_The word Development is devious and captivating, however, the development path is perplexed. In most cases, the governments try to attain economic, military, technological, and infrastructural development, whereas, the power centers evade investing and working on issues of Human Development. The governments of countries like Pakistan strive to shuffle the attentiveness of the world by spending a huge amount on building the roads, on bridges, and transportation and in maximization of arms and ammunition. Human development in Pakistan has always been (...) neglected due to various reasons. A huge population of almost a 22million having as low as 154 th position in the human development index. The patriarchal system has created the social and cultural environment that is supporting persistence male domination, remains the major obstacle in the intellectual, social, and economic growth of women. This paper addresses the conceptual and methodological aspects of human development and women’s empowerment in Pakistan, it explains the challenges and trends concerning women’s empowerment throughout Pakistan’s history, specifically in key areas such as individual, education, and health, economic and political participation, and especially Women’s limited and controlled mobility._. (shrink)

Nuclearization of South Asia always remains the most imperative concern for the international community particularly when In May 1998, India and Pakistan tested their nuclear devices which plunged South Asia into a relentless nuclear arms race. Since then, the nuclearization of South Asia has been a reality but the region is as insecure as it was before. Historically, Pakistan’s nuclear program has been a subject of contention with the Western world. Pakistan has worked hard and successfully to build diverse nuclear (...) capabilities. It will preserve these capabilities for the predictable future as a necessary deterrent against perceived existential threats from India. The objective of this study is to provide historical background of the initiatives undertaken by Pakistan towards the development of its nuclear program and highlight the major challenges and hurdles that stood in the way of achieving this goal. Paper conclude that under the present turbulent regional and international environment, Pakistan should carefully weigh its options to become an internationally acceptable normal nuclear state without compromising its genuine security concerns. It is hoped that the finding of this qualitative work would not only facilitate scholars and experts of international relations, but also be a massive contribution for the students in this field. (shrink)

This study develops a conceptual framework and investigates green human resource practices —green recruitment and selection, green training and development, and green reward and compensation? effects on pro-environmental psychological climate and pro-environmental behavior, which cause green corporate social responsibility. We employ information technology capabilities as a moderator between the GHRM and pro-environmental behavior. It applies a convenience sampling technique and survey questionnaire to collect data from 388 employees at CPEC projects. Results demonstrate that GHRM positively influences pro-environmental psychological climate and (...) pro-environmental behavior that significantly develops GCSR. IT capabilities significantly moderate the relationships between GHRM and pro-environmental behavior. The study findings add to the body of green HRM practices, strategic management, and information processing and policy makers better postulate, align, and exercise their green HRM practices for its synergetic effects for green CSR and sustainability. We also acknowledge some limitations and provide future directions. (shrink)

Stock markets accurately reflect countries’ economic health, and stock returns are tightly related to economic indices. One popular area of financial research is the factors that influence stock returns. Several investigations have frequently cited macroeconomic factors, among numerous elements. Therefore, this study focuses on the empirical analysis of the relationship between macroeconomic factors and stock market returns. When a stock market becomes increasingly volatile, it becomes susceptible to economic uncertainty news, and information on social media platforms. Thus, we incorporated a (...) new dimension of economic uncertainty news sentiment for stock return predictions. We employed the daily data ofgold index, crude oil price, interest rate, exchange rate, and stock returns for a set of countries from January 2010 to December 2020. Subsequently, to compute coefficients, we conducted a regression analysis using one of the more sophisticated approaches: single-layer neural networks and ordinary least square regression. In addition, we only computed EUNS for the period of the fiscal budget announcement for the US, Turkey, and Hong Kong. The results indicate that the gold index, interest rate, and exchange rate are highly significant and negative macroeconomic factors for all analyzed countries. These findings also indicate that EUNS is important and detrimental for projecting stock returns. (shrink)

The COVID-19 outbreak has disturbed the victims' economic conditions and posed a significant threat to economies worldwide and their respective financial markets. The majority of the world stock markets have suffered losses in the trillions of dollars, and international financial institutions were forced to reduce their forecasted growth for 2020 and the years to come. The current research deals with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global stock markets. It has focused on the contingent effects of previous and (...) current pandemics on the financial markets. It has also elaborated on the pandemic impact on diverse pillars of the economy. Irrespective of all these destructive effects of the pandemic, still hopes are there for a sharp rise and speedy improvement in global stock markets' performance. (shrink)

