This brief essay reflects on my encounters with Polany, June and Rhine and tries to link some elements of their thought.

This brief essay reflects on my encounters with Polany, June and Rhine and tries to link some elements of their thought.

About a year before the pandemic struck, personal archives of Anton Sovre (1885–1963) were rediscovered, and they eventually made their way to the National and University Library in Ljubljana. During the fifties, Anton Sovre was the undisputed éminence grise of the field of classics in Slovenia and among the new sources now available to researchers is an essay on “Perspective Development of Classical Philology” from 1959. The document was written in the tradition of the Five-Year Plans, and its rhetoric is (...) often amusing. Its content, however, was written mainly by Sovre’s best student. At that time, Kajetan Gantar (1930–2022) had already defended his PhD thesis on Homer. Due to political reasons, he was initially blocked from getting a university position. However, the situation changed somewhat during the thaw in the sixties, when he could finally get the position of lecturer, and he eventually became the leading classical scholar and translator in the country and Sovre’s successor. His proposal for the future of the discipline shows strategic thinking, which was confirmed by the decades that followed. (shrink)

_The Case of the Speluncean Explorers, _written in 1949 by Lon Fuller, is the most famous fictitious legal case of all time. Describing a case of trapped travellers who are forcd to cannibalize one of their team, it is used on courses in philosophy of law and Jurisprudence to show how their trial upon rescue touches on key concepts in philosophy and legal theory such as utilitarianism and naturalism. _The Case of the Speluncean Explorers: Nine New opinions_ includes (...) a reprint of Fuller's classic article and a much-needed revision of and addition to the five openings originally expressed in the case by the five Supreme Court Judges. Peter Suber carefully and clearly introduces students to the main themes of Fuller's article before introducing nine new opinions. These opinions include perspectives from communitarian, feminist, multicultural, postmodern and economic theories of law, updating Fuller's original case and bringing contemporary theories of law to bear on the five original opinions. Why read this book? One reason is to get beyond sloganeering about "judicial activism" and "activist judges". The book is an enjoyable and even-handed way to understand what the debate is about. It doesn't tell you what to think, but illustrates the contending positions and lets you think for yourself. It will show you how judges with different moral and political beliefs interpret written law, how they use precedents, how they conceive the proper role of judges, how they conceive the relationship between law and morality, and how they defend their judicial practices against criticism. It anchors all of this in a Supreme Court hearing of a gripping, concrete case on which real people disagree. The book uses no jargon and assumes no prior knowledge of law or legal philosophy. (shrink)

Through the explorations of excellent scholars, this book provides a new understanding of Plato's _Theaetetus_, an absolute masterpiece which contains fundamental insights – about the nature of human cognition, perception, rationality – which are still at the centre of the contemporary debate.

As the scope of innovative technologies is expanding, their implications and applications are increasingly intersecting with various facets of society, including the deeply rooted traditions of religion. This paper embarks on an exploratory journey to bridge the perceived divide between advancements in technology and faith, aiming to catalyze a dialogue between the religious and scientific communities. The former often views technological progress through a lens of conflict rather than compatibility. By utilizing a technology-centric perspective, we draw metaphorical parallels between the (...) functionalities of new technologies and some theological concepts of Islam. The purpose is not to reinterpret religious concepts but to illustrate how these two domains can coexist harmoniously. This comparative analysis serves as a conversation starter with an intention to mitigate any apprehensions towards technology by highlighting its potential to align with religious concepts. By fostering an environment where technological innovations are seen as tools for enhancement rather than threats to tradition, we contribute to a more inclusive discourse that encourages the religious community to engage with and potentially embrace contemporary technological advancements. (shrink)

