_The Belt and Road initiative was announced in 2013 under the administration of China’s President, Xi Jinping. It was designed to fulfill the aim of interconnecting Asia, Europe, and Africa through reliable connectivity networks. In reaction to it, the 47 th summit of G7 in June 2021 has given a response to this Chinese Initiative with the idea of Build Back Better World (B3W). G7 tried to show that the world can have an alternative to BRI. The main objective of (...) the study was to compare the feasibility of these two massive infrastructural projects. It is a qualitative document analysis of the previously published material on the related theme, that highlighted a competition of economic supremacy between the US and China. The research found that BRI was gaining enough popularity as compared to B3W in the eyes of the world specifically in connecting different regions._. (shrink)

The Belt and Road initiative was announced in 2013 under the administration of China’s President, Xi Jinping. It was designed to fulfill the aim of interconnecting Asia, Europe, and Africa through reliable connectivity networks. In reaction to it, the 47th summit of G7 in June 2021 has given a response to this Chinese Initiative with the idea of Build Back Better World. G7 tried to show that the world can have an alternative to BRI. The main objective of the study (...) is to compare the feasibility of these two massive infrastructural projects. It is a qualitative document analysis of the previously published material on the related theme, that highlighted a competition of economic supremacy between the US and China. The research finds that BRI is gaining enough popularity as compared to B3W in the eyes of the world specifically in connecting different regions. (shrink)

The number of comments/reviews for movies is enormous and cannot be processed manually. Therefore, machine learning techniques are used to efficiently process the user’s opinion. This research work proposes a deep neural network with seven layers for movie reviews’ sentiment analysis. The model consists of an input layer called the embedding layer, which represents the dataset as a sequence of numbers called vectors, and two consecutive layers of 1D-CNN for extracting features. A global max-pooling layer is used to reduce dimensions. (...) A dense layer for classification and a dropout layer are also used to reduce overfitting and improve generalization error in the neural network. A fully connected layer is the last layer to predict between two classes. Two movie review datasets are used and widely accepted by the research community. The first dataset contains 25,000 samples, half positive and half negative, whereas the second dataset contains 50,000 specimens of movie reviews. Our neural network model performs sentiment classification among positive and negative movie reviews called binary classification. The model achieves 92% accuracy on both datasets, which is more efficient than traditional machine learning models. (shrink)

Plastic consumption is an important aspect of contemporary living, and studies that systematically examine consumers’ plastic waste recycling intentions from an ethical perspective are scarce. Considering the severity of plastic waste recycling problems globally based on the stimulus-organism-response paradigm, this study analyses how the information publicity influences consumers’ plastic waste recycling intentions from an ethical perspective in an emerging market economy. We investigate this link by focusing on the indirect effect of perceived social pressure and the moderating role of media (...) disposition (i.e., media richness and content trustworthiness). Data from a three-wave field survey of 469 household consumers from China showed that social pressure mediated the positive relationship between information publicity and ethical recycling intentions. Additionally, media richness and content trustworthiness moderate the link between information publicity and consumers’ perceptions of social pressure. These findings provide encouraging evidence for applying the SOR paradigm to explain the ethical recycling intention of consumers. The findings may assist policymakers in motivating consumers to think ethically about plastic waste recycling. (shrink)

