With the increasing growth of online shopping, businesses are intertwining to establish new shopping antecedents. Customer experience has steadily become the most important source of retailers’ long-term competitive advantage via difference. To preserve long-term and sustained consumer loyalty, retailers must continually improve the customer experiences. This study presents a framework for online retailing in a digital environment called the Online Customer Experience-Engagement Context model in the presence of value co-creation. Data was gathered from 189 people who purchased products online. For (...) additional analysis, testing the hypothesis, and model construction, SPSS 26 and Smart-PLS were used. The data was then evaluated further using descriptive statistics, path analysis, measurement, and structural model. The findings show that the online customer experience substantially influenced customer engagement, which improved customer loyalty. The VCC strengthened the link between online customer experience and customer engagement. It suggests that including consumers in co-creating a delightful online customer experience from time to time may be a valuable strategy for online retailers to increase customer engagement and loyalty. To create an overarching outcome, information integration theory, multi-attribute utility theory, and the attitude-behavior-context theory theories are converged to explain the proposed model in the study. (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)

Climate change and farming malpractices are harmful to the globe's productive soil and biodiversity, thereby posing a hazard to the survival of future generations. Innovative technologies provide continuous smart conservation solutions, such as regenerative farming, to confront the ongoing climate crisis and maintain biodiversity. Albeit, regenerative farming has the potential to conserve climate change by upgrading the soil's organic materials and reinstating biodiversity leading to carbon attenuation. However, a critical problem remains concerning adapting conservation farming practices that can assist low-income (...) farmers. In this scenario, theoretical-driven communication campaigns are critical for addressing individuals' resistance to innovation. Thereby, this research uncovers the moderating influence of the numerous communication tools in determining the adoption of regenerative farming through diminishing farmers' resistance to innovation. The study employed a cross-sectional design vis-à-vis a survey method. A sample of 863 farmers participated by responding to the self-administrated questionnaire. In line with prior theories, the study's results identified that communication campaigns such as public service advertisements and informative scientific documentaries could reduce the resistance to innovation that increases the attitude toward the adoption of regenerative farming with varied intensity. Besides, informational support also remained a significant contributor in determining the intention to adopt regenerative farming. This specifies that implanting habits of conservation farming requires the initiation of communication campaigns using different media content. These results may be advantageous for policymakers to influence farmers' intentions to adopt regenerative farming. (shrink)

Ethical and quality concerns are important concerns in doctoral research programs and often draw the attention of governments, universities governing bodies, academics, and research students. Addressing these concerns is key to maintaining and improving the quality of doctoral research. This study used generic qualitative research design. The sample of the study consisting of seventeen doctoral students and ten doctoral supervisors was selected from social science doctoral programs using purposive sampling technique. Interviews were used as data collection tools. The study aimed (...) at contributing to the areas of quality and ethical processes and outcomes in social science research in the Pakistani context where ethical and quality dimensions in educational research have been relatively less explored. The study indicated several ethical and quality issues in the doctoral research programs including inadequate research supervision and evaluation processes, inadequate course work, low teaching quality, and a focus on getting degrees rather than on obtaining genuine scholarship. Policy makers and higher education institutions may need to deal with issues that lead to a compromise on doctoral research studies in ethical and quality terms. The findings of this study may prove helpful to remedy some of the existing causes of ethical and quality issues in research at the PhD level and may help to produce value added research for social and economic progress. Further research may be conducted to explore possible ethical and quality concerns in natural sciences doctoral programs and to explore possible intervention-mechanisms for ensuring ethical and quality concerns in such programs. (shrink)

