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The purpose of this study is to utilize two types of gypsum mold wastes from two different factories as novel and economical reinforcing fillers for composites that may be useful for building materials and floors. Two types of gypsum mold wastes from two different factories as raw materials were incorporated into linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) aiming to get rid of that waste in one hand and obtaining useful economical composites suitable for building materials and floors.

Composites were prepared from two types of gypsum mold wastes substituted with different ratios from raw gypsum and LLDPE throughout the melt blending technique. The physico-mechanical and electrical investigations in addition to the morphology of the composites were included.

The mechanical results illustrate that substituting commercial gypsum with gypsum mold waste positively affects tensile strength, flexural strength and hardness shore D for the LLDPE composites. The tensile strength increased from 5 MPa for LLDPE filled with commercial gypsum as blank samples to 11.2 and 13.2 MPa for LLDPE filled with D and S waste. Also, electrical properties which include both permittivity ɛ′ and dielectric loss ɛ″ increased with increasing the waste content in the LLDPE matrix. In addition to the electrical conductivity values, σ lies in the order of insulation materials. Consequently, it is possible to produce materials with a gypsum matrix by adding industrial waste, improving the behavior of the traditional gypsum and enabling those composites to be applied in various construction applications as eco-friendly tiles.

This study aims to prepare eco-friendly composites based on LLDPE and waste gypsum mold to preserve resources for the coming generations, other than lowering the environmental footprint and saving the costs of getting rid of it.

The purpose of this paper is to establish practical guidelines for benchmarking eight total quality management (TQM) practices vital to pharmaceutical companies’ performance. The paper also proposes the use of an analytic total quality index (TQI) as a benchmarking tool and illustrates the importance and effectiveness of this benchmarking methodology by applying it in two comparative studies of three Jordanian pharmaceutical companies.

In order to achieve the above-mentioned purpose, the data were gathered through a questionnaire that was used to evaluate the gap between the ideal and current status of the quality management system and distributed to the quality units from three companies: pharmaceutical manufacturing company, a pharmaceutical manufacturing company working in the same field and a pharmaceutical service providing research services to a pharmaceutical manufacturing companies. And the mean differences between the current and ideal states for the eight critical TQM practices were compared for these two comparative studies using the t-test.

Each of the two comparisons reveals statistically significant differences regarding the perceptions of actual and ideal scores for manufacturing and service companies on five out of eight critical factors and, on two out of eight critical factors for manufacturing and manufacturing companies.

The pharmaceutical companies, regardless of whether they are manufacturing or service company, can adopt benchmarking techniques which were applied in this case study to improve their performance and their product/service quality.

The consequences of this research can support organization managers and policy makers in effectively benchmarking the identified TQM practices in their organizations using the proposed TQI benchmarking tool.

This article reconsiders the cross‐national determinants of female labour force participation in Islamic settings. It explores a neopatriarchal perspective using in dicators of the role of the government and the political role of women. The study shows that government plays a significant role in determining female employment. Islamic ideology as a cultural variable also contributes significantly to the model. Thus, the results indicate that Islamic ideology per se is not the only factor determining female labour force participation; the political atmosphere and economic development also contribute. In main stream sociology, Muslim countries have usually been classified as outliers on gender relations and demographic factors. These countries generally have lower‐than‐average levels of female labour force participation (FLFP) and higher‐than‐average levels of fertility and mortality relative to non‐Muslim nations at the same level of economic development (Weeks, 1988). For example, in 1995, female employment in Islamic countries was 21.7% while other Muslim and non‐Muslim developing countries, it was 38.1% (World Bank World Tables, 1999). The popular press and much of the academic literature interpret Islam as the “secluder” and “excluder” of women which, in turn, inhibits women’s integration into the formal labour force. What is missing from the analysis is the role of the state in those societies as the main employer and investor. In many Islamic societies, the patriarchal system has never been weakened but rather modernised into a system referred to in this study as the neopatriachal state (Moghadam, 1992; Sharabi, 1988). Neopatriarchy will be defined in this article as traditional patriarchy, especially embedded in religion, which gets appropriated by the state to reinforce its rule. In the following section the meaning of each of these factors and how they affect female employment opportunities is explored.

In the present era, the achievement of employee Islamic performance has become a significant challenge for organizations. The purpose of the study is to examine the effect of Islamic leadership on employee Islamic performance directly and indirectly by bridging the connections between employees’ Islamic organizational values, Islamic organizational culture, and Islamic work motivation among the employees of Egyptian banks.

The authors used quantitative methods in this study and based its findings on the data received from 312 respondents in response to a questionnaire.

By using SmartPLS 4, this study’s findings demonstrate that Islamic leadership has a positive and significant effect on Islamic organizational values, culture, employee Islamic performance and work motivation. While Islamic organizational values and Islamic organizational culture do not significantly impact employee Islamic performance, Islamic work motivation is a significant predictor of employee Islamic performance. On the one hand, Islamic organizational values and Islamic organizational culture do not mediate the relationship between Islamic leadership and employee Islamic performance. On the other hand, Islamic work motivation is a mediating variable that significantly develops the relationship between Islamic leadership and employee Islamic performance.

