This paper examines the production efficiency and its determinants of 3301 rice farms in Vietnam. Our empirical results from data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique show that rice farms perform on average level of efficiency. There are differences in production of each farm related to some demographic factors and educational level. Results from Tobit model indicate that education played an important role in helping farmer improve their efficiency. In addition, policies on increasing the cultivation area may also promote the farm efficiency.

Saudi labour market is unique in nature due to a number of aspects. It provides a picture of increas-ing job opportunity and, at the same time, higher level of youth unemployment. Like other countries, the employability of accounting graduates of Saudi Arabia is also subject to doubts. The present study assesses the convenience of accounting education for the unique requirements of Saudi labour market. The study collects data from 914 respondents from the three main stakeholders–students, faculty and accounting practitioners. The study finds that all the three stakeholders were of the opinion that the education was capable of meeting the unique requirements of the labour market in Saudi Arabia. A few suggestions are also presented, which would help improve the outcomes of the accounting programs and make the graduates employable.

The profitability of tourism industry is affected by several factors due to the specificity of tourism business activities such as the season, resources, geographic position, state and local policy, etc. Therefore, determining the groups of factors that affect the profitability and profitability ratios in tourism business activities helps to give synchronous solutions to improve the efficiency of tourism business. This study is based on a survey on the factors affecting the profitability through the questionnaires and interviews of 115 tourist enterprises in BinhDinh, Vietnam. The study conducts Cronbach’s Alpha and EFA analysis to determine groups of influencing factors and building regression functions of factors affecting the profitability ratios in tourist enterprises in BinhDinh province, Vietnam. Based on the EFA analysis results, the study has found two main types of fac-tors affecting the profitability of enterprises; namely within and outside the firms. The group of fac-tors within the enterprise includes 3 small groups; namely financial capacity; Enterprise human re-sources and Enterprise leadership. The external factors include 4 small groups including tourism business market; travel space and support services; political institutions; infrastructure and tourism security. The effects of these factors on financial figures are also represented in regression form.

This paper mainly aimed to identify the impact of critical factors of advertisement on consumer buying behaviour for skincare products. Data for this study were collected from 428 people from all around Malaysia using self-administered questionnaires. The acquired data went through an exhaustive process of screening and cleaning to ensure that it was ready for analyses in SPSS software. Various robust tests were conducted to reach the findings. These include, frequency tests, reliability tests, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and also hypotheses testing. Structural equation modelling was used to test for the fitness of the proposed model. The results revealed that two elements of advertisement; namely, usefulness of advertisement and features of advertisement had significant positive impacts on consumer buying behaviour. A unique attempt was also made to search for a suitable nested model, where features of advertisement resulted in a strong positive significant impact on usefulness of advertisement. This research has invaluable implications for policy makers, especially in cosmetic and health industry of Malaysia. It is hoped that the findings of this study can be considered while making marketing plans for a skincare brand.

The present study attempted to understand how financial performance can be enhanced in the finan-cial sector. Therein, the study worked to find out how Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and organizational engagement can be used to predict financial performance. In addition, the study also tested the moderating role of organizational engagement on the relationship between CSR and financial performance. Managerial level employees from seven retail banks in Bahrain were sampled for the present study. The results of the structural equation modelling reported significant impact of CSR on financial performance. Accordingly, the study also reported significant relationship between organizational engagement and financial performance. Notably, the study also reported significant moderation of organizational engagement on the CSR and financial performance relationship. The study forwards notable implications for theory and practice followed by scope for future studies.

The value chain and the target cost play significant role in achieving competitive advantage in many areas where both concepts are complement to each other. The two concepts also aim to reduce cost and maintain product quality. The current research aims to establish a framework of complementary association between value chain analysis and target costing system to achieve competitive advantage in manufacturing companies of Saudi Arabia. The study uses exploratory research to study the problem with the help of a structured questionnaire. The reported results show that target costing aids the manufacturing firms of Saudi Arabia in achieving the competitive advantage, and similar type of result holds with the value chain analysis. However, the target costing method is having an insignificant relationship with competitive advantage when combined with value chain analysis method, even after controlling for difficulties.

