Explore publications.

This study aims to determine the relationship between Islamic work ethics and the love of money, and was carried out with the participation of 500 tradesmen working in the Alanya district centre. It was determined from the research that there are positively significant correlations between the good, budget and power-success dimensions of the love of money and Islamic work ethic while no significant relationship was found with the evil dimension of the love of money. Furthermore, it was revealed that the perception of the Islamic work ethic changes according to marital status and the level of income. 

Construction contractors have a great role in terms of operation work properly in construction project management. An effective contractor selection is most important to the success of any construction projects. Contractor selection is a multi criteria decision making problem which includes qualitative and quantitative characteristics. For the contractor selection problem, this study proposes a combined decision approach, which employs analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and Fuzzy Technique Ordered Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS)  methods. In the proposed approach, AHP is used to determine the weights of selection criteria, and Fuzzy TOPSIS is used to select appropriate contractor alternative. Additionally, a real case study in construction industry is presented to illustrate the application of the proposed approach.

Big Data has recently been used for many purposes like medicine, marketing and sports. It has helped improve management decisions. However, for almost each case a unique data warehouse should be built to benefit from the merits of data mining and Big Data. Hence, each time we start from scratch to form and build a Big Data Warehouse. In this study, we propose a Big Data Warehouse and a model for universities to be used for information management, to be more specific gossip management. The overall model is a decision support system that may help university administraitons when they are making decisions and also provide them with information or gossips being circulated among students and staff. In the model, unsupervised machine learning algorithms have been employed. A prototype of the proposed system has also been presented in the study. User generated data has been collected from students in order to learn gossips and students’ problems related to school, classes, staff and instructors. The findings and results of the pilot study suggest that social media messages among students may give important clues for the happenings at school and this information may be used for management purposes.The model may be developed and implemented by not only universities but also some other organisations.

Safranbolu is typical ottoman city with classical wooden houses, buildings and streets. With these characteristics Safranbolu located in world heritage list of UNESCO. Tourism is one of the most important activities in Safranbolu economy. Safranbolu is competing with its rivals to attract more visitors and earn more income from tourism. Though Safranbolu hosts many visitors, we can’t say that it seizes the opportunity to use its potential. Most probably, if Safranbolu uses all of its potential city can host more visitors and earn more from tourism. Our aim is to reveal strong and weak sides of Safranbolu city, opportunities and threads in this competition. By this way, Safranbolu can activate its potential and get more profit from tourism. To this aim, we conducted a survey to owner and administrators of Safranbolu touristic enterprises and analyses the results. We revealed interesting results about Safranbolu Tourism sector.

Dynamic competition conditions in present day bring about the consequence for businesses to face varied problems with each passing day. At this point, current management approaches include studies that would shed light on the new problems of businesses. Organizational Silence, a concept that has recently been being voiced in business world, has come up in such context. Organizational silence could be expressed as the employee behavior of keeping silent about certain negativities due to various reasons in an organization. Since knowledge sharing in modern organizations is of capital importance in terms of responding hastily to the changes in a competitive environment, spread of this behavior of employees to organization culture and climate presents a threat of indifference. In this study, the concept of Organizational Silence is defined and the effects of conceived silence climate on management of organizations are discussed.

Using bank level data this paper examines how bank’s specific characteristics and macroeconomic indicators affect the profitability in the Tunisian banking industry over the period 1990–2008. The results indicate that the more profitable banks are those higher amount of capital and lower operating costs. Furthermore, it appears that private banks tend to perform better than state owned ones.  Despite the great importance given to the board of directors, it doesn't have a dominant role in the Tunisian commercial banks. Finally, turning to macroeconomic conditions and its impact on banks’ profitability, we find that the real interest rate has a positive effect on bank profitability.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the market structure and degree of concentration of Bangladeshi banking industry. The study measured market concentration by using widely recognized measures like k-bank concentration ratio and Herfindahl-Hirchman Index (HHI). It evaluates market structure by applying Panzar-Rosse Model over 8 years period from 2006 to 2013. The result of concentration measures indicates a decreasing trend and low level of market concentration in Bangladeshi banking industry over the sample period. The panzer-Rosse “H-Statistic” suggests that banks in Bangladesh are operating under monopolistic competition. Present paper contributes to a burgeoning literature on banking competition that has evolved significantly over the past periods on a developing country perspective like Bangladesh.

