This study is aimed to identify the relative effect of online review ratings and perceived crowding on purchase intentions of a consumer. Our study also investigated the contingent effect of gender and perceived crowding between the relationship of exogenous and endogenous variables. This study was conducted in the Malaysian restaurant industry. We applied the purposive sampling technique to identify respondents, the mall intercept survey method was used for data collection. Smart PLS software was applied for data analysis. This study demonstrates (...) through its results that online review ratings and perceived crowding have a positive effect on purchase intentions of a consumer. Moreover, if a consumer perceives crowding at a restaurant, this has a positive contingent effect on the relationship between review ratings and purchase intentions. This demonstrates that the consumer is more inclined to choose a restaurant with a high online review rating and has high perceived crowding at some unfamiliar place. Lastly, no evidence is found for the gender difference between review rating and purchase intentions; however, gender shows contingent effect and results confirmed that males preferred more crowded restaurants as compared to females. There are theoretical and practical implications for managers in the findings of this study. (shrink)

Drawing on social cognitive theory and social information processing theory, this study investigated how organizations' efforts to embody environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) shape consumer perception of a green corporate image through employees' environmental passion and pro-environmental behavior (PEB). To test our hypotheses, we collected multisource time-lagged data from 214 employee–customer dyads from hotel and banking sector organizations in Pakistan. The findings show that organizations' green corporate image is a function of their efforts to engage in ECSR activities as demonstrated (...) through employees' environmental passion and PEB. These findings have important implications in the environment and management domains because it can help organizations draft useful strategies to counter environmental degradation and generate a green corporate image in customers' minds through employees' green behavior. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to investigate the incidence of service failure in rendering service process during COVID-19. It further explores the outcomes of service recovery offered to customers in case of service failure. Like other businesses, webstores have also faced the challenges in their efforts to satisfy their customers during COVID-19. Service failure has increased due to unexpected circumstances produced by this pandemic. It has become necessary for the webstores to retain their dissatisfied customers by reconsidering their service (...) strategies. Relevant data for the purpose of this study were collected through questionnaires from 383 respondents by using online channels. The online channels were exclusively employed for maintaining the safety of respondents during COVID-19. Respondents for this study were online shoppers who encountered service failure during COVID-19. The results indicated that the incidence of service failure has increased due to an increase in online shopping during COVID-19. Some customers tend to repurchase from the same webstore. On the other hand, some customers do not want to purchase again from the same seller and decided to switch to the alternative webstore. Based on the findings, new strategy for online shopping service providers was introduced. This strategy will be helpful for the online service providers to increase their profitability by retaining their dissatisfied customers. Service providers can minimize the number of customers switching to other webstores by reducing the events of service failure. Customer’s assistive intent can also be helpful for service providers to increase the efficiency of service recovery. Conducting a proper follow-up after providing service recovery can also reduce the switching of customer. It will be helpful for service providers to understand the customers’ expectations before recovery process and their feeling after getting service recovery. (shrink)

Emotion-based sentimental analysis has recently received a lot of interest, with an emphasis on automated identification of user behavior, such as emotional expressions, based on online social media texts. However, the majority of the prior attempts are based on traditional procedures that are insufficient to provide promising outcomes. In this study, we categorize emotional sentiments by recognizing them in the text. For that purpose, we present a deep learning model, bidirectional long-term short-term memory, for emotion recognition that takes into account (...) five main emotions. We use our experimental assessments on the emotion dataset to accomplish the emotion categorization job. The datasets were evaluated and the findings revealed that, when compared to state-of-the-art methodologies, the proposed model can successfully categorize user emotions into several classifications. Finally, we assess the efficacy of our strategy using statistical analysis. This research’s findings help firms to apply best practices in the selection, management, and optimization of policies, services, and product information. (shrink)

For a graph G, its variable sum exdeg index is defined as SEI a G = ∑ x y ∈ E G a d x + a d y, where a is a real number other than 1 and d x is the degree of a vertex x. In this paper, we characterize all trees on n vertices with first three maximum and first three minimum values of the SEI a index. Also, we determine all the trees of order n (...) with given diameter d and having first three largest values of the SEI a index. (shrink)

