Technology permeates all walks of life. It has emerged as a global facilitator to improve learning and training, alleviating the temporal and spatial limitations of traditional learning systems. It is imperative to identify enablers or inhibitors of technology adoption by employees for sustainable change in education management systems. Using the theoretical lens of organizational support theory, this paper studies effect of institutional support on education management information systems use along with two individual traits of self-efficacy and innovative behavior of academic (...) employees in British higher educational institutions. Data for this cross-sectional study were collected through a questionnaire completed by 591 academic employees of 23 universities from 10 cities in the United Kingdom. Partial Least Square structural equation modeling was used to analyze data with smartPLS 3.2.9 software. Results indicate that institutional support promotes self-efficacy and innovative behavior that help develop positive employee perceptions. The model explains a 52.9% variance in intention to use. Post-hoc mediation analysis shows that innovativeness and self-efficacy mediate between institutional support and employee technology adoption behavior. As opposed to student samples in past studies on educational technology, this study adds to the literature by focusing on academic employees. (shrink)

Abusive supervision, defined as subordinates’ perception of the extent to which supervisors engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal and non-verbal behaviors, excluding physical contact, is associated with various negative outcomes. This has made it easy for researchers to overlook the possibility that some supervisors regret their bad behavior and express remorse for their actions. Hence, we know little about how subordinates react to the perception that their supervisor is remorseful and how this perception affects the outcomes of supervisors’ (...) undesired behavior. Specifically, drawing on the social exchange theory and displace revenge literature, this study explains how abusive supervision leads to victims’ service sabotage behavior. In addition, this study also investigates how perceived supervisors’ remorse mitigates the adverse effects of abusive supervision. Based on time-lagged, dyadic data from Chinese individuals, this study found support for all the proposed relationships, i.e., abusive supervision leads to service sabotage through the mediating effect of revenge desire. The findings also conclude that PSR lessens the detrimental effects of abusive supervision on victims’ behavior with their customers. Finally, this research contributes to service sabotage literature by highlighting the possibility where abusive supervisors cause service sabotage behavior among victims. This study also shows the importance of PSR’s role in decreasing service sabotage behavior exhibited by victims of abusive supervisors in the service sector. (shrink)

To maintain the competitive edge and evaluating the needs of the quality app is in the mobile application market. The user’s feedback on these applications plays an essential role in the mobile application development industry. The rapid growth of web technology gave people an opportunity to interact and express their review, rate and share their feedback about applications. In this paper we have scrapped 506259 of user reviews and applications rate from Google Play Store from 14 different categories. The statistical (...) information was measured in the results using different of common machine learning algorithms such as the Logistic Regression, Random Forest Classifier, and Multinomial Naïve Bayes. Different parameters including the accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score were used to evaluate Bigram, Trigram, and N-gram, and the statistical result of these algorithms was compared. The analysis of each algorithm, one by one, is performed, and the result has been evaluated. It is concluded that logistic regression is the best algorithm for review analysis of the Google Play Store applications. The results have been checked scientifically, and it is found that the accuracy of the logistic regression algorithm for analyzing different reviews based on three classes, i.e., positive, negative, and neutral. (shrink)

Very few studies have investigated the movement in stock returns that result due to changes in oil prices. In recent years due to cooling down of China, unveiled oil reserves of Iran, decreasing demand worldwide and discovery of shale gases the world has experienced a large fall in the oil prices. These changes are also affecting performance of manufacturing and other associated companies in countries all over the world. Pakistan has also been affected by these changes in many ways. Especially, (...) the returns on stock markets have been affected a lot by the variations in the oil prices. This paper using monthly data set from years 2014 to 2016 of the non-financial firms operated in Pakistan Stock Exchange, investigates the effect of variation in oil prices on returns on stock. Results from the panel data analysis indicate a negative relationship between the variables. Since, Pakistan is an oil importing, movement in the prices contribute towards affecting the production cost in a positive manner which in turn affects the execution of the enterprises as well as returns of the stocks negatively. (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 purpose of this research is to highlight the relationship between green product attributes and consumer trust that influence consumers’ decision to purchase green products in the context of Pakistan. This study contributes to determining quantitatively how green product attributes such as physical, perceptual, and reflexive attributes influence consumers’ trust to purchase a green product and investigates the mediating role of green marketing. Data was collected from different industrial sectors through a survey questionnaire. We employed Structural Equation Modeling using the (...) SMART-PLS software to check the reliability and validity of the constructs, and to test the hypotheses. This study reveals variations in terms of shaping the sustainable consumers’ buying behavior by modifying product attributes and green marketing strategies that are in congruence with the proposed hypotheses of this study. In the end, the findings and interpretations of the results are given which can guide the managers to develop effective green marketing campaigns in reshaping the purchase intentions of consumers toward their green products. (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)

