Based on the social exchange theory, the aim of this study is to identify the association between job stress state anger, emotional exhaustion and job turnover intention. This study postulates that job related stress and state anger among nurses during COVID-19 subsequently leads to their job turnover intentions. In addition, the study also aims to see the mediating role of emotional exhaustion between COVID-19-related job stress, state anger, and turnover intentions. The sample of this study is gathered from 335 registered (...) nurses working in Pakistani hospitals dealing with COVID-19-related patients. The interrelationships between variables are checked by using structural equation modeling through AMOS. Key findings confirm that COVID-19-related job stress and state anger had a significant effect on nurses’ turnover intentions. Furthermore, emotional exhaustion mediated the relationship between COVID-19-related job stress, state anger, and turnover intentions. There is a lack of research which has assessed the impact of Novel COVID-19-related job stress and state anger on nurses’ turnover intentions in hospitals, providing empirical evidence from a developing country-Pakistan. This study offers managerial implications for hospital management and health policymakers. Moreover, nursing managers need to pay attention to nurses’ turnover intentions who are facing the issue at the front line as patients receive their initial treatment from nurses in the COVID-19 outbreak. (shrink)

The big five personality traits and entrepreneurial mindset are crucial individual-level elements that determine entrepreneurial intention. This study examines the impact of big five personality traits and EM, on EI using the theory of planned behavior. Besides, this study examined the role of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and attitude toward entrepreneurship influences EI. To achieve the research objectives, a quantitative approach was used. Structural equation modeling and path analysis were conducted using SmartPLS software. Data were collected from 270 respondents through online questionnaires. (...) Findings of the study revealed that big five personality traits influence ESE and ATE which led to EI. Finally, the moderating role of entrepreneurial passion was also found to have strong effect on influence ESE and ATE. This study offers evidence and insights that academics, educators, and others involved in the creation or expansion of entrepreneurial knowledge can use as a reference point. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been an escalation in cases of cyber violence, which has had a chilling effect on users' behavior toward social media sites. This article explores the causes behind cyber violence and provides empirical data for developing means for effective prevention. Using elements of the stimulus–organism–response theory, we constructed a model of cyber-violence behavior. A closed-ended questionnaire was administered to collect data through an online survey, which results in 531 valid responses. A proposed model was tested using (...) partial least squares structural equation modeling using SmartPLS 3.0, v. Research findings show that information inequality is a strong external stimulus with a significant positive impact on digital distrust and negative emotion. However, the effects of information overload on digital distrust and the adverse effects of communication overload on negative emotions should not be ignored. Both digital distrust and negative emotions have significant positive impacts on cyber violence and cumulatively represent 11.5% changes in cyber violence. Furthermore, information overload, communication overload, information inequality, and digital distrust show a 27.1% change in negative emotions. This study also presents evidence for competitive mediation of digital distrust by information overload, information inequality, and cyber violence. The results of this study have implications for individual practitioners and scholars, for organizations, and at the governmental level regarding cyber-violence behavior. To test our hypotheses, we have constructed an empirical, multidimensional model, including the role of specific mediators in creating relationships. (shrink)

With the development of wireless technology, two basic wireless network models that are commonly used, known as infrastructure and wireless ad hoc networks, have been developed. In the literature, it has been observed that channel contention is one of the main reasons for packet drop in WANETs. To handle this problem, this paper presents a routing protocol named CCBR. CCBR tries to determine a least contended path between the endpoints to increase packet delivery ratio and to reduce packet delay and (...) normalized routing overhead. Moreover, throughout the active data section, each intermediate node computes its channel contention value. If an intermediate node detects an increase in channel contention, it notifies the source node. Then the source node determines another least contended route for transmission. The advantages of CCBR are verified in our NS2-based performance study, and the results show that CCBR outperforms ad hoc on-demand distance vector in terms of packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay, and routing overhead by 4% to 9%. (shrink)