This study sheds light on strategies for retaining skilled pharmacists in Pakistan's pharmaceutical sector, offering valuable insights for both academia and industry stakeholders by investigating the impact of human resource management practices, including training and development, compensation and rewards, job performance, and job satisfaction, on employee retention. It also examines the moderating role of career growth in this context. Theoretical foundations are grounded in international migration theories and social exchange theory, providing a comprehensive framework for the study. A cross-sectional survey (...) design was used to collect data from 254 pharmacists in southern Punjab, Pakistan. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed for data analysis. Findings reveal that training and development, compensation and rewards, job performance, and job satisfaction all have significant direct effects on employee retention. Additionally, career growth acts as a crucial moderator, strengthening the relationship between training and development and job performance, as well as compensation and rewards and job satisfaction in relation to employee retention. Theoretical implications emphasize the importance of tailored training programs, fair compensation practices, and career growth opportunities. Practical recommendations include creating a positive work environment, rewarding high-performing employees, and fostering career development. Future research directions encompass longitudinal studies, the influence of organizational culture and technology, regional variations, and additional factors affecting retention. (shrink)

The study aims to determine the role of personal factors, consumer social responsibility, and social marketing among meat anti-consumers. The study tests a model of anti-consumption using a sample of 597 participants from a cluster of young consumers through the distribution of the questionnaires in the Pakistani market. SEM employing the AMOS model for path relationships along with the Johnson-Neyman technique for moderation was mainly used. Results prescribe religiosity as the moderating driver of the anti-consumption of meat among young consumers (...) in Pakistan. Consumer social responsibility is a robust antecedent, while social marketing is significantly documented for sustainability motives. Consumers apprise the personal health and environmental domain as an auspicious component for meat anti-consumption. The study reveals social marketing motivations for anti-consumption that eventually steers marketers and policymakers in shaping the concerned strategies. Our study delivers new insights into food anti-consumption behavior that provides guidelines for policymakers who heed consumer eating behaviors. The study is among pioneer work that establishes the moderating role of religious motivations and meat anti-consumption behavior among Muslim consumers to acquire healthy wellbeing. (shrink)

The study is based on validating and exploring the effects of a mega project plan on infrastructure development and Sustainable Project Management. The CPEC has great importance to infrastructure development and economy-boosting. The current study's primary aim is to deal with environmental protection, economic boost up, international relations influencing to the Project's success. The paper also addressed project management as a moderator between environmental protection, economic boost up, international relations, and the CPEC project's success. The primary data has been gathered (...) by using questionnaires, and PLS-SEM has been employed for the analysis. The results revealed that environmental protection, economy boost up, and international relations have a positive association with the success of CPEC. The outcomes also exposed that project management moderating among the nexus of economy boosts up the international relations and success of CPEC. The present study results guided how Pakistan and China make the CPEC project stronger with the efficient implementation of practices required for protecting the environment, with the economic growth and boost up, and good strong relations with foreign countries. This study was an attempt to validate the different factors to check their association with each other in a new environment, resulting in a leading edge for the success of mega projects that influence project management. (shrink)

This study explored the direct and indirect influences of the entrepreneurial curriculum on entrepreneurial competencies, using the campus learning environment as a mediator. In this study, a survey questionnaire composed of 48 items was used to collect data on the entrepreneurial curriculum, entrepreneurial competencies, and campus learning environment from pre-service vocational teachers enrolled in six universities located in Hunan Province, China. The entrepreneurial curriculum has four components, namely, curriculum content, curriculum material, teaching strategies, and feedback and assessment. Partial least squares (...) structural equation modeling was used through SmartPLS 3.3.3 to measure the effects. The curriculum content has a direct, significant, and positive influence on entrepreneurial competencies. For the indirect influence, all four dimensions of the entrepreneurial curriculum influenced the campus learning environment, which, in turn, was positively associated with entrepreneurial competencies. The campus learning environment was therefore revealed to play a mediating role between the entrepreneurial curriculum and entrepreneurial competencies. The study explored that effective entrepreneurial curriculum delivery and campus learning environment are helpful for developing entrepreneurial competencies among the pre-service vocational teachers. Universities should take initiatives to update the entrepreneurial curriculum and create a conducive campus learning environment that brings a positive change to develop entrepreneurial competencies among their students. Moreover, practical implications and future research directions are also discussed in this article. (shrink)