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

The stagnant and even underdeveloped condition of Muslims all over the world has raised concerns among scholars. Many are trying to offer solutions to restore Islamic civilization to its peak. Various proposals lead to the reconstruction of philosophical elements, including epistemology and worldview, to more practical ones, such as the Islamization of knowledge. This study tries to compare the concept of worldview and its implications for the Islamization of knowledge from two major contemporary figures. The two are Syed (...) class='Hi'>Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, a mainstream leader of the Islamization of knowledge from Malaysia, and Ayatullah Muhammad Taqie Miṣbāḥ Yazdī, a neo-Sadrian philosopher from Persia. This research used a qualitative approach, namely the method of literature study to understand the Islamic worldview from the perspective of the two figures and what the implications are for the Islamization of knowledge. The results of the study revealed they both believe in the importance of a genuine worldview as the basis for the reconstruction of Muslims at the individual level and Islam at the level of civilization. However, they adhere to different ontological and epistemological arguments. In Al-Attas, the commitment to sacred texts as well as the interpretation of classical scholars makes the model of Islamization of knowledge tend to be backward and reactionary towards the West. As for Ayatullah Yazdī, prioritizing reason and demonstration has led to a model of Islamization of science that is critical and open for dialogue toward Western science. (shrink)

This article presents a theory of how the consumption of Islamic products may promote morally consistent behavior over time. We identify and examine three unique meta-characteristics (MCs) of Islamic ethics: ubudiyah (subservience to God), akhirah (focus on the hereafter or the long-term), and tawado (being modest while doing an ethical act). In four experiments, we show that after consumption of an Islamic banking product, MCs produce moral consistency or repeat ethical behavior, which is one major objective of an ethical system. (...) We also show that the absence of MCs results in moral inconsistency, that is, unethical behavior follows earlier consumption of an Islamic banking product due to the mediating psychological mechanism of moral licensing. Hence, it is not only the enactment of general ethical practices, rather the enactment of ethical practices in the specific context set by the MCs through which Islamic ethical system promotes ethical conduct and prevents unethical conduct. The findings have implications for Islamic ethical system and Islamic banking. (shrink)

Taking support from ego-depletion theory, this study examines ego depletion as a mechanism that explains how employees’ organizational citizenship behavior leads to antagonistic consequences, i.e., service sabotage. Employees’ positive psychological capital is considered a moderator. PROCESS macro was used to test all the hypotheses using time-lagged, dyadic data collected from 420 employees and their 112 their supervisors associated with the service industry in China. This study finds that employees’ exhibition of OCB is positively linked to ego depletion, which in turn (...) drives service sabotage behavior. Furthermore, employees’ PsyCap weakens the effect of OCB on employees’ ego depletion. This study highlights the dark side of OCB, the mechanism through which it causes adverse effects, and the moderating effect of PsyCap. It also provides insights to the organizations for managing service sector employees to effectively interact with customers. (shrink)

Using patients as teaching tools raise many ethical issues like informed consent, privacy, confidentiality and beneficence. The current study highlights issues on respecting patient’s choice and acquiring informed consent with its spirit rather than as mere formality. The study was conducted in out-patient department of The Kidney Center Postgraduate Training Institute Karachi Pakistan in May 2008 to July 2008. All patients who had come for the first time to see the author were included in the study. The said study explored (...) the willingness of patients to allow medical students to be present during history taking and physical examination by the consultant. There were 18 male and 03 female patients. Age ranging from 22 to 73 years with mean age of 53.5 ± 13.7 years. There were total of 21 patient–students encounters out of which two encounters were with male students only and two with female students only. So in 17 Patient–students encounters, students of both genders were present. All patients permitted history taking in the presence of medical students except one who had a history of extramarital sexual contact and signs and symptoms suggestive of sexually transmitted disease. Of the male patients 50% (9/18) did not allow intimate examination before medical students. Out of these nine patients who refused, four consented earlier but when enquired again about their true willingness, they expressed their preference not to have medical students in the room while undergoing digital rectal and external genital examinations. Physicians need to develop sensitivity to acquire informed consent in its true essence rather than just as a formality by exploring actual willingness of the patient. One should refrain from being judgmental on the basis of gender, looks, religion or norms. (shrink)