Atheism is an ideology that rejects the existence of God and has gained increasing prominence in societies globally, including Malaysia. Atheism significantly challenges the religious orientation of Malaysian society. Specifically, atheism challenges spiritual and ethical foundations, unity, and cultural heritage linked to religious beliefs. Understanding these challenges is vital to formulate proactive measures, education, and informed dialogue to mitigate the negative impact of atheism on Malaysian society. This study explored the effects of atheism on Malaysian religious society via library research (...) analysis. Scholarly articles, books, and reputable online resources on religious and atheism underwent content analysis, which yielded five key findings. Firstly, atheism leads to the loss of spiritual guidance and morality. Secondly, atheism potentially erodes ethical values and societal norms, and subsequently reduces social trust and cohesion. Thirdly, atheism contributes to moral relativism and ethical ambiguity, which potentially undermines established moral frameworks and social norms. Fourthly, atheism can weaken community cohesion. Lastly, atheism threatens religious institutions and practices. Additionally, the absence of the role of God might undermine the cultural and heritage importance of religion. This study presented critical insights on the negative societal effects of atheism. By exploring the potential consequences of atheism on social cohesion, moral foundations, and existential perspectives, this study highlighted the need for religious education as part of atheism prevention and rehabilitation. (shrink)

This book explores the differences and similarities between Sartrean existentialism and French poststructuralism.

While substantial progress has been made in the field known as artificial consciousness, at the present time there is no generally accepted phenomenally conscious machine, nor even a clear route to how one might be produced should we decide to try. Here, we take the position that, from our computer science perspective, a major reason for this is a computational explanatory gap: our inability to understand/explain the implementation of high-level cognitive algorithms in terms of neurocomputational processing. We explain how addressing (...) the computational explanatory gap can identify computational correlates of consciousness. We suggest that bridging this gap is not only critical to further progress in the area of machine consciousness, but would also inform the search for neurobiological correlates of consciousness and would, with high probability, contribute to demystifying the “hard problem” of understanding the mind–brain relationship. We compile a listing of previously proposed computational correlates of consciousness and, based on the results of recent computational modeling, suggest that the gating mechanisms associated with top-down cognitive control of working memory should be added to this list. We conclude that developing neurocognitive architectures that contribute to bridging the computational explanatory gap provides a credible and achievable roadmap to understanding the ultimate prospects for a conscious machine, and to a better understanding of the mind–brain problem in general. (shrink)

Two conceptual strands of research within the field of cathedral studies have theorised the capacity of Anglican cathedrals to engage more successfully than parish churches with the wider non-churchgoing community. One strand has explored mobilising cathedral metaphors, and the other strand has explored the notion of implicit religion. Both strands illuminate the power of events and installations to soften the boundaries between common ground and sacred space. Drawing on a quantitative survey among 978 people who attended the pre-Christmas son et (...) lumiere at Liverpool Cathedral during December 2022, the present study analyses the qualitative responses of 123 participants who never attend church services. Three categories of themes emerged from these data, concerning the Cathedral itself, the installation, and discordant experience.Contribution: Situated within the science of cathedral studies, this article draws on original qualitative data to illuminate the experiences of participants who never attend church services when engaging with the pre-Christmas son et lumiere at a major cathedral. Conceptualised within the framework of implicit religion, these data confirmed how the son et lumiere succeeded in softening boundaries between the sacred and the secular and provided a deeply moving experience. As one participant said, ‘I am not religious, but I had the best experience ever’. (shrink)

Religious conflicts in Indonesia are prevalent, with endless debates, provocations, and strains among religious groups. Therefore, promoting moderation is crucial to alleviate, minimize, or even eradicate such tensions. Based on the country’s history related to the monarchy system, as well as the jumbled existence of political, religious, and social leaders in society, the role of a leader is significant. Unfortunately, Western, religious, and secular values of leadership have limited opportunities for implementation because of Indonesia’s heterogenous community. Therefore, this article argued (...) that the native leadership knowledge of tona’as from Minahasa is a promising area to explore for religious moderation. To achieve the desired result, descriptive, analytical, and argumentative methods were employed. In conclusion, the responsibility, requirements, and praxis of a tona’as offers alternative insights into leadership in relation to religious moderation in Indonesia.Contribution: This article contributes the values of leadership model in Minahasa that could be a constructive contribution to the religious moderation in Indonesia. The knowledge and insight of tona’as as an original culture and tradition offers leadership philosophy that could bring harmony and peace. (shrink)