In this paper we recount several research projects conducted at ImaginationLancaster a Design-led research laboratory, all of which consider Object-Oriented Ontology. The role OOO plays in these projects is varied: as a generative mechanism contributing to ideation; as a framework for analysis; and as a constituent in developing new design theory. Each project’s focus is quite unique—an app, a board game, a set of Tarot cards, a kettle and a living room—however they are all concerned with developing new understandings relating (...) to the ubiquitous, networked, ‘smart’ technologies which are often referred to as the Internet of Things. Through our reflexive account of these research projects the aim of this paper is to provide insights into, and promote new discussion about, the relevance and scope for OOO in socio-technical Design Research, and beyond. (shrink)

This study provides a ‘pyramid of hate’ perspective on issues and challenges facing minority religious communities in social and political climates that bestow permission to hate. Previous research shows that adverse social stereotypes and biases, together with non-inclusive policies and practices at the level of the state, create an enabling environment that signals the legitimacy of public hostility towards a minority community. This paper argues that such climates of hate within and outside the workplace may be better understood by paying (...) attention to the multiple levels of hate, i.e., biased attitudes, biased actions, discrimination and violence. In its extreme form, such climate may lead to indiscriminate massacres and genocide. This contextual study draws on interviews with 76 Shia Muslim professionals and employees in Pakistan to provide a ‘pyramid of hate’ perspective on issues of bias, discrimination and violence facing them. The study unveils a range of experiences, from subtle bias and stereotyping to blatant harassment, discrimination and hostilities facing Shia professionals and employees in Pakistan. The study is unique as it integrates the notion of pyramid of hate into management and organization studies and advances this theory by examining issues of sect-based bias, discrimination and violence within one religion. (shrink)

This research focuses on students' online purchase intentions in Pakistan toward different products available for sale on numerous e-business websites. This study's main objective is to determine which methodology is better to enhance customer online purchase intention. It also aims to discover how to improve perceived benefits and lower perceived risks associated with any available online product and entrepreneurship. AMOS 24 has been used to deal with the mediation in study design with bootstrap methodology. The study was conducted on 250 (...) students from different educational institutes in Pakistan using a simple random sampling technique. A finding of this study suggests that both methods positively impact online purchase intention of consumers and sustainable digital economy. But social media advertisement is more effective through enhancing the perceived benefits of products. In contrast, product content factors are more effective at lowering the perceived risks associated with available online products. (shrink)

This study investigates structural influence of the Madrassah system on effectiveness of its students in terms of civic health, system thinking and professional development. The researchers constructed the instrument of survey after rigorous literature review, frequent interaction with scholars, clerics and policy makers. The survey was administrated to 600 Madrassah’s students from different schools of thought. By applying T-test and Kruskal Waliss Rank Test for measurement of effectiveness and Structural Equation Modeling methodology the researchers has explored the relationship between the (...) variables, and later analyzed with the help of selected model. Findings of the study demonstrate that education system followed in Madrassahs does not seem to be effective and need-based in contemporary times. Indicators of Madrassah structure such as curriculum and openness negatively influences the students while peda­gogy positively influences the effectiveness of students of Madrasah in Pakistan. In the end, it is recommended that curriculum and pedagogy of Madrassah should be reformed and updated in accordance with knowledge-based economy. This will not only upgrade the poor segment of society but also bring together the variety of individuals close enough to understand each other. (shrink)

There is evidence of continued food insecurity and malnutrition in Pakistan despite significant progress made in terms of food production in recent years. According to “Vision 2030” of the Planning Commission of Pakistan, about half of the population in the country suffers from absolute to moderate malnutrition, with the most vulnerable being children, women, and elderly among the lowest income group. The Government of Pakistan has been taking a series of policy initiatives and strategic measures to combat food insecurity issues. (...) These range from increasing production to food imports, implementation of poverty reduction strategies, nutritional improvement programs, as well as provision of social safety nets. The article aims to instill some fresh thinking into the debate regarding the challenges of food security. It underscores the limitations of hitherto policy response, and suggests crucial measures to improve the present grim scenario. Policy makers, planners, practitioners, and academicians in countries with comparable socio-political and economic setup can view this discussion as a case study and may apply the findings in their domain accordingly. (shrink)

