Privacy in Islam: A Sacred Human Right

‘Right to Privacy’ or the’ Privacy of an individual’ is considered as the most important and the most basic of all the fundamental rights and liberties. It is the concern of all legal systems, civilizations, cultures and religions. In the modern Western and legal perspectives, the right to privacy has emerged from the concept of right to life, which is considered as the basic right from which all the other rights are derived. Islam, on the other hand, considers as an independent and separate human right. The present study is an attempt to briefly reflect and accumulate all the aspects and dimensions of the Privacy right in Islam. It is mainly concerned with the privacy of one’s home, confidential correspondence investigating someone’s financial, private and family affairs, and other such violations, Its punishment prescribed by Islam and its implications on an human society, arising out of doubts, suspicions, accusations and mistrust, in the teachings of Quran and Sunnah of the Messenger ﷺ in particular and of the Islamic jurists in general.

Transcendence of Behavioral Finance in Corporate Financial Decisions and its Impact on Corporate Performance: Evidence from Emerging Economies

Prior major studies in the field of corporate finance have centered on financial decisions and corporate performance. While studying the corporate performance and financial decision patterns, classical finance assumes that managers are rational and self-interested in their decision-making. However, behavioral finance contradicts this idea and provides evidence of irrationality in corporate decisions. For this purpose, our study investigated the effect of behavioral biases of corporate finance managers (i.e., self-serving, overconfidence, optimism, anchoring & representativeness, loss aversion and mental accounting) on three facets of corporate financial decisions (i.e. capital structure, dividend policy and working capital management), and how the corporate performance is affected by these financial decisions. This study also focused on the conditional impact of risk perception, financial literacy, and managerial skills on financial decisions of corporate finance managers. For the contextual contribution, the emerging economies like Pakistan, Malaysia, and Turkey have been chosen for the cross-country comparison. This study used primary data to address research questions. Questionnaire items were adapted from different authors, pilot tested and rephrased for numerous validity and reliability measures. The unit of analysis in this cross-sectional study was the financial decision makers of the corporate sector. The results of this study concluded that overconfidence, optimism, anchor/representative and mental accounting bias have a positive impact on risk perception. However, loss aversion bias has a negative impact on risk perception. These relations are significant for all countries except loss aversion bias which is not significant for Malaysia. Self-serving bias has no impact on risk perception and overconfidence. This finding is consistent for all three counties. Risk perception negatively impacts on dividend policy decisions, positively impacts on the capital structure and working capital management decisions. Dividend policy and working capital management positively while capital structure negatively impacts the corporate performance. These results are also consistent with all three counties. Overall results concluded that the behaviorally biased managers impact corporate financial decisions. The results of the moderation of financial literacy and managerial skills indicated that the moderating effect of financial literacy on the relationship of self-serving and anchoring bias with risk perception is not significant for all countries. Financial literacy is moderating the relationship of risk perception with overconfidence and mental accounting for all countries. The moderating effect of financial literacy with optimism on risk perception is supported for Pakistan and Malaysia, however, not supported for Turkey. The moderating impact of financial literacy with loss aversion bias on risk perception is supported only in Pakistan. The moderation of managerial skills on the relationship of risk perception and the corporate financial decision is not found significant for Pakistan, Malaysia, and Turkey. However, it is only significant in the relationship of risk perception and capital structure decisions of Turkey. The risk perception fully mediates the relationship of overconfidence and capital structure while partial mediates with dividend policy and working capital management. The mediation of risk perception between self-serving and financial decisions is not significant for all counties. Moreover, it partially mediates the relationship of optimism and financial decisions while it fully mediates for anchoring for all three countries. Risk perception is not mediating the relationship of loss aversion and financial decisions in Malaysia while partially mediates for Pakistan and Turkey. Overall the mixed results show that in general, risk perception mediates the relationship of behavioral biases and corporate financial decisions. The comparison of family vis-à-vis non-family owned companies reveals that in family-owned companies, the effect of behavioral biases is escalating and vice versa. Owing to the scarce evidence in the literature, this study not only contributes to the existing literature on behavioral aspects but opens some new horizon to understand the behavior of corporate managers of developing countries. This study tries to provide the opportunity for a better understanding of the heteroskedastic policies and decisions of individuals and groups. Based on results and discussion of the study, the policymakers are strongly recommended to look beyond the classical facets by focusing psychological aspects while hiring finance managers with desired experience, personality, management style, and problem-solving skills.