Sometimes, we face choices between actions most likely to lead to valuable outcomes, and actions which put us in a better position to learn. These choices exemplify what is called the exploration/exploitation trade-off. In computer science and psychology, this trade-off has fruitfully been applied to modulating the way agents or systems make choices over time. This article extends the trade-off to belief. We can be torn between two ways of believing, one of which is expected to be more accurate in (...) light of current evidence, whereas the other is expected to lead to more learning opportunity and accuracy in the long run. Further, it is sometimes rationally permissible to choose the latter. The article breaks down the features of action which give rise to the trade-off, and then argues that each feature applies equally well to belief. This conclusion is an instance of a systematic, foreseeable way in which what is rational to believe now depends on what one expects to be doing in the future. That is, epistemic rationality fundamentally concerns time. (shrink)

Creativity is a crucial aspect of entrepreneurship. However, research on the information processing mechanism of creativity in relation to entrepreneurship is still very limited. To explore factors contributing to creativity performance among entrepreneurs in terms of information processing, we applied the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework. We used the Serendipity-Mindsponge-3D (SM3D) knowledge management theory to construct models and conducted Bayesian analysis on the most comprehensive and well-designed dataset of 3071 Vietnamese entrepreneurs up to date. We found that entrepreneurs who give more time (...) to their startup attempts are likely to have lower levels of creativity. Both factors of higher levels of knowledge within one’s discipline and better connections to out-of-discipline knowledge are positively associated with more creativity. While the effect of openmindedness on the relationship between within-discipline knowledge and creativity is unclear, openmindedness was found to have a positive moderating effect on the association between out-of-discipline knowledge and creativity. These findings support entrepreneurs in understanding the information processing mechanisms behind creativity for creating more effective knowledge management strategies. (shrink)

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility is an edited collection of new essays by an internationally recognized line-up of contributors. It is aimed at readers who wish to explore the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications.

The present article explores the rationales of scientists and engineers for distributing moral responsibilities related technology development. On the basis of a qualitative case study, it was investigated how the actors within a research network distribute responsibilities for these issues. Rawls’ Wide Reflective Equilibrium model was used as a descriptive framework. This study indicates that there is a correlation between the actors’ ethics position and their responsibility rationale. When discussing how to address ethical issues or how to distribute the responsibility (...) for addressing them, actors with similar normative background theories referred to the same type of normative arguments. It was found that these deliberative processes could best be interpreted in terms of an interplay between different layers of morality. The case suggests that people seek coherence between these layers rather than work through them one-directionally. By distinguishing between rationales for distributing responsibilities and the actual distributions, possible sources of misunderstanding can be identified. The benefit from acknowledging these different rationales is that it enables actors to recognize the legitimacy of other people’s opinions, ultimately contributing to a responsibility distribution that is both complete and accepted by all as justified. (shrink)

In this updated and extended edition of their book, Goodale and Milner explore one of the most extraordinary neurological cases of recent years--one that profoundly changed scientific views on the visual brain. Taking us on a journey into the unconscious brain, this book is a fascinating illustration of the power of the 'unconscious' mind.

Models developed using machine learning are increasingly prevalent in scientific research. At the same time, these models are notoriously opaque. Explainable AI aims to mitigate the impact of opacity by rendering opaque models transparent. More than being just the solution to a problem, however, Explainable AI can also play an invaluable role in scientific exploration. This paper describes how post-hoc analytic techniques from Explainable AI can be used to refine target phenomena in medical science, to identify starting points for future (...) investigations of causal relationships, and to generate possible explanations of target phenomena in cognitive science. In this way, this paper describes how Explainable AI—over and above machine learning itself—contributes to the efficiency and scope of data-driven scientific research. (shrink)

