Green banking or sustainable banking is one of the issues of the concern of all stakeholders of the world. Following this concern, this study has investigated the status of green banking practices of the non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) and commercial banks of Bangladesh. Analyzing the contents of annual reports as well as websites of banks and NBFIs, the study finds that 44 out of 57 banks and 13 out of 33 NBFIs, to a varying degree, have exposures in direct or indirect green financing. But only 45 banks and 25 NBFIs conducted environmental risk rating. Most of the banks and NBFIs practice green banking only in a limited scale and volume and disclose green banking information in a semi structured manner in both the annual reports and corporate websites. However, except one, all the 56 scheduled banks and all the 33 non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) have their own green banking policy guidelines. They also have green office guide for conducting in-house green activities. The study finds that green banking disclosures in their annual reports exceed that in their websites. It is also found that both private commercial banks (PCBs), and foreign commercial banks (FCBs) have surpassed state-owned commercial banks (SCBs) and state-owned specialized development banks (SDBs) in terms of the green financing.

In recent decades some countries of the Middle East have offered facilities to attract international students to pursue their higher education within their higher education institutions. The purpose of this study is to understand the difficulties faced by these students while conducting their studies abroad, and in doing so, to broaden the awareness of the challenges they face to complete their research. The participants of this qualitative study are international PhD students studying at a Middle Eastern public university. The university has reported increasing enrollment of international students, particularly from Africa in the last few years. Data were collected using a set of semi-structured interviews that drew out information on critical incidents that characterized the kind of difficulties students had faced in their studies. The data collected was further analyzed using a qualitative software package, NVivo (QSR International, 11). Six main themes came out from the content analysis of the interviews, which are the role of the adviser, student features, funding issues, family engagement, research and psychological obstacles which provide a holistic picture of student perspectives on the factors that influence degree progress. While these students might have faced difficulties mentioned in existing literature, this study argues that the participants have indicated experiencing psychological obstacles that were not described in earlier studies, such as the state of mind they were in as a result of being worried for family members due to war or violence in their home countries, and drop in currency exchange rates and difficulties in acquiring money due to international sanctions imposed against their countries. This study provides important thoughts on the factors that impact the degree progress of international PhD students from Africa, while at the same time revealing a serious gap in the advisers' role which can contribute to the problems experience during the study progress of doctoral students.

Satisfaction of student has been viewed as a vital factor regarding quality of learning approach and a key factor in the success of learning programs. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how students perceive the environment, quality, and services they are offered at a Turkish university and how satisfied they are with them. The analysis utilized structured questionnaire and use SPSS for determining correlation among different factors of satisfaction. Also it applied step wise multiple regression to manifest the degree of factors that satisfied international students of Turkish universities. The study concentrated on the insight into how international students perceive and experienced about environment, quality and services they offered and how they satisfied are. The research consider eight factors as satisfied with academic and education quality, image and prestige of the university, administrative support, future career and retention reason, personal influence, financial and economic consideration, and environment and safety. Among the factors five factors as students self preparation, academic and education quality, administrative and staff support, personal influence, and environment and safety had found significant from the analysis. The findings are expected to provide useful guidelines to the academic institution while improving students satisfaction.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is considered neither an optional extra nor a philanthropic exercise; rather it is a mandatory and strategic tool by which a company can strengthen its brand, develop good relationships with stakeholders, increase its attractiveness to present as well as potential employees, and enable access to new markets which ultimately lead to materialize its vision. In this article a thorough study has been done on the exercise of CSR activities and sustainable reporting of a world renowned Swedish business conglomerate named Volvo Group with a view to know the nature as well as ways of CSR exercises. It is found that Volvo Group is not only following 'creating shared value' (CSV) approach but also 'Stakeholders model' of CSR and every CSR activity is exercised deliberately and strategically. As a result, the overall performance of the group is increasing gradually, which ultimately leads the group towards the achievement of its vision. Indeed, CSR of Volvo is related to many aspects of business management like risk management, challenge management, environment management, supply chain management, talent management, economic growth management, efficiency management and corruption management. Consequently, the competiveness of the Group is uplifting gradually. It is expected that this study will inspire the corporations of all over the world to exercise the CSR activities in strategic way not only for the greater and better benefits of the stakeholders but also for the sustainable competitive advantage of the company with a view to materialize corporate vision.

The study critically examines the state of the Islamic Microfinance sector of Bangladesh to find its role in addressing poverty. The study constitutes linkage between Islamic Microfinance and Poverty Alleviation. It is a desk-based and libraryoriented research relying on secondary data, structured on research objectives. Islamic microfinance organizations have not yet developed to the expected level in Bangladesh and thus Muslim citizens are compelled to borrow from conventional interest-based lending sources, but many underprivileged and small-scale entrepreneurs feel unable to access funding due to their religious ideology. Islamic concern for the disadvantaged makes it crucial to ensure Islamic microfinance services include their participation in the production process. Due to a lack of Islamic microfinance institutions in Bangladesh, the integration of Islamic microfinance with NGOs, NPOs (non-profit organizations), Zakah, Waqf, and capacity-building institutions to facilitate small-scale financial services to the poor can internalize them into the market mechanism and thereby work as a powerful tool for poverty eradication. This study proposes a new framework that directly addresses Islamic Microfinance and Poverty alleviation in Bangladesh.