In the modern business environment, characterized by rapid technological advancements and globalization, abetted by IoT and Industry 5.0 phenomenon, innovation is indispensable for competitive advantage and economic growth. However, many organizations are facing problems in its true implementation due to the absence of a practical innovation management framework, which has made the implementation of the concept elusive instead of persuasive. The present study has proposed a new innovation management framework labeled as “Absolute Innovation Management (AIM)” to make innovation more understandable, (...) implementable, and part of the organization’s everyday routine by synergizing the innovation ecosystem, design thinking, and corporate strategy to achieve competitive advantage and economic growth. The current study used an integrative literature review methodology to develop the “Absolute Innovation Management” framework. The absolute innovation management framework links the innovation ecosystem with the corporate strategy of the firm by adopting innovation management as a strategy through design thinking. Thus, making innovation more user/human-centered that is desirable by the customer, viable for business and technically feasible, creating both entrepreneurial and customer value, and boosting corporate venturing and corporate entrepreneurship to achieve competitive advantage and economic growth while addressing the needs of IoT and Industry 5.0 era. In sum, it synergizes innovation, design thinking, and strategy to make businesses future-ready for IoT and the industry 5.0 revolution. The present study is significant, as it not only makes considerable contributions to the existing literature on innovation management by developing a new framework but also makes the concept more practical, implementable and part of an organization’s everyday routine. (shrink)

The present study investigated the relationship between paranoia and job satisfaction. Paranoia is defined as suspiciousness and the feeling of being threatened even if there is no proof of real threat. Paranoia is a concept that is often ignored in researches in Pakistan and rarely explored in context of any concept related to occupational life. After a detailed literature review, it was hypothesized that paranoia would be negatively correlated to job satisfaction. The sample of the present research consisted of 154 (...) professionals from different work settings. Paranoia was measured with the Feingstein Paranoia Scale Urdu version and job satisfaction was measured by the Generic Job Satisfaction Scale. Statistical analysis though Pearson Product Moment Correlation indicates that there is a strong negative correlation between paranoia and job satisfaction. Recommendations for employers and policy makers, avenues of future researches are discussed. (shrink)

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

The study aimed to identify the strategic sensitivity and its impact on enhancing the creative behavior of Palestinian NGOs in Gaza Strip, and the study used the descriptive analytical approach and the questionnaire as a main tool for collecting data from employees of associations working in Gaza Strip governorates, and the cluster sample method was used and the sample size reached (343) individuals (298) questionnaires were retrieved, and the following results were reached: The relative weight of strategic sensitivity was 79.22 (...) (%), and the relative weight of creative behavior was 78.99 (%), a statistically significant relationship between all strategic sensitivity and creative behavior, and the presence of a sensitivity effect The strategy’s strategy on creative behavior, there are statistically significant differences in the scale dimensions attributable to the gender variable and the differences were in favor of females, there are no statistically significant differences between the averages of strategic sensitivity due to the age variable, and the educational qualification, and there were no statistically significant differences in creative behavior according to The gender variable, age, educational qualification, specialization, and the study presented a set of recommendations, the most important of which are: the need for civil organizations in Gaza Strip to seek funding from external countries in order to provide self-income for associations to face crises and give them independence Mechanism in order to keep them to carry out their role in society, the need to follow up the strategic plan of civil organizations using e-mails as they pave the way to reach excellence and creativity in the field of work. (shrink)

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

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

We provide two programmatic frameworks for integrating philosophical research on understanding with complementary work in computer science, psychology, and neuroscience. First, philosophical theories of understanding have consequences about how agents should reason if they are to understand that can then be evaluated empirically by their concordance with findings in scientific studies of reasoning. Second, these studies use a multitude of explanations, and a philosophical theory of understanding is well suited to integrating these explanations in illuminating ways.

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

Sir Muhammad Iqbal, 1877-1938, Urdu poet and philosopher.

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

This study aims to identify the influence of knowledge management practices on the entrepreneurial and organizational performance with the mediating effect of dynamic capabilities and moderating role of opportunity recognition. Data were gathered from 486 entrepreneurs and applied a structural equation model to test the hypotheses. We found that knowledge management practices have a positive and significant influence on dynamic capabilities, as well as have a significant impact on entrepreneurial and organizational performance. Moreover, results indicated that dynamic capabilities partially mediate (...) in the relationship between knowledge management practices on entrepreneurial and organizational performance. Furthermore, the relationship between knowledge management practices with entrepreneurial and organizational performance strengthening by opportunity recognition. Further, implications and limitations were discussed in the paper. (shrink)

