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Prior studies in Bangladesh examined how several non-demographic factors influenced consumers' online buying behavior. However, no specific research has been conducted to examine an association between consumers' demographic factors and the online shopping behavior of Bangladeshi buyers. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the association between online shopping behavior and the demographic characteristics of Bangladeshi buyers. The association between six consumers' demographic variables, such as age, gender, income, education, occupation, and marital status, and online shopping behavior, proxied by the frequency of online shopping, was examined. Primary data through a structured questionnaire was collected from the 547 respondents in urban and rural areas of seven divisions in Bangladesh through offline and online surveys. The chi-square test was used to examine the association between consumers' demographic characteristics and online shopping behavior. The study found that male and married consumers with a higher level of education and higher-category jobs have a higher propensity to shop online. However, consumers' age and income level do not significantly impact their online shopping behavior. The study's outcomes are expected to provide online retailers and merchants with critical information about buyer behavior. Keywords: Association, online shopping behavior, demographic characteristics, chi-square test, Cramér’s V, e-commerce. JEL Classification: M31, M39, and L81

This study analyzes the effect of capital structure on the performance of telecommunications firms. The firm performance is measured by return on assets while capital structure is proxied with the ratio of debt total assets. Data of telecommunication firm in 62 countries period of year 2010-2020 proceed with a dynamic data panel regression model using the generalized method of moment approach. The empirical results indicated that capital structure of telecommunication firm has significantly impact to the firm performance in developed and developing countries as well as in integrated and wireless telecommunication firms.  The other factors that effect on firm performance are firm size and growth. The novelty of this study lies in the scope of analyses that cover world-wide telecommunication industry based on demographic group (developed and developing countries) and main businesses (integrated and wireless telecommunication).

Cybercrime is touted as any harmful behaviour that is in some way related to a computer but does not have a specific legal reference. Therefore, the objective of this study was to explore cybersecurity as a response to combating cybercrime, focusing on demystifying the prevailing threats, while offering recommendations to the African regions. Moreover, this qualitative study employed a non-empirical research design: Systematic review methodology to analyse grey literature and primary research studies peer-reviewed and published, restricted from 2010-2022, not following yearly sequential consideration. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) and Critical Appraisal Skill Programme (CASP) were employed to ensure the trustworthiness of the findings of this study based on reviewed conventional and seminal literature studies on this subject. The main findings of this study rest on a lack of a common universal definition of cybercrime, this has an impact on its prevention and ignores enormous economic value associated with the commission of this crime across the world, African regions included. It was also observed that this criminal act is presently committed with internet usage, consisting of copyright infringements, computer-related fraud, child or adult pornography, and network security violations, amongst others. Equally, addressing this scourge in African regions requires advanced skills and knowledge; exceeding the average computer and internet user.  It is also critical to recognise the importance of implementing efficient cybersecurity methods, as policing this crime remains an important component of the Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA), and more innovative strategies are required and a globally coordinated response to this problem is urgently sought.

Road Traffic accidents is a major problem worldwide even in South Africa is a leading killer on the road. Human factor is a main contributory factor to fatalities on the road as many road users are not adhering to the rules of the road. The inability of road users to understand and interpret the rules of the road is a major problem on South African roads. This article focus on preventive measures to curb factors contributing to road traffic accidents in South Africa. The article is based on a qualitatively rooted methodology including a wide range of primary and secondary sources such as documents from Road Traffic Management Corporation, academic books, articles, dissertations, thesis and reports from non-governmental organisations focusing on road safety. The article further draws on the findings from the world on road safety and formulate steps to counteract road traffic accidents in South Africa. Awareness of road safety play a critical component in changing the behaviour of the road users other than just focusing on reducing road traffic accidents. The research based key steps leading to the prevention of road traffic accidents. The first step related to increasing law enforcement officials on the road; awareness campaigns to change the behaviour of road users; capacitate law enforcement agencies with resources to address non-compliance on the road; provide anti- corruption strategies in the law enforcement agencies.