Soon after the first COVID-19 positive case was detected in Wuhan, China, the virus spread around the globe, and in no time, it was declared as a global pandemic by the WHO. Testing, which is the first step in identifying and diagnosing COVID-19, became the first need of the masses. Therefore, testing kits for COVID-19 were manufactured for efficiently detecting COVID-19. However, due to limited resources in the densely populated countries, testing capacity even after a year is still a limiting (...) factor for COVID-19 diagnosis on a larger scale and contributes to a lag in disease tracking and containment. Due to this reason, we started this study to provide a better cost-effective solution for enhancing the testing capacity so that the maximum number of people could get tested for COVID-19. For this purpose, we utilized the approach of artificial neural networks (ANN) to acquire the relevant data on COVID-19 and its testing. The data were analyzed by using Machine Learning, and probabilistic algorithms were applied to obtain a statistically proven solution for COVID-19 testing. The results obtained through ANN indicated that sample pooling is not only an effective way but also regarded as a “Gold standard” for testing samples when the prevalence of the disease is low in the population and the chances of getting a positive result are less. We further demonstrated through algorithms that pooling samples from 16 individuals is better than pooling samples of 8 individuals when there is a high likelihood of getting negative test results. These findings provide ground to the fact that if sample pooling will be employed on a larger scale, testing capacity will be considerably increased within limited available resources without compromising the test specificity. It will provide healthcare units and enterprises with solutions through scientifically proven algorithms, thus, saving a considerable amount of time and finances. This will eventually help in containing the spread of the pandemic in densely populated areas including vulnerably confined groups, such as nursing homes, hospitals, cruise ships, and military ships. (shrink)

Cardiac disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. Cardiovascular diseases can be prevented if an effective diagnostic is made at the initial stages. The ECG test is referred to as the diagnostic assistant tool for screening of cardiac disorder. The research purposes of a cardiac disorder detection system from 12-lead-based ECG Images. The healthcare institutes used various ECG equipment that present results in nonuniform formats of ECG images. The research study proposes a generalized methodology to process all formats of (...) ECG. Single Shoot Detection MobileNet v2-based Deep Neural Network architecture was used to detect cardiovascular disease detection. The study focused on detecting the four major cardiac abnormalities with 98% accuracy results were calculated. The work is relatively rare based on their dataset; a collection of 11,148 standard 12-lead-based ECG images used in this study were manually collected from health care institutes and annotated by the domain experts. The study achieved high accuracy results to differentiate and detect four major cardiac abnormalities. Several cardiologists manually verified the proposed system’s accuracy result and recommended that the proposed system can be used to screen for a cardiac disorder. (shrink)

E-commerce has led to a significant increase in internet purchases. The marketing sector is very competitive these days, and marketers have a difficult task: understanding the behavior of their customers. Strategic marketing planning relies heavily on consumer behavior since the consumer acts as the user, buyer, and payer in that process. Consumers’ behavior changes in response to shifts in the factors that influence it. The purpose of this research is to show how Internet usage influence on consumer impulsive buying behavior (...) of agriculture products through moderating role personality traits and emotional intelligence in China organic market. The data gathered in three months from January to March 2022, due to COVID-19 pandemic data was gathered through an online survey questionnaire sent by Chinese social media platforms including WeChat and an email address. The PLS-SEM technique and the SmartPLS software version 3.2.8 were used for data analyses. The result revealed that internet usage positively and significantly influences consumer impulsive buying behavior. Also, both moderator personality trait and emotional intelligence positively and significantly moderate the relationship between internet usage and consumer impulsive buying behavior. Lastly, theoretical and practical implications, and future directions were discussed. (shrink)