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan has been a mere victim of climate change in recent years. The country needs emergency measures at every level to mitigate environmental dilapidation. The role of enterprises in the country’s environmental efforts is critical. In this regard, the hotel sector is known for its outsized carbon footprint. Knowing this, the current study aims to improve a hotel enterprise’s environmental performance as an outcome of corporate social responsibility. The study also considers the mediating role of pro-environmental (...) behavior of employees and the moderating role of altruistic values. A hypothesized model was developed, which was validated by employing the structural equation modeling technique. The empirical results confirmed that CSR, directly and indirectly, positively induces the ENP of a hotel enterprise. Whereas the conditional indirect role of ALT was also found significant. The study offers different implications for theory and practice, among which one important takeaway for the hotel sector is to realize the importance of employees to spur ENP of a hotel enterprise through their eco-friendly behavior. At the same time, the current work also advances the theory by highlighting the moderating role of ALT between the indirect relationship of CSR and ENP. (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)

This article attempts to evaluate emotive meanings across languages and cultures expressed and elicited semiotically from viewers. It investigates the challenges of subtitling emotive feelings in the American filmHomeless to Harvard(2003) into Arabic. It adopts Paul Thibault’s (2000. The multimodal transcription of a television advertisement: Theory and practice. In Anthony Baldry (ed.),Multimodality and multimediality in the distance learning age, 311–385. Campobasso: Palladino Editore) method of multimodal transcription and Feng and O’Halloran’s (2013. The multimodal representation of emotion in film: Integrating cognitive (...) and semiotic approaches.Semiotica197(1/4). 79–100) framework of the multimodal representation of emotion to formulate strategies for subtitling emotion from English into Arabic. Additionally, Feng and O’Halloran’s (2013) framework is adapted to show how stylistic choices (e.g., cinematography, music, soundtracks, etc.) and semiotic expressions can elicit emotion from viewers. The social semiotic model is employed to investigate how emotive representation is realized through verbal and non-verbal items. The findings showed that the filmmakers had properly used stylistic choices and various semiotic techniques to elicit emotion from the viewer derived from the emotion of the film’s heroine. (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)

The present study focused on this particular situation in which doctoral candidates become anxious, impatient, and disappointed while experiencing a prolonged delay in processing their dissertation during and after the submission. The researchers tend to explore doctoral candidates’ storied experiences they had while confronting such procedural barriers and delays. We undertook a narrative mode of inquiry to explore the events and storied experiences through interviewing doctoral candidates from public universities in the province of Punjab, Pakistan. Nine doctoral candidates were selected (...) through snowball sampling with the criterion of including those participants who were waiting for their external reviews at least for more than 1 year. From the narratives, the emergent themes include supervisors’ mutual relationships, the pressure of paper publication, lack of administrative support, external evaluation and follow-up and stress of delayed evaluation. The study has implications for relaxing procedural formalities during and after submission of a doctoral dissertation to facilitate students in the timely attainment of their doctoral degrees. (shrink)

Firms in controversial industries such as tobacco, alcohol, gambling, weapon, and nuclear power suffer organizational legitimacy problems. These firms, therefore, adopt various strategies to acquire legitimacy. Drawing on institutional theory, we conceptualize the top management team gender diversity as a legitimacy-seeking strategy and examines how a firm’s belonging to a controversial sector affects TMT gender diversity. Based on a cross-country sample of 1542 firms operating in controversial industries from 34 countries and control sample with another set of 1542 similar-sized firms (...) from non-controversial industries, the empirical evidence shows that belonging to a controversial industry exerts a positive impact on TMT gender diversity. The effect of industry belonging on TMT gender diversity is positively moderated by institutional gender parity and a low level of corruption. It indicates that institutional factors act as emancipative forces that foster women's empowerment. Taken together, our results for moderating variables highlight the role of institutional characteristics in supporting women empowerment initiatives. (shrink)

This research aims to examine the Indonesian Ulema Council’s (MUI) fatwa strategy on COVID-19 vaccination booster, which employed religious narrations and laboratory test evidence to justify its arguments. Religious texts become ideological frames that are legitimate and effective in influencing the human senses. This study uses maqashid al-Qur’an as approach. Hence, the use of text of the Qur’an, hadith, and quotations from various ulema’s opinions elucidates the vaccination aim under Islamic law. Based on the MUI fatwa, the primary purpose of (...) the vaccinations is for the sake of national benefits, whereas, from the perspective of maqashid al-Qur’an, it mainly leads to the preservation of the Indonesian people’s life as a whole. The COVID-19 vaccination carried out in Indonesia is for curative purposes; consequently, this programme is classified into the daruriyah [urgent] category. The results revealed that religious authority plays a crucial role in persuading its adherents.Contribution: This research shows that interpreting the Qur’anic verses using the maqashid theory should also be integrated with a scientific approach for the benefit of humanity. (shrink)

1. Academics as a profession is traditionally viewed as stress-free due to high levels of academic freedom, clarity of job description and performance indicators, and tenure protected positions (Th...

