Operational efficiency of Islamic versus conventional mutual funds during the COVID-19 crisis: A two-stage data envelopment analysis of Malaysian funds (2015–2022)

Academic resilience and emotional intelligence are considered important personal resources for furthering students’ academic performance. However, many educational organizations seem to trivialize the performance implications of these constructs in teachings and curriculum. Consequently, it can decrease not just their academic performance but also their employability, as they lack the generic competencies to adapt and survive in a stressful context. Even so, empirical evidence on integrating academic resilience, emotional intelligence, and academic performance remains unexplored in the Nigerian university context. Therefore, the study aimed to investigate the linkages between academic resilience, emotional intelligence, and academic performance in Nigeria. The partial least square (PLS) modeling method was utilized for testing the stated hypotheses with data collected from 179 final year undergraduate students in the regular B.Sc. Business Administration and B.Sc. Marketing program at Delta State University, Nigeria. From the PLS results, the study reported that academic resilience was positively related to emotional intelligence (β = 0.125, p = 0.007), academic resilience (β = 0.231, p = 0.000) and emotional intelligence (β = 0.260, p = 0.000) were positively related to academic performance, and emotional resilience mediated the positive relationship between academic resilience and academic performance (β = 0.057, p = 0.005). While academic resilience predicted academic performance, it also predicted emotional intelligence, which affected academic performance significantly and positively.

This study examines the impact of digital capabilities and digital orientation on the digital transformation and digital innovation of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, this study assesses how the role of digital transformation and digital innovation mediates the relationship between digital capabilities, digital orientation, and SME performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a sample of 247 SMEs managers, data were analyzed using the structural equation modeling with a partial least square approach. The findings demonstrate the significant and positive influence of digital capability and orientation on SMEs’ digital transformation and innovation during the pandemic. Additionally, the study confirms that digital transformation and innovation positively affect SMEs’ performance during the pandemic. Furthermore, the study reveals that digital transformation and innovation mediate the relationship between digital orientation and capability on SMEs’ performance during the pandemic. However, digital innovation was not found to significantly mediate the link between digital capability and SMEs’ performance.

VUСA is a chaotic and rapidly changing business environment that, based on the variability, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity of the modern world, transforms the approach of banks to the analysis of financial stability. The aim of the paper is to improve tools for monitoring the impact of VUCA-world conditions on the financial stability of banks, namely a model for studying and analyzing the impact of the modern business space “VUCA” on the financial stability of the country's banks. To test the model, the method of constructing regression equations in multifactor regression analysis is used. For this study, data from some Eastern European countries (Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova) were used, and time series data were used for 10 years from 2010 to 2019.
Having considered the definition of “VUCA-world conditions”, the model of modern business space “VUCA” was developed when analyzing the activity of banks in the studied countries. Drivers, consequences, requirements and macroeconomic indicators of the countries’ activities in the VUСA-world conditions are determined. The VUCA-world conditions also consider the study of key macroeconomic indicators that allow building long-term relationships throughout the value chain. The analysis of the studied Eastern European countries showed that with the increase of factors of GDP growth, GNI per capita growth, research and development costs, foreign direct investment, and net inflow of 1%, the effective ratio of bank capital and assets also increases. The assessment, in contrast to the existing ones, makes it possible to consider the impact of the macroeconomic environment of banks on their financial stability.