Shah Md. Safiul Hoque

Human Resource Management (HRM) approaches play a critical role in enhancing the culture in organizations by inspiring employees to perform their best through practicing organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The prime purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of four human resource practices— recruitment and selection, training and development, performance appraisals, and compensation on employees’ OCB in the commercial banking sector of Bangladesh. The study collected 170 samples from various commercial banks in Dhaka city to conduct the study, using a structured questionnaire. The study conducted Structural Equation Modeling PLS-SEM, which revealed that all the HRM practices have a significant positive relationship with OCB and performance appraisal, and training & development are the strongest predictors of OCB. The significance of this study is that it gives insights into commercial banks’ employees OCB and HRM practices relationship from a Bangladeshi context.

Human Resource Management (HRM) approaches play a critical role in enhancing the culture in organizations by inspiring employees to perform their best through practicing organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The prime purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of four human resource practices—recruitment and selection, training and development, performance appraisals, and compensation on employees’ OCB in the commercial banking sector of Bangladesh. The study collected 170 samples from various commercial banks in Dhaka city to conduct the study, using a structured questionnaire. The study conducted Structural Equation Modeling PLS-SEM, which revealed that all the HRM practices have a significant positive relationship with OCB and performance appraisal, and training & development are the strongest predictors of OCB. The significance of this study is that it gives insights into commercial banks’ employees OCB and HRM practices relationship from a Bangladeshi context.

In this study, the authors look at the most significant factors influencing the sustainability of operations of Union Digital Centres (UDCs), which operate under the system of a public–private partnership (PPP) in Bangladesh. Most UDCs are experiencing premature shutdown because of the weakness of infrastructure and uncertainty in service provision, in spite of their strategic relevance in the digital inclusion process. A cross-sectional survey of 637 entrepreneurs with the help of structural equation modelling reveals such elements as equipment availability, service diversity and entrepreneurial investment to be of paramount importance in influencing sustainability. The results indicate that most occupants have easy access to basic information and communications technology (ICT) tools, with few opportunities for using advanced and pictorial tools, thereby restricting the service delivery. Also, there is a gap in the uniformity of provision of e-government and commercial services. The strongest factor indicating UDC sustainability was an entrepreneurial investment that helps to emphasise the importance of the intervention of the private sector. This article points out that specific improvements in ICT infrastructure, delivery mechanisms and entrepreneurial education are required to support the sustainability of digital hubs in rural Bangladesh in the long run.

This study examines the impact of TQM and product innovation on competitive advantage. Correlation coefficient and regression analysis are used to examine the relationship between TQM, product innovation, and competitive advantage. The study is followed by a quantitative approach, and the sample of the study is drawn from the manufacturing and service industries located in the Sohar city of Oman. A total of 131 samples was analyzed to judge the hypotheses. The empirical results of this study confirm that TQM and product innovation are both significantly correlated to competitive advantage. Thus, to remain competitive in the marketplace, the management of organizations should give high priority to these influential factors. This empirical study is considered the first study investigating the impact of TQM and product innovation on competitive advantage, adding great value to existing literature from the perspective of Oman.

Purpose: The prime intention of this study is to explore client satisfaction with branchless agent banking services during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The roles of service quality, security, transaction cost, trust, and convenience have been explored to assess the client satisfaction of agent banking in Bangladesh. Theoretical framework: The research model used in this study is based on the theory of Oliver (1980). In the model, dependent variable (client satisfaction) is measured through the service quality, security, transaction cost, trust, and convenience. Oliver (1980) claims that the customer satisfaction model explains why feelings of satisfaction occur when customers assess how well actual products or services perform in comparison to their expectations.   Design/Methodology/Approach: The self-administered questionnaire was deployed for primary data collection purposes. A partial least square-structural equation model (PLS-SEM) analysis was performed on the 286 useable questionnaires that were returned from a total of 300 questionnaires in order to validate the model and assess the validity of the hypothesis. Findings: The study's conclusions showed that factors including service quality, security, trust, and convenience have a big impact on how satisfied customers are. Transaction costs don't, however, significantly affect how satisfied customers are. Research, Practical & Social implications: This study's findings will close the existing empirical gap by educating academics about the relationship between consumer happiness, service quality, security, transaction cost, trust, and convenience in the agent banking sector. Furthermore, it aids in their comprehension of theoretical and practical issues. Certainly, this research will serve as the basis for future research in Bangladesh in this field. The results of this investigation will have a wide range of significant ramifications for the sector.   Originality/Value: Agent banking is not a novel concept in Bangladesh, but to the best of our knowledge, there is no literature available that uses PLS-SEM to assess rural consumers' satisfaction. This essay is a wise attempt to close that gap. The research offers some useful practical implications for agent banks to identify appropriate ways to satisfy their consumers, despite some constraints.