Ethical consumerism has been dramatically increasing in recent decades, but in service sector, fewer research has been conducted especially in the fast-food industry. In this paper, we determined empirically the consumer perceived ethicality effects on repurchase intentions as well as on word of mouth through brand image partial mediation and customer expertise moderation in fast-food sector. The data were collected from 307 consumers of the fast-food restaurants through self-administered questionnaires. Common method variance and social desirability bias were measured before testing (...) hypotheses, and the data were investigated by SPSS and AMOS 21st version. The empirical results demonstrated that consumer perceived ethicality effects on repurchase intentions directly and through brand image partial mediation indirectly. Moreover, the direct and positive effects of repurchase intentions on word of mouth were experienced. This study generalized the results of previous studies of consumer perceived ethicality conducted in western culture in Pakistani fast-food sector. This study also proposed that firms should tackle ethical concerns at corporate and operational strategy levels to improve consumers’ behavioral intentions. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of two comparative leadership styles on organizational performance outcomes. The leadership styles undertaken is transformational and servant leadership. A sample of 155 participants is taken from profit-oriented service sector of Pakistan. Data through survey gathered on a five point likert scale from organizations. AMOS and SPSS are used for statistical analysis. The result shows that, transformational leadership has more impact on organizational learning than servant leadership. Furthermore organizational learning enhances organizational (...) performance. Managers and leaders of corporate sector can get benefited from this study. Their main objective is to maximize the profitability of organization thus, they can choose leadership style which polishes their abilities and helps them to achieve profit maximization. (shrink)

In this article, I present a critique of Robert Geraci's Apocalyptic artificial intelligence (AI) discourse, drawing attention to certain shortcomings which become apparent when the analytical lens shifts from religion to the race–religion nexus. Building on earlier work, I explore the phenomenon of existential risk associated with Apocalyptic AI in relation to “White Crisis,” a modern racial phenomenon with premodern religious origins. Adopting a critical race theoretical and decolonial perspective, I argue that all three phenomena are entangled and they should (...) be understood as a strategy, albeit perhaps merely rhetorical, for maintaining white hegemony under nonwhite contestation. I further suggest that this claim can be shown to be supported by the disclosure of continuity through change in the long‐durée entanglement of race and religion associated with the establishment, maintenance, expansion, and refinement of the modern/colonial world system if and when such phenomena are understood as iterative shifts in a programmatic trajectory of domination which might usefully be framed as “algorithmic racism.”. (shrink)

Two sample populations, one refugee and one resident, were studied. The frequencies of consanguineous marriages came out to be 49·8% and 55·4%, respectively, for the refugees and the residents. Caste endogamy was dominant both in the residents and the refugees. The mean coefficient of inbreeding was calculated to be 0·0303 for the refugee population and 0·0332 for the resident population samples. First cousin marriage was the dominant type of marriage in both samples; fathers daughter (FBD) marriage was more frequent among (...) the refugees while mothers daughter (MBD) marriage was more frequent among the residents. Education has no decreasing effect on the incidence of consanguineous marriages. A significant difference in the pattern of marriages in the refugees is observed after the Saur Revolution of 1979. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to empirically examine moral ideology, ethical beliefs, and moral intensity in the context of Pakistan. Jones, 366–395, 1991) model and Muncy and Vitell have extensively been investigated and validated in west for examining ethical decision-making process. This study examines and validates these models in a collectivist cultural settings, i.e., Pakistan. A self-administered online survey technique using convenience sampling technique was used to gather data from a sample of 1000 consumers in Pakistan. Final analysis was (...) carried out on 338 valid responses. Data was analyzed using from descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and model estimation carried out AMOS. Cronbach’s α was used to test the reliability of the instrument. A majority of the consumers were high on idealism and low on relativism. Consumers dejected questionable activities that have harmful outcomes more than ones that have harmless outcomes. Both idealism and relativism are found to significant predict moral intensity. However, no relationship has been found between moral ideology and ethical beliefs. Consumer’s ethical beliefs are found to significantly affect moral intensity and behavioral intention. Social moral intensity is found to mediate the relationship of relativism and harmful ethical beliefs. The study is among the pioneer studies in Pakistan that examines the link of moral ideology, moral intensity, and ethical beliefs. The study provides an Urdu version of scales that can be utilized for further exploration and validation. (shrink)

