Examining Impact of Islamic Work Ethic on Task Performance: Mediating Effect of Psychological Capital and a Moderating Role of Ethical Leadership

The twenty-first century has seen an increase in ethical misconduct at the workplace, highlighting the need to stimulate discussion on the role of work ethics. The objective of the current study is to extend the literature on work ethics by examining the role of Islamic work ethic in enhancing the task performance of employees. The current study proposes that psychological capital mediates the relationship between Islamic work ethic and task performance. It is also proposed that ethical leadership might act as a boundary condition that boosts the positive relationship between Islamic work ethic and psychological capital. Data were collected in three-time lags from employees working in the service sector of Pakistan (N?=?218) through the questionnaire. The results supported the mediation and moderation hypothesis, confirming that psychological capital mediates the relationship between Islamic work ethic and task performance. Ethical leadership moderates the relationship between Islamic work ethic and psychological capital. The results offer implications for theory and practice. Limitations and future research directions are also discussed.

     

Diehard or delicate? Violence and young firm performance in a developing country

Business Economics - The genesis and survival of new businesses is an important determinant of entrepreneurial dynamism. With the recent surge in security challenges, the issue of young...     

Want to make me emotional? The influence of emotional advertisements on women’s consumption behavior

A wide difference of opinion exists about the content and composition of emotions. Advertising may influence an audience and their buying decisions about products and services. The objective of this study is to better conceptualize how women emotionally respond to emotional advertisements (EAs). The variant views are integrated into an ACE model, composed of subordinate levels of emotions (E), celebrity endorsements (C), and appeal drivers (A). This empirical study examines women’s emotional response using data from 240 Chinese women respondents. The study participants were invited to develop ACE mix based advertisements and fill out questionnaires. PLS-SEM analysis, a novel approach in ACE advertisement development and its applicability to consumer behavior, was used. The results show that showbiz celebrities expressing the emotion of happiness with music and color make the most effective ACE mix to influence the consumption behavior of women. The results are significantly mediated by attention levels and are widely applicable in the burgeoning advertising industry. The study also calls for further research with different ACE mixes in different contexts and on different audiences. It also opens doors for policy making and an appropriate understanding of women’s consumption behavior in the Chinese context.     

Measuring Distortions to Agricultural Incentives for Value Chain Analysis: Evidence from Indian Value Chains

We extend the nominal rate of protection (NRP) methodology to a value chain framework. We develop our methodology for three types of value chains: a new value chain created by policy, a value chain in which a by‐product is created in the processing of a commodity, and a value chain in which processing of a commodity generates new product(s). We consider two cases of value chains: when the commodity is tradable and when it is non‐tradable. The proposed indicator, value chain NRP, allows policy‐makers to see an aggregate measure of all policy impacts on all the commodities and products in the value chain, normalised at the farm level. We apply the methodology to selected value chains in India. Our results indicate that farmers are subsidised, but at different rates. Both sugarcane producers and sugar producers are protected, but sugar producers are protected at higher rates. Producers of downstream products such as ethanol and molasses are taxed, whereas the crushing industry is subsidised. We observe that there is increasing protection along the value chain from commodity to product for the oilseeds sector, whereas the picture is less clear for the sugarcane value chain.     

Mixture cumulative count control chart for mixture geometric process characteristics

A statistical process control chart named the mixture cumulative count control chart (MCCC-chart) is suggested in this study, motivated by an existing control chart named cumulative count control chart (CCC-chart). The MCCC-chart is constructed based on the distribution function of a two component mixture of geometric distributions using the number of items inspected until a defective item is observed ‘n’ as plotting statistics. We have observed that the MCCC-chart has the ability to perform equivalent to the CCC-chart when number of defective items follows geometric distribution and better than the CCC-chart when the number of defective items produced by a process follows a mixture geometric model. The MCCC-chart may be considered as a generalized version of CCC-chart.     

