Search results

This study aims to examine the perceptions and opinions of relevant stakeholders regarding entrepreneurship opportunities and growth in the Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) province of Pakistan. Specifically, it focuses on the role of special economic zones (SEZs), such as Maqpondass SEZ and the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), in fostering nascent entrepreneurship (NE) and promoting regional development.

The study employs ordered logistic regression to estimate the relationship between various independent variables and nascent entrepreneurship (NE). The independent variables include awareness of CPEC (AAC), awareness of Maqpondass SEZ (AAMEZ), SEZ incentives (SEZInc), regional market competitiveness (RMC), loan availability (LA) and education and experience (EE).

The findings indicate a robust positive relationship between SEZ-based industries and the growth of local small businesses and enterprises in Gilgit-Baltistan. Furthermore, the study suggests that government incentives, access to finance, skill development, relevant knowledge, and connections with local businesses facilitate the establishment of new ventures.

The study underscores the importance of focusing on human capital development, providing financial assistance, and creating incentives for adopting advanced technology to foster the growth of local businesses in Gilgit-Baltistan through SEZs. It emphasizes the need for policymakers and stakeholders to prioritize initiatives that support entrepreneurship and innovation in the region.

This study contributes to the existing literature by providing novel insights into the perceptions of entrepreneurship development in Gilgit-Baltistan, particularly concerning the influence of natural resources and SEZs. It fills a gap in the research by offering valuable implications for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners seeking to promote sustainable economic development in the region.

Values have long guided special education services and supports for students with extensive support needs; over the past four decades, those values have been backed by research evidence demonstrating the critical nature of values related to inclusive education, self-determination, and seeking strengths and assets. In this chapter, we investigate these values and their supporting research, documenting strengths and needs in extant research. We emphasize the need to continue to embrace and maintain these values while pursuing research that addresses research gaps while centering the priorities, perspectives, and preferences of people with extensive support needs.

This study investigates how the conflict between Russia and Ukraine impacts global inflation.

The study uses monthly consumer price index (CPI) data from 60 countries for 30 months, from January 2020 to June 2022. An event study methodology has been employed to check abnormal variation in the CPI, after classifying country-specific monthly data into nine groups.

The outcome revealed that Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered inflation globally. However, the severity of inflation in the sample countries is determined by their geographical proximity and trading activity with the countries in conflict. A significant rise in inflation was observed among major European economies during the invasion. As the war continues, the increase in the price of essential commodities is evident worldwide.

The war literature till now has concentrated on stock markets, energy markets, exchange rates and precious metals. Since no previous research has attempted to quantify the abnormal effect of the war on domestic and global inflation, the current study will shed much-needed light on the subject.

In the modern digital realm, while artificial intelligence (AI) technologies pave the way for unprecedented opportunities, they also give rise to intricate cybersecurity issues, including threats like deepfakes and unanticipated AI-induced risks. This study aims to address the insufficient exploration of AI cybersecurity awareness in the current literature.

Using in-depth surveys across varied sectors (N = 150), the authors analyzed the correlation between the absence of AI risk content in organizational cybersecurity awareness programs and its impact on employee awareness.

A significant AI-risk knowledge void was observed among users: despite frequent interaction with AI tools, a majority remain unaware of specialized AI threats. A pronounced knowledge difference existed between those that are trained in AI risks and those who are not, more apparent among non-technical personnel and sectors managing sensitive information.

This study paves the way for thorough research, allowing for refinement of awareness initiatives tailored to distinct industries.

It is imperative for organizations to emphasize AI risk training, especially among non-technical staff. Industries handling sensitive data should be at the forefront.

Ensuring employees are aware of AI-related threats can lead to a safer digital environment for both organizations and society at large, given the pervasive nature of AI in everyday life.

Unlike most of the papers about AI risks, the authors do not trust subjective data from second hand papers, but use objective authentic data from the authors’ own up-to-date anonymous survey.

