This paper describes the experience of conducting a series of workshops in Bioethics Pedagogy within Pakistan. Initiated by the Centre of Biomedical Ethics and Culture (CBEC), Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT) located in Karachi, Pakistan, this series is the first of its kind, blending knowledge of bioethics with that of medical education. While students are expected to teach bioethics upon graduating from academic programs such as Postgraduate Diploma in Biomedical Ethics and Master’s in Bioethics, they do not receive (...) formal pedagogical training in bioethics. Bioethics, as a discipline differs from others within medical education since it enhances critical thinking skills and impacts behavior and attitudes. This formed the rationale for introducing these workshops along with the impetus provided by shift to online teaching due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Centre’s experience of running a bioethics program in Kenya through the CBEC-KEMRI Bioethics Training Initiative (CK-BTI). The paper describes the structure and content of the workshops and shares feedback received from participants. Therefore, it provides valuable lessons to bioethics educators and aspires that through sharing of these experiences, training in Bioethics Pedagogy becomes a norm rather than an exception in institutions in Pakistan, and beyond. (shrink)

Improved governance in any economy indicates government stability, secured law and order, and minimum internal and external conflicts. A higher level of governance may demonstrate the healthy performance of economic activities and tax revenue collection. Hence, it is vital to investigate the relationship between governance and tax revenue collection in any developing country. Therefore, we aim to investigate the impact of governance on tax revenue in Pakistan using control variables inflation and industrial value-added. The Autoregressive Distributive Lag cointegration technique is (...) utilized to find the long- and short-run effects of hypothesized variables on the tax revenue using a period 1976–2019. After employing a cointegration on the hypothesized model, the results expose that government stability, law and order, and internal and external conflicts leave a positive and significant impact on tax revenue in the long and short run. Hence, it is concluded that governance is an essential source in expanding tax revenue in Pakistan. Moreover, industrial value-added and inflation also show positive effects on the tax revenue. On the grounds of these results, it is proposed that the government should make serious efforts to improve governance and industrial activities for better tax revenue collection. (shrink)

This study aims to examine the underlying mechanism of the relationship between perceived green human resource management and perceived employee green behavior. By drawing on attitude and social exchange theories, we examined green commitment as a mediator and green knowledge sharing as a moderator of the GHRM–EGB relationship. The study employs partial least square structural equation modeling to analyze 329 responses. Data were collected in two time lags. The empirical results confirmed that GC mediates the relationship between GHRM and EGB. (...) However, the study results found that GKS moderated the indirect influence of GHRM on green behavior via GC. This research signifies the effect of GHRM, GKS, GC, and green behavior on organizations’ sustainability and environmental management. Despite the emerging literature on the significance of green practices in organizations for environmental management, no study has examined the moderating role of GKS on the indirect effect of GHRM on green behavior via mediating role of GC. This study offers valuable insight into environmental management in organizations through green practices and green behavior. (shrink)

The number of scientific publications is growing exponentially. Research articles cite other work for various reasons and, therefore, have been studied extensively to associate documents. It is argued that not all references carry the same level of importance. It is essential to understand the reason for citation, called citation intent or function. Text information can contribute well if new natural language processing techniques are applied to capture the context of text data. In this paper, we have used contextualized word embedding (...) to find the numerical representation of text features. We further investigated the performance of various machine-learning techniques on the numerical representation of text. The performance of each of the classifiers was evaluated on two state-of-the-art datasets containing the text features. In the case of the unbalanced dataset, we observed that the linear Support Vector Machine achieved 86% accuracy for the “background” class, where the training was extensive. For the rest of the classes, including “motivation,” “extension,” and “future,” the machine was trained on less than 100 records; therefore, the accuracy was only 57 to 64%. In the case of a balanced dataset, each of the classes has the same accuracy as trained on the same size of training data. Overall, SVM performed best on both of the datasets, followed by the stochastic gradient descent classifier; therefore, SVM can produce good results as text classification on top of contextual word embedding. (shrink)

Computer vision and human–computer interaction are essential in many technological fields. Researchers in CV are particularly interested in real-time object detection techniques, which have a wide range of applications, including inspection systems. In this study, we design and implement real-time object detection and recognition systems using the single-shoot detector algorithm and deep learning techniques with pre-trained models. The system can detect static and moving objects in real-time and recognize the object’s class. The primary goals of this research were to investigate (...) and develop a real-time object detection system that employs deep learning and neural systems for real-time object detection and recognition. In addition, we evaluated the free available, pre-trained models with the SSD algorithm on various types of datasets to determine which models have high accuracy and speed when detecting an object. Moreover, the system is required to be operational on reasonable equipment. We tried and evaluated several deep learning structures and techniques during the coding procedure and developed and proposed a highly accurate and efficient object detection system. This system utilizes freely available datasets such as MS Common Objects in Context, PASCAL VOC, and Kitti. We evaluated our system’s accuracy using various metrics such as precision and recall. The proposed system achieved a high accuracy of 97% while detecting and recognizing real-time objects. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of the teachers, specifically the techno stress arising in them as a result of issues faced by them in the use of technology when they conduct the online academic activities. It aims to assess the major factors related to the online teaching that specifically adds to techno stress on the teachers during the COVID-19 outbreak. Finally, the study aims to provide suggestions to the policymakers and the management (...) of the universities so that the effect of the COVID-19's on teachers' mental health and the related techno stress can be reduced. This paper is a literature review of the articles on the notion of techno stress on teachers and their mental health by searching the related articles with these terminologies using the renowned search engines of Google Scholar and Web of Science. A combination of the terms such as Coronavirus, COVID-19, mental health, psychological distress, techno stress, and online teaching were used in the article search for the review. The literature has suggested that the COVID-19 outbreak has significantly affected the mental health of the employees in general and specifically, the teachers who are engaged in online academic activities and teaching in the universities. The paper has identified a few factors that are the cause of the techno stress and provides recommendations for the university management and the policy makers for minimizing their negative impact on the teachers, in terms of the techno stress and their mental health. Coronavirus is a new strain of the viruses that has badly engulfed the entire population of the world. It is even now badly rising and causing deaths while this article is in the writing phase. The article has addressed the mental health concerns of the university teachers as they are now working from home using ICT for delivering the lectures and conducting the online teaching and learning activities for the students at their universities. This is a matter of grave importance now and requires immediate attention. Hence, this article broadens the scope of the research on the corona virus and its impact on the university teachers. (shrink)

