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Among the various online services provided by the government, e-tax system is one of the commonly used e-government platforms, which offers significant benefits to government and citizens by reducing costs, eliminate human errors, and reduce the turnaround time for processing income tax returns. Despite these plausible benefits, some reservations have been articulated regarding the continuance usage intention of e-tax system. Thus, we investigate the most critical factors of e-tax continuance usage in this paper. We developed an integrated theoretical model based on the technology continuance theory (TCT) extended with social influence and perceived risk. The proposed conceptual model was empirically validated with data collected from a sample of 345 e-tax service users in Bangladesh. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed to analyze the collected data. The study findings suggest that user satisfaction, perceived usefulness, and attitude have a direct impact on continuance usage intention where confirmation, ease of use and social influence have indirect influence on continuance usage intention of e-tax system. This paper discusses some contributions to theory and practice based on our findings

Despite providing service and consumption are two sides of the same coin of value co-creation in the gig economy, value as an outcome was only investigated from the customer point of view, not from the provider. This study aims to explore the impact of algorithmic management, customer dysfunctional behavior and perceived injustice on Uber and Careem drivers perceived value in Egypt. Qualitative interviews and content analysis were employed. Thematic analysis will be used for identifying, analyzing, and reporting patterns within data. Our findings define how drivers’ perceived value is negatively influenced by algorithmic management, customer dysfunctional behavior, and perceived injustice. In order to increase drivers’ perceived value, ride-hailing companies should not only put consideration on how to improve the control of algorithmic management and customer empowerment but also have to revise their policies and decisions to provide positive value to their drivers.

This study investigates the impact of democracy indices on the literacy rate. Panel Data of 134 Countries from 2007-2018 were collected from the website the World Bank and Gapminder. This study uses Ordinary Least Square (OLS), Pooled Ordinary Least Square (POLS), Driscoll-Kraay (DK), Second Stage Least Square (2SLS), Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) methods. This research has found that political participation index and political culture index has a significant positive relationship with literacy rate in all the method. The functioning of the government index has a significant positive relationship and electoral process and the pluralism index has a significant negative relationship with literacy rate in all the methods except the GMM method. The civil liberties index has a significant negative relationship with literacy rate in POLS and in the other models, there is no significant relationship between the civil liberties index and literacy rate.

In recent years, feeling lonely in the workplace has become a serious issue that has gained growing concern due to its complex outcomes. Limited research is available on workplace loneliness and empirical research on workplace loneliness is still in infancy. The purpose of this quantitative research study is to determine whether a positive relationship exists between workplace loneliness and employee creativity in the tourism industry of Maldives. I propose a moderated mediation model in which workplace loneliness foster employee creativity via personal identity and knowledge hiding hinders it, and this effect is moderated by team identification. Role transition and social identity theory are used as an explanatory framework for workplace loneliness and employee creativity. Results from a study of 204 individuals show that workplace loneliness is positively and significantly related to employee creativity. Further analysis identified that personal identity is positively and significantly related to the relationship between workplace loneliness and employee creativity. The discussion concludes that a subjective and personal experience; workplace loneliness can foster employee creativity. These results contribute to the literature on creativity and workplace loneliness by clarifying how and what influences of workplace loneliness are related to employee creativity. Recommendation for further research are give

In the arena of economic analysis, the wealth of a nation is getting more and more attention to be a better indicator to evaluate the status of an economy. This paper had studied the aggregate household wealth of different nations of the world, 106 countries, for the year 2009-2018. During these years, only two countries of the world, China and the USA have managed to increase their wealth tremendously over the last decade while others experienced a slow pace in the growth of wealth. To satisfy the query of how efficient these countries were in maximizing their wealth, a stochastic frontier approach (SFA) has been used to predict the technical efficiency dependent variable and then generalized methods of moments (GMM) and other models have been used to find out the determinants of this efficiency. The study had come up with the result that land, labor, and capital mainly contributed to the output of wealth maximization while past year level of efficiency, export, and import played the main roles in determining the wealth maximizing efficiency status of a nation. It is found that there is a negative relationship between past-year efficiency with current years and the more a country imports, the less efficient the country is while the more it exports, the more efficient the country is in maximizing wealth. 