One of the goals of happiness research is to identify the key factors that influence it. Therefore, the present research is designed to examine the determining factors of subjective wellbeing in Pakistan. The present research is conducted by collecting the data of 1,566 households in Punjab, Pakistan, using the ordered logit and tobit model. The findings of this research confirm that income, education, government effectiveness, no perceived corruption, and perceived institutional quality improve wellbeing, while lower trust in family and friends, (...) poor health status, living on rent, and dissatisfaction with the services of hospitals lower the level of wellbeing. But individuals with more social ties, who face barriers in health services, live more happily satisfied with their lives. Crime victimization and worrisome terrorism also lower the level of SWB. Findings of research strongly emphasize policymakers and government institutions to improve their quality and take essential measures for improving the governance structure. (shrink)

Background and ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to draw the attention toward the implications of COVID-19 and the related restrictions imposed worldwide especially in Pakistan. The primary objective was to highlight the levels of psychological distress, anxiety, family violence, suicidality, and well-being due to COVID-19 and the secondary objective was to associate it to social demographic factors.Materials and MethodsIt is designed as a cross-sectional study by employing an online questionnaire in the English language and obtaining responses using a snowball (...) sampling technique. We used three validated measures including Kessler Psychological Distress Scale, Generalized Anxiety Disorder index and World Health Organization Well-Being Index.ResultsA sample of 420 participants was recruited from across Pakistan, with most participants were females, students and belonging to Punjab. Nearly one-fourth of the participants scored above the minimum value set for moderate or high psychological distress. There was a higher prevalence of distress among females and resident of province Punjab. The majority of individuals reported that they were living with their family and more than half were neutral regarding their satisfaction with their living conditions. 40.5% believed that the lockdown has had a negative impact on their mental health. 31.4% have reported that they themselves have experienced abuse from a family member. 48.6% scored high on the GAD-7 scale and low wellbeing score was found among 80.2%. Students were found to be more vulnerable to mental illness and anxiety.ConclusionWith the lockdown restrictions, psychosocial distress has become prevalent in Pakistan. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to understand how leader humility effectively stimulates follower creativity in the workplace during the coronavirus disease 2019 scenario. Relying on social cognitive and social information processing theories, this study investigates how leader humility cultivates follower self-efficacy and follower creativity. Furthermore, it explores an intervening mechanism of follower self-efficacy and examines a moderating role of leader proactive personality. The hypothesized model is empirically tested by collecting the data from 405 employees and 87 managers working in (...) the banking sector of Pakistan. The results indicate that leader humility is positively related to follower self-efficacy and follower creativity, which improve the organization’s innovation climate and an environment for social sustainability. Follower self-efficacy is also significantly related to follower creativity. The mediation analysis shows that follower self-efficacy mediates the relationship between leader humility and follower creativity. Additionally, leader proactive personality moderates the relation between follower self-efficacy and follower creativity. This study highlights the importance of leader humility for creativity and extends the literature by explaining the role of self-efficacy. Furthermore, the findings may assist the policymakers in how a humble leader heightens employee creativity and social sustainability in COVID-19. (shrink)

We examined the direct and indirect (via relational social capital) relationship between ethical leadership and knowledge hiding. We also tested the moderating role of instrumental thinking in the relationship between ethical leadership and knowledge hiding and the relationship between ethical leadership and relational social capital. Data were collected from 245 employees in different firms spanning different manufacturing and service sectors. The results showed that ethical leadership was negatively related to knowledge hiding, both directly and via relational social capital. The results (...) revealed that instrumental thinking moderated the positive relationship between ethical leadership and relational social capital, such that the relationship was weak when instrumental thinking was high. The results also showed that instrumental thinking moderated both direct and indirect relationships between ethical leadership and knowledge hiding, such that the relationships were weak when instrumental thinking was high. The study carries important practical implications for managers concerned about the destructive consequences of knowledge hiding. (shrink)