<p><em>The present paper measured the influence of the oil prices on the Islamic banking efficiencies scores during the financial crisis of 2008-2009. The study showed that there is no a direct relationship between the oil prices and the efficiencies scores of Islamic banks in the MENA area. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that Islamic banks in the GCC area showed a higher mean in pure technical efficiency compared to Islamic banks in the North African and other MENA. Islamic banks in other MENA countries and North Africa considered to be technically inefficient. The inefficiencies were due to the underdeveloped banking system and the lack of experiences in those countries to allocate resources between the bank inputs and outputs. </em></p>

<p><em>Islamic banking is based on profit and loss mechanism where the use of interest is prohibited.  Unlike conventional banks, these banks do not charge a specific rate of interest, rather provides financing in exchange for profit sharing.  However, there are studies claiming that, in practice, Islamic banking is same as conventional banking with regard to the use of interest. It is also claimed that, Islamic deposits are not interest-free, but are closely attached to conventional deposits.  On this background, the objective of this study is to examine the relationship between pricing in Islamic banks vis-à-vis conventional banks by taking the case of Bangladesh. We have used monthly data during the period of 2009-2013. The findings of the study showed that, there is no statistically significant difference between the monthly average lending rates of Islamic banks and conventional banks. However, there is significant difference between deposit rates. The existence of causal relationship was inconclusive, and requires further analysis.</em></p>

<p>The proactively evolved banking regulations in the Indian Banking sector under the authorative directive of the Reserve bank of India (RBI) has often brought about a change in the business strategy, capital structure and operations of the banks in the Indian banking sector. During these events of continuous change and adoption of Basel norms, we analyse the efficiency of the Indian banking sector with using Data Envelopment Analysis across three economic eras andacross the different ownership structures. The determinants of efficiency are selected on the basis of intermediation approach. We also attempt to identify whether the inefficiency arises from managerial incompetence or improper size and resource allocation. From our analysis, we identify the main cause of inefficiency in the Indian Banking sector to be arising out of improper size allocation.</p>

<p>This paper aims to test the validity of the causality between financial development and economic growth on energy consumption in three of North African countries. The study employs error coreection model and Granger causaility test to analyza a dataset for three North African countries covering a period from 1980 to 2010. The applied model is based on demand function for energy to assess the existing of causal relationship of energy with financial development, and economic growth, in Algeria, Egypt, and Tunisia. Empirical results provide a positive significant relating financial development and energy consumption in Algeria, and Tunisia. On the other hand, Egypt’s results show a negative significant relationship relating energy consumption and financial development. The paper is valuable to policy makers in North African countries in their pursuit for achieving economic growth as it clarifies the urge for the financial development reforms to stimulate investment and growth.</p>

<p>The perceptions of Islamic banking professionals are surveyed through a questionnaire to explore whether the process of risk management mediates board involvement in risk management and risk management practices of Islamic banks in Malaysia and Egypt. The findings of this study identified that the Islamic banks in the selected countries are somewhat efficient in their risk<br />management process. It was noticed that board involvement in risk management, process of risk management and risk management<br />among Islamic banks in Malaysia are significantly higher than their counterparts in Egypt. Furthermore, high involvement of boards in risk management significantly increases the risk management process, and in turn, leads to significantly higher risk management practices in Islamic banks. Hence, boards should take formal responsibility for setting, managing and periodically<br />assessing the risk management culture of the banks. It is expected that the outcomes of this study would help policy setters in the selected countries to develop a well-structured and harmonized risk management process that enhance risk management practices, with emphasis on the effective involvements of the board of directors and Shari’ah supervisory boards in risk management<br />practices.</p>