The research on the dark side of leadership is still in its infancy. We have contributed to this line of research by proposing that work alienation acts as an underlying mechanism through which aversive leadership results in reduced job performance. We further propose that psychological capital acts as an important personal resource that reduces the negative effects of aversive leadership in the form of work alienation. The proposed model gets its support from the conversation of resources theory given by Hobfoll (...) (1981) which suggests that stressful situation like an aversive leadership results in the loss of employee resources as a result of that he/she indulges in work alienation and shows poor job performance to retain back the lost resources. People with better personal resources in the form of psychological capital are better able to cope-up with the aversive leader behavior and make them able to avoid work alienation. It is a time-lagged study. The data for the current study was collected from 321 employees working in the service sector organizations, particularly universities, banks and telecom organizations, through personally administered questionnaires. The results supported the mediation and moderation hypothesis. Limitations and future research along with theoretical and practical implications are given at the end. (shrink)

The paper proposes a research model explaining the sequential mediation effect of job embeddedness and work engagement between ethical leadership and career satisfaction. The model also examines whether JE heightens WENG, a factor indirectly influenced by ethical practices ending in employee satisfaction. The study used a time-lagged data collection procedure and survey responses of 247 hotel workers in China. Data were analyzed through structural equation modeling. The results showed that EL directly and indirectly contributes to employee CS. The present empirical (...) framework extends the hospitality industry literature by explaining the precise mechanism through which EL generates CS among hospitality workers in China. The paper offers theoretical and practical implications and future research directions. (shrink)

To determine the attitude of general practitioners towards continuing medical education and reasons motivating or hindering them from attending CME procedures, we conducted a cross-sectional survey from November 2013 to April 2014 in Karachi. Three hundred general practitioners who possessed a medical license for practice in Pakistan filled a pre-designed questionnaire consisting of questions pertaining to attitudes towards CME. Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS v16.0. 70.3% of the participants were males. Mean age was 47.75 ± 9.47 years. Only (...) 67.33% knew about CME and only 52% had attended a CME session. Reasons for attending CME procedures reported were: need for updating knowledge, skills and competencies, opportunity to meet colleagues and presenting scientific papers. Mean Likert score was 1.67 for those who thought CME is worthwhile and 1.44 for those who consider their clinical duties as the major hurdle in attending CME procedures. Most common cause for not attending CME was lack of knowledge followed by time constraint. Most physicians were not sufficiently informed about the potential benefits of CME and had never attended a CME session. Most common reason for attending CME procedures reported was need for updating knowledge, skills and competencies while reasons hindering physicians from attending CME were lack of knowledge and time constraint. (shrink)

Young academics have been facing a problem of high turnover rate due to missing links between the institutions’ policies and the performance. This study explores the effect of job embeddedness and community embeddedness on creative work performance and intentions to leave of young teaching staff in academic institutions in Pakistan. In this study, 300 qualified young academics from public and private universities were selected as subjects and asked to complete a questionnaire. Data were collected via mail-survey. A variance-based structural equation (...) model is employed to measure the path model. The results show that the fit-dimension of organizational- and community-embeddedness, along with the moderating effect of organization size and the availability of nearby alternative jobs have a significant impact on improving perceived creative performance and reducing staff turnover intentions. This study suggests that organizations should focus on organizational-fit and community-fit constructs in their nurturing strategies to embed young teachers in their academic institutions. This study also suggests that monetary rewards only are relatively ineffective to improve retention. Hence, public and private sector universities should facilitate meaningful contributions from young teachers in creative work and provide opportunities for social interactions and personal development. (shrink)

This article focuses on the hegemonic shift portrayed by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged. The book focuses on the conflict between producers and those who exploit them. The protagonist, John Galt, leads a strike of the producers, which undermines the society's looters and puts an end to the hegemonic control of the left. Neoliberalism—used here as a synonym for contemporary libertarian thought—rescues the world from the havoc wreaked by statism. This shift is studied in the light of Antonio Gramsci's theory (...) of hegemony, focusing on the role of intellectuals. (shrink)