Suffering On the one hand is the existential problem that leads us to ask on why it exists, and on the other hand is a philosophical and theological question that challenges divine justice or even the existence of God. Hence, religious thinkers have addressed the nature of suffering, kinds, causes and consequences of it. In this paper we will show that sufferings in Rumi’s view are the inverse-horseshoes, He sees the true grace at the exterior wrath, and recognizes true pain (...) at the specious grace. He believes that “fundamental true suffering” is the separation from increate beloved Neglecting which, will result in other kinds that have been nominated “secondary true sufferings” in here; and other life difficulties that are “suffer-liked graces” are nominated “virtual sufferings”, here we will discuss about the results of these sufferings from Rumi’s view. In his viewpoint we’ll see that the faith is the best human reaction to pains and sufferings, with the gifted insight of which, believers will be able to make suffering meaningful and acceptable. According to Rumi, it is just through the awareness of the real suffering that we can pass through the endless path of faith. In this way of curse the worldly sufferings won’t be removed or denied, but will be meaningful and tolerable - or perhaps sweetness - for lover believers. Rumi believed that passionate faith would be the best answer to life sufferings. (shrink)

The history of Hejaz especially in one century before Islam was affected by Quraysh tribe. All political, social and economical changes were under the control of Quraysh leaders. Qsy Ibn Kalab was the most influential leader of this tribe during history. His unique courageous deeds have change Quraysh from some dispersed tribes to a unified effective tribe. Among such acts of this leader was foundation of "Dar-Al-Nodveh" which was very significant. Dar-Al-Nodveh guaranteed the success of all acts performed in Quraysh (...) and other tribes. Leaders of Quraysh organized their important deeds within the framework of the making opportunities resulted in expansion of this city due to decisions made by elites of the city and consequently Mecca was turned into the biggest business republic of Arabestan. Even they leaded a part of commercial market of the world. They could keep that safe and dispelled all probable dangers. The question is that the idea for formation of this government city, "Dar-Al-Nodveh", is that how came to the mind of Qsy Ibn Kalab and how much was the influence of Dar-Al-Nodveh in Mecca and how did it gave identity to the city? It seems that the international conditions of that time and personality of Qsy Ibn Kalab had very significant influence on the future of the city of Mecca. His corrective actions did much in turning Mecca to a prominent city in peninsula. The present article aimed to study general formation process of this government city with emphasis on the role of Qsy Ibn Kalab. (shrink)

Conventional agency theory typically focuses on a unidirectional problem, in which an agent behaves opportunistically against the interests of a principal. Yet, this conceptualization is too limited to fully describe all aspects of principal–agent relationships. This article presents a more comprehensive framework explaining a potential three-directional problem—that is, agents behave opportunistically against the interests of principals, principals behave opportunistically against the interests of agents, and relationships between agents and principals representing confluence of interests affect the interests of third-party stakeholders. The (...) article provides evidence of these problems, describes their unique characteristics, and outlines implications for society. It concludes with a discussion focusing on the implications of the proposed framework for purported governance solutions, the ongoing debate between shareholder and stakeholder views of the firm, and business practices. (shrink)

Mankind is faced with a number of serious problems that demand an effective solution. The prevalence of injustice and the frequency of financial crises are two of the most serious of these problems. Consisting of an in-depth introduction along with a selection of eight of Muhammad Umer Chapra's essays--four on Islamic economics and four on Islamic finance--this timely book raises the question of what can be done to not only minimize the frequency and severity of the financial crises, but (...) also make the financial system more equitable. The author considers the origins of Islamic economics and outlines its development and underlying principles. He compares the approach taken to ethics and economics in Islam with that taken in the West, considering whether lessons can be applied to the global financial architecture in order to mitigate against financial crises. The book also examines the case against interest and looks at both innovation in Islamic finance, as well as challenges facing the industry. Written by a leading authority in the field, this book will be a stimulating resource for students and researchers in Islamic economics and finance, as well as providing valuable insight to all of those with an interest in financial systems and their interaction with society. (shrink)

Data analytics, machine intelligence, and other cognitive algorithms have been employed in predicting various types of diseases in health care. The revolution of artificial neural networks in the medical discipline emerged for data-driven applications, particularly in the healthcare domain. It ranges from diagnosis of various diseases, medical image processing, decision support system, and disease prediction. The intention of conducting the research is to ascertain the impact of parameters on diabetes data to predict whether a particular patient has a disease or (...) not. This paper develops an improved ANN model trained using an artificial backpropagation scaled conjugate gradient neural network algorithm to predict diabetes effectively. For validating the performance of the proposed model, we conduct a large set of experiments on a Pima Indian Diabetes dataset using accuracy and mean squared error as evaluation metrics. We use different number of neurons in the hidden layer, ranging from 5 to 50, to train the ANN models. The experimental results show that the ABP-SCGNN model, containing 20 neurons, attains 93% accuracy on the validation set, which is higher than using the other ANNs models. This result confirms the model’s effectiveness and efficiency in predicting diabetes disease from the required data attributes. (shrink)

