مطالب

This study focuses on the consumer experience of telecommunications service quality in Malaysia. Malaysia's penetration rate has gone over 100 percent, meaning that each person in Malaysia has at least one account registered with the telecommunications provider. Telecommunications industry competition is becoming fierce as there is a limited market available to share among the industry players. This study used a quantitative approach, using a questionnaire to collect data through random sampling. One hundred and fifty available respondents received, using SEM-PLS analysis. Results indicate that customers are more concerned with service quality and trust than brand image and price. Brand image and price did not impact consumer loyalty. One of the critical factors is that the facilities and packages provided are approximately the same price ranges for almost similar coverage areas. The service provider will use the outcome for their ongoing long-term plan.

Digital Transformation has not been foreign to people in emerging economic growth, especially SME entrepreneurs in developing countries such as Malaysia. Digital transformation adoption is a way for an enterprise to improve the use of technology in a better way. But as the digital revolution has been evolving, there are still a few entrepreneurs who neglect it. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the factors affecting the adoption which is (competitive pressure, technology advancement, cost minimization, and environmental influence) on digital transformation adoption among SMEs in Malaysia. The relationship also consists of a moderating effect which is environment shock (pandemic covid-19) between the independent variable and dependent variable. The study also provides some knowledge for a deeper understanding of digital transformation and a guide to all SME entrepreneurs and others.

The Holy Quran tells of Allah creating seven heavens and seven earths. These have been traditionally identified cosmologically with seven stars etc. or geographically with seven lands. We provide an alternative interpretation that these refer to seven centers in the spinal cord. Each center has a physical location and a psychic quality. Abraham Maslow has suggested that a human being evolves progressively through seven needs. We suggest this evolution refers to the consciousness of a person rising thorugh the seven centers in the spinal cord. Car G. Jung has commented on the Hindu understanding of these seven centers and endorsed that these have psychic qualities. We find that this understanding is consistent with the Quran. In particular, a Hadith tells of the area from the Prophet’s “throat to lower part of the abdomen” being washed. This is the location of the lower five of the seven psychic centers in the spine. The Hadith then goes on to tell that the Prophet ascended the seven heavens and met with Adam, Jesus and John, Joseph, Idris, Aaron, Moses and Abraham sequentially. In the seventh heaven He was shown Bait-al-Ma'mur or Allah's House which could indicate that his consciousness reached the crown center which is said to be the seat of “spiritual emancipation.”

The study of the resilience of the cities against earthquake is one of the necessities for the reduction of losses and death toll of the earthquakes. Resilience has various definitions and there is not a unique comprehensive model for its quantitative assessment. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive quantitative indicator for resilience and to study the efficacy of social and governance strategies in improvement of urban resilience against earthquake. To achieve this aim, first effective dimensions and indices of resilience of urban areas were explored and extracted by reviewing available research studies and experts elicitation method. Then based on experts’ opinions and pairwise comparison the model was justified and the relative weights for dimensions and indices were obtained and a comprehensive overall resilience index was introduced. Using the proposed index, the efficacy of different social and governance strategies were compared considering three different earthquake scenarios of North-Tehran, Ray fault, and floating faults. The comparisons were based on three metrics i.e. absolute value of resilience increase, distance from the origin of the Pareto chart considering implementation duration time and costs, and the ratio of cost to resilience increase. In this regard, strategy S3 (90 percent increase of social resilience), strategy S1 (10 percent increase of social resilience) and strategy S3 were the optimal ones based on the first, second and third metrics, respectively. On the whole, the social strategies had better efficiency than the governance ones, but it seems in practice the social and governance strategy categories must be implemented in an integrated manner which could be considered as a future research proposal.

This study investigates the reasons for why people seek new political beginnings after historical plagues. The search for such political restarts appeared during the outbreaks of epidemics, but also they still exist among current historians. This investigation is conducted through historical and contemporary interpretations of epidemics. This study concentrates on examples from European and Muslim worlds, but also looks at that of China. It concludes that the meanings assigned to plagues are intertwined with the historical development of political power and its justification by the societies in question.