Heidegger’s reading of Kant is deciphered to have illuminated his own project concerning the basic question of Ontology, Time, Space and History [Temporality, Spatiality and Historicity] embodying the novel description of Human reality in terms of Mit-Dasein and Mit-welt [Subjectivity with the public face]. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason led Heidegger develop his own project of Existential Phenomenology contrary to Husserilian Phenomenology. We will discuss the Kantian Heidegger following the two main issues: one, Heidegger appreciates Kant on his identifying and (...) exploring the difference of ontic/ontological. Two, Kant prioritizes time over space. Heidegger would explore the subject of ontic/ontological difference in the sense that ontic knowledge is the knowledge of particular beings, whereas ontological knowledge is described as the a priori condition inferring the ontic knowledge. In this sense ontological knowledge pertains to question of being rather than beings. This is how Heidegger’s Kant interpretation would differ from the Neo-Kantianism of Marburg School which argued that Critique of Pure Reason is a work of epistemology. In contrast to this position, Heidegger held that Critique is a unique work of transcendental philosophy; it is theory of ontological knowledge but not ontic knowledge. Ontic knowledge of beings must conform to Being of beings [ontological foundation]. Heidegger holds that this should be Kant’s “Copernican Revolution”. However, Heidegger would appropriate the Kantian notion of time in the form of temporality of Dasein. Being manifests itself on beings through Being-there [Human reality] who purely understands Being. For Heidegger, temporality of Dasein is the foundation of ontological knowledge indeed. (shrink)

This paper develops an algebraic formulation summarizing various forms of socioeconomic interaction in and across individuals, groups, corporations, and states. The proposed articulation accelerates the understanding that coordination among economic agents leads to the efficient allocation of resources in society. The study considers an approach whereby the State has a regulatory role which helps attain responsible consumption and production choices (RCP). This study has the potential to encourage the use of resources in a way that promotes RCP decisions based on (...) an understanding of values. The fundamental structure of socioeconomic interaction is described in work using finite algebra. It presents how governance structure comprising intra- and interactions involving the State, corporation, groups, and the individual will attain (RCP). The prevailing economic structures functioned lower than the projected level, with enormous damage to the environment. It is deduced that the final level of the economy depends crucially on the initial injection of socioeconomic actions. Furthermore, diverse socioeconomic position patterns are possible depending on the nature of activity impulses undertaken at different levels. The world needs to decouple environmental degradation from economic growth to evolve towards a sustainable and collectively inclusive economy. For that purpose, mutual trust-based coordination among all stakeholders is vital to attain sustainable objectives. (shrink)

We describe a knowledge representation and inference formalism, based on an intensional propositional semantic network, in which variables are structures terms consisting of quantifier, type, and other information. This has three important consequences for natural language processing. First, this leads to an extended, more natural formalism whose use and representations are consistent with the use of variables in natural language in two ways: the structure of representations mirrors the structure of the language and allows re-use phenomena such as pronouns and (...) ellipsis. Second, the formalism allows the specification of description subsumption as a partial ordering on related concepts (variable nodes in a semantic network) that relates more general concepts to more specific instances of that concept, as is done in language. Finally, this structured variable representation simplifies the resolution of some representational difficulties with certain classes of natural language sentences, namely, donkey sentences and sentences involving branching quantifiers. The implementation of this formalism is called ANALOG (A NAtural LOGIC) and its utility for natural language processing tasks is illustrated. (shrink)

The approach of the complex network has well described seismic complex systems. In this paper, this is the first time three classical network construction methods for seismicity are compared. By using the same dataset from the Southern California Seismic Network, three networks are constructed. They all present the scale-free, small-world properties, a strength-degree correlation, and an assortative mixing feature. However, they show some differences in the hierarchical clustering feature. On observing the evolution results, three measures show a similar correlation with (...) seismicity dynamics, but one measure shows a different result. These results show that different network construction methods will present some similarities and differences in network properties. This situation needs to be considered, especially when discussing a predictive indicator of seismicity. (shrink)

While a corporate ethics program is expected to reduce employees’ unethical behavior, understanding the effects of the ethics program elements on reducing the unethical behavior is a crucial issue. This study aims to explore how a corporate ethics program with multiple control elements, including punishment, monitoring, internal reporting, code of ethics, ethics support service and ethics training, influence employees’ threat appraisal process, coping appraisal process and unethical behavior at workplaces. The data to verify proposed research hypotheses were collected by administering (...) questionnaire survey on four autonomous government organizations in Bangladesh. Research findings show that only punishment and monitoring have significantly negative relationships with unethical behavior. Monitoring and internal reporting have significantly positive relationships with threat appraisal. The code of ethics, ethics support service and ethics training are associated positively with coping appraisal. The mediation results reveal that coping appraisal mediates the relationship between ethics program elements and unethical behavior; but the mediation effects of threat appraisal are not significant. This study provides valuable insights into how a corporate ethics program with multiple control elements reduces employees’ unethical behavior as well as how employees’ threat and coping appraisal processes are related to the corporate ethics program and unethical behavior in organizations. (shrink)