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

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

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

The Iraqi constitution of 2005 grants freedom of religious thought, belief and practice for all religions. This study was also based on the premise that the constitutional rights are not adhered to in Iraq, even by government officials, which could be due to the absence of suitable legislations subsequent to the framing of the constitutional provisions. An analytical and descriptive research design was adopted for this study. Data was collected from primary and secondary sources through documentation research and evaluation of (...) historical sources. The primary data comprised Articles of the Iraqi constitution, and a few national and international legal instruments related to religious freedom. Secondary data included empirical research studies, books, articles and other published sources. This study therefore took the form of an empirical legal research as it involved the issues of constitutional reforms in the field of religious freedom. A comparative approach was adopted in analyzing the documents about religion and politics related to both the Arab region and the West. The focus was on the measures that should be adopted to advance the dialogues of religious freedom and maintain religious neutrality in all government policies. The study found out that there were apparent contradictions between the constitutional provisions and the State Laws. Similarly, the Iraqi civil and penal codes remain silent regarding legal remedies for the violation of constitutional provisions. (shrink)

The article attempts to examine the impact of banks' specifics and board of directors' characteristics on directors' remuneration (REM) of 38 Indian listed banks from 2010 to 2019. The current study is based on secondary data that are extracted from the Prowess IQ database. Fixed effect model is used for analysing the data and generalised method of moment is applied for dealing with endogeneity problem. Finally, the sample is classified into three groups in order to check the robustness of the (...) results. Results revealed that return on assets, size, and market capitalisation positively and significantly impact directors' REM of Indian listed banks. While banks' age, capital adequacy, current ratio, and board of directors' composition have an insignificant impact on directors' REM of Indian listed banks. The findings of the study provide new evidence about the impact of banks' specifics and board of directors' characteristics on directors' REM in the Indian banking sector. The findings suggest that firms' specifics are significant determinants of directors' REM. (shrink)

An argument that makes use of a generalization activates the prototype for the category used in the generalization. We conducted two experiments that investigated how the activation of the prototype affects the persuasiveness of the argument. The results of the experiments suggest that the features of the prototype overshadow and partly overwrite the actual facts of the case. The case is, to some extent, judged as if it had the features of the prototype instead of the features it actually has. (...) This prototype effect increases the persuasiveness of the argument in situations where the audience finds the judgment more warranted for the prototype than for the actual case, but decreases persuasiveness in situations where the audience finds the judgment less warranted for the prototype than for the actual case. (shrink)

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

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

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

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

In the debate on the European Union’s problems, the concept of “democracy deficit” has been present from its very beginning. This term is applied in a quite vast manner and, apart from the asymmetry of the relation between the European Parliament and the Council, it also concerns the overly limited role of national parliaments in the European Union. In this regard, inadequacy in the national position of individual parliaments is observed. On the other hand, it is necessary to emphasise their (...) uneven activity on their European aspirations. At the time when the European dispute on the rule of law in Poland has polarized attitudes and language in statements on both sides – despite irresponsible trends – it is worth to examine the participation of national parliaments (including the Polish parliament) in the European inter-parliamentary dialogue and, consequently, to determine whether and how its constructive impact on the European Union and its law functions. (shrink)

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

The research paper addresses the unresolved linguistic vacuum that accounts for the authorial and fictional abrogation and appropriation of language in Lessing’s works. This research paper attempts to take a holistic view of these implications. Lessing has used a number of methods to overcome this inadequacy and the abrogation and appropriation of language thus seen is clearly evident in her novel The Grass is Singing. The concepts of hegemony of language by the colonizers and their control over the means of (...) communications as well as the attempts to liberate the language by the blacks were seen in the novel. In order to analyze the post-colonial aspects of the novel, one has to keep in mind the colonial features that were seen in The Grass is Singing. Thus, the process of abrogation and appropriation will be seen through the fictional characters of Mary and Moses. With these characters Lessing highlights the larger reality of the center-margin, colonizer-colonized relation in the novel. Natives on acquiring control over the Language and the ability to control the means of communication then reveal the hollowness of the colonial ideas based on oppression and exploitation of the indigenous people. (shrink)

Many students who are doing their majors in English often suffer from English speaking anxiety. The purpose of this study was to examine the reasons that hinder the process of speaking English in the students who had English as their major course of studies in a public sector university in Karachi. The study was conducted using qualitative research approach and the data was collected using focus group discussion. The participants of this study were selected using convenient sampling technique for focus (...) group discussion. The findings revealed that the pronunciation, syntactic structures, insufficient lexical knowledge, fear of negative evaluation, role of a teacher, financial and social factors are the main causes of English-speaking anxiety among English majors. Recommended measures by the students disclosed that if the institution provides them with the suggested speaking opportunities, it could help them improve their anxiety towards speaking in English. (shrink)

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

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

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

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