GMOS and Political Stance: Global GMO Regulation, Certification, Labeling, and Consumer Preferences provides a foundational-to-current challenges resource for those involved in developing and applying regulations to these important resources. Beginning with basics of GMOs, the book first familiarizes the reader with the history, economic status, associated risks, global politics, and socio-economics of GMOs. From exploring the necessity of GMO regulations with the existing GMO technology as well as new gene editing technologies to discussion by GMO regulations experts from different continents (...) and countries, readers will find the information necessary to understand the laws, rules, regulations and policies at domestic and international scale. A last chapter delivers an update and future look on gene-edited food and feed and discusses the possibilities on the future risk assessment, legislation and regulation of gene-edited products. GMOS and Political Stance provides a unique and applicable synchronization of all regulatory information on GMOs to facilitate effective and efficient regulatory development and adherence." -- Amazon. (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 construction projects in Pakistan have inherent problems of erroneous planning and schedule development. This dilemma has led to the failure of the majority of construction projects in Pakistan. Earlier researches have tried to curtail the increasing spectrum of inaccurate planning and schedule development. But not many research studies have shed light on the major factor of 2D CAD drawings interpretation problems, which are playing a key role in defective planning and scheduling. Moreover, the role of BIM, i.e., Building Information (...) Modeling with respect to efficient planning, has not been also discussed in detail. This study has concluded a positive impact of BIM on effective planning and scheduling in the construction industry of Pakistan. About 210 responses were obtained from experienced construction professionals of Pakistan and tested via regression analysis in order to validate this argument. It has been analyzed that 2D CAD drawings are now getting primitive and 3D technology BIM is taking its place. BIM is an efficient tool for planning and scheduling. With the start of CPEC and Multi-Billion Dollar investment on infrastructure, construction industry of Pakistan needs to uplift its existing standard in order to meet with international requirements. For this purpose, BIM has been recommended. It will not only assist in attaining flawless planning but will also increase the success rate of CPEC projects in Pakistan. (shrink)

A modern classic of Universal Sufism that explores the mystical dimensions of music-and the musical dimensions of mysticism. Music, according to Sufi teaching, is really a small expression of the overwhelming and perfect harmony of the whole universe-and that is the secret of its amazing power to move us. The Indian Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927), the first teacher to bring the Sufi mystical tradition to the West, was an accomplished musician himself. His lucid exposition of music's divine (...) nature has become a modern classic, beloved not only by those interested in Sufism but by musicians of all kinds. This newly reissued edition includes a foreword by Pir Zia Inayat Khan, Hazrat Inayat Khan's grandson and the current leader of the Inayati Order, the widespread Western Sufi organization that Hazrat Inayat Khan founded. (shrink)

The New Towns Movement began in England and later spread world-wide in response to the increasing concern felt at the deterioration of the quality of life in the large cities under the impact of industrialization. The New Towns, it was felt, would combine the advantages of life in the country with that of life in the city. They would be small communities of between 30.000 and 60.000 inhabitants. Their principal characteristics were to be a balanced economy and a well-defined pattern (...) of industrial, commercial and residential zones. (shrink)

This work is an exposition of Salighed, a concept at the heart of Kierkegaard's thought, and the dialectical starting point for his reflections on what it means to live a genuinely human life. Kierkegaard studies to date appear to have underestimated the importance of the word and the concepts that lie behind it—perhaps because the word appears easily translated into the English forms of "eternal happiness" or "blessedness." This, suggests Khan, does little justice to the concepts behind the word, (...) and does even less justice to the relationships of the concept of Salighed to other concepts crucial to Kierkegaard's thought. Khan's approach to this word/concept study has been greatly augmented by his use of the computer in analyzing word-relatedness, context, and frequency of occurrence, both within individual works and in comparing one work with a context of the Kierkegaard corpus. The volume will, of course, be of interest to students of Kierkegaard. It will also be of interest to those scholars intrigued by the possibilities of using computers in linguistic research and in literary studies. (shrink)

In an attempt to re-envision economics, the paper analyses Robert Heilbroner’s philosophy of economics through the lens of Max Weber’s philosophy of science. Specifically, Heilbroner’s position on vision, ideology and value-freedom is examined by contextualising it within a framework of … More ›.

Iqbāl kī shāʻirī meṉ falsafah-yi ḵẖvudī.

Text and Context: Quran and Contemporary Challenges is a compilation of Arif Mohammed Khan s thought-provoking articles published in various newspapers and magazines. It is a comprehensive understanding of the Message and Spirit of Quran and Prophetic Tra.

The question of the development of aesthetic perception in relation to works of art and phenomena of nature suggests a differentiation between aesthetic education and art education which will be attempted in this study. At the same time the necessary interrelationship between the two will also be analysed.