The current study investigates whether tournament incentives motivate chief executive officer to be socially responsible. Furthermore, it explores the role of sub-national institutional contingencies [i.e., state-owned enterprises vs. non-SOEs, foreign-owned entities vs. non-FOEs, cross-listed vs. non-cross-listed, developed region] in CEO tournament incentives and the corporate social responsibility performance relationship. Data were collected from all A-shared companies listed in the stock exchanges of China from 2014 to 2019. The study uses the baseline methodology of ordinary least squares and cluster OLS regression. (...) Moreover, firm-fixed effects regression, two-stage least squares regression, and propensity score matching deal with the endogeneity problem and check the robustness of the results. The results provide reliable evidence that tournament incentives motivate CEOs to be more socially responsible. On the other hand, sub-national institutional contingencies positively affect the association between CEO tournament incentives and CSRP. The findings have important implications for companies and regulators who wish to enhance CSP by providing incentives to top managers. (shrink)

Virtue signaling serves to express moral and ethical values publicly, showcasing commitment to social and sustainable ideals. This research, conducted with non-WEIRD samples to mitigate the prevalent WEIRD bias (i.e., the tendency to solely rely on samples from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies), examines whether the scarcely studied virtue-signaling construct mediates the influence of consumers’ attachment anxiety (vs. avoidance) on their green purchase behavior and prosocial responses. Drawing on attachment theory and the emerging virtue-signaling literature, the current work (...) reports the results from three studies (_N_ total = 898) in which consumers’ attachment patterns were not only measured, as in most prior related research, but also manipulated. Study 1 confirmed the unique ability of measured attachment anxiety, but not attachment avoidance, to predict consumers’ green purchase behavior and prosocial tendencies, with virtue signaling mediating these links. Study 2 manipulated participants’ attachment patterns, finding further support for the mediating role of virtue signaling between attachment anxiety (vs. avoidance) and these dependent variables. Study 3 provided a more nuanced account for our virtue-signaling conceptualization by documenting that self-oriented, but not other-oriented, virtue signaling mediated the link between attachment anxiety and both our key outcomes in public contexts. From a managerial viewpoint, these findings indicate that anxiously attached consumers constitute a potentially lucrative segment for companies seeking to expand their market share of sustainable and ethically produced products. (shrink)

RésuméCette première étude permet notamment de dégager ce résultat épistémologique: les différentes formes d’“inférence co-relationnelle” connues dans la jurisprudence islamique sous le nom de qiyās représentent une forme innovante et sophistiquée de raisonnement qui permet non seulement d'avoir une conception épistémologique plus claire du raisonnement légal en général, mais aussi de produire une mécanique bien huilée pour le “raisonnement parallèle”; cette mécanique du “raisonnement parallèle” peut être déployée selon un large spectre dans différents cadres de résolution de problèmes et ne (...) semble pas se réduire aux formes standard de l'argumentation analogique étudiées en philosophie des sciences contemporaine. Nous n'aborderons cependant dans la présente étude que le cas de la dénommée “inférence co-relationnelle du facteur occasionnel”, et ce seulement dans le contexte de la jurisprudence islamique. (shrink)

The world witnessed a major historical event in 1947 when subcontinent, which was governed as a one unit from Khyber to Burma since almost last one thousand years, partitioned by the ruling British Empire resulting into two states namely India and Pakistan. The major reason behind partition of the subcontinent was the religious and cultural differences between the Hindus and Muslims. This difference made them hostile towards each other and India having superiority in all aspects, compelled Pakistan to become a (...) security state right after its inception. To expand its superiority over the whole region, the Indian nuclear program started in 1944, even before its independence. India conducted first nuclear tests in 1974 and continued expanding its nuclear program. This forced Pakistan to work seriously on its nuclear program with a fast pace. India announced its formal entry to the nuclear weapons club in May 1998 with 5 nuclear tests at Pokhran, Pakistan, having nuclear capability at that time, replied back in merely two weeks with 6 nuclear tests and became the 7th nation in the world and first Islamic country to join the nuclear countries club. The lives of over a billion people are at mercy of the two nuclear powers state heads, especially India having an extremist government poses a serious threat to the peace of subcontinent which needs great attention especially from the global community otherwise a nuclear Armageddon could be expected. (shrink)

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

One of the epistemological results emerging from this initial study is that the different forms of co-relational inference, known in the Islamic jurisprudence as qiyās, represent an innovative and sophisticated form of reasoning that not only provides new epistemological insights into legal reasoning in general but also furnishes a fine-grained pattern for parallel reasoning which can be deployed in a wide range of problem-solving contexts and does not seem to reduce to the standard forms of analogical argumentation studied in contemporary (...) philosophy of science. However, in the present paper we will only discuss the case of so-called co-relational inferences of the occasioning factor and only in the context of Islamic jurisprudence. (shrink)

Muhammad Arsyad Al-Banjari who lived from 1710 to 1812 in Borneo, Indonesia, applied a model of integrating uses of the Banjarese tradition into Islamic Jurisprudence based on a dialectical constitution of qiyās, the legal argumentation theory for parallel reasoning and analogy, he learned from the Shāfi‘ī-school of jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh). Our paper focuses in the model of integration proposed and practiced by Al-Banjari, a rational debate grounded on a dynamic view on legal systems. We will illustrate the method with (...) the help of two different kinds of qiyās deployed by Al-Banjari in order to argue for the rejection of some traditional Banjarese offering-rituals for avoiding disease or calamities (manyanggar and mambuang pasilih), and for the acceptance of the use of consuming the traditional drink called lahang made of the juice of sugar-palm. As our dialogical reconstruction shows, the development of the debates, particularly the first one, is quite sophisticated, with a Banjarese opponent that does not surrender easily to the rejection of his use of those rituals. (shrink)

One of the epistemological results emerging from this initial study, is that the different forms of co-relational inference, known in the Islamic jurisprudence as qiyās represent an innovative and sophisticated form of reasoning that not only provide new epistemological insights of legal reasoning in general but they also furnish a fine-grained pattern for parallel reasoning that can be deployed in a wide range of problem-solving contexts and that does not seem to reduce to the standard forms of analogical argumentation studied (...) in contemporary philosophy of science. More specifically the main claim is that a dialectical framework provides the right instrument to stress two of the most salient features of this form of inference: (1) it's heuristic nature and (2) the dynamics underlying the meaning-explanation of the terms involved. Both display what we take to be the main epistemological idea behind the qiyās, namely: the open texture of the meaning of normative statements. To put it more generally, the notion of co-relational inference suggests that every form of parallel reasoning based on meaning presupposes that the concept of meaning involved is open to contextual changes. Moreover the latter indicates that the whole process deployed is intrinsically dialectic. (shrink)