The purpose of this study was to examine transformational leadership and organizational justice on employee performance with the role of job satisfaction as a mediation. This research was conducted on the employee of police officers are part of Indonesian police officers, especially located in Blitar, East Java, Indonesia with a total sample used in this study is 176 respondents. Questionnaires are used in this study for the data collection method, the data is analyzed using Structural Equation Model and Partial Least Square. The results show; (1) There is a positive and significant influence between transformational leadership on employee performance, (2) There is a positive and significant influence between transformational leadership on job satisfaction, and (3) There is a positive and significant influence between organizational justice on employee performance, (4) There is positive and significant influence between organizational justice towards job satisfaction, (5) There is positive and significant influence between job satisfaction on employee performance, (6) There is positive and significant influence between transformational leadership on employee performance through job satisfaction, (7) There is positive and no significant influence between organizational justice on employee performance through job satisfaction.

While economic incentives, technical developments, and government policies and regulations can all contribute to reduce residential water use, householders, on the other hand, can also help lessen overall water demands by using less water. In this study, we look at how to modify people's behaviour to conserve water at home. Using the theory of reasoned action which suggest human behaviour is a construct of subjective norms, and attitude, this study aimed to identify the factors that influences water conservation behaviour in low-income households in South Africa South Africa.   The study focused on the Waterloo Township, which is located north of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal. This study followed a positive paradigm and employed a descriptive cross-sectional research design and a quantitative survey design with a sample of (n=305). Both descriptive and inferential analysis was used to analyze and present the data. Path analysis using regression coefficient was performed to establish the factors that predict water conservation behaviour. The results suggest that although the knowledge of water conservation was high among the respondents, there was however a negative gap difference (-20.3) between their knowledge (94.4%) and actual behaviour (74.1%) towards water saving techniques.  The regression analysis conducted revealed that subject norms were the strongest predictor towards water conservation intentions in the Waterloo LCH.  This conclusively suggest that the conceptualisation of water conservation behaviour as a function of attitude and subjective norm may be appropriate in the context of the low-cost housing areas within South Africa.

This study aims to understand the predictors of firm performance, namely by examining the direct influence of transformational leadership, HRM digitalization, and organizational commitment. The sample which becomes the respondents of this study is the owners or managers of creative MSMEs in Bandung, West Java, with the number of samples of 125 respondents. The data is collected using survey method, namely by giving the questionnaires to the respondents. The data is analyzed using multiple linear regression analysis with SPSS 25 software. The findings prove that transformational leadership, HRM digitalization, and organizational commitment are able to predict firm performance, both partially and simultaneously.

Retracted Paper This paper aims to evaluate students’ feedback on the impediments to developing critical thinking in the classroom. Interpretative phenomenological analysis techniques were used to obtain data from postgraduate and undergraduate students of an Internal Auditing department in a South African university. The students identified several barriers to developing critical thinking in the classroom some of which are (1) the lecturers who are most times not knowledgeable in the field of critical thinking, (2) the students themselves who are simply not interested, (3) finally the educational system, according to the students who all argued that critical thinking is not ingrained in the country's educational institutions. According to the students, their lack of knowledge of critical thinking including the lecturers’ seeming insufficient knowledge of critical thinking calls for urgent intervention in the form of re-curriculation and training of lecturers. The findings of this research could have important implications for the auditing profession, as lecturers are often challenged to identify innovative ways to assist students in improving their critical thinking skills.