This paper offers novel insight into the Islamic banking business model by considering the effect of investments in human capital and corporate governance features on the market performance of Islamic banks. Based on a sample of 47 banks operating in different regions during the 2005–2010 period, and controlling for firm-specific characteristics, this paper finds investments in human capital to have a significant positive impact on the market value in the pre- and post-financial crisis period. Based on a market measure, this (...) paper finds board size and CEO power to have a significant positive impact, while the size of Shariah Supervisory Board has the opposite effect on market performance. The results further reveal that the Islamic banking sector is not a homogeneous group, with full-fledged Islamic banks having lax corporate governance mechanisms and large size, while their counterparts, Islamic Shariah-windows, having strong corporate governance mechanisms tend to invest more in human capital to yield positive market value. Overall, the analysis suggests that the financial crisis may have further spurred the impact of investments in human capital on the market performance. (shrink)

Arsalan Khan offers an ethnography of the normative vision that drives Pakistani Muslim men from diverse social and economic backgrounds to participate in a transnational Islamic piety movement: Tablighi Jamaat. Khan examines how Tablighis constitute the domain of religion in ritual and semiotic practice, how they place an ethical commitment to hierarchy at the heart of religion, and how this, in turn, becomes the basis for restructuring domestic and political life.

Drawing insight from affective events theory, this study presents a new dimension of perceived organizational politics and job attitudes. The motivation for this study was based on the fact that perceived organizational politics affect job attitudes and that personal resources moderate the direct relationship between perceived organizational politics and job attitudes in the context of the higher-education sector. In this regard, the data was collected through purposive sampling from 310 faculty members from higher-education institutions in Pakistan. To test the relationships (...) among the variables, we employed structural equation modeling via the AMOS software version 24.0. The results indicated that perceived organizational politics were significantly negatively related to job satisfaction. Moreover, perceived organizational politics were non-significantly related to job involvement. Political skill and work ethic weakened the relationship between perceived organizational politics and job satisfaction. We anticipated that these personal resources could mitigate the negative effect of perceived organizational politics and job attitudes. This study also suggests organizations to train their employees to develop essential personal skills. (shrink)

The increasing interest in online shopping in recent years has increased the importance of understanding customer engagement valence in a virtual service network. There is yet a comprehensive explanation of the CEV concept, particularly its impact on multi-actor networks such as web stores. Therefore, this study aims to fill this research gap. In this study, past literature in the marketing and consumer psychology field was critically reviewed to understand the concept of CEV in online shopping, and the propositional-based style was (...) employed to conceptualize the CEV within the online shopping context. The outcomes demonstrate that the valence of customer engagement is dependent on the cognitive interpretation of signals that are prompted by multiple actors on a web store service network. If the signals are positively interpreted, positive outcomes such as service co-creation are expected, but if they are negatively interpreted, negative outcomes such as service co-destruction are predicted. These notions create avenues for future empirical research and practical implications. (shrink)

In this article I argue that Jürgen Habermas’ notion of morality (moral norms) has more in common with Hegel’s notion of ‘ethical life’ as a ‘ sittlich ’ relation – understood as a socially integrative force – rather than Kant’s supreme principle of personal morality. I show that Habermas and Hegel, each in his own way, make a distinction between morality and ethics. However, I make the case that Habermas’ conception of ‘morality’ incorporates aspects of Hegel’s notion of ‘ethical life’, (...) while Habermas’ conception of ‘ethical’ – referring to individual and group conceptions of the good life – is a remedy to the shortcomings in Hegel’s overly unified ethical life. I offer an alternative reading of Habermas’ principle of morality, which I suggest should be read as his attempt to provide a binding process to set up the norms that ought to condition a modern political community understood as a civil association. (shrink)