Evaluation of business processes using probability-driven activity-based costing

The design of business processes often ignores detailed consideration of service cost. With competitive market pressure, this has become a key factor for the service sector. The ideas discussed in this paper are a result of research into automating the re-engineering of business processes. This paper presents a methodology for estimating the cost of a process, crucial to the evaluation of the process, using a novel variation of activity-based cost estimation. The majority of the research in this project has concentrated on the service sector and these types of processes are used as examples.     

A multilevel framework to enhance organizational resilience

Abstract

Organizational resilience is a capacity that emerges at multiple levels. Although the multilevel character of organizations has been generally acknowledged in existing organizational studies, there is a lack of theoretical and empirical studies that address how it affects organizational resilience. To adress this gap, this article offers a multilevel framework applicable to enhance organizational resilience and presents an empirical study to probe the impact of multilevel elements on organization's capacity for responding to critical situations. More specifically, the new framework will help an organization to enhance its resilience through a process of self-assessment on crisis preparedness and response capacity. This process will allow the organization to identify and remedy potential vulnerabilities in the interaction between its organs as well as environment. We argue that crisis management and organizational resilience are mutually shaped across multiple levels, from individual, organizational, to environmental. These multiple levels are operationalized operationalization in four phases: (1) reviewing and monitoring context, (2) testing preparedness, (3) analysing and assessing responses, and (4) strengthening capabilities. In these phases, we underline that resilience management requires continuous embracing of the dynamic processes within an organizational system and its environment. To validate the framework, we present an empirical study on a security organization, and describe the results to demonstrate how to utilise the tool in practice. In conclusion, we discuss how the multilevel framework can be further applied towards building stronger resilience management.     

Distributional Consequences of Globalization: Is Organization of the Islamic Conference Countries Different?

This article investigates distributional effects of globalization using new comparable panel data for Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and non-OIC developing countries from 1965 to 2010. The results show that the Kuznets Curve does not exist in OIC countries, while it holds in non-OIC countries. International trade tends to widen income inequality in OIC countries while it helps to ameliorate inequalities in non-OIC countries. Financial development decreases inequality only in OIC countries. The study concludes that OIC countries are different from non-OIC countries in their exposure to globalization.     

Distortions to agricultural incentives: Evidence from Nigerian value chains

Understanding how policies affect price transmission and incentives for producers and consumers along the complete value chain is a relevant research question due to the more globalized structure of agricultural value chains. In particular, Nigerian agricultural value chains have been targeted by a number of policy decisions. We analyze the import‐oriented palm oil value chain and the export‐oriented cacao value chain, estimating the price distortions from policies and their implications for production incentives at the regional level. For palm oil, due to protective trade policies and domestic initiatives, the nominal rate of protection (NRP) at the farmgate for palm oil producers shows that producers have been protected. NRPs at the border for cacao beans and cocoa products are negative, which may be due to a quality gap, the export market structure, and the concentration of buyers in global markets. Negative NRPs at the farmgate are seen for all regions, showing disincentives in the cacao beans export market reverberate through the domestic market despite domestic support policies. In both value chains, NRPs at farmgate vary across regions partially due to regional policy frameworks and partially due to local conditions impacting price transmission.     

Global production sharing: Exploring Australia's competitive edge

Cross‐border dispersion of production processes within vertically integrated global industries (“global production sharing”) has been an increasingly important structural feature of economic globalisation in the recent decades. This paper examines patterns and determinants of global production sharing with an emphasis on how Australian manufacturing fits into global production networks (GPNs). Though Australia is a minor player in GPNs, there is evidence that Australian manufacturing has a distinct competitive edge in specialised, skill‐intensive tasks in several industries such as aircraft, medical devices, machine tools, measuring and scientific equipment and photographic equipment. Specialisation in high‐value‐to‐weight components and final goods within GPNs, which are suitable for air transport, helps Australian manufacturing to overcome the “tyranny of distance” in world trade. Being predominantly “relationship specific,” Australian GPN exports are not significantly susceptible to real exchange rate appreciation.