Intellectual Capital is a driving force behind the financial performance of non-financial firms. Investing in intellectual and physical capital allows companies to optimize their financial performance by maximizing resource utilization. This study aims to determine whether IC efficiency impacts the financial performance of listed Pakistani and Indian companies between 2010 and 2020. Return on Assets and Return on Equity are used to calculate financial performance, and IC is calculated using the modified Value-Added Intellectual Coefficient model. Regression analysis is performed using (...) the STATA software developed by the South Texas Art Therapy Association. Human Capital, Structural Capital, and Capital Employed have a significant impact on Pakistani and Indian firms’ financial performance. Resource-based theory supports these findings. The findings should provide management with a prompt to improve financial performance and emphasize the importance of IC. A rare study has addressed the impact of IC on firm financial performance using the MVAIC model, rather than the VAIC model, in Pakistan and India. (shrink)

This monograph proposes a new way of studying the different forms of correlational inference, known in the Islamic jurisprudence as qiyās. According to the authors’ view, qiyās represents an innovative and sophisticated form of dialectical reasoning that not only provides new epistemological insights into legal argumentation in general but also furnishes a fine-grained pattern for parallel reasoning which can be deployed in a wide range of problem-solving contexts and does not seem to reduce to the standard forms of analogical reasoning (...) studied in contemporary philosophy of science and argumentation theory. After an overview of the emergence of qiyās and of the work of al-Shīrāzī penned by Soufi Youcef, the authors discuss al-Shīrāzī’s classification of correlational inferences of the occasioning factor. The second part of the volume deliberates on the system of correlational inferences by indication and resemblance. The third part develops the main theoretical background of the authors’ work, namely, the dialogical approach to Martin-Löf's Constructive Type Theory. The authors present this in a general form and independently of adaptations deployed in parts I and II. Part III also includes an appendix on the relevant notions of Constructive Type Theory, which has been extracted from an overview written by Ansten Klev. The book concludes with some brief remarks on contemporary approaches to analogy in Common and Civil Law and also to parallel reasoning in general. (shrink)

With the advancement of scientific collaboration in the 20th century, researchers started collaborating in many research areas. Researchers and scientists no longer remain solitary individuals; instead, they collaborate to advance fundamental understandings of research topics. Various bibliometric methods are used to quantify the scientific collaboration among researchers and scientific communities. Among these different bibliometric methods, the co-authorship method is one of the most verifiable methods to quantify or analyze scientific collaboration. In this research, the initial study has been conducted to (...) analyze interdisciplinary research activities in the computer science domain. The ACM has classified the computer science fields. We selected the Journal of Universal Computer Science for experimentation purposes. The J.UCS is the first Journal of Computer Science that addresses a complete ACM topic. Using J.UCS data, the co-authorship network of the researcher up to the 2nd level was developed. Then the co-authorship network was analyzed to find interdisciplinary among scientific communities. Additionally, the results are also visualized to comprehend the interdisciplinary among the ACM categories. A whole working web-based system has been developed, and a forced directed graph technique has been implemented to understand IDR trends in ACM categories. Finally, the IDR values between the categories are computed to quantify the collaboration trends among the ACM categories. It was found that “Artificial Intelligence” and “Information Storage and Retrieval”, “Natural Language Processing and Information Storage and Retrieval”, and “Human-Computer Interface” and “Database Applications” were found the most overlapping areas by acquiring an IDR score of 0.879, 0.711, and 0.663, respectively. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to identify how both tourism service provider- and tourist-generated social media communication affect the value co-creation process and how this can affect online customer experience and customer wellbeing. A questionnaire survey was used and 361 valid responses were obtained from Malaysian citizens. The research findings showed that tourism service provider- and tourist- generated social media communication positively influence value co-creation. Similarly, value co-creation positively influences cognitive and affective experiential states and these two states positively (...) influence customer wellbeing. Furthermore, value co-creation partially mediates the relationship between social media communication and online customer experience, whereas, online customer experiences also partially mediate the relationship between value co-creation and customer wellbeing. This study has tried to establish theoretical relationship between some significant variables and the findings would aid both academicians and practitioners in formulating strategies for future. (shrink)

The study is based on validating and exploring the effects of a mega project plan on infrastructure development and Sustainable Project Management. The CPEC has great importance to infrastructure development and economy-boosting. The current study's primary aim is to deal with environmental protection, economic boost up, international relations influencing to the Project's success. The paper also addressed project management as a moderator between environmental protection, economic boost up, international relations, and the CPEC project's success. The primary data has been gathered (...) by using questionnaires, and PLS-SEM has been employed for the analysis. The results revealed that environmental protection, economy boost up, and international relations have a positive association with the success of CPEC. The outcomes also exposed that project management moderating among the nexus of economy boosts up the international relations and success of CPEC. The present study results guided how Pakistan and China make the CPEC project stronger with the efficient implementation of practices required for protecting the environment, with the economic growth and boost up, and good strong relations with foreign countries. This study was an attempt to validate the different factors to check their association with each other in a new environment, resulting in a leading edge for the success of mega projects that influence project management. (shrink)

The main aim of this study was to empirically analyze whether Institutional Quality moderates the relationship between corporate governance and stock liquidity through the light of agency and information asymmetry theory. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first finance study. The sample consists of 230 non-financial firms listed on the Pakistan stock exchange during the period of 2009–2019. We used an instrumental variable approach and our new Institutional Quality index composed of world governance indicators and a corporate (...) governance index, developed via principal component analysis, to demonstrate a relationship between corporate governance and stock liquidity and check the moderating role of Institutional Quality by following the resources complementary phenomenon. Our results show a significant, positive relationship between the corporate governance index and stock liquidity, suggesting that well-governed firms have high liquidity. The results show that the Institutional Quality index has a positive moderating impact on the relationship between corporate governance and stock liquidity, suggesting that corporate governance in Pakistan is weak. Our results are robust to a series of endogeneity checks using alternative proxies of stock liquidity. (shrink)

