Asian Journal of Economics, Business and Accounting

United Nation set seventeen Sustainable Development Goals for all its member countries to achieve them by 2030. Pakistan is also a member of UN and is required to achieve these SDGs by 2030. Literature on SDGs pointed out that Pakistan is working on these goals especially on 05 basic goals i.e. Education, Health, Poverty, clean water &sanitary and Gender equality. One of the SDGs addresses the Gender Equality with focus on women empowerment. There found some hurdles i.e. environment, financial and religious in achieving these and other goals. Islamic financial institutions are not playing expected role in empowering people especially females to achieve these goals. This study discusses the gender gap in accordance with Sharia and analyzes the women empowerment through Islamic Finance. For this, the study provides brief discussion on Islamic thoughts on the gender gap and Women’s empowerment and examines how women can be empowered through Islamic Financial Institutions. The data for the study is qualitative in natures and acquired through survey questionnaire. The research question set for the study is ‘By how IFIs fulfill the needs in terms of equal opportunities for women, and to analyze the impact of IFIs environment on women’s empowerment, if a country establishes an IFI in its territory either for students, bank’s employees, religious women who are engaged in Madrasas or households. The findings of the analysis interpret that, women empowerment leads gender equality if regulator help IFIs to mitigate the problems and hurdles come under way. The establishment of separate IFI for women with the development of specific rules for betterment of women may help women to get jobs that also comprise the female Sharia scholars in Sharia board, consequently increased the numbers of women in banking industry.

High food prices are seen as synonymous with food insecurity. This is because it defiles one of the four cardinals of food security; food accessibility. To ensure the attainment of food security which is a common denominator in the United Nation’s MDGs and SDG as eradication of hunger, food must be economically accessible by all and sundry. Bayelsa State has been bedevilled by exorbitant food prices as confirmed by NBS data released in March 2020 which placed the state as having the highest cost in 15 out of 43 food items reviewed. This placed it as the state where food is most expensive in the federation. This study employing the tool purposive structured interview and schedule sought the view of 400 traders from five markets in the state capital, Yenagoa. Also 15 food truck drivers were interviewed. Using frequencies and percentages, the result showed that the key contributors to high food prices in the state are high dependence on food importation from within and outside the nation as the natives are not farmers, activities of touts, oil pollution, absence of large mechanized farms in the state, poor road network among others. The study strongly suggests the harmonisation of taskforce collecting agencies to eradicate multiple levies that are currently ongoing. It also suggested improved investment in agriculture by both public and private sectors with comparative advantage in mind to ensure that the potentials of the state in agriculture are adequately harnessed.

Aims: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of self-directed learning readiness on developing entrepreneurial behaviors through social learning in the context of entrepreneurship education programs offered by state sector universities of Sri Lanka.

Study Design: Correlational research design.

Place and Duration of the Study: University of Colombo, University of Sri Jayewardenepura and University of Moratuwa during August 2018 to March 2019.

Methodology: Collected primary data from the participants of entrepreneurship education programs conducted by three major state sector universities in Sri Lanka to reveal their level of self-directed learning readiness, availability of social learning opportunities in the programs and consequent development in their entrepreneurial behaviors after enrolling the programs. Stratified random sampling is used in selecting respondents for the sample of this quantitative study and self-administered questionnaires are used as the method of data collection. SPSS is used to carry out different kinds of statistical analysis such as Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy and Bartlett’s test of sphericity, factor analysis, descriptive statistics, correlation and hierarchical regression analysis.

Results: The results show that self-directed learning readiness moderates the positive association of the development in entrepreneurial behaviors and social learning in the context of entrepreneurship education. Further, the paper provides an important analysis of the state of entrepreneurship education in Sri Lanka to enable further research to be taken in the area of entrepreneurship education. The findings provide valuable insight on sustaining the unique pedagogy of entrepreneurship education by restructuring the selection process to assess the level of self-directed learning readiness of applicants.

Conclusion: The paper affirms the framework of Bandura to provide a basis to improve the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in Sri Lanka. However, the paper only concerns students’ perceptions towards the tripartite relationship between self-directed learning readiness, social learning and development of entrepreneurial behaviors

This study investigated the effect of cash flow optimality on investment returns in selected listed Manufacturing companies in Nigeria. The population consisted of listed 66 manufacturing companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. 25 of these manufacturing companies were purposively selected for a period of 10 years (2010-2019). The study employed data obtained from the published financial statement of the selected manufacturing companies. Panel data analysis was employed while diagnostic tests were carried out and an application of the Hausman test provided the criteria for choosing between Random Effect Models and Fixed Effect Models. Jarque-Bera Normality, Breusch, and Pagan Lagrangian multiplier tests were conducted to confirm the Hausman test results in order to decide between Random Effects and Pooled OLS. The study found that cash flow optimality had a positive statistically significant on return on assets, AdjR² = 0.099; Wad-chi² _{(4, 245)} = 22.22; P-value = 0.000). Furthermore, the study revealed that cash flow optimality exhibited a positive statistical effect on Tobin’s Q, (AdjR² = 0.130; F _{(4, 245)} = 2.884; P-value = 0.025). Thus, the study recommended that since the essence of investment is the expected returns, managers of manufacturing companies should ensure that all strategic decisions are channeled towards this direction, and ensure efficient resources management and cash flow optimal management towards meeting investor returns expectations.

Electronic recruitment (E-recruitment) has become a common phenomenon due to the increasing utilization of information technology by the human resource departments in many organizations around the world. However, recently, we can also observe the integration of social media as a part of e-recruitment although the practice is limited. This review paper aims at discussing the role of social media on e-recruitment process based on existing literature. Most of the previous studies indicate that social media is not being used as the main source of e-recruitment, rather as one of the secondary sources. Further, it has been revealed that such utilization of social media as complementary source is getting popular due to the inexpensive availability of information. The paper is expected to be beneficial for the scholars as a substantial literature evidence for reference as well as for human resource professionals for some practical guidelines (based on recommendations provided) regarding the utilization of social media information for e-recruitment.