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The paper aims to build the relationship between an entire function of restricted hyper-order with its linear c-shift operator.

Standard methodology for papers in difference and shift operators and value distribution theory have been used.

The relation between an entire function of restricted hyper-order with its linear c-shift operator was found under the periphery of sharing a set of two small functions IM (ignoring multiplicities) when exponent of convergence of zeros is strictly less than its order. This research work is an improvement and extension of two previous papers.

This is an original research work.

This study explores whether expatriation type (assigned expatriates (AEs) versus self-initiated expatriates (SIEs)) is linked to job exhaustion via possible differences in required efforts for their jobs and the rewards they gain from them, and/or the balance between efforts and rewards. Adopting effort–reward imbalance (ERI) and job demands/resources (JD-R) theories, the authors study the possible role of ERI as a mediator between expatriation type and job exhaustion.

An online survey was carried out in co-operation with two Finnish trade unions, providing representative data from 484 assigned and SIEs. The authors test this study’s hypotheses through latent structural equation modelling, and the analysis was conducted with Stata 17.0 software.

The results show that ERI between them are correlated with the job exhaustion of expatriates in general and there are no direct links between expatriation type and job exhaustion. The required effort from AEs was higher than that from SIEs though no difference was found for rewards, and the match between effort demands and rewards is less favourable for AEs than SIEs. AEs experienced higher job exhaustion than SIEs because of the higher effort demands and greater imbalance between efforts and rewards.

The study examines the work well-being of two types of expatriates and explores the underlying mechanisms that may explain why they may differ from each other.

This paper investigates the integration of leadership training into IT curricula to develop current and future skills needed by the IT job market. The technical and non-technical skills required for IT professionals are presented and a conceptual model for including leadership training in technical courses is outlined. To implement this model, we adopted the Problem-Based Learning approach to teach an IT course. Qualitative and quantitative data were gathered, through a survey, from 52 undergraduate students in the College of Information Technology at Zayed University. Our results show that our adopted approach was successful in teaching IT skills as well as developing leadership skills. Given these findings, we highlight the importance and feasibility of integrating leadership development on a daily basis within technical courses to develop both the technical and non technical skills required by the job market.

Advising systems play an important role not only in the student development process but also in student retention. Academic scholars across the world have been emphasising the presence of an effective student advising system as one of the requirements of a standard educational set up. To ensure student satisfaction with the advising system, institutions conduct satisfaction studies to monitor the effectiveness of their system and to understand key issues such as influencing factors and the association between demographic and influencing variables. The current paper addresses these key issues. A survey was conducted during Fall 2012 with students from across the GCC at three colleges in Muscat, Oman, to identify the factors influencing student satisfaction with advising system. In our study twenty-six variables were formed into five factors. The results show that student satisfaction with the advising systems is highly influenced by ‘feel good’, ‘critical situations’ and ‘IT’ factors. It was also found that satisfaction is independent of gender but not of the education level: lower level students were found to be more satisfied with advising systems than the students at the higher level. Student satisfaction has a significant positive correlation with training/orientation on advising and perceived quickness in solving students’ problems.

This paper introduces a new mathematical model for analyzing the economic benefits of incorporating the fourth party logistics (4PL), which is a contractor (i.e. agent) for the supply chain coordination and construction based on the division of community and the outsourcing development. Based on the physical theory and the wave-particle duality, a supply chain is the special organization whose characteristic has wave-particle duality. The mathematical model enriches the connotation of 4PL and it broadens the thought for 4PL development. Secondly, the proposed mathematical model predicated on transaction costs, is supported by Transaction Cost Theory (TCT) and acts as the theoretical analysis tool of 4PL for coordinating 3-party generic supply chain. Through the model, some trendy conclusions can be drawn to provide theoretical support for 4PL’s practices. Finally, a case illustrates our conclusions.