The influence of macroeconomic variables on aspects of business and the country's economy has been a subject of robust discussion. This study was conducted to identify the effect of macroeconomic variables, namely inflation rate, economic growth, exchange rate and share price, on listed companies in South Africa. The goal was to study the long run and short run effects of macroeconomic volatility on company performance because of the world’s recent pandemic experience. To achieve this objective, the study applied the panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model on annual panel data from 2010 to 2020 to analyse the short run and long run effects of macroeconomic variables on a company’s performance. The study results suggested a positive impact of economic growth, exchange rate and share price on asset returns, whilst a company's equity return is supported by economic growth and share price in the long run. The short run revealed that none of the independent variables has a sufficiently significant effect to influence a company's performance changes in the short run. Based on the findings, it was recommended that policymakers and economic authorities should introduce and implement strategies that favour and enhance the country's economic growth and stable exchange rate in order to improve company performance. Additionally, given that the company's short-run performance may highly depend on internal factors such as corporate governance, internal policies and business strategies, these decisions should be taken with precaution and a high level of professionalism.

This article aims to assess the Integrated Development Planning (IDP) process for improved community participation. The IDP process was developed to improve strategic planning and community participation at the municipal level. Many South African municipalities have been struggling to use the IDP process to improve community participation. The methodology included 400 respondents who were chosen through a probability sampling technique and probed to complete the online survey using a closed-ended questionnaire guide, and ten respondents were also chosen through a non-probability sampling technique and were face-to-face interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. The key findings revealed that poor community participation exists in the study area due to a lack of encouragement from responsible authorities. The Tzaneen municipality does not provide adequate feedback to the communities, and the inputs of the communities are not considered. There is a continuous lack of community consultation during the annual review of the IDP. The ineffective IDP process for improved community participation presents several challenges. Thus, this article concluded by providing a few recommendations to enhance the application of the IDP process and community participation. The Tzaneen municipal area should at all times uphold democratic principles by ensuring active public participation, transparency, and openness in municipal affairs. It also recommends making it easier for marginalised and previously disadvantaged people to participate in municipal policy and decision-making without prejudice. South African municipalities, including Tzaneen municipality, should develop and innovate institutional, and organisational capabilities to better utilise their resources, mitigate socio-economic challenges and enhance service delivery.

China as a hot luxury market has witnessed high growth in luxury sales despite the COVID-19. In recent years, many luxury companies have further improved their brand value and influence via co-branding strategies, however, their brand cooperation received mixed evaluations. Drawing on the conceptual blending theory and self-concept consistency theory, this paper constructs and verifies the structural equation model of consumer evaluation of luxury co-branding from the perspectives of the brands and the consumers. The study reveals that luxury co-branding fit, advertising types and the consumers’ life-role transition have a positive impact on consumer evaluation. Both the type of advertising and consumers’ life-role transition have a moderating effect on consumer evaluation. Specifically, (i) In luxury co-branding, the co-branded products paired with a high fit between the values of the cooperative brands are more likely to receive high consumer evaluation; (ii) The publicity of the brand image of the co-branded products has a stronger moderating effect on the perceived quality, appeal and purchase intention of luxury users than the publicity of the features of the co-branded products; (iii) For luxury brands with a high degree of joint fit, consumers who have not experienced life-role transformation have a stronger regulatory effect on consumers' perceived quality, attractiveness and purchase intention than consumers who have experienced life-role transformation.

Misconduct, in any form, whether corruption, theft, mismanagement of funds, maladministration, non-compliance of rules, etc. may create unethical environment in an organisation. This situation, if not get corrected timely, may have a negative impact on organisational performance as employees may be more inclined to focus on personal gains than working towards realising orgaisational vision. Authors of this article have utilised various official reports to substantiate this statement, and hence avoid a biased approach. The study focuses on the Local Government Sector Education Training Authority (LGSETA), to assess whether there is misconduct that limits the organization’s ability to establish an ethical culture. The study is based on qualitative desktop analysis utilising literature and document reviews to gather information. The findings explore varied ethical challenges and thus discuss measures to combat misconduct in LGSETA. The study recommends the adoption of the Governance Operating Model, suggested by Deloitte (2013) that can assist LGSETA to minimise misconduct by implementing measures to institute and promote an ethical culture.

