Ontology-based islamic banking product information for informed decision making and product innovation / Ahmad Shaharudin Abdul Latiff

The Islamic banks need to remove the grievances on them and gain support of their customers. There were presumptions that the issues were due to the customers’ lack of understanding. Hence, there was need to identify the actual root causes of the issues and the factors that had been impeding the customers’ understanding. The issue of the grievances could be attended by improving the customers’ decision making with the use of information systems. Yet, such systems need to hold the information on the banking products. The information on the Islamic banking products could be modelled in form of a domain ontology. The objectives of this research were to ascertain the real issues of the grievances on the Islamic banks, the effect of lack of understanding of the product on the grievances, and then build a domain ontology on the Islamic banking products which is capable to facilitate customers’ informed decision making and innovation of new products. The research was done qualitatively to identify the issue of the customers’ grievances by identifying the factors that are causing the grievances and also the factors that have been hindering the understanding. Among the factors that had hindered the customers’ understanding was due to the distinct concepts and terminologies, predominant use of Arabic terms, variation of practices by different banks and also the diverse Shariah concepts adopted by products of similar nature. With the use of software engineering approach, the research studied the characteristics of the Islamic banking products to design an ontology on the Islamic banking products. The conceptualised ontology includes knowledge on the prevailing Islamic banking Shariah concepts and contracts, the commercial banking processes and others. It also defined the roles played by the bank and its customers respectively according to the different Shariah concepts. The ontology was evaluated with the use of competency questions related to the information needed for decision making and interviews were conducted with customers, non-customers and also the bank staff. With such ontology, the customers will be supported to make informed decision making which would satisfy their need and the banks may innovate more new products. These would eventually remove the grievances in the long run

Entrepreneurship as a Sustainable Solution for the Female Graduates in the SME Sector of Bangladesh

Female entrepreneurship is a sustainable entrepreneurial activity by women, individually or in a group. This relatively new phenomenon has been gaining attention in developing countries like Bangladesh. The female graduates of the country represent an important yet untapped segment of entrepreneurship. The paper critically reviews the existing literature and evaluates the current situation of this segment and finds that issues from social, cultural, legal, political, workplace and educational system contexts limit their capacity to participate in the labor-force besides their male counterparts. The issues, if not treated prudently, might adversely affect the socio-economic goals of Bangladesh. Entrepreneurship may stand as a sustainable employment solution for the female graduates, which would enable them to contribute to the Small and Medium-sized enterprises (SME) sector of the country. The article proposes practical recommendations to reinforce the initiatives by the stakeholders and suggests to make necessary policy changes in order to facilitate graduate female entrepreneurship in the SME sector, enhance sustainability of the sector and convert it into a catalyst for economic growth of Bangladesh

A Systematic review of ontology-based approach and decision-making (DM) to improve public service delivery (PSD)

A systematic review of the DM literature on PSD was performed with the aim to build an operational ontology-based for decision makers. Five public administration journals were screened on the subject with more than 200 articles found. 29 articles were shortlisted, categorised, summarised, and applied to outline the influential factors in DM for PSD. The result of the systematic reviews also provided a brief clarification on the requirement for the creation of a more citizen-centric and coordinated eco-system for efficient PSD underpinned by effective DM

Definitions and Concepts of Organizational Sustainability: A Literature Analysis

This research paper provides a comprehensive literature review that thoroughly examines the definitions and different concepts of organizational sustainability. This paper also looks at how research gaps are addressed in the literature with a particular emphasis on issues of organizational sustainability. Overall, organizational sustainability, including issues and aspects related to sustainability, is discussed. Individual authors provide their perspectives on various aspects of organizational sustainability from their field research, case analysis, and creative search. It also includes a greater knowledge of how real economic activity concerns and political dynamics can inhibit decision-making related to operational or practical sustainability. Several sustainability viewpoints from around the world have provided a genuine mechanism for organizations to increase their financial success while minimizing their impact on the environment and society. This study urges that knowing an organization's ability to change and self-regulate on critical issues for long-term sustainability can help solve the socio-ecological dilemma. This study shows how firms approach sustainability and what fundamental issues still need to be resolved. The research has provided novel and unusual insights into the factors contributing to organizational sustainability. Additional value is generated by estimating progress toward the idea of organizational sustainability, identifying impediments, and analyzing various real-world examples of measures to enhance advancement toward that concept

Price efficiency of Islamic and conventional banks: evidence from panel data

Literature on the price efficiency of Islamic and conventional banks have focused mostly on cost efficiency while attention on profit and revenue efficiency has been lukewarm. This study examines how Islamic and conventional banks differ in terms of cost, profit and revenue efficiency. Using a sample of 18 countries with 70 Islamic and 374 conventional banks spanning from year 2009 to 2017 across the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia regions, the empirical results derived from using the least squares dummy variable indicate that there is no significant difference between both types of banks. Further robustness checks utilizing random effects model also reveal similar findings. Among the sample countries, Islamic and conventional banks from Singapore, Malaysia and Qatar were found to be relatively higher in average profit efficiency compared to banks from other sampled countries, while Islamic and conventional banks from Indonesia, Iraq and Jordan were found to be relatively inefficient in generating profit. This study also found that banks from some countries did relatively better in terms of revenue efficiency compared to cost efficiency and vice versa. This indicates there is a need to look not just into the topic of costs but also how well banks fare in generating revenue