This collection of essays offers multifaceted explorations of animal encounters in a range of philosophical, cultural, literary, and historical contexts. Exploring Animal Encounters encourages us to think about the richness and complexity of animal lives and human-animal relations, foregrounding the intricate roles nonhuman creatures play in the always already more-than-human sphere of ethics and politics. In this way, the essays in this volume can be understood as a contribution to alternative imaginings of interspecies coexistence in a time in which the (...) issue of human relations with earth and earth others has come to the fore with unprecedented force and severity. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relationship between Stakeholder Engagement (SE) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), approaching CSR as a complex system made up of components and interactions. Adopting a System Thinking approach to analyze CSR in a stakeholders-company network, explorative research is conducted through three stages: (1) a critical literature review aimed to identify the components of the CSR system model, (2) the development of the dataset and of the Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) model, (3) the analysis of the CSR behavior (...) in light of the ‘system archetypes’ underpinning the system. The analysis reveals both the structure and the dynamics of CSR and explain its behavior in light of the stakeholder engagement network variables. Findings from this research underscore the existence of six feedback loops, which characterize the relation CSR-SE. The ‘company-stakeholder fit’ acts as a growth engine for the stakeholder engagement network, however other balancing dynamics (e.g., detriment of business objectives) require a tradeoff between Social and Business orientation. This paper contributes to a more profound understanding of the relation between CSR and stakeholder engagement, showing in particular the link between CSR and SE under the assumption of stakeholder-company network. The insights provided serve as a guide for managers and policymakers to navigate the complex dynamics of SE to inform effective strategies of CSR based on network structural actions. (shrink)

This comparative study delves into the concepts of contemporary feminism and Islamic perspectives on gender equality and women’s rights, aiming to identify similarities, differences, and areas of convergence between the two frameworks globally. Drawing on a diverse range of feminist theories and Islamic sources, the study analyses key concepts, principles, and practices related to gender equality, women’s rights, and empowerment. Additionally, the article explores the inclusion of feminist perspectives from Sufism, further enriching the discourse on gender dynamics. By examining the (...) intersections and tensions between these frameworks, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of the complexities surrounding gender equality discourse and ongoing conversations on women’s rights within diverse cultural and religious contexts. Objectives of the Study: To do a comparative study and explore the contemporary concepts and Islamic perspectives on gender equality with incorporation of feminist ideals within Sufism. (shrink)

This book explores the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications. Skepticism about free will and moral responsibility has been on the rise in recent years. In fact, a significant number of philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists now either doubt or outright deny the existence of free will and/or moral responsibility—and the list of prominent skeptics appears to grow by the day. Given the profound importance that the concepts of free will and moral responsibility play in our (...) lives—in understanding ourselves, society, and the law—it is important that we explore what is behind this new wave of skepticism. It is also important that we explore the potential consequences of skepticism for ourselves and society. This edited collection of new essays brings together an internationally recognized line-up of contributors, most of whom hold skeptical positions of some sort, to display and explore the leading arguments for free will skepticism and to debate their implications. It includes original contributions by Derk Pereboom, Galen Strawson, Ted Honderich, Bruce Waller, Neil Levy, Saul Smilansky, Thomas Nadelhoffer and Daniela Goya Tocchetto, Benjamin Vilhauer, Susan Blackmore, Manuel Vargas, Shaun Nichols, John-Dylan Haynes and Michael Pauen, Thomas Clark, Mark Hallett, Susan Pockett, and Maureen Sie. (shrink)

Intellectual humility (IH) is often conceived as the recognition of, and appropriate response to, your own intellectual limitations. As far as we are aware, only a handful of studies look at interventions to increase IH – e.g. through journalling – and no study so far explores the extent to which having high or low IH can be predicted. This paper uses machine learning and natural language processing techniques to develop a predictive model for IH and identify top terms and features (...) that indicate degrees of IH. We trained our classifier on the dataset from an existing psychological study on IH, where participants were asked to journal their experiences with handling social conflicts over 30 days. We used Logistic Regression (LR) to train a classifier and the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) dictionaries for feature selection, picking out a range of word categories relevant to interpersonal relationships. Our results show that people who differ on IH do in fact systematically express themselves in different ways, including through expression of emotions (i.e., positive, negative, and specifically anger, anxiety, sadness, as well as the use of swear words), use of pronouns (i.e., first person, second person, and third person) and time orientation (i.e., past, present, and future tenses). We discuss the importance of these findings for IH and the value of using such techniques for similar psychological studies, as well as some ethical concerns and limitations with the use of such semi-automated classifications. (shrink)

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility is an edited collection of new essays by an internationally recognized line-up of contributors. It is aimed at readers who wish to explore the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications.