Los estudios modernos sobre derecho islámico han puesto de relieve la necesidad de estudiar los procedimientos jurídicos en el Islam y el papel desempeñado por la práctica judicial en su formación. Se considera en general que, en el período temprano, los cadíes disponían de mayor libertad en lo relativo a testigos y métodos para establecer pruebas. Posteriormente y de forma gradual el sistema se volvió más rígido y restrictivo. En relación a este desarrollo, los investigadores han propuesto distintas fechas, que (...) van desde la segunda mitad del siglo VII hasta el siglo VIII e incluso hasta el siglo XI. Estos investigadores han tratado la doctrina de al-yamīn ma‛ al-šàhid como una excepción dentro del procedimiento establecido por la šarī‛a que, según ellos, se basaba estricta y mecánicamente en la doctrina de los dos testigos. Para dichos investigadores, la doctrina de al-yamīn ma‛ al-šàhid surgió bajo la influencia de determinadas locadidades o bien por influencia judía. Este artículo propone que esa doctrina debió de surgir en el contexto del período de la guerra civil, cuando las cuestiones sobre qiṣāṣ, qawad, qasāma y ḥakam fueron discutidas con frecuencia en relación con el Corán y la sunna común y cuando se sintió la necesidad de reformar la institución del ḥakam. Sobre la base de afirmaciones dispersas de ulemas que vivieron en fechas cercanas a ese período, afirmaciones que se ven confirmadas por los comentarios de Wakī‛, se concluye que Mu‛āwiya fue quien introdujo ese método para reformar la institución del ḥakam. La práctica judicial de esta doctrina también confirma que estaba demasiado difundida como para poder considerarla una práctica medinense o una práctica local, tal y como pretenden algunos juristas clásicos, los tradicionistas y algunos investigadores modernos. (shrink)

PREFACEProf. Göran Sundholm of Leiden University inspired the group of Logic at Lille and Valparaíso to start a fundamental review of the dialogical conception of logic by linking it to constructive type logic. One of Sundholm's insights was that inference can be seen as involving an implicit interlocutor. This led to several investigations aimed at exploring the consequences of joining winning strategies to the proof-theoretical conception of meaning. The leading idea is, roughly, that while introduction rules lay down the conditions (...) under which a winning strategy for the Proponent may be built, the elimination rules lay down those elements of the Opponent's assertions that the Proponent has the right to use for building winning strategy. It is the pragmatic and ethical features of obligations and rights that naturally lead to the dialogical interpretation of natural deduction.During the Visiting Professorship of Prof. Sundholm at Lille in (2012) the group of Lille started delving into the ways of implementing Per Martin-Löf's Constructive Type Theory with the dialogical perspective. In particular, Aarne Ranta's (1988) paper, the first publication on the subject, was read and discussed during Sundholm’s seminar. The discussions strongly suggested that the game-theoretical conception of quantifiers as deploying interdependent moves provide a natural link between CTT and dialogical logic. This idea triggered several publications by the group of Lille in collaboration with Nicolas Clerbout and Juan Redmond at the University of Valparaíso, including the publication of the book (2015) by Clerbout / Rahman that provides a systematic development of this way of linking CTT and the dialogical conception of logic. However the Clerbout / Rahman book was written from the CTT perspective on dialogical logic, rather than the other way round. The present book should provide the perspective from the other side of the dialogue between the Dialogical Framework and Constructive Type Theory. The main idea of our present study is that Sundholm's (1997) notion of epistemic assumption is closely linked to the Copy-Cat Rule or Socratic Rule that distinguishes the dialogical framework from other game-theoretical approaches. One way to read the present book is as a further development of Sundholm’s extension of Austin's (1946, p. 171) remark on acts of assertion to inference. Indeed, Sundholm (2013, p. 17) gave the following forceful formulation: When I say therefore, I give others my authority for asserting the conclusion, given theirs for asserting the premisses.Per Martin-Löf, in recent lectures, have utilized the dialogical perspective on epistemic assumptions to get out of a certain circle that threatens the explanation of the notions of inference and demonstration. A demonstration may be explained as a chain of (immediate) inferences starting from no premisses. That an inference J1... Jn—————Jis valid means that the conclusion J can be made evident on the assumption that J1, …, Jn are known. The notion of epistemic assumption thus enters in the explanation of valid inference. We cannot, however, in this explanation understand 'known' in the sense of demonstrated, for then we are explaining the notion of inference in terms of demonstration, whereas demonstration has been explained in terms of inference. Martin-Löf suggests that we here understand 'known' in the sense of asserted, so that epistemic assumptions are judgements others have made, judgements for which others have taken the responsibility; that the inference is valid then means that, given that others have taken responsbility for the premisses, I can take responsibility for the conclusion:The circularity problem is this: if you define a demonstration to be a chain of immediate inferences, then you are defining demonstration in terms of inference. Now we are considering an immediate inference and we are trying to give a proper explanation of that; but, if that begins by saying: Assume that J1, …, Jn have been demonstrated – then you are clearly in trouble, because you are about to explain demonstration in terms of the notion of immediate inference, hence when you are giving an account of the notion of immediate inference, the notion of demonstration is not yet at your disposal. So, to say: Assume that J1, …, Jn have already been demonstrated, makes you accusable of trying to explain things in a circle. The solution to this circularity problem, it seems to me now, comes naturally out of this dialogical analysis. […]The solution is that the premisses here should not be assumed to be known in the qualified sense, that is, to be demonstrated, but we should simply assume that they have been asserted, which is to say that others have taken responsibility for them, and then the question for me is whether I can take responsibility for the conclusion. So, the assumption is merely that they have been asserted, not that they have been demonstrated. That seems to me to be the appropriate definition of epistemic assumption in Sundholm's sense. One of the main tenets of the present study is that the further move of relating the Socratic Rule rule with judgemental equality provides both a simpler and more direct way to implement the constructive type theoretical approach within the dialogical framework. Such a reconsideration of the Socratic Rule, roughly speaking, amounts to the following. 1.A move from P that brings-forward a play-object in order to defend an elementary proposition A can be challenged by O. 2.The answer to such a challenge, involves P bringing forward a definitional equality that expresses the fact that the play-object chosen by P copies the one O has chosen while positing A. For short, the equality expresses at the object-languaje level that the defence of P relies on the authority given to O to be able to produce the play-objects she brings forward. More generally, according to this view, a definitional equality established by P and brought forward while defending the proposition A, expresses the equality between a play-object (introduced by O) and the instruction for building a play-object deployed by O while affirming A. So it can be read as a computation rule that indicates how to compute O's instructions. Let us recall that from the strategic point of view, O's moves correspond to elimination rules of demonstrations. Thus, the dialogical rules that prescribe how to introduce a definitional equality – correspond – at the strategic level – to the definitional equality rules for CTT as applied to the selector-functions involved in the elimination rules. So, what we are doing here is extending the dialogical interpretation of Sundholm's epistemic assumption to the rules that set up the definitional equality of a type.The present work is structured in the following way:•In the Introduction we state the main tenets that guide our book•Chapter II contains a brief overview of Constructive Type Theory penned by Ansten Klev with exercises and their solutions. •Chapter III offers a novel presentation of the dialogical conception of logic. In fact, the first two sections of the chapter provide an overview of standard dialogical logic – including solved exercises, slightly adapted to the content of the present volume. The rest of the sections develop a new dialogical approach to Constructive Type Theory. •Chapters IV and V contain the main body of our study, namely the relation between the Socratic Rule, epistemic assumptions, and equality. The chapter provides the reader with thoroughly worked out examples with comments. •After the Final Remarks the book containsa.An appendix containing a an overview of all the rules for the new formulation of dialogical approach to constructive type theory developed in the book; b.a brief outline of Per Martin-Löf's informal presentation of the demonstration of the axiom of choice.c.two examples of a tree-shaped graph of an extensive strategy. Acknowledgments: Many thanks to Mark van Atten (Paris1), Giuliano Bacigalupo (Zürich), Charles Zacharie Bowao (Univ. Ma Ngouabi de Brazzaville, Congo), Christian Berner (Lille3), Michel Crubellier (Lille3), Pierre Cardascia (Lille3), Oumar Dia (Dakar), Marcel Nguimbi ((Univ. Marien Ngouabi de Brazzaville, Congo), Adjoua Bernadette Dango (Lille3 / Alassane Ouattara de Bouaké, Côte d'Ivoire), Steephen Rossy Eckoubili (Lille3), Johan Georg Granström (Zürich), Gerhard Heinzmann (Nancy2), Muhammad Iqbal (Lille3), Matthieu Fontaine (Lille3), Radmila Jovanovic (Belgrad), Hanna Karpenko (Lille3), Laurent Keiff (Lille3), Sébastien Magnier (Saint Dennis, Réunion), Clément Lion (Lille3), Gildas Nzokou (Libreville), Fachrur Rozie (Lille3), Helge Rückert (Mannheim), Mohammad Shafiei (Paris1), and Hassan Tahiri (Lisbon), for rich interchanges, suggestions on the main claims of the present study and proof-reading of specific sections of the text. Special thanks to Gildas Nzokou (Libreville), Steephen Rossy Eckoubili (Lille3) and Clément Lion (Lille3), with whom a Pre-Graduate Textbook in French on dialogical logic and CTT is in the process of being worked out – during the visiting-professorship in 2016 of the former. Eckoubili is the author of the sections on exercises for dialogical logic, Nzokou cared of those involving the development of CTT-demonstrations out of winning-strategies. Special thanks also to Ansten Klev (Prague) for helping with technical details and conceptual issues on CTT, particularly so as author of the chapter introducing CTT. (shrink)