Leveraging on social media as a communication channel for improving services of the government of Malaysia

In today’s competition, the private and public sector is taking social media to another level towards achieving their purposes, whether to improve profitability of the company or to improve organizational performance. Ubiquitous and innovative ICTs provide different communication channels for the public to give feedbacks on the services given the public sector. As such, social media provides an opportunity to gather feedbacks and responses towards improving services. The purpose of this paper is to give a background on leveraging social media to improve services in the Malaysian government sector. Based on the study background, observations and content analysis on the social media pages were carried out for the purpose of the study. It is understood that leveraging social media does have an advantage to give insights for successful social media implementation and can give a positive organizational effect to the departments

The Influence of Institutional Policies and Information Technology Adoption towards Sustainable Logistics Transportation

Logistics is the movement engine for cargos and merchandises both for domestics and international. People complete their business process through logistics transportation, especially to move cargos and merchandises reaching their end users around the world, hence transportation also can be considered as the backbone to business supply chain. Unfortunately, their operations produced negative impacts to our environment and society. Thus, business activities nowadays goes beyond sustaining economic sustainability solely. They are concern dearly on the environmental quality and human well-being as well. The objective of this paper is to review the influence of institutional policies and information technology (IT) adoption towards sustainable logistics transportations in the economic, environmental and social performance. Through understanding of Institutional Theory and Resource-Based View (RBV) Theory, institutional policies and IT adoption can be considered as the enabler for logistics performance and their sustainability. This paper expects to provide new insights to the logistics practitioners and policy makers in sustaining logistics sector in parallel with todays world demand, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Bridge from Theory to Practice: A Conceptual Framework Fostering Sustainable Business Performance through Green Technology Innovation, Organizational Agility and Employer Branding

In order to address the harming issues of biodiversity and social isolation, organizations are under pressure to study innovative and sustainable business performance practices. The resource-based view (RBV) and the stakeholder model established a set of values that businesses might use to create a sustainable future. The primary objective of this research was to explore how RBV and the stakeholder theory model support sustainable business performance through organizational agility, employer branding, and green technology innovation. A conceptual framework was built by reviewing the prior literature in order to accomplish the study's goal. This conceptual approach consists of three phases: agility-brand talent attraction measure (ABTAM), innovation, and sustainability. For the purpose to achieve sustainable business performance, organizational agility, employer branding and green technology innovation were supported by previous literature. Although this idea outlines basic concepts. However, it is important to take into account any relevant data in order to bring these steps into integration with the different situations. In order to achieve many aspects of organizational sustainability, this article offers a systematic review of the Resource Based View (RBV) and stakeholder model. Within the context of the RBV and stakeholder model, a conceptual framework was established to create a sustainable business performance. This was accomplished by incorporating organizational agility and employer branding into the context of the model. In this work, both theoretical and practical ramifications are taken into consideration and explained Research paper Keywords: Organizational agility; Employer branding; Innovation; Sustainability; RBV; Stakeholder Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Hussain, A., Abdul Wahab, S., & Shaharudin, A. (2023). Bridge from Theory to Practice: A Conceptual Framework Fostering Sustainable Business Performance through Green Technology Innovation, Organizational Agility and Employer Branding. Journal of Entrepreneurship, Business and Economics, 11(2), 29–52

The Underlying Theories of Organizational Sustainability: The Motivation Perspective

The primary purpose of this paper is to illustrate the significance of several underlying theories of organizational sustainability from a motivational perspective. This paper adopts three theories from three distinct perspectives, including the institutional or organizational perspective, the employee perspective, and the stakeholder perspective, to construct and develop strong relationships among different variables to form a research framework connecting these three perspectives with organizational sustainability. The study then suggested a conceptual model for organizational sustainability based on three theories: the institutional theory (IT), the ability-motivation-opportunity (AMO) theory, and the stakeholder theory (ST). Several theoretical perspectives of organizational sustainability, including IT, AMO theory, and ST perspectives of sustainability concerns, were used to explore and determine the motivational viewpoint of these theories. This study began with a review of multiple studies and an analysis of the numerous ideas driving organizational sustainability. After that, the examined studies were appraised for their evidence and inadequacies. This paper included environmental, social, and economic aspects in one comprehensive review and focused on recent studies based on IT, AMO theory, and ST from a motivational perspective. Previous organizational sustainability reviews of several theories in different sectors or industries were primarily based on resource base view theory, resource dependency theory, social exchange theory, dynamic capability theory, and so on. This study examined current changes in IT, AMO theory, and ST theory from a motivational viewpoint. Additionally, the development of organizational sustainability in the industrial arena was addressed. This paper may be used as a guide for different stakeholders, especially practitioners and policymakers so that they can set up their strategies, action plans, and policies in a way that will ensure the sustainability of their organizations