<p>There is an evidence of large scale migration of the rural poor to the cities/towns in search of employment in India, especially since 1991when India adopted Economic Reform Programme. In the absence of any affordable housing , there has been a  growth of slums in the urban areas of the country. The Government of India (GOI) has been incorporating certain programmes to alleviate  poverty , create employment opportunities and encourage  planned urban development in its public policy , yet there has been a fast emergence of slums in the Indian cities due to a number of factors.  The present paper aims to analyze certain demographic attributes of the slum population in India , its socio-economic and  environmental impact and the public policy response towards the same. It also reviews certain programmes designed by the government to control the growth of slums and the efforts to rehabilitate the slum-dwellers.   The data and definition of slums in India are based on the census of 2001, 65<sup>th</sup> round of NSSO and other GOI documents.</p>

In this paper, we examine the impact of CEO power on auditor choice. We are motivated by the competing financial reporting incentives arising from CEO power. Our empirical finding suggests that powerful CEOs are more likely to hire high-quality auditors as a signal of superior financial reporting quality. We contribute to the literature of auditor switch and extend the research on the links between CEO power and firm behaviors.

The Chinese stock market is an emerging market that has gained much importance over the past few decades. Because of this, it also serves as a great subject for studying market inefficiencies and anomalies. In this paper we provide a review of evidence regarding the development, efficiency and integration of the Chinese stock market. In particular, we review recent literature in the areas of market segmentation, cross-listings and calendar effects. This provides evidence of market inefficiency in China. We also pose questions that can be answered in future studies.

A well-functioning financial institution will sustain a countries economic development and play a great role in reduction of poverty. One of the major participants in the financial institution is the banking industry.  However, the mal-functioning of the banking system can be extremely costly to the real economy. As Bank is one of the participants and major key player in the financial institutions, it needs a continuous assessment by its supervisory and management. Mere ratio analyses are commonly used Performance measurement among the banking industry in Ethiopia. Nonetheless, these financial ratios are more of traditional as well as partial measurements. As such this study conducted using CAMEL framework set by bank for international settlement. The study takes secondary data which are gathered from audited annual reports of all banks. The result shows CAMEL framework is the best fit measurement for Ethiopian Banks and it give a comprehensive result which is very helpful for the governor to set a well determined policy and procedure.

This paper aims to identify the determinants of performance of the Tunisian banking sector. The results found, following an empirical study using panel data of Tunisian banks listed on the stock market over the period 2000-2013, show that credit risk, liquidity, total assets and disclosure of information relating to credit are the main determinants of banking performance

In a data set, an outlier refers to a data point that is considerably different from the others. Detecting outliers provides useful application-specific insights and leads to choosing right prediction models. Outlier detection (also known as anomaly detection or novelty detection) has been studied in statistics and machine learning for a long time. It is an essential preprocessing step of data mining process. In this study, outlier detection step in the data mining process is applied for identifying the top 20 outlier firms. Three outlier detection algorithms are utilized using fundamental analysis variables of firms listed in Borsa Istanbul for the 2011-2014 period. The results of each algorithm are presented and compared. Findings show that 15 different firms are identified by three different outlier detection methods. KCHOL and SAHOL have the greatest number of appearances with 12 observations among these firms. By investigating the results, it is concluded that each of three algorithms makes different outlier firm lists due to differences in their approaches for outlier detection.

This study empirically investigates the causal relationship between construction production and GDP for Turkey during 2005Q1-2013Q4 period. Because it is found that, there is no cointegration which means there is no long run relationship between variables, VAR Granger Causality Method is used to test the causality in short run. The findings reveal that, the causality runs from GDP to Building Production and Building Production to Non-Building Production (i.e. bidirectional relationship). Findings of this paper suggest that, because there is no long run relationship between Construction Production (Building and Non-Building) and GDP and also in short run the causality runs from GDP to Construction Production, the growth strategy based on mainly Construction Sector growth is not a good idea for Turkey.

In modern age, positive psychological capital is as important as financial capital for organizational development and sustainability. Efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience are the dimensions of positive psychological capital. Emotional labor is defined by Hochschild as control of self emotions at work by workers who have a high degree of contact with coworkers within the organization or with external clients, so as to create an expression, voice or body gesture which is acceptible to the clients. Emotional labor is analysized under three components: surface acting, deep acting and naturally felt emotions. This study is aimed to investigate the impact of positive psychological capital on emotional labor. So a research is conducted with the aim of exploring the relationship between the sub-dimensions of psychological capital and emotional labour.