The passionate and staunch defence of logic of the controversial thinker Ibn Ḥazm, Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Aḥmad b. Saʿīd of Córdoba (384-456/994-1064), had lasting consequences in the Islamic world. Indeed, his book Facilitating the Understanding of the Rules of Logic and Introduction Thereto, with Common Expressions and Juristic Examples (Kitāb al-Taqrīb li-ḥadd al-manṭiq wa-l-mudkhal ilayhi bi-l-alfāẓ al-ʿāmmiyya wa-l-amthila al-fiqhiyya), composed in 1025-1029, was well known and discussed during and after his time; and it paved the way for the studies (...) of his compatriots Ibn Bājjah (d. 1138), Ibn Ṭufayl (1185), and Ibn Rushd (1198), who each gave demonstrative reasoning a privileged place within the methods of attaining knowledge. Unfortunately, as too often in the history of science, Ibn Ḥazm’s innovative perspectives and contributions in logic have been overlooked or considered with an attitude of contempt. On the one hand, his work has been seen, at best, as promulgating the benefits of studying Aristotle’s logic, so that his contribution is assessed as more didactical than conceptual. And on the other hand, those who do examine his innovations often consider them to be mistaken. As indicated by Chejne (1984, p. 2) contempt towards the logical work of Ibn Ḥazm was also present in its reception by the Eastern philosophers who accused him of deviating from Aristotelian logic and of dabbling in things beyond his capability. However, a reassessment of his work on logic has since begun, by delving into the ways the thinker of Córdoba studied the links between deontic and modal qualification of propositions. In this context Lameer’s (2013) paper on the logical sources of Ibn Ḥazm is worth mentioning; the author (p. 417, footnote 1) observes that, although, strictly speaking, it was al-Fārābī who first drew the parallelism between deontic and modal concepts, it was Ibn Ḥazm who developed it and worked it out in a more precise manner. A primary aim of this paper is to help fill some of these gaps by stressing the role of the work of Ibn Ḥazm in developing a notion of deontic necessity deeply rooted in legal normativity, and in explicitly discussing the transference between deontic and modal concepts. According to our view; the basic units of Islamic deontic logic are what we might call, indulging in terminological anachronism, heteronomous imperatives. As it turns out, the heteronomy of imperatives within Islamic legal systems contrasts with those of the purely moral realm, which seem to be closer to an autonomous conception of moral law. There it concurs again with Leibniz’s proposal to define obligatory as “what is necessary for a good person to do”. In the present paper, we will focus on the heteronomous imperatives of legal systems rather than on the imperatives of the purely moral realm. In this context, the work of Ibn Ḥazm extends the parallelism between the necessity of events and that of human actions stressed by his predecessors. According to our understanding, Ibn Ḥazm’s parallelism can be rendered explicit formally by means of a conditional (or hypothetical) structure shared by both deontic and modal propositions. Moreover, this structure makes apparent that this parallelism displays an underlying system of “degrees”. Indeed, while in the domain of events, given some conditions, it makes sense to distinguish between an event that is more likely to happen than another. Ibn Ḥazm speaks of near and distant possibility (such as the higher degree of likelihood of rain, given the condensation of clouds in December, and its lower degree, when the condensation occurs in summer); and, in the domain of actions, the Islamic notion of weighting actions determines degrees of virtue (or of legal and moral value). So whereas the degree of virtue of performing a forbidden act as determined by the distribution of sanction and reward is 0, we obtain the same value by pondering the likelihood of an impossible event to take place. Furthermore, as discussed in section II.3.2, the system of values at work in the parallelism can be seen as opening the way to a more direct correspondence. Thus, while in the realm of nature, likelihood of occurrence of an event is dependent upon the conditions specific to the occurrence of that event; while, in the realm of jurisprudence, likelihood of performing an action is dependent upon the distribution of reward and sanction specific to that action (being that, given the choice to perform or not perform a given action, those that will be rewarded are more likely to be performed than those that are not). According to this perspective, the point of the parallelism is that both deontic and modal qualifications measure the degree of an action or event to become actual; that is – indulging once more in anachronism (but this time from the Leibnizian background) – the degree measures how feasible (facile) an action or event may be. This suggests that Ibn Ḥazm’s perspectives already herald the links to probability and possibility explored by Leibniz six centuries later – see for example Leibniz’s (1671, A VI, I, p. 424-26) use of probability in the context of conditional right. Nevertheless, it also shows a crucial difference to the approach developed in the Elementa Jura Naturalis: whereas Leibniz’s studies seek to define what is to be just or virtuous, the logical system of deontic imperatives within Islamic jurisprudence presupposes that what is to be virtuous has already been settled. Determining what is to be virtuous is not achieved by logical reasoning within the system of legal jurisprudence, but by delving into the higher objectives of the Sharīʿa. While developing our point, we will delve into the logical structure of the heteronomous imperatives. This distinguishes our contribution from the existing literature, such as the papers of Chejne (1984), Lameer (2014), and Guerrero (1997, 2010, 2014), which do not provide a logical analysis of the deontic concepts put into work by Ibn Ḥazm. The true antecedent to the present paper is the work of Farid Zidani (2007, 2015), who, so far as we know, was the first to undertake such a task. Some of our own developments and general epistemological thoughts go beyond Ibn Ḥazm’s framework and motivations; mainly those contained in sections II.3.2 and IV. However, according to our view, these reflections suggest that Ibn Ḥazm’s approach has the substance for a broader and deeper exploration of the logic of norms. The paper is structured as follows:I.Ibn Ḥazm’s Logic of Heteronomous Imperatives. After presenting some extracts of the relevant text, we proceed by providing a formal reconstruction of the five forms of deontic modalities. II. A Landmark in the History of the Logical Analysis of Norms. Duties and Modalities. In this section, we study the transferences from deontic to modal necessity and possibility. We briefly compare the deontic system of Islamic Jurisprudence with that of Leibniz.III. Leibniz and Hypothetical Imperatives in Law.IV. Beyond Ibn Ḥazm: Conclusions and the Work Ahead. We will conclude the paper by discussing briefly some conceptual points that distinguish the logic of heteronomous imperatives from contemporary deontic logic. Our final words will discuss deontic-modal parallelism in the context of Ibn Ḥazm’s rejection of reasoning by conjecture and what we call “the internalization of nature.”. (shrink)