The study examined the effects of rural-urban migration on the economic status of rural residents. The study utilized a mixed-methods research approach to collect and analyze data, first, data were collected through a questionnaire from households whose family members migrated to urban centers, and interviews were held with various heads of villages in the study area. The study reveals that the majority of the migrants were able-bodied youth who migrated to urban centers to seek employment and education. Migrants’ families at places of origin benefited from migration of their own relations to urban centers mainly through remittances which enabled them to improve their livelihood as the remittances were spent on daily consumption and investment into business activities. The study recommends that government should formulate policies that would create employment for citizens in rural areas, and encourage the private sector to build industries in rural areas to prevent rural-urban migration. Government and the private sector should also empower rural farmers through the promotion of markets for farm produce in order to improve the income of rural farmers, reduce poverty, improve the quality of life and well-being, increase their happiness, satisfaction, and minimize rural-urban migration. The study findings are limited to developing countries where rural-urban migration is a challenge due to the generally low quality of life in rural areas. Further research on the effects of rural-urban migration on the economic status of rural residents should involve a quantitative analysis of the impact of remittances by migrants on poverty reduction in rural areas.

This paper researches the impact that shadow banking in China has upon credit creation and the potential effectiveness of monetary policy. Using a credit creation model, we derive the effect that shadow banking has upon the money multiplier and the money supply. The model shows that shadow banking can change the money multiplier, potentially increasing it during an expansion and decreasing it during a contraction. Introducing shadow banking in a CC-LM model results in a shift of the CC and LM curves resulting in a higher equilibrium output. A vector autoregressive model is used to empirically estimate the impact of shadow banking deposits' growth rate on the growth rates of the broad money supply, GDP, and the CPI. The results show that shadow banking's credit creation function in China has a pro-cyclical characteristic, potentially reducing the money supply's controllability and increasing the difficulty in effectively regulating monetary policy. This paper introduces shadow banking into the currency creation process of traditional commercial banks, accounting for the reserve requirement ratio, the excess reserve ratio, the shadow bank leakage rate, and the reserved deduction rate. Future research can determine whether coordinating monetary policy and leverage ratio regulation mitigates the impact of shadow banking. Another area of research is how the shadow banking of non-financial companies affect monetary policy.

In the current era, digital technology cannot be overlooked in higher education and other economic factors. Digital technology introduces scopes that expedite blended, e-learning, and online in higher education; suggests a multiple of ways to communicate, learn, correspond, cooperate, and collaborate. Also, digital technology has been more and more widely used in higher education for the continuous development of the economy. This study replicates on the growing importance of digital technology on higher education in Bangladesh over the period 1988-2018. Besides, the study exploits the Johansen cointegration and vector error correction model (VECM) for investigating the positive relationship between digital technology and higher education. The Johansen's cointegration outcomes ascertain that digital technology, higher education, and gross domestic product are cointegrated in the long-run. Furthermore, the VECM outcomes suggest that digital technology can stimulate higher education in both the long run and short run, where learners, educators, and nations are consistently gainer of this country. The study also highlights that higher education consistently contributes to gross domestic product. This research would do twisting up higher education in the kind of digital technology that effectively contributes to educational institutions and countries to remain long-term response. Bangladesh must be beneficial by growing technological development in higher education. For the rapid changes in higher education, the research is advocated that the successful execution of digital technology needs to concentrate on interconnecting structures for transformation: the educator, the educational institutions, and the policymakers. Consequently, public policies would make educational changes in practicing the digital technology of Bangladesh