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor vision and mission are to improve the people's living standards of Pakistan and China through bilateral investments, trade, cultural exchanges, and economic activities. To achieve this envisioned dream, Pakistan established the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Authority to further its completion, but Covid-19 slowed it down. This situation compelled the digitalization of CPEC. This article reviews the best practices and success stories of various digitalization and e-governance programs and, in this light, advises the implementation of the Ajman Digital (...) Governance model as a theoretical framework for CPEC digitalization. This article concludes that the Pakistani government needs to transform CPEC digitalization by setting up the CPEC Digitalization and Transformation Center at the CPECA office to attract more investors and businesses. (shrink)

This paper investigates the layoff behavior, a typical people dimension of corporate social performance, of family firms from a place-based perspective. We theorize that a place-based culture within family firms ensures that all organizational members share a deep sense of connection with the place of operations which makes them inherently care about their impact on society. Using data on layoffs of 2000 largest US firms between 1994 and 2007, we find that family firms do indeed exhibit a lower tendency to (...) lay off employees in comparison to non-family firms; this relationship is particularly strong in ‘places’ with low population where the negative social externalities related to layoffs tend to be higher. Further post hoc analyses indicate that family firms have a strong place-based culture which can provide resource-based competitive advantages. (shrink)

v. 1. Introduction to the study of Qurʼan -- v. 2. Surat ul-Faateha to Surat-ul-Baqarah (sections 1-21) -- v. 3. Surat-ul-Baqarah (sections 22 to 37) -- v. 4. Surat-ul-Baqarah (sections 38-40), Surat Aal-e-Imran, Surat-un-Nisa (sections 1 and 2) -- v. 5. Surat-un-Nisa (sections 3 to 24), Surat Al-Maaʼidah (complete), Surat Al-Anʼaam (sections 1-5) -- v. 6. Surat Al-Anʼaam (sections 6-20) -- v. 7. Surat Yunus to Surat Ibrahim -- v. 8. Surat al-Hijr to Surat al-kahf -- v. 9. Surat Maryam (...) to Surat-ul-Moʼminoon -- v. 10. Surat-un-Noor to Surat-ul-Qasas -- v. 11. Suratul Ankaboot to Surat Faatir -- v. 12. Surat Yaaseen to Surat-ush-Shoora -- v. 13. Surat Zukhruf to Surat Toor -- v. 14. Surat-un-Najm to Surat-ul-Munafiqoon -- v. 15. Surat-at-Taghaabun to Surat-al-Infitaar -- v. 16. Surat-at-Tateef to surat-an-Naas. (shrink)

THIS little work embodies the substance of a lecture delivered to the Society for the Higher Training of Youths, and forms a mere attempt towards the exposition ...

Arab and English cultures are incongruent, where the former is greatly influenced by religion when compared to the latter. This study focuses on court interpreting from Arabic into English and questions the interpreters’ objectivity when rendering religious and cultural expressions, bearing in mind that certain cultures, like the Arab and Muslim ones, have significant religious ties. To this end, fifteen transcripts were randomly collected from Canadian court hearings. The analysis showed that interpreting religious and cultural expressions can be complex, especially (...) when the original speaker attempts to transmit a notion that may have negative implications in the target language. The results also showed that court interpreters either added explanations to religious and cultural expressions or omitted them. Such additions and omissions may be used to avoid negative stereotypes other cultures have about Muslims and Arabs. The study recommends that future researchers interested in legal interpreting consider the non-verbal factors that can be observed during court hearings. The study suggests allocating extensive training sessions to interpreters on how to impartially render culture-bound expressions, mainly in the legal context. (shrink)