The study’s findings support policymakers and human resource management practitioners to develop plans and strategies which enhance the Islamic performance of organizations’ employees. In addition, this study’s findings provide insights for researchers and academicians in developing Islamic leadership within their organizations so that they operate by Islamic values and codes.

Finally, by offering an integrated model of Islamic leadership, Islamic organizational values, Islamic organizational culture and employee Islamic performance, this study’s findings fill the gaps in the context of bank employees in a developing country, namely, Egypt.

The study aims to describe the impact of supervisor’s and co-worker’s ostracism on the employee's responses (emotional, psychological and behavioral) through the mediation of employees' efficacy needs and relational needs. Moreover, psychological capital is treated as a moderator to handle the adverse responses of ostracized employees.

The study employed a three-wave quantitative research design to gather data from employees and their respective supervisors who belonged to various healthcare units (N = 510) using self-administered close-ended questionnaires. After that, SmartPLS software was used to analyze the data through a structured equation modeling (SEM) technique.

The empirical results of the study endorsed that ostracism adversely (negatively) affects employees' responses (comprised of emotional, behavioral and psychological). Moreover, the results revealed that employees' needs (efficacy and relational) mediate the relationship between ostracism experienced by employees (supervisor’ and co-workers’ ostracism) and their emotional, behavioral and psychological responses. In addition, it is also evidenced that employees' psychological capital improves the negative association between employees' needs and responses.

The literature in this domain is scarce, and the theoretical stance is weak due to the traditional approaches that are more concerned with the outcomes rather than analyzing the employee's conditional what they are going through. The present study enhances the knowledge of the transactional mode of coping and its application to ostracism in the workplace. The results of the current study may also support the practitioners in formulating interventions to foster a favorable workplace environment.

Product-service innovation (i.e. servitization) is providing opportunities to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to offer services that are directly coupled to their products. Despite scholarly efforts on servitization in domestic markets, the determinants of international product-service innovation remain unclear. Therefore, this study draws insights from dynamic capability (DC) view and aims to examine the international human capital and international product-service innovation relationship. Specifically, the authors argue that the effect of international human capital on international product-service innovation is mediated by international inter-organizational marketing capability (IIMC) and moderated by international market complexity.

The authors test the conceptual model using structural equation modeling on a sample of 211 SMEs operating in United Arab Emirates (UAE) – an emerging market economy.

The results show that IIMC mediates the relationship between international human capital and international product-service innovation. The authors further found that the indirect relationship between international human capital and international product-service innovation is strengthened when international market complexity increases in magnitude.

This study advances the knowledge on international servitization by examining international human capital and IIMC as the determinants and international market complexity as a moderator. Data collection in the UAE contributes to empirical research on international servitization from emerging markets.

This paper aims to investigate the volatility transmission across stocks, gold and crude oil markets before and during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis.

A multivariate vector autoregression (VAR)-Baba, Engle, Kraft and Kroner generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model (BEKK-GARCH) is used to assess volatility transmission across the examined markets. The sample is divided as follows. The first period ranging from 02/01/2019 to 10/03/2020 defines the pre-COVID-19 crisis. The second period is from 11/03/2020 to 05/10/2020, representing the COVID-19 crisis period. Then, a robustness test is used using exponential GARCH models after including an exogenous variable capturing the growth of COVID-19 confirmed death cases worldwide with the aim to test the accuracy of the VAR-BEKK-GARCH estimated results.

Results indicate that the interconnectedness among the examined market has been intensified during the COVID-19 crisis, proving the lack of hedging opportunities. It is also found that stocks and Gold markets lead the crude oil market especially during the COVID-19 crisis, which explains the freefall of the crude oil price during the health crisis. Similarly, results show that Gold is most likely to act as a diversifier rather than a hedging tool during the current health crisis.

Although the recent studies in the field focused on analyzing the relationships between different markets during the first quarter of 2020, this study considers a larger data set with the aim to assess the volatility transmission across the examined international markets Amid the COVID-19 crisis, while it shows the most significant impact on various financial markets compared to other diseases.

The purpose of this paper is to aggregate significant part of debates in the field of International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) toward performance improvement by benchmarking of the Total Quality Management (TQM) practices, and to propose TQM-Benchmarking model as a seed for future research in the context of INGOs.

TQM practices for INGOs were first identified based on critical synthesis of the literature for both, existing for-profit TQM literature and the INGOs field-specific quality and accountability frameworks, initiatives, and practices (Jordan introduced as an example) followed by solicitation of the opinions of experts and colleagues through personal interviews and focus group discussions to define the proposed TQM-Benchmarking model.