The history of Iraq in the twentieth century, and perhaps the Middle East more broadly, is punctuated by an intellectual shift that has, for the most part, escaped the attention of scholars. It might be characterized as a shift from a problem of representation introduced by the rise of left-wing politics, to a problem of experience created by its failure. This shift registers in the work of writers and artists, where the depiction of the social world gave way to an (...) exploration of states of being. The paradigm for that turn inward in modern art was set by the artist Kadhim Haidar, in a series of paintings exhibited at the National Museum of Modern Art in Baghdad, in 1965, under the title The Epic of the Martyr [Malḥamat al-shahīd]. The paintings reconstructed imagery from the mourning processions that annually commemorate the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, al-Husayn. This paper argues that the ritual imagery contains a grammar of experience, forged in the early history of Islam, that linked justice to a state of being, and that the transposition of the imagery into painting activated that grammar in the artwork. (shrink)

Since their introduction in the early 2000s, the use of social networking websites has exploded. Many businesses are seeing increased revenue due to their social commerce strategy. Despite the popularity of social commerce websites, some consumers are still hesitate to use them. This study aims to evaluate the factors that influence the adoption of social commerce. A sample of 721 Chinese We Chat users took part in the research. The findings reveal that social capital mediates the positive effect of social (...) commerce adoption and perceived ease of use on techno-stress and online impulse purchasing. Likewise, information overloading mediates the positive effect of social commerce adoption and PERU on techno-stress and online impulse purchasing. The findings have implications for both practice and research in understanding social commerce adoption in emerging economies. (shrink)

Stakeholder pressure and public awareness of environmental protection drive organizations to improve environmental practices in the supply chain, such as green supply chain integration and green innovation. The use of information technology is crucial to manufacturing organizations’ GSCI and performance. However, the research on the relationship between IT capabilities, GSCI, GI and organizational performance is still limited. Therefore, empirical research is needed on the cognitive thinking of employees using IT capabilities to improve GSCI and organizational performance. The data for this (...) study comes from SC personnel in manufacturing organizations through a structured questionnaires and was analyzed by employing structural equation modeling. Based on the results, this paper concludes that organizational IT capabilities positively affect the GSCI and improve organizational performance. Furthermore, the study discovered that GI increases organizational performance and acts as a positive mediator in the link between GSCI and performance. The findings contribute to existing GSCI and GI knowledge, which can provide a bird’s eye-view to develop an organization’s IT capabilities to achieve competitive performance goals. (shrink)

This study evaluates the relationship between diversified relationships established under the umbrella of the Stimuli-Organism-Response framework to study the consumer continuation intention of the Airbnb platform from a Malaysian perspective. A web-based survey was conducted among Malaysian Airbnb consumers, and a sample of 303 respondents was obtained. SmartPLS has been used for data analysis. The statistical output of the respondent’s data indicates that social overload and information overload influence consumer continuation intention. Moreover, the satisfaction and trust in the platform partially (...) mediate the relationship between the stimuli and behavioral response. Further, perceived health risk strengthens the negative relationship between continuation and trust in the platform. The theoretical implications include enacting a SOR framework to understand the consumer’s internal state of mind and ability to influence the consumer platform continuation intention. The practical implications suggest that the managers and business owners focus on limiting the social exposure at the host destination and the flow of information from the application. (shrink)

Although the role of leadership in fostering employee creativity has been extensively studied, it is still unclear whether and how leader humor affects employee creativity. Drawing upon cultural representation theory, we examined creative self-efficacy as a mediator and traditionality as a situational factor in the relationship between leader humor and employee creativity by analyzing a sample of 306 employees and 88 leaders collected through survey questionnaire from firms based in Hubei Province, China, covering the industries of automobile, IT, and medicine. (...) Following the multi-level examination, leader humor was positively related to employee creativity, and creative self-efficacy was found to mediate the impact of leader humor on employee creativity. Furthermore, traditionality moderated the effect of leader humor on creative self-efficacy, as well as the indirect effect of leader humor on employee creativity through creative self-efficacy. This study provides a social psychological explanation for the association between humor and employee creativity, deepens the current understanding of the influence process of leader humor. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed at the end alongside limitations and recommendations for future research. (shrink)