It is known that the National Pension Service (NPS) of Korea contributes to the market stability because it tends to pursue the negative feedback trading strategy in the Korean stock market. While many studies deal with institutional investors’ trading in the financial derivatives market, the NPS’s trading in the derivatives market is rarely studied. Using the NPS’s trading data for the period from January 2010 to March, 2020, the authors examine the transactions of the NPS in the KOSPI200 futures market. We find that the NPS’s net investment flow (NIF) in KOSPI200 futures is negatively associated with the past returns of KOSPI200 futures and the KOPI200 index. However, we also find that the NPS’s NIF of KOSPI200 futures is positively associated with its NIF in KOSPI200 stocks. Along with the legal restriction on the NPS’s trading in the derivatives market, the result suggests that the NPS uses KOSPI200 futures to deviate the problems related to non-synchronous trading in the spot market. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first study of the NPS’s transactions of KOSPI200 futures. The paper suggests that the NPS does not trade KOSPI200 futures for hedging or arbitrage profit but for complementing its transactions in the spot market of KOSPI200 stocks.

Acquiring a foreign language may be a lifelong endeavor, and this requires one to approach it from a lifelong learning perspective. However, learners may not always be ready for such an approach. It is important to know where learners stand in their orientations toward learning and consider this when planning educational activities. Therefore, it is necessary to determine language learners’ readiness for lifelong learning (LLL) in order to support their language development. This paper reports the findings of a study conducted to identify the LLL propensities of some Turkish and Emirati university students learning English as a foreign language in their local contexts. The study included 61 Emirati and 47 Turkish students, with a mean age of 19. Data were collected using a research tool with three sections: Demographics, the Lifelong Learning Tendency Scale (LLLTS – developed by Coskun & Demirel (2012)), and a survey with six open-ended questions. Student’s t-test, the Kruskal-Wallis test and the Mann-Whitney U-test were used to compare the quantitative data in terms of the participants’ nationalities, gender and length of study. The results showed that both Turkish and Emirati students had a moderate level of propensity for LLL. However, the Turkish students’ overall LLLTS scores as well as certain sub-skills were found to be higher than those of the Emirati students. Gender was not found to make a significant difference in the students’ LLL orientations, while motivation was found to be lower at a statistically significant level for those learning English for more than a year. Suggestions are offered for the development of language learners’ LLL skills.

Student transitions from secondary to tertiary education have attracted global attention as universities and colleges of higher education seek to improve student retention. Over the course of one academic year, I documented the transitional experiences of first-year male Emirati students at a college of higher education in a rural location of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In this paper I describe four categories of cultural border crossing experiences – smooth, managed, difficult, and impossible – with easier and smoother crossing experiences associated with close congruency (related to the students’ self-perceived attitude and scholastic preparedness as broadly reflected in their competence in their second language, English) between the predominantly Arabic life-world associated with Emirati families and government schooling and the dominant Western/English language culture in institutes of higher education. Additionally, I describe and evaluate students’ cultural border crossing experiences with some Foundation program faculty, finding that those teachers who developed a classroom culture based on Kleinfeld’s (1975) notion of ‘warm demandingness’ and caring rapport-building appeared to have the most positive impact upon the students. Implications from this research have the potential to positively impact both the student and faculty classroom experience in the Gulf tertiary classroom, in addition to improving overall student retention rates.

Since the turn of the 21st century, various institutions of higher education have been established in the Gulf Cooperation Council region, several of which are branches of universities from North America, Europe, Australia, and other regions. Quality education is currently a required component in the models of collaboration between Universities; yet the literature suggests that challenges remain in how the quality education will be practiced in a region that lacked for long time private universities. In this paper, we present an exploratory investigation to determine what could be learned by studying the practicalities of collaboration and accreditation of a newly established institution in Oman, namely, Dhofar University. The case study focuses on the practicalities of DU’s external collaboration, national accreditation, and good practices University-wide and within the College of Engineering in particular. The paper aims to present and analyze challenges, good practices, faculty and staff experiences, and solutions that could be a useful pattern for similar institutions. The investigation builds on an internal University-wide self-study and an external review by an accreditation council.