Determinants of SMEs owner-manager behavioral intention towards usage of financial products

Evaluation of socio-psychological determinants of SMEs financial behavior have often been prescribed as an important research direction, particularly in developing economies. In accordance with the above, this study based in Pakistan investigated socio-psychological determinants of SMEs owner-managers' attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control towards usage of financial products. The antecedents of these socio-psychological determinants are depicted as motivation, awareness, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived risk; social beliefs and religious beliefs; and self-efficacy. Moderating influences of demographic characteristics of owner-managers have also been analyzed in order to explain the scenario with enhanced precision and possibilities. The study proposed an extended model by combining Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Technology Acceptance Model towards understanding financial behavior of SME owner-managers. Relying on a survey research design, and following a stratified sampling method, 375 SMEs owner-managers were surveyed from Punjab province of Pakistan. Descriptive analysis was done using SPSS, and inferential analysis using Smart PLS 3.2.2. The findings revealed that awareness, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, social and religious beliefs possess significant positive relationships with owner-manager attitude and subjective norms which further significantly predicts behavioral intention. However, perceived risk was found to have a significant negative influence on the attitude of SMEs owner-manager. The results revealed that gender exerts no moderation effect on attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control whereas age, education and experience moderate the relationship of attitude only. As SMEs owner-managers exhibit serious concern towards formal financial products usage, it is recommended to the financial institutes that they ensure fairness in their offerings, marketing communications and the way they make products available to SMEs owner-manager. It is also suggested that policy must focus to create awareness among SMEs regarding financial products availability and usefulness, in addition to instituting desirable regulations

Understanding Gendered Perspective to Corruption: Evidence from Pakistan

This study focuses on the debate that whether women are as corrupt as men, or their propensity to corruption is less than their male counterparts on account of their soft gender? It also encompasses the dynamics of networking, with particular emphasis on sifarish (use of influence for undue benefits)  and networking in gender perspective. Are women less corrupt than men? Do the sifarish and networking have gender biasness, how women become part of these networks and what role they play therein? These are the questions addressed in this study. An interpretive approach of qualitative research has been adopted keeping in view the subjective nature of networking and corruption. Semi-structured interviews from seventeen General / Senior Managers of public sector organizations were conducted to get their input on the research questions, middle management of public sector has been selected with a view that they have immediate exposure to corruption occurrences in the society. In addition to it, in depth review of the relevant available literature has been made. It has been concluded that apparent image of women being less susceptible to corruption is not related with their sex or gender, rather it is due to their less exposure to business and economic world which, even as of today, is dominated by men This study will add to the literature on role of gender in corruption, sifarish, networking and favoritism in the Pakistani context. This will also help management practitioners in working out their strategies in defining the role of women in the anti-corruption campaigns in business and political sectors. This study has acquired feedback from the middle management employees belonging to public sector organizations as they are directly related with formation and implementation of policies, which is also a sampling limitation. Future research should be carried out on diverse samples covering private organizations and non-professional people

Role of Advertising and Sales-Promotions to Create Brand-Satisfaction in the FMCG; Evidence from Pakistan

The role of brand satisfaction as a predecessor of brand loyalty has been acknowledged by researchers, academicians, and practitioners for long. Various concepts, theories, and models have been presented in the literature to understand the antecedents and predictors of brand satisfaction. It has been propounded that advertising supports to incite brand satisfaction. At the same time, many studies go against this point of view indicating its detrimental role in this regard. Although the research on sales promotions and brand satisfaction in the context of quality, performance, and value perceptions is meagre, it tends to depict it, for the most time, damaging and therefore unsuitable. This empirical research is an attempt to explore the comparative effectiveness of sales promotions and advertising to induce brand satisfaction taking into account all important constructs. The research has been conducted on the FMCG sector involving two most frequently purchased products consuming minimal household budget i.e. bath soap and toothpaste. The study findings, although determine advertising relatively more efficacious to produce feelings of satisfaction towards a brand, the role of sales promotions cannot be downplayed as they are equally important in respect of brand quality and utilitarian value

How Does Stakeholders Pressure Affect Organization Performance and Employee Wellbeing? Study of Multiple Mediating Roles