This study investigates the significance of understanding police perspectives on community policing as a means of addressing insecurity, particularly within the context of localised and asymmetrical conflicts. It highlights the pivotal role of the police in shaping community security and the substantial impact they can have (positive or negative) in fragile environments. The study contends that the localised nature of the community policing effectively addresses security and development issues and empowering citizens. Qualitative interviews were conducted with senior police in Islamabad, (...) to assess the implementation and potential impacts of community policing in Pakistan’s Federal Capital Territory. The findings reveal how the historical foundations of police structures and operations – which date back to the colonial period – have led to the promotion of fear, mistrust and manipulation under successive regimes. Despite these challenges, the findings are promising highlighting enhanced human security through context-specific community policing. Finally, the paper argues that the movement towards community-oriented policing marks a departure from the control of elites within state systems, and encourages values such as local ownership, social cohesion, mutual engagement, accountability and agency. These developments have profound implications for global security and justice. (shrink)

We examine the implications of the US government’s too-big-to-fail policy as it has been applied to banks. Using alternative measures of risk, we compare the risk-taking behavior of 11 TBTF banks, identified by the Comptroller of the Currency in 1984, to a number of non-TBTF banks. We provide both theory and new empirical evidence to support our argument that the TBTF policy leads management to significantly increase risk-taking, with no corresponding increase in performance. While prior studies have considered the effects (...) of the TBTF policy on limited, but risk-related aspects of bank behavior, such as the cost of funds, our study provides direct evidence about the risk-taking behavior associated with the TBTF policy. Our study has important implications for the current political debate regarding the too-big-to-fail policy. (shrink)

With the growing call for private sector actors to address global challenges, it is necessary to first assess whether regions with the greatest needs are accessing corporate philanthropy. In this paper, we ask whether corporate philanthropy is reaching those with the greatest health-care needs. Drawing on economic geography and corporate homophily, we argue that corporate philanthropy tends to exacerbate health inequality as grants are destined for counties with fewer health problems. We test and find support for this hypothesis using data (...) on health grants made by US corporate foundations and county-level health data. Our results that corporate health grants are less likely to go to counties which have a lower proportion of medical service providers and insured citizens suggest that corporate foundations are unwittingly complicit in worsening the resource gap between small, poor, rural counties and large, wealthy, urban counties. From an ethical perspective, we provide some guidance as to how this may be corrected. (shrink)

Muslim communities in the village facing the COVID-19 Pandemic attempts to find refuge from the plague and hope for survival. However, this led to more caution, which may lead to xenophobia. Via ethnography, this study unmasks the xenophobic attitude. This research discusses the root causes of panic in the community so that remedies can be implemented. The research attempts to explain, from a socio-anthropological viewpoint, how people and religious groups in the village perceive the pandemic of COVID-19 based on their (...) belief in their faith and in the science. The research takes place in Cigagak village, an area of approximately 7000 m2 on the outskirts of Bandung of West Java of Indonesia. This study examines the selected respondents from about 190 inhabitants who had close ties to managing places of worship and public places. This study utilises a collaborative self-ethnographic method and qualitative analysis. The influence of COVID-19 has moved to new exclusive and disintegrating practices from the inclusion-cohesive religious tradition. Therefore, this study tries to find out ways on how to reduce exclusive perception and religious practices to a minimum level and how to disappear xenophobia. Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic, inclusive awareness and actions were re-established, and even social cohesiveness was fostered. This study concludes that in its deep conviction nature, theology can change exclusive behaviour to be inclusive if it is based on the religious principles that are raised in response to human events. In this case, the Muslim community in a village can change the fear of COVID-19 pandemic to be a reducer of the panic based on the support of the religious doctrines.Contribution: This article used a collaborative self-ethnography with a religious socio-anthropological viewpoint. This study could help to solve social problems through theological convergence in Islamic milieu, especially that of the government’s formal Islamic organisation and organic Islamic leaders of the society. (shrink)