This paper explores the space of possibilities for public justification in morally diverse communities. Moral diversity is far more consequential than is typically appreciated, and as a result, we need to think more carefully about how our standard tools function in such environments. I argue that because of this diversity, public justification can be divorced from any claim of determinateness. Instead, we should focus our attention on procedures—in particular, what Rawls called cases of pure procedural justice. I use a modified (...) form of the procedure “I cut, you choose” to demonstrate how perspectival diversity can make what looks like a simple procedure quite complex in practice. I use this to reframe disputes between classical liberal and contemporary liberal approaches to questions of public morality, arguing that classically liberal procedures, such as a reliance on the harm principle, can generate rather illiberal-looking outcomes when used in a morally diverse community. A seemingly less-principled approach, which simply balances burdens, appears to generate outcomes that look closer to what we would expect from classical liberalism. However, since both approaches are based on pure procedures that we can justify without reference to outcomes, it remains indeterminate which we ought to choose. (shrink)

In Exploring Robotic Minds: Actions, Symbols, and Consciousness as Self-Organizing Dynamic Phenomena, Jun Tani sets out to answer an essential and tantalizing question: How do our minds work? By providing an overview of his "synthetic neurorobotics" project, Tani reveals how symbols and concepts that represent the world can emerge in a neurodynamic structure--iterative interactions between the top-down subjective view, which proactively acts on the world, and the bottom-up recognition of the resultant perceptual reality. He argues that nontrivial problems of consciousness (...) and free will could be addressed through structural understanding of such iterative, conflicting interactions between the top-down and the bottom-up pathways. A wide range of readers will enjoy this wonderful journey of the mind and will follow the author on interdisciplinary discussions that span neuroscience, dynamical systems theories, robotics, and phenomenology. The book also includes many figures, as well as a link to videos of Tani's exciting robotic experiments. (shrink)

Deliberative Democracy theory is an ever-expanding field in political theory. In the present article, I aim to present the significance of Gandhian thought for the theory of deliberative democracy. Gandhi never used the term deliberation or articulated a theory of deliberative democracy specifically while expressing his notion of ideal democracy. For him, discussion, exchange of thoughts, reasoning, etc. was instinctive for democracy and not something that required to be defended within the boundaries of scholarship. I trace the central elements of (...) democracy in Gandhian thought and examine them through the lens of deliberative democracy theory. I also examine the implication of Gandhi’s formulations in India. In doing so, I would develop a richer understanding of democracy by bringing clarity to the contribution of Gandhi to the cause of deliberative democracy. (shrink)

We explored the relationship between 24 character strengths measured by the Global Assessment of Character Strengths (GACS), which was revised from the original VIA instrument, and moral functioning comprising postconventional moral reasoning, empathic traits and moral identity. Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) was employed to explore the best models, which were more parsimonious than full regression models estimated through frequentist regression, predicting moral functioning indicators with the 24 candidate character strength predictors. Our exploration was conducted with a dataset collected from 666 (...) college students at a public university in the Southern United States. Results showed that character strengths as measured by GACS partially predicted relevant moral functioning indicators. Performance evaluation results demonstrated that the best models identified by BMA performed significantly better than the full models estimated by frequentist regression in terms of AIC, BIC, and cross-validation accuracy. We discuss theoretical and methodological implications of the findings for future studies addressing character strengths and moral functioning. (shrink)

New research tools such as PET can produce dramatic results. But they can also produce dramatic artifacts. Why is PET to be trusted? We examine both the rationale that justifies interpreting PET as measuring brain activity and the strategies for interpreting PET results functionally. We show that functional ascriptions with PET make important assumptions and depend critically on relating PET results to those secured through other research techniques.

Search in an environment with an uncertain distribution of resources involves a trade-off between exploitation of past discoveries and further exploration. This extends to information foraging, where a knowledge-seeker shifts between reading in depth and studying new domains. To study this decision-making process, we examine the reading choices made by one of the most celebrated scientists of the modern era: Charles Darwin. From the full-text of books listed in his chronologically-organized reading journals, we generate topic models to quantify his local (...) (text-to-text) and global (text-to-past) reading decisions using Kullback-Liebler Divergence, a cognitively-validated, information-theoretic measure of relative surprise. Rather than a pattern of surprise-minimization, corresponding to a pure exploitation strategy, Darwin’s behavior shifts from early exploitation to later exploration, seeking unusually high levels of cognitive surprise relative to previous eras. These shifts, detected by an unsupervised Bayesian model, correlate with major intellectual epochs of his career as identified both by qualitative scholarship and Darwin’s own self-commentary. Our methods allow us to compare his consumption of texts with their publication order. We find Darwin’s consumption more exploratory than the culture’s production, suggesting that underneath gradual societal changes are the explorations of individual synthesis and discovery. Our quantitative methods advance the study of cognitive search through a framework for testing interactions between individual and collective behavior and between short- and long-term consumption choices. This novel application of topic modeling to characterize individual reading complements widespread studies of collective scientific behavior. (shrink)