The release of over 6,000 genetically modified mosquitoes (GMM) into uninhabited Malaysian forests in 2010 was a frantic step on the part of the Malaysian government to combat the spread of dengue fever. The field trial was designed to control and reduce the dengue vector by producing offspring that die in the early developmental stage, thus decreasing the local Aedes aegypti population below the dengue transmission threshold. However, the GMM trials were discontinued in Malaysia despite being technologically feasible. The lack (...) of systematic studies in terms of cost-benefit analysis, questionable research efficacy and safety-related concerns might have contributed to the termination of the field trial. Hence, this research aims to evaluate the feasibility of GMM release in Malaysia by using a holistic approach based on an Islamic ethical-legal assessment under the maslahah-mafsadah (benefit-risk) concept. Three main strategies based on the maslahah-mafsadah concept approach have been applied: 1) an evidence-based approach, 2) an impact-based approach and, 3) a priority approach. The analysis concluded that GMM could be categorised as zanniyyah (probable). GMM is a promising alternative for dengue control, but many issues must be addressed before its widespread adoption. (shrink)

The World Health Organization declares coronavirus disease 2019 as a pandemic, and The World Economic Forum argues that the COVID-19-induced global lockdown is the biggest psychological experiment. This study is an attempt to empirically evaluate the possible adverse psychosocial effects caused by COVID-19-related lockdown, if any. To do so, a cross-sectional study is conducted based on a comprehensive online survey using snowball sampling to analyze the level of social and psychological impacts during the early stage of the outbreak in Pakistan. (...) The questionnaire is filled out by the residents in Pakistan including working professionals and students. We find that the development of stress due to COVID-19-induced lockdown is particularly because of mood swings. Additionally, a higher prevalence of stress in the children of highly educated mothers is evident. To assess the belief in stakeholders, we focus gender, demographics, and education. It is observed that parental education and age significantly affect the belief in several stakeholders. The lockdown-induced fear of losing job is lower in female and male children whose fathers are graduates. Lastly, we observe that food storage and “no fear of losing job” significantly increases the odds of life satisfaction. These findings have important implications in the context of social insurance, parental education, and policy related to COVID-19 at various levels. This study further facilitates to understand the factors that might affect the mental health and life satisfaction of people during such pandemics. (shrink)

This study employs the Porter hypothesis framework to test the moderating role of production cost in the relationship between resource-efficiency actions and financial performance for German small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). For this purpose, we employ the 2012, 2018, and 2021 Flash Eurobarometer surveys to analyze how consistently SMEs adopt resource-efficiency actions, and the impact of these actions on their performance and costs. We also conduct a generalized method of moments regression analysis (GMM). Among the seven resource-efficiency actions proposed, saving (...) water had a significant positive (negative) influence on financial performance in 2012, 2021, and (2018). Saving energy and using renewable energy had a positive and significant (insignificant) effect on financial performance in 2018, 2021, and (2012). Finally, selling scrap material to other companies had a positive and significant impact in all years. Furthermore, increased production costs negatively moderate the relationship between eco-efficiency action scores and financial performance. The results indicate that the “strong” version of the Porter hypothesis is not supported: It only holds when the implementation of eco-efficiency actions reduces production costs and increases financial performance. (shrink)