Drawing on self-fulfilling prophecy theory and status boundary conditions, the aim of this research is to test if promotion focus motivation mediates the employees' self-performance expectations towards breakthrough creativity. Besides, this paper also examines whether status stability significantly moderates the relationship between self-performance expectations and promotion focus motivation. The author conducted a longitudinal study and surveyed 380 staff in China with 102 immediate supervisors. In the first phase of data collection, including self-reported measures of team members' self-performance expectation and promotion focus motivation and status stability in the group. In the second phase of time, supervisors rated their team members' breakthrough creativity. Confirmatory factor analysis is conducted to test the reliability and validity of data. Also, hierarchical linear modeling is used to test the hypothesis. The bootstrapping process was adopted to calculate the indirect effect. The results were in line with the expected conceptual framework, Self-performance expectations and promotion focus motivation are found positive to predict breakthrough creativity. Besides, having more stability in status makes the employee more promotion focus, which brings breakthrough creativity from the cognitive level.  Supervisors should organize sensitivity training to make them realize what is anticipated from them. Also, a simple nurturing will mobilize the existing cognitive pressure to achieve breakthrough creativity while investing in lower organizational resources. Finally, this model will deliver new insight into employees' motives towards breakthrough creativity, considering the influence of boundary condition and self-performance expectations in the organization. 

Top managers are recognized as important forces in fostering the spread of ethical spirits and responsible behaviors in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of personal ethical values and demographics (age, gender, and education level) on top managers’ CSR perceptions in Ethiopia. A quantitative approach involving a structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 294 executive managers of four sectors (floriculture, food, textile, and banks). Multiple linear regressions were employed to analyze the data. The analysis revealed that while some personal demographics, i.e., age and educational level had no impact on Ethiopian managers’ CSR perception, gender was positively and significantly correlated with managers’ CSR perception. Additionally, the analysis indicated that managers’ personal moral values had significantly influenced Ethiopian managers’ CSR perception.

Based on Construal-level theory, this study hypothesized that self-actualization positively relates to employees’ taking charge, and self-actualization affects creative performance and normal performance through taking charge positively, but the effect is different. The authors selected a cross-sectional design to investigate interrelations amongst study variables at two different time points with the interval of one month, and surveyed 417 team members and 186 immediate team leaders in the banking sector in Pakistan. The authors used individual-level data to evaluate the validity and test the proposed relationships by using Mplus. They revealed that self-actualization affects taking charge positively, and taking charge mediated the relationship with the difference in effect e.g. taking charge has high effect on creative performance in comparison to normal performance. The outcomes carry important implications aimed at increasing high-level self-actualization that results in taking charge, and so on leads to creative and normal performance.

The aim of this study is to explore how COVID-19 influences the mental health of old age employees by posing challenges to psychological resilience thus affecting their work engagement. The data was collected from three countries, China, Pakistan, and the UK, through eighteen semi-structured interviews. Three sub-themes emerged under the core theme of “psychological challenges”: “cognitive challenges”, “physical challenges”, and “behavioral challenges”. Similarly, “individual resilience” and “group resilience” emerged under the core theme of “psychological resilience”. The results showed that the mental health of old age employees without having any medical complications was also affected during the pandemic thus resulting in low work engagement. The data was collected from three countries namely China, Pakistan, and the UK. Furthermore, data were collected through telephonic interviews so some aspects of the study might be left unexplored which can only be possible through face to face interaction. This study, in line with the previous literature, indicate that challenges explored related to COVID-19 can significantly influence the mental wellbeing of aging employees. The study also encourages employers to understand the limitations of aging employees and develop flexible policies that can have a positive impact on work engagement. The study presents a novel approach contributing to the knowledge gap of COVID-19 impact on wellbeing and work engagement of healthy but senescent employees.

This study aims to identify the factors that favor the use of modern contraceptive methods in non-pregnant women who need to space or limit births. The analyzes were made using SPSS software (statistical package for social sciences) version 25. The data used in this publication comes from a TRAC survey on family planning carried out by the Family Health Association / Population Service international (ASF / PSI) in DRC. Continuously Tracking Results surveys are knowledge surveys, attitudes, and practices of women in matters of family planning but with the introduction of questions on scales as mentioned above. This survey concerned 1965 women aged 15 to 49 selected in urban and peri-urban areas of the provincial city of Kinshasa. Our results show that the discussion between partner or spouse on the use of modern contraceptive methods positively influences the majority of women (OR = 4.28; p <0.001),being part of a social norm (OR = 3.30; p <0.01) and having a high socioeconomic level (OR = 2.54; p <0.01), also favor positively the use of modern contraceptives. The paper concludes that any effort to increase contraceptive prevalence should target attitude, level of knowledge of methods, and spousal support to optimize the use of modern contraception in the city of Kinshasa.