Nūr Muḥammad is one of the teachings in Sufism that studies the beginning of the creation of the universe. The Sufis discussed Nūr Muḥammad through God's tajallī (manifestation), and they believed that only Insan Kamil (Perfect Humans) possessed the perfection of His tajallī. This Sufi theory can be comprehended through the dhawqi approach. This research will deal with Nūr Muḥammad's theory of Sufism through the perspective of Tijaniyah Tarekat. The data for this study was obtained through library research utilizing a (...) documentary technique. The collected data will be analyzed using the descriptive analysis method. This study finds that the Tijaniyah Tarekat is a Sufism institution that bases its teachings and practices on the concept of Nūr Muḥammad in the form of ṣalawāt al-fātiḥ and ṣalawāt jawharah al-kamāl. This Tarekat's elucidation of Nūr Muḥammad is also built on and consistent with the explication of authoritative Sufis in Islam's intellectual and spiritual tradition. (shrink)

This study sheds light on strategies for retaining skilled pharmacists in Pakistan's pharmaceutical sector, offering valuable insights for both academia and industry stakeholders by investigating the impact of human resource management practices, including training and development, compensation and rewards, job performance, and job satisfaction, on employee retention. It also examines the moderating role of career growth in this context. Theoretical foundations are grounded in international migration theories and social exchange theory, providing a comprehensive framework for the study. A cross-sectional survey (...) design was used to collect data from 254 pharmacists in southern Punjab, Pakistan. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed for data analysis. Findings reveal that training and development, compensation and rewards, job performance, and job satisfaction all have significant direct effects on employee retention. Additionally, career growth acts as a crucial moderator, strengthening the relationship between training and development and job performance, as well as compensation and rewards and job satisfaction in relation to employee retention. Theoretical implications emphasize the importance of tailored training programs, fair compensation practices, and career growth opportunities. Practical recommendations include creating a positive work environment, rewarding high-performing employees, and fostering career development. Future research directions encompass longitudinal studies, the influence of organizational culture and technology, regional variations, and additional factors affecting retention. (shrink)

BackgroundIn Pakistan, drug promotion practices, ethical or unethical, have rarely been in the spotlight. We aimed to assess the perception and barriers of medical representatives (MRs) and doctors (MDs) regarding ethical promotion of pharmaceuticals in Pakistan.MethodsA cross sectional survey was conducted in seven major cities of Pakistan for 6-months period. Self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. Logistic regression and five-point Likert scale scoring was used to estimate the perceptions and barriers.ResultsCompared to national companies (NCs), the medical representatives (MRs) of (...) multinational companies (MNCs) strongly believed that their companies follow World Health Organization (WHO) (OR; 5.31, p = 0.0005), International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA) (OR; 6.45, p = 0.0005) and national codes of ethics (OR; 5.84, p = 0.0005). MNCs trained their MRs (OR; 6.68, p = 0.0005), provide accurate and valid scientific data (OR; 4.01, p = 0.007) with adequate system of accountability and controls on product samples (OR; 1.96, p = 0.047), while, NCs sponsor social or entertainment activities, seminars and conferences, and all sort of facilitation in form of gifts of their choice and clinic renovation for medical doctors (MDs). MDs perceptions were similar to MRs mentioned above, yet strongly agreed that companies offer cash payments or equivalents to MDs. The MRs of NCs/mncs and MDs agreed/strongly agreed that no external accountability, profiteering, pressure on sale targets, job insecurity, condoning unethical promotion by high-ups’ and business promotion by junior MDs were the predominant barriers.ConclusionIn conclusion, MRs of MNCs and MDs believed that MNCs follow certain codes of ethics in the promotion of pharmaceuticals, while NCs tend to be more profit oriented and even condone unethical promotion. All stakeholders, MRs, MDs and companies, might pose certain barriers, intentionally or unintentionally, in ethical promotion. (shrink)

While emancipatory ethical social media campaigns play an imperative role for fostering relationship and facilitating peace, limited research has examined the motivational response from peace-promoting viral videos. This research scrutinizes the effects of a viral video titled “Peace Anthem”: a mash-up between Pakistani and Indian national anthems, performed by famous artists and broadcasted in the wake of Independence Day in India and Pakistan. We examine the effect of listening to the anthem medley on relationship harmony using a longitudinal study design (...) and contribute to the burgeoning body of knowledge on peace music and relational musicology fostering relationship harmony. Study 1, consisting of 1048 cases, determines the effects of the likeability of the “Peace Anthem” and education on relationship harmony, and it also examines the moderating role of education. Study 2 with 605 cases investigates the persistency of these effects over time. The results demonstrate significant relationships between the likeability of the “Peace Anthem” and education with relationship harmony, as well as validate the moderating role of education. Although these effects decrease over time, there are noteworthy changes that consequently call for the persistence of ethical social media campaigns for stimulating peace. We discuss the policy implications of these findings and conclude with study limitations and recommendations for further research. (shrink)

Keyword extraction refers to the process of selecting most significant, relevant, and descriptive terms as keywords, which are present inside a single document. Keyword extraction has major applications in the information retrieval domain, such as analysis, summarization, indexing, and search, of documents. In this paper, we present a novel supervised technique for extraction of keywords from medium-sized documents, namely Corpus-based Contextual Semantic Smoothing. CCSS extends the concept of Contextual Semantic Smoothing, which considers term usage patterns in similar texts to improve (...) term relevance information. We introduce four more features beyond CSS as our novel contributions in this work. We systematically compare the performance of CCSS with other techniques, when implemented over INSPEC dataset, where CCSS outperforms all state-of-the-art keyphrase extraction techniques presented in the literature. (shrink)