Word of mouth (WOM) is the oldest, yet still a very common form of marketing. Over the years, it has undergone under significant transformation as a result of the changing business strategies and rapid improvement in technology. Today, WOM has gained traction as a very effective and economic form of advertisement. With the increase in the use of internet technology and use of social media for marketing, online word of mouth (OWoM) is significantly changing the sphere. Today, many marketers prefer to use OWoM through platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for marketing their products. However, consumer’s behaviors and attitudes are found to strongly influence OWoM. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior, the study explored the factors that predict the use of the OWoM marketing among youths in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Data were collected from 440 samples using structured questionnaires and analyzed using PLS-SEM. The results have succeeded in showing the complex relationship between attitude, behavioral control and subjective norms; the underlying beliefs, and the intention towards the OWoM.

During the past few years, many studies associated with sustainability of the organizations have primarily analyzed the financial and performance related implications of sustainability of an organization, and perception of these practices by neglecting the role of the employees who might play a vital role through taking part in pro-environmental behavior in the workstation. Thus, this study focuses on the individual’s pro-environmental workplace (PEW) intention to determine its mediating effect between the factors in the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the PEW behavior context among public workers in Malaysia. Random sampling on a list of ministries situated in Federal Territory of Putrajaya was used in the first stage followed by systematic sampling based on officer’s list of the directory in those ministries. Cleaned data resulted in 460 questionnaires gathered on demographic characteristics, PEW intention, attitude towards environmental practice in the workplace, subjective norms, perceived environmental workplace control, and PEW behavior of public sector context in Malaysia. The results reveal significant influences of PEW subjective norms, and perceived PEW control on the PEW behavior. While a series of regression analyses show that the PEW intention mediated only the two relationships between PEW subjective norms, and perceived PEW control on PEW behavior.

This research aims to examine bank specific, market and regulatory determinants of leverage and capital structure based on a panel data of publicly listed Islamic banks in 12 countries over the peri-od 2008-2017. Apart from testing standard corporate finance parameters using both OLS and M-Estimators, this study adds several idiosyncratic and regulatory environment related determinants of leverage unique to Islamic banks. The significance of potential determinants is tested for market and book leverage as well as newly introduced ‘Islamic banking leverage’. Overall, the results show that Islamic banks with higher growth opportunities, tangibility, low profitability and low risk are likely to have a high leverage. Similarly, the findings suggest important role played by debt market conditions, share of investment accounts and regulatory environment in such decisions, providing an evidence of the significance of trade-off and pecking order theory in capital structure in Islamic banks. The results are more robust for market and Islamic banking leverage, rather than book leverage. The findings offer insights to regulators, standard setters and especially Islamic banks regarding parameters to strengthen their capital, enhance resilience and thus contribute to the stability of relevant financial. This paper is among the few extant studies that focus on listed Islamic banks and tests de-terminants based on stock market data.

This study is conducted to investigate the levels of factors influencing audit fees for clients of Vietnamese garment and textile firms. Data are collected from 186 auditors in independent audit firms in Vietnam. We use PLS analysis on Smart PLS 3.0 and test the scale’s reliability with Cronbach’s Alpha index and the total correlation on the software of SPSS 22.0. The results show that the characteristics of audit firm, customers, auditors, characteristics of the audit and the relationship between the audit firm and customers had positive effects on the audit fee. The moderate role of auditor's age, qualification in the relationship between the auditor's characteristics on the audit fee are also verified. The findings reveal that the higher level the auditors are, and the more experiences the auditors are, the higher the cost of audit fee is. The results of multi-group analysis between auditors and customers group show that auditors believed that the characteristics of customers had the strongest impact on audit fees, whereas the audited clients claim that the characteristics of audits had the strongest impact on audit fees.