This article examines viability of track II and III initiatives between India and Pakistan and their contribution in creating a cordial environment for track I diplomacy. The objective is the probe whether informal dialogues pave the way for states to communicate formally or their presence is cosmetic in nature. Pakistan and India share a belligerent history of bilateral relationships. Despite four wars, diplomacy has somehow remained at work between the two. Although the two countries have been engaged in official and (...) backdoor dialogues periodically, however, this diplomatic contact appeared fragile and felt prey of severity many times. Track II and Track III diplomacy initiatives were launched and sought as means to reach the end of cordiality in bilateral relationships. The methodology used in this article is qualitative with primary and secondary sources. Through analysis of semi-governmental and people to people initiative, it is found that unofficial contact between the two states has not contributed toward paving the way for track I diplomacy. Such initiatives enjoy at length in good times more, rather than converting hostility into harmony in tense times. From Neemrana Dialogue to Ashoka Theater, track II and track III were unable to substitute track I. (shrink)

The twenty-first century has seen an increase in ethical misconduct at the workplace, highlighting the need to stimulate discussion on the role of work ethics. The objective of the current study is to extend the literature on work ethics by examining the role of Islamic work ethic in enhancing the task performance of employees. The current study proposes that psychological capital mediates the relationship between Islamic work ethic and task performance. It is also proposed that ethical leadership might act as (...) a boundary condition that boosts the positive relationship between Islamic work ethic and psychological capital. Data were collected in three-time lags from employees working in the service sector of Pakistan through the questionnaire. The results supported the mediation and moderation hypothesis, confirming that psychological capital mediates the relationship between Islamic work ethic and task performance. Ethical leadership moderates the relationship between Islamic work ethic and psychological capital. The results offer implications for theory and practice. Limitations and future research directions are also discussed. (shrink)

As the COVID-19 outbreak remains an ongoing issue, there are concerns about its disruption, the level of its disruption, how long this pandemic is going to last, and how innovative technological solutions like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and expert systems can assist to deal with this pandemic. AI has the potential to provide extremely accurate insights for an organization to make better decisions based on collected data. Despite the numerous advantages that may be achieved by AI, the use of AI can (...) be perceived differently by society, where moral and ethical issues may be raised, especially in regards to accessing and exploiting public data gathered from social media platforms. To better comprehend the concerns and ethical challenges, utilitarianism and deontology were used as business ethics frameworks to explore the aforementioned challenges of AI in society. The framework assists in determining whether the AI’s deployment is ethically acceptable or not. The paper lays forth policy recommendations for public and private organizations to embrace AI-based decision-making processes to avoid data privacy violations and maintain public trust. (shrink)

ABSTRACT BackgroundIt isn’t clear how lay people balance the various ethical interests when addressing medical issues. We explored lay people’s ethical resolution models in relation to abortion. MethodsIn a tertiary healthcare setting, 196 respondents rank-ordered 42 opinion-statements on abortion following a 9-category symmetrical distribution. Statements’ scores were analyzed by averaging-analysis and Q-methodology. ResultsRespondents’ mean (SD) age was 34.5(10.5) years, 53% were women, 68% Muslims (31% Christians), 28% Saudis (26% Filipinos), and 38% healthcare-related. The most-agreeable statements were “Acceptable if health-benefit to (...) woman large,” “Acceptable if congenital disease risk large,” and “Woman’s right if fetus has congenital disease.” The most-disagreeable statements were “State’s right even if woman disagrees,” “Acceptable even with no congenital disease risk,” and “Father’s right even if woman disagrees.” Q-methodology identified several resolution models that were multi-principled, consequentialism-dominated, and associated with respondents’ demographics. The majority of Christian women and men identified with and supported a relatively “fetus rights plus State authority-oriented” model. The majority of Muslim women and men identified with and supported a “conception-oriented” model and “consequentialism plus virtue-oriented” model, respectively. One or more of three motives-related statements received extreme ranks on averaging-analysis and in 33% of the models. Conclusions1) On average, consequentialism, focusing on a woman’s health-benefit and congenital disease risk, was the predominant approach. This was followed by the rights approach, favoring a woman’s interest but taking context into account. 2) Q-methodology identified various ethical resolution models that were multi-principled and partially associated with respondents’ demographics. 3) Motives were important to some respondents, providing empirical evidence against adequacy of principlism. (shrink)