While the effects of pattern learning on language processing are well known, the way in which pattern learning shapes exploratory behavior has long gone unnoticed. We report on the way in which individual differences in statistical pattern learning affect performance in the domain of language along multiple dimensions. Analyzing data from healthy monolingual adults' performance on a serial reaction time task and a self‐paced reading task, we show how individual differences in statistical pattern learning are reflected in readers' knowledge of (...) linguistic co‐occurrence patterns and in their exploration and exploitation of content‐specific and task‐general information. First, we investigated the extent to which an individual's pattern learning correlates with his or her sensitivity to systematic morphological and syntactic co‐occurrences, as evidenced while reading authentic sentences. We found that the stream of morphological and syntactic information has a more pronounced effect on the reading speed of, as we will label them, content‐sensitive learners in that the more probable the co‐occurrence pattern, the faster their reading of that pattern will be. Next, we investigated how differences in pattern learning are reflected in the ways in which individuals approach the reading task itself and adapt to it. Casting this relation in terms of exploration/exploitation strategies, known from Reinforcement Learning, we conclude that content‐sensitive learners are also more likely to initially probe (explore) a wider range of directly relevant patterns, which they can later use (exploit) to optimize their reading performance further. By affecting exploratory behavior, pattern learning influences the information that is gathered and becomes available for exploitation, thereby increasing the effect pattern learning has on language cognition. (shrink)

This research explores the relationship of variant degrees of a country’s economic freedom to the ethical profiles of millennial business students, specifically an individual’s personal value orientation and post-conventional reasoning. Grounded in Social Identity, Personal Values, and Cognitive Moral Development theories, we construct an ethical profile to compare responses provided by millennial business students from eight countries. Our results suggest that a country’s degree of economic freedom has some association with an individual’s ethical profile, yet we also discuss other national (...) influences on an ethical profile. These results and their implications are discussed in the article. (shrink)

In recent years, major disasters have figured prominently in the media. While corporate response to disasters may have raised corporate philanthropy to a new level, it remains an understudied phenomenon. This article draws on comparative research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate philanthropy to explore the geography of corporate philanthropic disaster response. The study analyzes donation announcements made by Fortune Global 500 firms from North America, Europe and Asia to look for regional patterns across three recent disasters: the South (...) Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the Kashmiri earthquake. The results reveal inter-regional differences in the overall likelihood of donations and in their cash value, in addition to the identification of home-region- and local presence effects. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed. (shrink)

This paper explores the gray area of questionable research practices (QRPs) between responsible conduct of research and severe research misconduct in the form of fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (Steneck in SEE 12(1): 53–57, 2006). Up until now, we have had very little knowledge of disciplinary similarities and differences in QRPs. The paper is the first systematic account of variances and similarities. It reports on the findings of a comprehensive study comprising 22 focus groups on practices and perceptions of QRPs across (...) main areas of research. The paper supports the relevance of the idea of epistemic cultures (Knorr Cetina in: Epistemic cultures: how the sciences make knowledge, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1999), also when it comes to QRPs. It shows which QRPs researchers from different areas of research (humanities, social sciences, medical sciences, natural sciences, and technical sciences) report as the most severe and prevalent within their fields. Furthermore, it shows where in the research process these self-reported QRPs can be found. This is done by using a five-phase analytical model of the research process (idea generation, research design, data collection, data analysis, scientific publication and reporting). The paper shows that QRPs are closely connected to the distinct research practices within the different areas of research. Many QRPs can therefore only be found within one area of research, and QRPs that cut across main areas often cover relatively different practices. In a few cases, QRPs in one area are considered good research practice in another. (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)