The existing research aims to seek the herding effects on stock returns at the industry level in Pakistan Stock Exchange. Moreover, the relationship between stock returns and herding has been studied by taking some macroeconomic and fundamental control variables. Herding is actually imitating other’s behaviour. This phenomenon indicates a situation where the investors follow the crowed and ignores their personal information, despite knowing the correctness of their information. Herd behaviour may drive from fundamental factors leading to efficient markets. However, it (...) may not be associated with fundamental information causing unstable prices. The stock price data of PSX listed companies from 1999 to 2017 have been the point of focus. The underlying herding measure was the cross-sectional absolute deviation, proposed by Chang et al.. The significant analysis technique facilitating the current research is pooled mean group /panel autoregressive distributed lag approach. Findings revealed that some sectors are evident for positive effect of herding on stock returns, whereas some others are witnessed for its negative effects on stock returns, in both long run and short run. As far as the control variables are concerned, they demonstrated both significant and insignificant effects on stock returns in different sectors of PSX. The study has important implications for policymakers. (shrink)

This paper explores the theory of ‘Thoughtful Intelligence’. This theory proposes that the capacity to realize the impact of one’s statements and actions on the continued existence, dignity, and development of other people and nations is ‘Thoughtful Intelligence’. I show that the 4 unique thoughtful features (self point of reference, human point of reference, nature point of reference, and creator point of reference) result in a ‘Thoughtful’ leadership role. Applying this to climate change management enables one to characterize and visualize (...) the forthcoming flow of Thoughtful Intelligence. A Delphi-focused method helped identify 7 dynamics of thoughtful climate statesmanship, including carbon neutrality, offsetting carbon in neighboring countries, fighting climate change, integrity of social well-being, preserving environment and culture, caring use of limited resources, and gross national happiness. A Delphi-exploratory method was used to clarify thoughtful climate statesmanship. The consensual 95% results documented that the best thoughtful climate statesmanship belonged to Bhutan. The documentation of thoughtful climate statesmanship is strengthening the literature on statesmanship. Summit leaders, scientists, and people in business globally can benefit from this study. (shrink)

This study examined the mediating role of core Executive Functions (EF: working memory and inhibitory control) and moderating role of Perceived Academic Intent to Entrepreneurship (PAIE) in relationship between Dark Personality Traits (SDT) and Entrepreneurial Intentions (EI) of university students. A sample of 539 university students enrolled in various undergraduate and postgraduate programs completed the Short Dark Triad-3 (SD3), Adult Executive Functioning Inventory (ADEXI), and measures for assessing Entrepreneurial Intent and Perceived Academic Intent to Entrepreneurship. The results showed that of (...) SDT, only Machiavellianism was significantly associated with EI. Both of the core executive functions and PAIE were also positively correlated with EI. Moreover, findings showed that EF positively mediated the relationship between Machiavellian disposition and entrepreneurial intention, while perceived academic intent to entrepreneurship moderated the relationship between executive functions and EI. A significant moderated mediation index was also reported. Findings offer useful insight to the interplay among above mentioned variables and guide educational and organizational psychologists to employ core cognitive strategies for promoting entrepreneurial thoughts and channelizing the productive energies of students with malevolent tendencies through academic coaching. (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)

COVID-19 has had a huge impact on workers and workplaces across the world while putting regular work practices into disarray. Apart from the obvious effects of COVID-19, the pandemic is anticipated to have a variety of social–psychological, health-related, and economic implications for individuals at work. Despite extensive research on psychological contracts and knowledge sharing, these domains of pedagogic endeavor have received relatively little attention in the context of employee creativity subjected to the boundary conditions of the organization’s socialization and work-related (...) curiosity. This study investigates, empirically, the role of psychological contracts in escalating employee creativity through knowledge sharing by considering the moderating role of an organization’s socialization and work-related curiosity. The response received from 372 employees of the manufacturing sector has been investigated and analyzed through Smart PLS software. The results have revealed that knowledge sharing is mediating the relationship between psychological contract and employee creative performance, whereas the moderators significantly moderate the relationships between psychological contract and knowledge sharing and between knowledge sharing and employee creative performance accordingly. It has also been depicted that the moderating impact shown by both moderators is significantly high. (shrink)