Saba Mahmood’s anthropological work studies the gain in skills, agency and capacity building by the women’s dawa movement in Egypt. These women increase their virtue toward the goal of piety by following dominant, often patriarchal norms. Mahmood argues that “teleological feminism” ignores this gain in agency because this kind of feminism only focuses on opposition or resistance to these norms. In this paper I defend Mahmood’s “anti-teleological” feminist work from criticisms that her project valorizes oppression and has no vision for (...) a nonoppressive feminist future. I argue the future envisioned by teleological feminists gets caught in “the Hegelian” trap of replicating past oppression in their feminist future. I find in Mahmood’s work the tools to escape this trap. I argue, rather than a movement of overcoming oppression, Mahmood’s work suggests an immanent and creative movement that emphasizes difference for a truly new future. I turn to a Bergsonian metaphor and argue that this movement can be seen as akin to the movement of biological evolution. I conclude using the work of Eve Sedgwick that the Egyptian women that Mahmood studies are being read in a “paranoid” fashion and demonstrate using Leila Ahmed a better “reparative” reading of these women. (shrink)

I begin the first part by showing how situationism should make us question traditional understandings of virtues as intrinsic dispositions. I concentrate specifically on situationist experiments related to mood. I then introduce Islamic virtue ethics and the dawa movement. In parts two and three I examine ethnography of the dawa movement to explore how they deal with worries about the influence of mood on their virtue. In part two I show how they train their habits in very traditional virtue ethics (...) ways in order to be more resilient when faced with virtue-diminishing affective situations. In part three I show how the situation, rather than hindering practitioners, is recruited into helping these women achieve piety. I conclude, in part four, by showing the dawa movement's creative use of the Islamic veil as a way to help these women deal with the objection that one cannot avoid all bad situations. Going beyond social psychological experiments, I examine two methodological sources not found in situationist debates. First, I argue for ethnography as an empirical method through which to study virtue. I draw on ethnography of the Islamic women's dawa movement. Secondly, the work in the philosophy of mind on ‘affective scaffolding’. (shrink)

In step with rapid advancements in computer vision, vehicle classification demonstrates a considerable potential to reshape intelligent transportation systems. In the last couple of decades, image processing and pattern recognition-based vehicle classification systems have been used to improve the effectiveness of automated highway toll collection and traffic monitoring systems. However, these methods are trained on limited handcrafted features extracted from small datasets, which do not cater the real-time road traffic conditions. Deep learning-based classification systems have been proposed to incorporate the (...) above-mentioned issues in traditional methods. However, convolutional neural networks require piles of data including noise, weather, and illumination factors to ensure robustness in real-time applications. Moreover, there is no generalized dataset available to validate the efficacy of vehicle classification systems. To overcome these issues, we propose a convolutional neural network-based vehicle classification system to improve robustness of vehicle classification in real-time applications. We present a vehicle dataset comprising of 10,000 images categorized into six-common vehicle classes considering adverse illuminous conditions to achieve robustness in real-time vehicle classification systems. Initially, pretrained AlexNet, GoogleNet, Inception-v3, VGG, and ResNet are fine-tuned on self-constructed vehicle dataset to evaluate their performance in terms of accuracy and convergence. Based on better performance, ResNet architecture is further improved by adding a new classification block in the network. To ensure generalization, we fine-tuned the network on the public VeRi dataset containing 50,000 images, which have been categorized into six vehicle classes. Finally, a comparison study has been carried out between the proposed and existing vehicle classification methods to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed vehicle classification system. Consequently, our proposed system achieved 99.68%, 99.65%, and 99.56% accuracy, precision, and F1-score on our self-constructed dataset. (shrink)

This article examined the recent emergence of the national and international issue of religious polarisation and identity, which affects some groups’ populism and fanaticism. Regarding social phenomena, religion and identity are intertwined like the two sides of a coin. This discourse has an impact how to interpret diversity on religious issues that are caused by political influences. Given the polarisation of identity politics and religion, the national and state campaign slogan ‘unity in diversity’ is merely wishful thinking. The polarisation of (...) identity and religion is heavily implicated in the Indonesia–Philippines border case; consequently, in some instances, the ‘seeds’ of these cases are discovered, eventually resulting in group fanaticism. This article employed the historical way of writing while also taking a social science angle that interacts with the research being done. For some communities, religion and identity may take on symbolic meaning, affecting how well they adapt and are accepted. However, the qualities of a community group or region are also shaped by historical events. According to the study’s findings, religion and ethnic identity have played important roles in long-standing historical processes and impacted them. This study is anticipated to ‘suppress’ the problem of political division involving religion and identity because the identification of ‘border’ communities depends not only on entity and identity issues but also on the community’s culture.Contribution: The contribution in this study is that it has an impact on religious issues and cultural identity relations perspectives. (shrink)

This book is about the philosophy or nature of aesthetic values and beauty.

