One of the important factors for higher education institutions is to achieve global university rankings, and creativity in academic faculty could contribute towards achieving this. This requires academic leadership to encourage creativity to acquire core competencies in order to meet performance indicator standards and promote organizational innovation by stimulating intrinsic motivation and influencing creativity in lecturers to provide a favorable work environment. This research aimed to analyze the effect of behavioral leadership, intrinsic motivation on individual creativity. It also examined the effect of leadership style and individual creativity on organizational innovation. The target population was the faculty of economics from two Islamic state universities in Indonesia and Malaysia. The sample of the study was 248 lecturers. Data were collected by questionnaires and analyzed using the Partial Least Square (PLS). The results showed that behavioral leadership directly affects organizational innovation (β = .38; p = .00), intrinsic motivation mediates the effect of behavioral leadership on individual creativity (β = .39; p = .00), and individual creativity affects organizational innovation (β = .35; p = .02). In contrast, individual creativity is not a mediator of the effect of behavioral leadership on organizational innovation (β = .14; p = .23). In addition, intrinsic motivation as a mediator between behavioral leadership and individual creativity. The findings from this research could be applied to enhance organizational innovation by developing intrinsic motivation, and individual creativity among faculty members in higher education.

The study of zakat and taxes is still a highly regarded topic, especially in relation to the public’s perception of zakat as a tax reduction. The aim of this study is to examine the influencing factors towards the perception of Muslims on the zakat policy as a form of tax reduction based on an adopted research model. To assess the quality of the models and hypothesis, the Partial Least Square (PLS) - Structure Equations Model (SEM) is used in this study. There is a total of 152 respondents involved in this study whereby the respondents are almost evenly divided between Malaysians and Indonesians. The Malaysian citizens are a total of 77 people (50.7%) and the remaining 75 people (49.3%) are Indonesian residents. Based on the SEM results of the formation factors in the test produced by the method of Exploratory Factor Analysis, it can be said that only the knowledge about tax, religiosity and satisfaction variables have a significant and positive influence or impact on the perception towards tax through zakat system. The results of this study can reduce the gap in perception and understanding among the Muslim community regarding the perception of Muslims towards tax breaks through the zakat system and will surely play an important role for countries, policy makers and zakat or tax institutions both in Malaysia and Indonesia as well as around the world in utilizing practices which can be considered highly and positively beneficial to the Muslim society.

This study aims to examine the model adopted based on Muslim consumer perceptions of taxes through the zakat system. This research uses three stages of comprehensive technical analysis through demographic depiction of respondents based on distribution frequently, then tests the adopted factors using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to select and determine the number of factors and related items. In the final stage, data analysis is carried out in the form of the modeling technique using Structure Equations Model (SEM) to test the quality of the models and hypotheses produced. 152 respondents were collected who were sampled in this study, the majority of respondents are 77 Malaysian citizens and 75 Indonesian residents. At the testing stage of the model through the Structural Equation Model (SEM), based on the results of the formation factors in the test, it can be said that only the knowledge about tax, religious, and service variables have an impact on perception toward through zakat system positively and significantly, but through testing the serviceability of a model results in a determinant coefficient of 0.668, which it was relatively strong to explaining independent variable.