The study aims to examine the effect of the entrepreneurial mindset and work environment the individual work performance. To deepen the understanding of the concepts and establish the theories of the study, literature was reviewed. The study used a descriptive assessment and correlation research design. Total enumeration sampling was taken as the sampling design of the study. Therefore, the population of the study was all employees of Divine Word College of Laoag, a total of 169 employees. Questionnaires were used to gather the data and to determine the correlation, the ANOVA was used. The results indicate that entrepreneurial mindset and work environment and individual work performance are high and the result of the correlation found that both, entrepreneurial mindset and work environment are significantly correlated to the individual work performance.

The aim of the paper is to investigate the impact of SEO on the business performance of a private university in Sarajevo. Thus, the main research question provides the finding on how does the implementation of SEO influence the performance of the business. Moreover, the tested hypothesis presents whether SEO positively influences the business performance of International Burch University (IBU). The research strategy is to analyze primary data derived from a case study, which is generated following a conversation with the Head of the IBU Marketing and PR team. The data sample is derived from Google Analytics (focusing on the number of visits and sessions, average engagement time, keywords and SERP positioning). Seobility tools are employed in data analysis. Business performance is calculated through the IBU CRM system, focusing on student enrolment. Findings indicate that increasing a site's rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs) led to a variety of positive outcomes for companies including an increase in the number of visitors to the site, an increase in the average amount of time users spent on the site, increased user engagement, and an increase in student enrollment, which resulted in IBU increased annual sales revenue. It will benefit many different groups, including the government, which will benefit in both microeconomic and macroeconomic senses, digital marketing enthusiasts and SEO experts, and the academic world, which will benefit as a framework for future studies and research in the field of SEO recognition and implementation in business queries.

The objective of the study was to assess the factors that motivate or demotivate households to choose among the three healthcare facilities, public healthcare, private health care and traditional healthcare facilities in South Africa as revealed by Statistics South Africa . The utilisation of healthcare facilities in South Africa is such that more households prefer public healthcare facilities more than other healthcare facilities. The multinomial logit model was used, with traditional/self-medication category as the reference or baseline category. The results indicated that gender, income and access to grants were significant in influencing the probability of a household choosing a public healthcare facility, while age, income, grants, salaries/wages/commission and pensions were significant in influencing the choice of private healthcare institutions. Therefore the study recommends that due to a large portion of households that are using public health facilities compared to private and traditional facilities, the government must invest more in public healthcare facilities in South Africa.

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) give rise to many possibilities including those of negative interest rates. A two-period decision model is presented between one central bank and one representative household. The central bank applies the Taylor (1993) rule to choose its interest rate. The household allocates its resources strategically to production, consumption, CBDC holding, and non-CBDC holding. The results are determined analytically and illustrated numerically by varying 19 parameter values. Interesting novelties of the article are that the central bank may choose negative CBDC interest rates when the household holds far more CBDC than non-CBDC, for low inflation rates, low real interest rates, low household’s potential production, low weight assigned to inflation in the Taylor (1993) rule, high target inflation rate, and high household’s production parameter. That usually causes the household to decrease its CBDC holding and increase its non-CBDC holding, production and consumption. The central bank may increase its CBDC interest rate to compete with an increasing non-CBDC interest rate if the household’s transaction efficiencies for CBDC and non-CBDC increase, or the household’s transaction efficiency for consumption decreases. Shocks to production, inflation and interest rates are analyzed.