The financial system and capital market in developed countries are more developed as compare to emerging countries. Firms like small and medium enterprise (SMEs) needs finance to operate their business and make a competitive position in the market. In an emerging country like Pakistan, SMEs face a lot of financial and non-financial obstacles that may relate to the poor performance of SMEs. This study investigates the relationship between commercial loans, retain earnings, trade credit, managerial activities, and SME's performance. This study also investigates the interaction effect of managerial activities between independent variables and dependent variables.  A survey was conducted in a small and medium enterprise of KPK Pakistan. Data were collected from 362 employees. SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) software was employed for data analysis for descriptive and regression analysis. The finding confirmed that commercial loans, trade credit, retained earning have a positive and significant impact upon SME's performance. It is also found that managerial activities have played a mediating role and increased the performance of SMEs. Among variables under study, the more trade credit activities, the higher the performance of the SMEs is observed. Based on this study's results, Leaders, supervisors, and managers are those employees having a substantial role in the performance, development, failure, and success of an organization. Managerial activities are vital for a manager for the purpose to know what should be done in different circumstances and improve overall performance and accomplish organizational goals.

The use of Facebook as a social media platform has been cited to revolutionize the performance of different brand and firms globally.  The performance of the products and brands has been attributed to the creation of Facebook media brand communities, whose level of engagement influences consumer product outcomes. This study attempted to establish to what extend Facebook social media brand communities and brand engagement on brand trust. The study established that the three attributes of Facebook brand communities positively influenced consumer brand engagement (shared consciousness (?=1.52, p=0.001), shared rituals (?=1.44, p=0.001), obligations to society (?=2.11, p=0.001). The study further established that social media brand engagement positively influenced brand trust. The study recommends that firms should effectively increase their product and brand promotion and engagement through Facebook.

Employee engagement is the key factor in any success in the organization’s growth, quality, and good performance. This study conducted to shed insights on the effect that job resources, job demands, and uncertain working environments have an impact on the banking industry in South Sudan. The study focused on addressing the following objectives: To find out the relationships between job demands, job resources and employee engagement in the context of South Sudan; to explore the role of uncertain working environment on employee work engagement. We received the final responses from a sample of 160 employees. The quantitative research technique was used by analyzing our data via SPSS software. The study found that job resources positively affect employee work engagement, job demands had a negative significant influence on the relationship between job resources and employee work engagement. The uncertain work environment also negatively moderates job resources and work engagement relationships.

Although task conflict is usually seen to be beneficial to team creativity, the relationship is still unclear because of the mixed results. This research investigated why task conflicts resulted in some positive outcomes in terms of team creativity. Drawing on minority dissent theory, this study examined the conflict-creativity relationship by focusing on the mediating role of team reflexivity. We collected the sample data from 338 employees and 67 supervisors (67 teams) across three different sectors (banking, pharmaceuticals, and insurance) in Pakistan to support our hypotheses. We used bootstrapping analysis and the Sobel test to check for the mediation analysis. The results indicated that task conflict increases team reflexivity, team reflexivity facilitated team creativity, and thus, task conflict positively influenced team creativity via team reflexivity. The theoretical and practical implications of this study plus future directions are further discussed.    

Online banking has become a vital instrument for delivering quality and easily reached banking services at the lowest possible time with ensuring affordability both for customers and service providers. Although this banking has huge potentials and benefits, the successful adoption of online banking remains a significant challenge in the context of an emerging economy like Bangladesh. The purpose of this empirical study is to investigate the factors influencing the online banking services adoption in Bangladesh by using the extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with government support and risk factors. A questionnaire survey method was used to collect data from 380 banking customers.  To analyse the collected survey data and test the set of hypothesis, a structural equation modelling (SEM) method was used with the help of SmartPLS3 package. The results illustrate that perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude towards use, government support positively influence the intention to use as well as the intention to use positively impact on intention to continue to the adoption of online banking services. However, the relationship between risk and intention to use was statistically insignificant. Finally, the findings may assist banking professionals and programmers to develop and design successful policies regarding online banking services to boost this service industry in the future.