The notion of 'natural kinds' has been central to contemporary discussions of metaphysics and philosophy of science. Although explicitly articulated by nineteenth-century philosophers like Mill, Whewell and Venn, it has a much older history dating back to Plato and Aristotle. In recent years, essentialism has been the dominant account of natural kinds among philosophers, but the essentialist view has encountered resistance, especially among naturalist metaphysicians and philosophers of science. Informed by detailed examination of classification in the natural and social sciences, (...) this book argues against essentialism and for a naturalist account of natural kinds. By looking at case studies drawn from diverse scientific disciplines, from fluid mechanics to virology and polymer science to psychiatry, the author argues that natural kinds are nodes in causal networks. On the basis of this account, he maintains that there can be natural kinds in the social sciences as well as the natural sciences. (shrink)

The research addresses the effect of sense of control on perceived stress by controlling for the intervening effects of Religiosity and Materialism. A total of 609 emerging adults living in Dhaka city participated in the survey; surveyors used a 48-item structural closed-ended questionnaire to collect the responses. The elicited responses were quantified, and structural equation models were formulated to identify any associations among the variables of interest. The findings suggest that sense of control is a strong determinant of perceived stress; (...) neither religiosity nor materialism mediate the association. The study advances the transactional model of stress and coping. (shrink)

Building on conservation of resource (COR) theory, this study adds to the business ethics literature by examining how employees' religiousness might help them cope with a stressful work environment. In doing so, this study examines the differential effects of challenge and hindrance stressors on employees’ job performance and their helping behaviors; and the moderating role of religiousness in this process. Findings from a multisource and three-wave survey data, collected from dyads of employees and their supervisors in Pakistan-based organizations, indicate that (...) challenge stressors positively predict employees' job performance; however, the link between challenge stressors and helping behavior was not significant. Religiousness invigorates both these relationships such that the employees with high religiousness exhibit higher job performance and helping behavior when confronted with challenging stressors. In contrast, hindrance stressors had a negative effect on employees' job performance and their propensity to engage in helping behaviors. Religiousness mitigates this negative effect of hindrance stressors such that the effect is weaker for employees who can draw strength from their religiousness. Finally, this paper discusses the theoretical and practical implications of the study’s findings and offers directions for future research. (shrink)

This short book, based on authentic sources, outlines the story of Imam al-Ghazali's life.

The aim of this work focuses on the relationship among the Dark Triad, perceptions of organizational politics, political skills, and counterproductive work behavior. This study empirically tests the mediating role of perceptions of organizational politics in the relationship between the Dark Triad and counterproductive work behavior. Furthermore, the study investigates the moderating role of political skills in strengthening the link between the Dark Triad and the perceptions of organizational politics. A sample of 149 participants was randomly selected. To analyze the (...) data of the present work, we employed a structural equation model using partial least square and PROCESS. From empirical findings, we imply an inference that perception of organizational politics partially mediates the Dark Triad's influence on the counterproductive work behavior. Moreover, the results identify the moderating role of political skills in strengthening the link between the Dark Triad and the perceptions of organizational politics. Empirical findings suggest important policy implications for the hospitality industry. (shrink)

My intention in this paper is to reframe the practice of veiling as an embodied practice of self-development and self- transformation. I argue that practices like these cannot be handled by the choice/chance distinction relied on by those who would restrict religious minority accommodations. Embodied self- transformation necessarily means a change in personal identity and this means the religious believer cannot know if they will need religious accommodation when they begin their journey of piety. Even some luck egalitarians would find (...) leaning exclusively on preference and choice to find who should be burdened with paying the full costs of certain choices in one’s life too morally harsh to be justifiable. I end by briefly illustrating an alternative way to think about religious accommodation that does not rely on the choice/chance distinction. (shrink)