Employee satisfaction and high performance is every organization’s goal. When seen through the lens of stakeholder theory, these goals could be achieved by CSR practices through certain ways. Stakeholder theory affords an initial point to assimilate stakeholder pressure and corporate social responsibility practices. This research studies the effect of pressure from stakeholders over organization performance and wellbeing of employees by including the mediating effect of CSR oriented culture, CSR practices, organizational citizenship behavior, organizational commitment, and organizational trust in Pakistan’s banking sector. The study employs quantitative and cross sectional research design. A sample of 180 banks was studied through employing SmartPLS3.0 software using mediation analyses.The findings reveal that CSR oriented culture mediates between stakeholder pressure and CSR practices; CSR practices affect organization performance through organization citizenship behavior. Further, trust is a partial mediator among CSR practices and wellbeing of employees. Serial mediators play their role between stakeholder pressure and organization performance, and also play a role between stakeholder pressure and employee wellbeing. Implications/Originality/Value: The findings suggest Pakistani banks to acknowledge pressure from all stakeholders, and concentrate on CSR practices for their bank performance and staff wellbeing

Challenges in marketing of Islamic banking products in Malaysia

The history of banking is as old as Islam but the history of Islamic banking is only half a century old. It is agreed that Islamic banking started with a saving bank based on profit sharing in Mit Ghamr, Egypt in 1963. But, the first proper Islamic bank is deemed to be the Nasser Social Bank in 1971, again in Egypt. In 2013, after 50 years, there are about 400 Islamic banks and institutions in 53 countries with a fund based of USD 992 billion and asset based of USD 1.3 trillion. When Islamic banking started, Malaysia was busy with independence. Therefore, the start of Islamic banking in Malaysia was delayed by two decades. Malaysia passed Islamic banking Act in 1983 to start Bank Islam Malaysia Berhad with a capital based RM 80 million. The next three decades saw a tremendous growth. By 2013, there were 16 domestic and 5 international Islamic banks in Malaysia with an asset based of RM 442 billion, which does not include 15 Takaful operators. In spite of this tremendous growth, Islamic banking does not compare with conventional banking in terms of volume and acceptability. There have been studies which show that while 80% of the banking customers in Malaysia are aware of Islamic banking, but were not aware of Islamic banking products like Ijarah, Murabahah, etc. This conceptual paper brings out the challenges of marketing Islamic banking products in Malaysia and traces the roots of the problem to the lack of customer centricity

Economic Feasibility of Stand-Alone Wind Energy Hybrid with Bioenergy from Anaerobic Digestion for Electrification of Remote Area of Pakistan

Hybrid Renewable Energy systems (HRES) are gaining importance throughout the world because of the finite sources of oil and gas reservoirs. These have the great ability in the production of electrical energy and cleaning the environment. It is difficult to get grid electricity in the remote areas where no infrastructure exists. The utilization of renewable sources is the ultimate solution for the generation of electricity. In this paper, the economic modeling of Hybrid system consisting of Wind/biomass is explored for the remote area ‘Jangiah’ of Balochistan province, Pakistan. Anaerobic Digestion of biomass is used to get biogas. This source is used to complement the uncertainties in the wind production. Homer is used to simulate the hybrid model. Economic analysis is performed to get the net present value (NPV) and cost of energy. It is observed that wind/biomass alone is capable to meet the demand of community which consumes 60 kW peak daily along with the storage backup. This system is the most economical with COE equal to 0.118 US$/kWh following the hybrid biomass/wind/diesel system with COE 0.202 US$/kWh. The sensitivity analysis is carried out and shows that the proposed system is sensitive to the prices of fossil fuel and project lifespan. The net present value increases as the lifetime of the project increases from 15 years to 30 years. It can also be concluded that if the price of the diesel drops below 0.8 US$/liter, the traditional system using fossil fuels will become the most suitable system for the generation of electricity in remote areas

Influence of Awareness on SME’s Intention towards Islamic Finance Adoption in Pakistan