Software defects prediction at the initial period of the software development life cycle remains a critical and important assignment. Defect prediction and correctness leads to the assurance of the quality of software systems and has remained integral to study in the previous years. The quick forecast of imperfect or defective modules in software development can serve the development squad to use the existing assets competently and effectively to provide remarkable software products in a given short timeline. Hitherto, several researchers have (...) industrialized defect prediction models by utilizing statistical and machine learning techniques that are operative and effective approaches to pinpoint the defective modules. Tree family machine learning techniques are well-thought-out to be one of the finest and ordinarily used supervised learning methods. In this study, different tree family machine learning techniques are employed for software defect prediction using ten benchmark datasets. These techniques include Credal Decision Tree, Cost-Sensitive Decision Forest, Decision Stump, Forest by Penalizing Attributes, Hoeffding Tree, Decision Tree, Logistic Model Tree, Random Forest, Random Tree, and REP-Tree. Performance of each technique is evaluated using different measures, i.e., mean absolute error, relative absolute error, root mean squared error, root relative squared error, specificity, precision, recall, F-measure, G-measure, Matthew’s correlation coefficient, and accuracy. The overall outcomes of this paper suggested RF technique by producing best results in terms of reducing error rates as well as increasing accuracy on five datasets, i.e., AR3, PC1, PC2, PC3, and PC4. The average accuracy achieved by RF is 90.2238%. The comprehensive outcomes of this study can be used as a reference point for other researchers. Any assertion concerning the enhancement in prediction through any new model, technique, or framework can be benchmarked and verified. (shrink)

Textile is one of the largest export and source of foreign exchange in Pakistan. For the last two decades, Textile sector is serving as the backbone for Pakistan economy. Several foreign retailers including Target, Jessie Penny, Wal-Mart, and Kohl’s are outsourcing textile and garments from Pakistan. Along with the quality, these retailers are highly concerned with the ethical and social issues of their suppliers, including child labor, forced labor, compensation, working hours and environment health, and safety. My current study is (...) an applied research, based on the problem, regarding the working hours and its proper management in textile factories, mismanagement of which lead to serious issues during social and ethical standard audits. Repetition of which may consequent in termination of business with suppliers and factories. The research hypothesis is that working off the clock will lead to overtime premium not paid and double book record keeping. As far as ethical and social compliance is concerned both overtime premiums not paid and double book records are critical issues during SC audit. A sample of 40 suppliers of Pakistan was randomly selected working with foreign buyers. Secondary data were used to verify the findings based on Audits finding conducted by different third party during a period of 2 years, i.e. Feb., 2010 to Jan., 2012. The results and research findings reflect that during the last 2 years out of 40 factories audit reports 25 factories were found having working off the clock that also lead to overtime premium not paid. However, double book records were not witnessed in all 40 factories SC audit reports as parallel records were not maintained by any factories. The above findings will help the suppliers, factories, and buyers to develop a proactive approach and proper production planning to avoid critical issues and smooth business activities. (shrink)

In several studies, knowledge is witnessed as one of the foundations of long-term competitive edge and is also a basic source of new product development performance. The aim of this study is to investigate the role of knowledge management capabilities in new product development performance with the mediating role of organizational agility. Additionally, this study also intends to examine the moderating role of business model innovation on the relationship of KMC with organizational agility. This study was conducted on the Chinese (...) automobile sector, and the NPD project managers, supervisors, and engineers of the sector were respondents of this study. A survey questionnaire was used to collect the data from 201 respondents, and data were analyzed using the Smart PLS 3 software. The findings of this research, although limited to the automobile industries, indicate that knowledge sharing and knowledge application have significant and positive effects on the development of new products. Organizational agility significantly mediates the relationship of KMC with NPD. The results found that business model innovation has a significant moderating role in the relationship between KMC and organizational agility. Moreover, the results of this study will assist the managers in developing a modern competitive business environment by implicating KMC in the process of NPD. Lastly, organizations may improve the sustainability of their product and their overall performance by using organizational agility and modern ways of value delivery. (shrink)