Misunderstanding and harmful stereotyping have become commonplace amongst people in the United States and the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region since 2001, if not earlier. If universities are the locus of transformative education, work remains towards remedying these issues.One non-profit organisation, “Natafaham (pseudonym, Arabic for « we understand each other”), works to undo this negativity student by student. It brings participants from the MENA and Europe/North America into dialogue via Zoom each week. The inter-cultural dialogue availed to participants is empowering to actors, including the dialogue facilitator. This narrative is an autoethnographic exploration of my experience as an intercultural dialogue facilitator. Yet reviewing contemporaneous notes and reflections revealed structural aspects of this programme that empower voices from the MENA region, while facilitating learning amongst participants on both sides of the Atlantic. Such aspects include the format and the location of the programme, its focus on individuals rather than institutions or groups, its mixed top-down and bottom-up approach, and the opportunities it avails for ascension to positions of authority. This narrative analyses these aspects through several lenses and academic traditions, including those of global citizenship, critical internationalisation, (reciprocal) global service learning, and socio-cultural frameworks of second language acquisition. The chapter urges that these aspects are recognised as key catalysts of (more) equal relationships between youth in the MENA region and the United States, which merit widespread replication. It concludes by envisioning a still more equal relationship predicated upon more equitable language usage.

The purpose of the current application paper is to integrate previous literature with recent results from practitioners on effective practices for utilizing small groups in the leadership classroom.

We use these integrated findings to innovate practice on maximizing the role of undergraduate teaching assistants (UTAs) by matching their tasks to signature pedagogies in leadership education.

The integrated findings revealed three practice themes: (1) match UTAs to pedagogical approach, (2) create small groups by design and (3) providing training and reflection practice for UTAs.

In sum, leadership education can and should challenge historical practices in higher education whereby UTAs are used purely for grading and course logistics management.

This study aims on a broad review of Concrete's Rheological Properties. The Concrete is a commonly used engineering material because of its exquisite mechanical interpretation, but the addition of constituent amounts has significant effects on the concrete’s fresh properties. The workability of the concrete mixture is a short-term property, but it is anticipated to affect the concrete’s long-term property.

In this review, the concrete and workability definition; concrete’s rheology models like Bingham model, thixotropy model, H-B model and modified Bingham model; obtained rheological parameters of concrete; the effect of constituent’s rheological properties, which includes cement and aggregates; and the concrete’s rheological properties such as consistency, mobility, compatibility, workability and stability were studied in detail.

Also, this review study has detailed the constituents and concrete’s rheological properties effects. Moreover, it exhibits the relationship between yield stress and plastic viscosity in concrete’s rheological behavior. Hence, several methods have been reviewed, and performance has been noted. In that, the abrasion resistance concrete has attained the maximum compressive strength of 73.6 Mpa; the thixotropy approach has gained the lowest plastic viscosity at 22 Pa.s; and the model coaxial cylinder has recorded the lowest stress rate at 8 Pa.

This paper especially describes the possible strategies to constrain improper prediction of concrete’s rheological properties that make the workability and rheological behavior prediction simpler and more accurate. From this, future guidelines can afford for prediction of concrete rheological behavior by implementing novel enhancing numerical techniques and exploring the finest process to evaluate the workability.

This chapter proposes a sustainable trajectory for leadership and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) organizational change in higher education. Leadership practices and strategies necessary to construct and implement change and cultivate diverse, equitable, and inclusive educational environments are deliberated, with particular emphasis on transformational leadership theories and practices. These types of organization development practices produce concrete transformation in institutions that have long-established, inert, and deeply entrenched cultures in which discriminatory or even racist practices have been deeply embedded and accepted over time. The complex dynamics of transformation in higher education, brought on, in part, by the rigidity of its organizational structure coupled with its history and foundation in racism and racist practices, makes achieving sustainable change difficult in higher education. Transformational change requires the creation of new mental models through meaning making and perspective sharing that allow individuals in higher education to think differently about how higher education institutions should operate given the rapid shifts in our society. Organizational change leaders must engage in deep, purposeful, and critical reflection and examination of the organization's culture to lay the groundwork for significant change. The chapter explores topics such as leading change through transformational leadership and the styles, practices, and capabilities associated with it, leadership development, strategic diversity leadership, and the Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) as change leader in higher education. The internal and external environmental trends demanding substantive change in higher education continue to intensify over time. The demand for pervasive transformation in higher education is resounding, and institutional leaders must be open to and even drive new and innovative approaches to shifting its very core – its DNA, its culture – to meet those demands.