This study examines whether and how a CEO’s personal traits (gender, altruism, age, and founder) influence organizational performance. Building upon upper echelons theory, this study develops a conceptual framework that gives explicit recognition to how the institutional environment surrounding the CEOs shapes their characteristics, which, in turn, are reflected in the different organizational strategies and performance. This study moves beyond the existing focus on for-profit corporations and conducts the empirical analysis on a novel, hand-collected, longitudinal dataset of 1342 firm-year observations (...) of 128 faith-based charity organizations operating in a major developing, Muslim-majority country in the period 1996–2019. This study reveals that those faith-based charity organizations led by CEOs with specific personal traits (woman, altruistic, young, and founder) exhibit better organizational performance. Importantly, CEOs’ personal traits, however, do not have a uniform, systematic effect; their effect is generally strengthened when the CEO is also the founder of the faith-based charity organization, given the greater latitude of managerial discretion that a CEO has in managing the organization. Our findings have important implications for individual charity organizations; their board of directors; and their stakeholders, in particular the communities they serve, as well as the whole society where they operate. (shrink)

On November 2019, the world commemorated the 30th anniversary of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child. The UNCRC noted that “the press and other media have essential fu...

The main objective of this paper is to examine the determinants of CEO compensation in the UK public listed companies. Our analysis, based on the sample drawn from the FTSE100 constituent firms, suggest that firm financial performance measured by return of assets (ROA), influence CEO compensation with the impact being most pronounced for the CEO total compensation. Results further suggest that corporate governance characteristics such as board size and CEO role duality have direct implications for CEO compensation. These attributes, however, (...) differentially determine the various components of CEO compensation. Although the results of this research help to elucidate the importance of corporate outcomes, board attributes and CEO traits in explaining the determinants of CEO compensation in the UK public listed companies, these findings have important economic implications for the corporate sector, regulators, investors, market analysts, academics and the public, which extend beyond the UK market. (shrink)

Recent evidence suggests that the presence of music experienced as pleasant positively influences episodic memory (EM) encoding. However, it is unclear whether this impact of pleasant music holds regardless of how arousing the music is, and what influence, if any, music-induced aesthetic emotions have. Furthermore, most music EM studies have used verbal or facial memory tasks limiting the generalisability of these findings to everyday EMs with spatiotemporal richness. The current study used an online what-where-when paradigm to assess music's influence on (...) EM encoding in a rich spatiotemporal environment. 105 participants carried out the what-where-when task in the presence of either silence or one of four musical stimuli falling into the four corners of the 2-D circumplex emotion model. We observed an interaction effect between the pleasantness and arousingness of music stimuli, whereby for pleasant stimuli, the low arousing excerpt was associated with better recall performance compared to the high arousing excerpt. We also observed that, across all excerpts, experience of negative aesthetic emotions was associated with compromised recall performance. Together, our results confirm the deleterious influence arousing stimuli can have on memory and support the notion that aesthetic-emotional experience of music can influence how memories are encoded in everyday life. (shrink)

Mostly consists of works composed in Tibetan, with translations into Mongolian, on the Soyombo script.

Classical commentaries on Jaimini's Mīmāṃsāsūtra presenting the tradition of Bhāṭṭa school.

This paper focused on analysing the three very famous ethnographic works on Pukhtun Society of Swat. First, the work of Fredrik Barth “Political Leadership among Swath Pathans, was analysed then analysis of counter work to Barth’s done by Akbar S. Ahmed, “Millennium and Charisma among Pathans”, then there was critical review of the work by Charles Lindholm “Frontier Perspectives: Essays on Comaritive Anthropology”. Works of Louis Dupree, Talal Asad and Micheal Meeker, have also consulted to critically analyse the works of (...) the mentioned authors. This paper is an effort to examine the fact that the works of Fredrik Barth, Akber S. Ahmed, and Charles Lindholm present partially true picture about the socio-economic settings of Swat Pashtuns but not a fully appropriate, impartial and correct image of that society. If one would fully depend on these works to understand the economic and political circumstances of Swat society, then it would be probably insufficient and misleading owing to a significant difference in the writings of all these writers though written from the same society. It means that all of them were writing from the different positions, from separate cultural, educational and professional backgrounds. Their backgrounds have great influence on their writing, which made their work subjective and biased. Thus, it assumes that though an anthropologist tries to remain impartial and objective while writing about any culture, he cannot be, because of his cultural restriction. So, there is an effort to give an answer to the research question by applying the idea of post-modernist approach of James Clifford “writing culture”, also getting support by the Michel Foucault ideas of “Knowledge/Power” in discourse analysis. Thus, it is supposed here that work of each above mentioned authors is a partial truth, because in an ethnographic work author plays a central role and he writes ethnography as an auto-biography (based on his/her cultural limitation). (shrink)