Pakistan is a developing country and it has been showed remarkable development in many areas since its foundation in 1947. However, still some issues have not been handled properly, like poverty, corruption, load shedding, water crises etc. Apart from other issues, poverty is a big issue of the country and it can be observed more or less in every province. In this paper, we have analyzed the ground situation of district Ghotki, through surveys, which is considered last district of Sindh. (...) We tried to find the problems of poor people of district Ghotki, observed their general life style, discussed their issues and inquired about government’s role to provide the people with basic necessities of life. In this paper, mainly qualitative method is adopted to reach to best conclusion. However, partially quantitative style could also be observed, especially where concepts of Microfinance are discussed. We realized that around 40% people of the district need microfinance services and they are ready to welcome Islamic Microfinance banks, because people don’t want to opt interest based conventional microfinance services, and secondly, conventional microfinance banks don’t have capacity to cover vast area of the district. (shrink)

Little is known about the background of atheism in Malaysia and how Muslims respond to the phenomenon, although provocations by Malaysian atheists often take place on social media. This study addressed the gap by exploring the atheism phenomenon in Malaysia’s ethnoreligious-oriented society. Data were collected from in-depth interviews and content analysis using the qualitative method. All data were analysed thematically using the software for qualitative analysis, ATLAS.ti. The resulting superordinate themes that emerged from the analysis include the phenomenon of Malaysian (...) atheism, the factors for becoming atheists and the theme of arguments. The study’s findings are three-fold. Firstly, atheism started in Malaysia after globalisation began. Secondly, most Malaysian atheists were influenced by internal factors based on emotional–psychological elements rather than being scientifically oriented. Last but not least, the main themes of Malaysian atheist arguments are ‘God’s justice’, ‘the problem of evil’ and ‘science rationalism’. As a response, Muslims counter the atheism phenomenon by providing an effective approach to preserving social cohesion and harmony in an ethnoreligious society.Contribution: This article suggests that although atheism is regarded as a challenge to society since Malaysia is an ethnoreligious-oriented society, atheism needs to be countered through proper education as early prevention, besides encouraging healthy discussions. (shrink)

This study examined the influence of ethical leadership on knowledge sharing, the mediating role of psychological ownership, and the moderating effect of professional commitment between ethical leadership and knowledge sharing. Data were collected from 307 public listed Pakistani companies’ employees. Statistical analyses were performed by using SPSS Version 25 and AMOS version 22. The findings indicate a positive relationship between EL and KS behavior. Additionally, the impact of EL on KS was partially mediated by psychological ownership. Furthermore, professional commitment buffers (...) the link between EL and KS. This study contributes to the body of knowledge in the field of leadership by confirming the role of ethics. The results show that ethical leaders develop employee attitudes that contribute to employee KS behavior. Ethical leaders create and encourage a learning culture to enhance organizational performance. This study adds to the little data on the positive impact of EL on listed company’s employees and addresses the gaps in previous studies on the role of EL in changing environments. In addition, professional commitment as a moderator has not been previously investigated with ethical leadership antecedents. (shrink)

Abortion is the most common and controversial issue in many parts of the world. Approximately 46 million abortions are performed worldwide every year. The world ratio is 26 induced abortions per 100 known pregnancies. Pakistan has an estimated abortion rate of 29 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age, despite the procedure being illegal except to save a woman’s life. 890,000 abortions are performed annually in Pakistan. Many government and non-government organizations are working on the issue of abortion. Muslim jurists (...) are unanimous in declaring that after the fetus is completely formed and has been given a soul, abortion is haram (forbidden). (shrink)

The integration of cellular networks and vehicular networks is complex and heterogeneous. Synchronization among vehicles in heterogeneous vehicular clusters plays an important role in effective data sharing and the stability of the cluster. This synchronization depends on the smooth exchange of information between vehicles and remote servers over the Internet. The remote servers predict road traffic patterns by adopting deep learning methods to help drivers on the roads. At the same time, local data processing at the vehicular cluster level may (...) increase the capabilities of remote servers. However, global positioning system signal interruption, especially in the urban environment, plays a big part in the detritions of synchronization among the vehicles that lead to the instability of the cluster. Instability of connections is a major hurdle in developing cost-effective solutions for deriving assistance and route planning applications. To solve this problem, a self-localization scheme within the vehicular cluster is proposed. The proposed self-localization scheme handles GPS signal interruption to the vehicle within the cluster. A unique clustering criterion and a synchronization mechanism for sharing traffic information system data among multiple vehicles are developed. The developed scheme is simulated and compared with existing known approaches. The results show the better performance of our proposed scheme over others. (shrink)