A large number of SMEs in North Africa, Middle East and South Asia prefer Islamic financial products over their conventional counterparts. Similarly, in Pakistan SME owner-managers prefer Islamic finance as 20-25 percent of SMEs are not willing to take conventional finance.Despite higher demand, however, these firms are unable to access Islamic finance from financial institutions.There are several factors behind this dilemma on both supply and demand side.The present study discusses demand side issues pertaining to lack of adoption of Islamic finance by SMEs in Pakistan. Among various demand side factors, this paper has focused on the issue of lack of financial knowledge or awareness of Islamic financial products.In Pakistan, due to financial illiteracy of SME owner-managers, they seldom are able to identify suitable available financing options for their business financial needs.Thus, this study intended to determine the importance of awareness factor in influencing intention of SMEs to adopt Islamic finance. A conceptual framework has been constructed based on Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and research propositions are developed in order to elaborate role of awareness in influencing SME managers’ intention towards Islamic finance adoption.A preliminary analysis has been conducted through pilot study to check the internal consistency and reliability of instrument and found valid for further research. These both outcomes of the study are expected to lay foundation for more structured research on the issue of demand side factors of adoption of Islamic financial products

The influence of attitudinal factors of SME owner-managers on adoption of financial products

Given the key role of owner managers in the decision making process, understanding socio-psychological factors of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) financial behavior has often been prescribed as an important research direction.In accordance with the above, present study in context of Pakistan investigated the attitudinal factors of SMEs owner-managers’ towards adoption of financial products.The attitudinal factors are depicted as perceived relative advantage, perceived compatibility and perceived complexity.The proposed model has been adapted, which is composed of decomposed theory of planned behavior (DTPB) and decomposed attitudinal factors of SMEs owner-manager to investigate their intention to adopt financial products in Pakistan. Relying on a survey research design, and following stratified sampling method, after screening process 285 owner-managers responses have been considered for further analysis.The findings revealed that perceived relative advantage and perceived compatibility possess significant positive relationships with owner-manager attitude towards adoption of financial product which further significantly predicts behavioral intention.Moreover, perceived complexity has negative but significant relationship with SMEs owner-manager attitude towards adoption of financial products. SMEs owner-managers exhibit serious concern towards formal financial products adoption, the policy makers are suggested to focus on creating specialized products which are useful, compatible and easy to understand for SMEs owner-manager in Pakistan

SME ACCESS TO FINANCE IN EMERGING ECONOMIES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PAKISTAN AND MALAYSIA

It has been widely accepted that SMEs make a significant contribution to the socio-economic and political infrastructure in both developed and developing countries. SMEs make up more than 96% of all businesses in emerging economies that provide two out of three private sector jobs. Yet, the importance of SMEs notwithstanding as confronted with several hindrances which impede their development. In emerging economies access to finance has been found as one of the major constraints to SMEs growth. In Malaysia and Pakistan SMEs contributing towards economic growth, however huge finance gap for SME sector exist in both countries. By summarizing current data this paper highlights the share of SME sector towards economic growth, financing gap and supply/demand side challenges towards access to finance in Malaysia and Pakistan. The comparison of both countries revealed that challenges are more severe in lower-middle income country (Pakistan) because of inappropriate policies and their implementation. However, the upper-middle income country (Malaysia) consistent growth can minimize the finance gap for SME sector quickly. JEL Code: M

The modelling of wind farm layout optimization for the reduction of wake losses

The objective of the present research is to find out the optimized dimensions of the wind farm area and turbines layout to reduce the overall cost per unit power. The velocity deficits caused by the wakes of each turbine were calculated by using Jensen's wake model. The optimal positions of wind turbine placement are evaluated by using genetic algorithm, while sustaining the obligatory space between adjacent turbines for operation safety. The research on the wind farm area dimensions and fully utilization of upstream wind velocity is currently lacking in literature. The logical application of area dimensions and genetic algorithm improved the overall efficiency of the wind farm. It is concluded that proposed duel level optimization method outperforms the existing ones. The total wind farm area (2km × 2km) was divided into 100 identical cells, with each cell having dimensions 200m × 200m . The performance of the proposed method is compared with the results from previous studies. The simulation results showed that power output of the wind farm was increased by using same area with different dimensions. It was observed that by using the same number of wind turbines, the total efficiency of wind farm was increased by 7 %