Within the Ideological Surround Model of the social sciences and religion, so-called “universal” perspectives within the psychology of religion can dialogically clarify and be clarified by the “particular” elements of Muslim commitment. This study developed new scales for operationalizing the experience and behavior of Pakistani Muslims during Ramadan. In a sample of university students, one set of experiential factors apparently facilitated, whereas another interfered with the practices of Ramadan. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Personal Religious Orientations correlated with greater and the Extrinsic (...) Social motivation with lower levels of involvement in Ramadan. Relative to these religious orientation measures, Ramadan experience scales displayed incremental validity by explaining additional variance in Ramadan behavior. Women proved to be more religious than men. At the most general level, these data further supported the dialogic assumptions of the Ideological Surround Model of research in the psychology of religion. (shrink)

This study investigates the effect of inclusive leadership on innovation performance with a mediating role of employee innovation behavior and the moderating role of psychological empowerment. Supervisors and employees of Saudi manufacturing firms are the participants of this study. This study used a quantitative research technique with a cross-sectional approach and a self-administrative survey questionnaire to collect the data. The data were analyzed by using the Smart PLS 3 software. The results depict that inclusive leadership has a significant positive impact (...) on the firm’s innovation performance. Employees’ innovation behavior has a significant mediating effect on the association of inclusive leadership and innovation performance. Findings revealed that PE has an important moderating role in the association of inclusive leadership and innovation performance. The findings of this study contribute to the body of knowledge by finding that inclusive leadership has a significant effect on the firm’s innovative performance and PE is crucial to enhance innovation performance. (shrink)

This research article aims to evaluate the characteristics of ecotourism destination loyalty in light of destination attachment, destination equity framed by perceived value, and tourist experience. Thus, the attributes of ecotourism destination branding in formulating tourist loyalty are examined. The study is of significant importance for developing economies having natural tourist destinations. A total of 358 questionnaires were filled through wjx, and a SmartPLS-based structural equation modeling tool was used to analyze the data obtained from eco-tourists. The software is essential (...) for complex structural models, including multiple indicators, and relationships. The empirical results exhibit that perceived value and tourist experience significantly contribute to destination loyalty and equity, eventually influencing tourist destination loyalty. Moreover, destination memory moderates the relationship between destination attachment, destination equity, and destination loyalty. Further, destination attachment and destination equity mediate the relationship between the perceived value, experience, and destination loyalty. Additionally, the study extends the tourist consumption theory to the ecotourism literature. Besides the theoretical contribution, the study makes a practical contribution to practitioners. For instance, perceived value is a prime contributor to tourist destination loyalty. In perceived value, the most important factor is good value for money. Such practical contribution will provide a pathway to the strategic formation of business. (shrink)

This study examines the mental health consequences of terrorism exposures among youth in Pakistani society. Using Taaro Yamni formula to draw the sample, research approached 399 youth aged 15-24 years. As a research tool, Impact of Event Scale was used with slight modifications. Using Statistical Package of Social Sciences v. 21and Stata v. 20, a multinomial model was applied to explore the relation between different variables. The major findings of the study are that a person who has personal exposure to (...) terrorist attack is the worst affected and the person who was informed by someone is least affected to constant threat to terrorism. Thus, it is suggested that terrorism is threatening mental health of youth therefore counter terrorism policies should be extended to social dimensions. Moreover, severe impacts should be taken into consideration and devise a mechanism to provide counseling services to the victims free of cost. it is imperative to explore the impacts of terrorism on other groups of society including children, and women etc. (shrink)