TQM-Benchmarking model of six practices vital to INGOs performance are proposed by this review including leadership and management commitment, beneficiaries focus and participation, partnership management for sustainability, human resource (HR) focus, process management and learning and continuous improvement, and use of quality information.

While TQM practices succeed in improving performance of for-profit organizations, this review proposed TQM-Benchmarking model with field-specific practical pillars of performance improvement in the INGOs.

The purpose of this study was designed to investigate anise oil and geranium oil to amend body weight, serum bile acid and vitamin D, and liver histology in depressed rats.

Eighty male albino rats were divided into normal and depressed rats. Normal rats (40 rats) were divided into four equal groups: control, venlafaxine drug, anise oil and geranium oil groups. Depressed rats (40 rats) were divided into four equal groups: depressed rats, depressed rats + venlafaxine drug, depressed rats + anise oil and depressed rats + geranium oil groups. Body weight, food consumption and water intake were detected. Animal behavior, cerebral cortex and hippocampus neurotransmitters, serum bile acid and vitamin D and liver histology were also investigated in this study.

Body weight (117 ± 7.6 g), food consumption (5.6 ± 1.4 g/day) and water intake (8.7 ± 1.2 ml/day) were significantly decreased (p < 0.001) in depression compared to body weight (153 ± 7.6 g), food consumption (12.7 ± 1.6 g/day) and water intake (15.3 ± 1.6 ml/day) in control. Animal behavioral tests, e.g. sucrose preference (48.8 ± 1.5) test, distance traveled (70.0 ± 16.3), center square entries (0.20 ± 0.10), center square duration (52.18 ± 11.9), tail suspension (54.70 ± 2.9 s) test and forced swimming (134.4 ± 5.5 s) test were significantly decreased (p < 0.001) in depression compared to sucrose preference (89.2 ± 1.7) test, distance traveled (226 ± 90.1), center square entries (1.4 ± 1.8), center square duration (3.6 ± 2.0), tail suspension (19.3 ± 2.1 s) test and forced swimming (83.7 ± 3.6 s) test in control. Cerebral cortex and hippocampus areas neurotransmitters such as serotonin (7.4 ± 1.7 and 1.2 ± 0.54 pg/g tissue), dopamine (6.3 ± 1.5 and 0.86 ± 0.07 pg/g tissue), norepinephrine (8.1 ± 1.7 and 1.4 ± 0.41 pg/g tissue) and gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) (1.3 ± 0.41 and 0.08 ± 0.04 µmole/g tissue), serum bile acid (46.8 ± 3.5 µmole/L) and vitamin D (1.3 ± 0.37 ng/ml) were significantly decreased (p?0.001) in depression compared to cerebral cortex and hippocampus areas neurotransmitters such as serotonin (16.8 ± 2.1 and 4.0 ± 1.4 pg/g tissue), dopamine (15.7 ± 2.0 and 1.8 ± 0.49 pg/g tissue) norepinephrine (18.2 ± 2.3 and 3.8 ± 1.3 pg/g tissue) and GABA (2.7 ± 0.62 and 0.16 ± 0.06 µmole/g tissue), serum bile acid (90.5 ± 4.3 µmole/L) and vitamin D (2.7 ± 0.58 ng/ml) in control. Depression induced injury to hepatic tissues. Oral supplementation with anise oil and geranium oil ameliorated body weight, serum bile acid and vitamin D and liver histology in depressed rats.

Depression treatment persists for a long time, so the search for a new herbal treatment is of concern due to available sources, cheap and no side effects of herbal plants. Anise oil and geranium oil improved body weight, food consumption, water intake, animal behavioral tests, cerebral cortex and hippocampus areas neurotransmitters, serum bile acid and vitamin D and liver histology in depression.

This paper aims to identify variables that determine the differing levels of environmental quality on Java and other islands in Indonesia.

Using a quantitative approach, secondary data were sourced from the Central Statistics Agency and the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. The data were obtained through the collection of documentation from 33 provinces in Indonesia. The analytical approach used was discriminant analysis. The research variables are Trade Openness, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), industry, HDI and population growth.

The variables that distinguish between the levels of environmental quality in Indonesian provinces on the island of Java and on other islands are Industry, HDI, FDI and population growth. The openness variable is not a differentiating variable for environmental quality. The most powerful variable as a differentiator of environmental quality on Java Island and on other islands is the Industry variable.

This study has not classified the quality of the environment based on the Ministry of Environment and Forestry's categories, namely, the very good, good, quite good, poor, very poor and dangerous. For this reason, further research is needed using multiple discriminant analysis (MDA).

Industry is the variable that most strongly distinguishes between levels of environmental quality on Java and other island, while the industrial sector is the largest contributor to gross regional domestic product (GDRP). Government policy to develop green technology is mandatory so that there is no trade-off between industry and environmental quality.

This study is able to identify the differentiating variables of environmental quality in two different groups, on Java and on the other islands of the Indonesian archipelago.