This study aims to discover how artificial intelligence adoption in notion (AI) plays a role in digital innovation using the theoretical foundation of diffusion of innovations and effectuation theories. The current research also investigates the moderating role of other edge Internet of Things (IoT) and the mediating role of adaptive resilience. The data collection is performed using a survey conducted among employees of family-owned SMEs. The findings reveal that AI forecasts digital innovation through adaptive resilience. The results also confirm the moderating role of threat to IoT edge and the mediating role of adaptive resilience, but moderated mediating is not supported. We conclude that family-owned SMEs intend to adopt AI, but SMEs face challenges using IoT edge. This study has implications for family firms specifically and technology adopters in general.

Public–Private Partnerships are touted as a ‘silver bullet’ to address issues surrounding the sustainability of community-based ICT projects. This paper considers the PPP’s role in the provision of sustainable services at community access sites in Bangladesh and the Philippines. A comparative analysis of current community access operations in Bangladesh and the Philippines has been made in this study. The study investigates how the different adopted contract approaches (PPP vs. Public) have impacted the telecenter infrastructure attributes, and specifically, the impact on the types of services offered at telecenter sites. The data collection procedure utilized a mixed-methods approach, including user surveys, combined with telecenter operator interviews, and site observations. Simple descriptive statistics were used to compare the quantitative data collected regarding each of the telecenter infrastructures and telecenter services. This analysis contributes to the current understanding of telecenters concerning the adoption of PPPs toward the sustainability of public access initiatives.

With the advancements in the new technologies like IoT, the healthcare sector is also growing rapidly. The core concept of introducing IoT in the healthcare centers is to make it remotely accessible, so that communication between doctor and patient can be easy, and diagnosis of any disease can be remotely done through the Internet in case of emergency. The major objective of this study is to develop a security framework for the healthcare industry that can encrypt secret data on cloud servers using block-based data encoding. Since any information that is available on the Internet is vulnerable to various attacks, and the medical records of the patients carry sensitive information that must not be accessible to any unauthorized or unauthentic person, in this context, the concept of Blockchain (BC) technology was introduced in the healthcare systems. In the past few years, a number of BC based healthcare models were proposed in the system; however, these systems are decentralized in nature, which is a feature of Blockchain technology, but in certain applications, especially in healthcare, this feature gave rise to a problem termed as disease overlapping when the count of chains gets increased. To solve this issue, a BC based framework is used in this work that has a feature of creating a separate block in the chain every time whenever any alteration in information about patient’s health, any allergies, new symptoms, medications, etc. is updated. In addition to this, securing the sensitive information of patients is taken into consideration by developing an improved and enhanced multilayer Blockchain based IoT data security approach that not only protects the data, but also builds the trust between patients/user and healthcare service providers. The main focused area of this research article is to propose a security framework for healthcare domain that can encrypt the confidential data over cloud server under block-based data encoding. In the proposed approach, 128-bit AES key is generated in order to support the SHA-256 hashing algorithm. Individual user’s data is subdivided to blocks and encrypted to secure it from unauthorized access. An interface-based system is designed to present the real-world usage of the proposed model in healthcare application. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed approach is validated in the MATLAB software in terms of MAE, RMSE, MSE, encryption time, and decryption time. The RSA and DSA are the most trending encryption algorithms. These algorithms are crucial components of Blockchain technology, implemented in the proposed work, and later on, their performances are also compared with each other to check their effectiveness. The simulation results demonstrated that the proposed encrypting algorithm surpasses the other encryption approaches such as RSA and DSA in all factors to prove its supremacy. The experimental results show that the encryption and decryption time are lowest in the proposed framework; therefore, its performance is more effective and robust. It is also more effective and resilient.

Mobile phones have emerged as ubiquitous devices beyond simple means of communication. Students studying at tertiary‐level educational institutions are one of the major target groups for mobile companies. Notwithstanding, the educators and the marketers of mobile phones and services do not know much about their needs and mobile phone usage behavior. This study aims to determine the mobile phone needs and usage behavior of university students in Oman. The study delves upon longitudinal data collected over three different points of time in a decade and analyzes the changes in students' needs and mobile usage behavior. The findings suggest that students' preferences over time for mobile phones have changed not only for brands but also the way they patronize mobile phones and associated services. The study gives a vital lead to educators and the marketers of mobile phones and services. By understanding the mobile phone needs and usage behavior of students, educators can target their content and deliveries and marketers can target their features, apps, and services innovatively to this emerging segment.