This research examines the effect of safety knowledge and Workplace Safety Climate on safety performance mediated by worker safety behavior in the defense product manufacturing industry in Indonesia using PT Pindad as a research site. Occupational health and safety (K3) are one of the most important aspects of a company's production operations. No matter how good the quality or productivity of a company, it will be meaningless if there are problems regarding the value of K3 in its operations so that the K3 aspect cannot be ruled out. Safety knowledge of workers and creating a safety climate are able to achieve good safety performance. This study also measures the mediating effect of safety behavior in the causal relationship between safety knowledge and safety climate on safety performance. Questionnaires were distributed to 160 permanent employees. Then, Partial Least Squares are used to test the proposed hypothesis. The results showed that the safety knowledge variable was significantly related to the safety performance variable, with a count of 2.097, and the safety climate variable was significantly related to the safety performance variable, with an account of 2.243. The safety behavior variable mediates the effect of the safety knowledge variable on the safety performance variable, with a count of 2,607, and the safety behavior variable mediates the effect of the safety climate variable on the safety performance variable, with an account value of 2.094.

This study aims to investigate users’ satisfaction with e-Government services of Myanmar through a study of a specific e-Government service, the Myanmar Companies Online registration (MyCO) system. The MyCO system was chosen for this study because it is the initiative well-developed e-Government service in Myanmar. On the other hand, the company registration authority of Myanmar, the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA), has continuously made every endeavor to optimize responsive its e-Government services, after almost four years from the launching date of the MyCO system, systematically analyzing for optimizing the system still remains to research. In order to track public perception of the system, an online survey was conducted. The questionnaires were designed based on the Technology Acceptance Model in the fields of customer satisfaction consisting mainly of three main factors, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and perceived risk. Questionnaires were collected and analyzed with the respondents identifying themselves as having used the MyCO system. Notwithstanding the overall 79% of respondents were very satisfied and 20% were satisfied to some extent, payment transaction issues and some technical challenges are still remained in the system to be addressed to become a better user-centric public service. This study will support a number of contributions to find out the gap between e-Government services implementation and how publics’ expectations of e-Government services. The result of this study will provide awareness to DICA to improve more efficiency and effectiveness in implementing best practices in the provision of user-centric public services based on the public’s needs and demands.

This study aims to examine and analyse the effect of green transformational leadership and green attitude on green organisational citizenship behaviour mediated by emotional intelligence. This research was conducted at Batik Warna Alam SMES in Klaten, Central Java, with 118 respondents. Analysis of the data used is the quantitative method of Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) SMART-Partial Least Square (PLS) Software. This study indicates that: (1) There is a positive and significant effect between green transformational leadership on emotional intelligence. (2) there is a positive and significant effect between green attitude to green attitude (3) there is a positive and significant effect between emotional intelligence on green organisational citizenship behaviour. (4) there is a positive and significant effect between green transformational leadership on green organisational citizenship behaviour (5) there is a positive and significant effect between green attitude and green organisational citizenship behaviour (6) there is a positive and significant effect between green transformational leadership on green organisational citizenship behaviour mediated by emotional intelligence (7) there is a positive and significant effect between green attitude and green organisational citizenship behaviour mediated by emotional intelligence at Batik Warna Alam SMEs in Klaten, Central Java.

Bangladesh is the second-largest garments and textile exporting country in the world and has more than 80 percent of its total export earnings from this sector. Despite it playing a significant role in policymaking in developing countries like Bangladesh, there is a gap in study regarding the effect of participation and position of garments and textile industry in the global value chain (GVC). This paper empirically analyses the participation and position of Bangladesh’s garments and textile industry in the context of the GVC by using the multiregional Input-Output table EORA Global MIRO. We found that this country has a comparative edge in terms of low-cost production and specialization and makes a significant contribution to the global garments industry, but it has not been able to fully integrate into the global production network. We also found that Bangladesh's garments and textile industry have higher backward participation than forwarding participation and occupy a downstream position in GVC. However, the downstream phases contribute to a large percentage of this country's trade. The findings of the study suggest that enhancing the GVC participation of Bangladesh’s garments and textile industry may have a substantial positive impact on the local industry. To boost the capability, there must be local requirements, such as adequate backward linkage for the manufacturing process, research and development for innovation, fewer regulatory restrictions, a mature money market in international operation, and a favorable environment for foreign investors.