Lifestyle refers to a set of personal and group behaviours related to normative and semantic aspects of social life. Any coherent set of behavioural patterns derived from religious teachings that exist in life can be considered a religious lifestyle. Considering that the dominant religion in Jordan is Islam, the present study focused on the Islamic lifestyle. In addition, given that the correct relationship between couples has been compared to life-giving blood in marriage, and since the quality of marital role plays (...) a determining role, the existence of communication skills in any of the couples can generate satisfaction and compatibility, whereas lack of awareness of these skills could cause misunderstandings and tension. Therefore, the current study aims to study the role of the Islamic lifestyle in communication skills of 250 Muslim couples of Jordan (Amman, Zarqa and Irbid) in 2022. Data were collected using questionnaires during four months, and the validity and reliability was confirmed. In addition, data analysis was performed in Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and Linear Structural Relations (LISREL) using mean tests and structural equation modelling. According to the results, Islamic lifestyle had a positive, significant effect on the improvement of communication skills in Muslim couples in Jordan (P-value: 0.76; T-value: 7.92). Therefore, it is recommended that more attention should be paid to this issue by families, researchers and cultural authorities in the country.Contribution: Our findings revealed that Islamic lifestyle improved communication skills in Muslim couples, which demands special attention. By adhering to the Islamic lifestyle, couples can influence each other’s knowledge, emotions, education and growth, and try to have a realistic understanding of each other’s desires, needs, living environment and perceptions that each has in life issues. Furthermore, they can organise their role in the common life in appropriate ways to prevent problems and solve them in the event of problems. (shrink)

Internet of Things-based environments pose various challenges due to their anytime/anywhere computing, and the efficient cryptographic based key management is one of the major challenges in Internet of Things. The key management life cycle consists of initialization, key generation, key registration, key backup, key update, key recovery, and key revocation. Our contribution in this paper is to summarize the state-of-the-art key management schemes and techniques in different scenarios, such as mobile ad hoc networks, wireless sensor networks, and the Internet of (...) Things environments. Further different issues related specifically to the Internet of Things environment are discussed and the causes and effects pertaining to the security breach for Internet of Things are identified. Furthermore, in this research work, we develop a novel permutation of threshold and identity-based key management schemes for the Internet of Things environment and have proposed future directions to counteract the attacks on confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and availability of security services in the Internet of Things environment and identified the two key management schemes, that is, identity and threshold schemes for Internet of Things, to resolve Internet of Things key management issues and maximum possible security services effective implementation. We evaluate our scheme with the help of mathematical and statistical techniques. (shrink)

Sierpinski networks are networks of fractal nature having several applications in computer science, music, chemistry, and mathematics. These networks are commonly used in chaos, fractals, recursive sequences, and complex systems. In this article, we compute various connectivity polynomials such as M -polynomial, Zagreb polynomials, and forgotten polynomial of generalized Sierpinski networks S k n and recover some well-known degree-based topological indices from these. We also compute the most general Zagreb index known as α, β -Zagreb index and several other general (...) indices of similar nature for this network. Our results are the natural generalizations of already available results for particular classes of such type of networks. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented time in history. Surrounding this pandemic are many enormous uncertainties across the globe. Severe consequences have assessed for the incomes of almost 84% of employers and 68% of self-employed who are working and living in countries that are or have went through a phase of closing workplaces. Similarly, the global rate of unemployment is also expected to be increased in the coming years as 54% of employers worldwide are running their businesses in the hardest-hit (...) sectors. All of these clearly show the uneven impact of the Coronavirus crisis which will remarkably compound already present inequalities, difficulties, and vulnerabilities. The economic ramifications for 186 countries under the crunch of the COVID-19 pandemic is also considered tremendous for Pakistan. The core aim of this research was to test a new conceptual framework depicting the ramifications of restructuring processes carried out by management for their organizations amidst the COVID-19 pandemic on an Institute’s reputation as an employer brand. It also investigates the impact of perceived restructuring on a corporate brand promise made by the university or institute from the viewpoints of other key stakeholders and potential job seekers. The current study had proposed four hypotheses and according to the results of Structural Equation Modeling, the direct hypothesis based upon the relationship between restructuring and employer branding has been rejected. This study shows that restructuring and employer branding has a negative and insignificant effect on each other. The second direct hypothesis of the study that measures the effect of restructuring on corporate branding has been accepted. A corporate brand is a kind of a hub and it considers how an institute treats and deals with all of its stakeholders. It is different from employer brand as the perceptions of employees were the main focus. So, according to the results restructuring did not cause massive damage to the overall outlook of the institute. Furthermore, for the purpose of mediation analysis, the maximum likelihood method by bootstrapping was adopted to test the indirect hypotheses of the study. Crowdsourcing was introduced as a mediator in this study with restructuring, employer, and corporate brand all together in one framework, which is the novel aspect of this study. There are two indirect hypotheses and according to the results both of them did not show any insignificant results. Firstly, the study analyzed mediation among crowdsourcing, restructuring, and employer branding which was fully accepted as the results showed full mediation between these constructs. Secondly, the study analyzed mediation among crowdsourcing, restructuring, and corporate branding which was partially accepted as results showed partial mediation between these constructs. (shrink)

The study examines and theorizes the importance of strategic attribute constructs as applied to Pakistan’s banking sector by identifying their roles in enhancing organizational performance and the mediating effect of organizational commitment. The current study adopted quantitative research designs and methods to determine structural relationships between the proposed constructs. A total of 10 hypotheses were tested underpinned by the Resource-Based View of the Firm and Social Exchange theories. The strategic attributes studied were significantly and positively related to, and enhance, organizational (...) performance if the banks: focus on strategic positioning, fostering a strong organizational culture, strategize internal marketing practices, and boost organizational commitment. The findings supported the mediating role of organizational commitment between strategic attributes and organizational performance. This study contributes to existing literature and supports prior research while filling in gaps in the literature concerning developing countries. (shrink)

Background and ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to draw the attention toward the implications of COVID-19 and the related restrictions imposed worldwide especially in Pakistan. The primary objective was to highlight the levels of psychological distress, anxiety, family violence, suicidality, and well-being due to COVID-19 and the secondary objective was to associate it to social demographic factors.Materials and MethodsIt is designed as a cross-sectional study by employing an online questionnaire in the English language and obtaining responses using a snowball (...) sampling technique. We used three validated measures including Kessler Psychological Distress Scale, Generalized Anxiety Disorder index and World Health Organization Well-Being Index.ResultsA sample of 420 participants was recruited from across Pakistan, with most participants were females, students and belonging to Punjab. Nearly one-fourth of the participants scored above the minimum value set for moderate or high psychological distress. There was a higher prevalence of distress among females and resident of province Punjab. The majority of individuals reported that they were living with their family and more than half were neutral regarding their satisfaction with their living conditions. 40.5% believed that the lockdown has had a negative impact on their mental health. 31.4% have reported that they themselves have experienced abuse from a family member. 48.6% scored high on the GAD-7 scale and low wellbeing score was found among 80.2%. Students were found to be more vulnerable to mental illness and anxiety.ConclusionWith the lockdown restrictions, psychosocial distress has become prevalent in Pakistan. (shrink)