Shyness affects and influences the performance of the learners at school and college level. There are different correlates and reasons of shyness. Zimbardo states that Shyness is a vague concept which has many interpretations and definitions. One definition which is very renowned is that “The person, male or female, who is nervous, worried, and uncomfortable in the gathering or presence of others, is called shy”. The objectives of this research study were as: to investigate the relationship of schooling system with (...) shyness to investigate the relationship of residential locality with shyness to check relationship of Socio- Economic status with shyness To rank the correlates of shyness. Overall 252 students from graduation of Indus group of Colleges from Rawalpindi and Islamabad were the population of the study and 42 students were selected through simple random sampling technique as a sample for the study. The researcher got the data with the help of personal visits to the colleges. Questionnaire for measuring shyness was used by the researcher for this research study1. Another self developed questionnaire or instrument was used to know the correlates of shyness. Chisquare test of independence was used for data analysis. The results of the study showed that shyness depended upon these correlates of shyness as residential locality Schooling system socio-economic status of the learners. Shyness depends upon above mentioned correlates. In order to remove this problem of shyness, some steps should be taken as learners or students may not be blamed or punished without any reason. Learners should be encouraged and motivated. (shrink)

Intelligent big data analysis is an evolving pattern in the age of big data science and artificial intelligence. Analysis of organized data has been very successful, but analyzing human behavior using social media data becomes challenging. The social media data comprises a vast and unstructured format of data sources that can include likes, comments, tweets, shares, and views. Data analytics of social media data became a challenging task for companies, such as Dailymotion, that have billions of daily users and vast (...) numbers of comments, likes, and views. Social media data is created in a significant amount and at a tremendous pace. There is a very high volume to store, sort, process, and carefully study the data for making possible decisions. This article proposes an architecture using a big data analytics mechanism to efficiently and logically process the huge social media datasets. The proposed architecture is composed of three layers. The main objective of the project is to demonstrate Apache Spark parallel processing and distributed framework technologies with other storage and processing mechanisms. The social media data generated from Dailymotion is used in this article to demonstrate the benefits of this architecture. The project utilized the application programming interface of Dailymotion, allowing it to incorporate functions suitable to fetch and view information. The API key is generated to fetch information of public channel data in the form of text files. Hive storage machinist is utilized with Apache Spark for efficient data processing. The effectiveness of the proposed architecture is also highlighted. (shrink)

Emotion-based sentimental analysis has recently received a lot of interest, with an emphasis on automated identification of user behavior, such as emotional expressions, based on online social media texts. However, the majority of the prior attempts are based on traditional procedures that are insufficient to provide promising outcomes. In this study, we categorize emotional sentiments by recognizing them in the text. For that purpose, we present a deep learning model, bidirectional long-term short-term memory, for emotion recognition that takes into account (...) five main emotions. We use our experimental assessments on the emotion dataset to accomplish the emotion categorization job. The datasets were evaluated and the findings revealed that, when compared to state-of-the-art methodologies, the proposed model can successfully categorize user emotions into several classifications. Finally, we assess the efficacy of our strategy using statistical analysis. This research’s findings help firms to apply best practices in the selection, management, and optimization of policies, services, and product information. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine the direct and indirect impact of ambient air pollution on employees’ performance. This study has used cross sectional survey design to collect the data from the outdoor employees of the pharmaceutical industry of Pakistan. The data were collected in time lags from 299. Partial least squares- structural equation modeling approach was applied to analyze the data. The results show that AAP has a significant negative impact on the employees’ performance, and anxiety partially mediates the association (...) between AAP and employees’ performance. This study reveals that AAP brings anxiety among outdoor employees, which in turn decreases their working performance. The implications, limitations, and future research directions are presented in the last section of this study. (shrink)