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Although the research stream in the area of career plateau acknowledges its ramifications, yet investigation on how this phenomenon can be reduced is sparse. This study aims to address this gap by illuminating the role of proactive personality (PP) as a factor of minimizing plateau via playful work design (PWD), career adaptability (CA) and perceived work-life balance (PWLB).

A cross-sectional study design was applied and structural equation modelling was used to assess the hypothesized relationships among PP, CA, PWD, perceived work design and career plateau. A total of 338 employees from public and private universities were sampled from February 2020 to July 2020.

The results highlighted that CA mediated the relationship between PP and PWLB, as well as, PWD mediated the association between PP and PWLB. Further, the authors got support for both serial mediation paths i.e. PP, CA, PWLB and career plateau and PP, PWD, PWLB and career plateau.

The findings of this study provide much needed ways to overcome career plateau in the academic sector. Moreover, the use of multiple serial paths has enhanced the underlying factors of PP and career plateau nexus.

In recent times, progression of technology and growing demands of customers have substantially influenced the services sector to introduce fast real-time mechanisms for providing up-to-mark services. To meet these requirements, organizations are going to change their end-user operating systems but success rate of change is very low. The purpose of this paper is to address one of the practitioners’ complaint “no one tells us how to do it” and uncovers the indirect effects of knowledge management (KM) strategies: personalization and codification, toward organizational change via organizational learning and change readiness. The current study also highlights how organizational learning and change readiness are helpful to reduce the detrimental effects of organizational change cynicism toward success of a change process.

Temporal research design is used to get the appropriate responses from the targeted population in two stages such as pre-change (Time-1) and post-change (Time-2). In cumulative, 206 responses have been obtained from the banking sector of Pakistan.

The results of the current study are very promising as it has been stated that KM strategies have an indirect effect on successful organizational change through organizational learning and change readiness. Moreover, change cynicism has a weakening effect on a change process and can be managed through effective learning orientation of employees and developing readiness for change in organizations.

Change agents have to use an optimal mix of personalization and codification strategies to develop learning environment and readiness for change in organizations that are beneficial for implementing a change successfully. Moreover, change readiness and organizational learning in the context of change are equally beneficial to reduce organizational change cynicism as well.

This study is introducing a unique model to initiate a change with the help of KM strategies, organizational learning and readiness for change.

The study aims to describe the impact of supervisor’s and co-worker’s ostracism on the employee's responses (emotional, psychological and behavioral) through the mediation of employees' efficacy needs and relational needs. Moreover, psychological capital is treated as a moderator to handle the adverse responses of ostracized employees.

The study employed a three-wave quantitative research design to gather data from employees and their respective supervisors who belonged to various healthcare units (N = 510) using self-administered close-ended questionnaires. After that, SmartPLS software was used to analyze the data through a structured equation modeling (SEM) technique.

The empirical results of the study endorsed that ostracism adversely (negatively) affects employees' responses (comprised of emotional, behavioral and psychological). Moreover, the results revealed that employees' needs (efficacy and relational) mediate the relationship between ostracism experienced by employees (supervisor’ and co-workers’ ostracism) and their emotional, behavioral and psychological responses. In addition, it is also evidenced that employees' psychological capital improves the negative association between employees' needs and responses.

The literature in this domain is scarce, and the theoretical stance is weak due to the traditional approaches that are more concerned with the outcomes rather than analyzing the employee's conditional what they are going through. The present study enhances the knowledge of the transactional mode of coping and its application to ostracism in the workplace. The results of the current study may also support the practitioners in formulating interventions to foster a favorable workplace environment.

This paper provides a thematic analysis of an IUCN Red-Listed bird, the houbara bustard, which Pakistan uses as a fungible resource to appease its wealthy Arab benefactors.

Thematic analysis of relevant media reports and government ministry and NGO websites comprise the study's data. Media reports were located using Dow Jones' Factiva database.

Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issues wealthy Arabs special permits for hunting the houbara bustard as a “soft” foreign diplomacy strategy aimed at propping up the country's fragile economy. Although illegal under international and Pakistan's own wildlife laws, resource dependence theory helps explain how various country-specific issues (e.g. dysfunctional political and judicial systems) enable Pakistan's unlawful exchange of hunting permits for Arab oil and short-term financing. Surrogate accountability and agencement are examined as two means for arresting the bird's trajectory toward extinction.

Media reports comprise the primary data. Pakistani government officials were approached for interviews, but failed to reply. Although unfortunate, the pervasive corruption and mistrust that characterise Pakistan's culture would have likely tainted the responses. For this reason, media reports were always the primary data sought.

The present study extends prior literature by exploring how country context can subvert the transferability of social and political approaches used in developed countries to address environmental accounting issues and challenges. As this study shows, a developing country's economic vulnerability, combined with its dysfunctional political systems, impotent judiciary and feckless regulatory mechanisms, can undermine legislation meant to protect the country's natural environment, in general, and a threatened bird's existence, in particular.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between electricity access, population growth and economic growth in Pakistan.

Phillips–Perron unit root test was applied to check the stationarity of the variables and an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to co-integration was used to investigate the causality link between the study variables. Finally, a projection method was applied to check the future trend of the variables.

The study results show the long-term connections among the variables; further, the results illustrate that the electricity access to the urban population and the urban population growth has a significant impact on the economic growth, while the electricity access to the rural population and the rural population growth has a negative impact on the economic growth in Pakistan.

The electricity sector needs further attention from the Government of Pakistan to boost the production from different energy sources, such as oil, gas, solar, nuclear and hydropower to be able to fulfill the country’s growing demand.

By using the ARDL bounds testing approach to co-integration, this study addressed the literature gap regarding electricity access, population growth and economic growth in Pakistan.

This paper aims to model the mediating effects of facilitating conditions and innovativeness in the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and blockchain technology (BT) on manufacturing supply chain performance (MSCP).

Partial least square structural equation modelling was used to test the goodness of the model fit and hypotheses by using SmartPLS 3.3.3. Data was collected from 464 managers in Pakistan’s automotive industry through a stratified random sampling technique.

IIoT, BT, facilitating conditions and innovativeness significantly enhanced the MSCP. Therefore, the mediation between facilitating conditions and innovativeness to IIoT and BT adoption was significant in the MSCP.

The adoption of digital technology to improve the MSCP can assist companies in reducing the cost of complex procurement, production and distribution processes through secured and efficient operations. Furthermore, organisations must establish a conducive atmosphere that fosters experimentation, collaboration and resource allocation towards technological advancements to capitalise on the advantages of these technologies effectively.

This study developed a research model integrating IIoT technology, BT, facilitating conditions and innovativeness to determine the MSCP under the resource-based view theory. The outcome of this study could help organisations design a framework to improve supply chain performance by integrating innovativeness.

A study was conducted to assess the potential of six library and information education programs in preparing manpower for the digital environment. The situation of six schools in the member nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council has been analyzed by collecting data from the schools heads and 49 faculty members, focusing on: curricular changes; faculty size and its research and publication record; hardware equipment and software packages available for instruction; use of digital resources such as databases, online services, and electronic utilities for instruction; and availability of periodicals, books, and electronic resources for instructional activity. This study has brought forth a number of crucial issues related to these factors. Unless these schools take significant developmental or remedial initiatives, they cannot fare well in coping with the changes wrought by the digital imperatives.

This study aims to investigate the research productivity of library and information science (LIS) authors affiliated with the 22 countries of the Arab League. It also identifies the top countries, organizations, authors, journals, natures of collaboration, and frequently used keywords in LIS research in the Arab world.

Bibliometric methods were used to evaluate the research performance of the authors affiliated with library organizations in the Arab region. The Elsevier Scopus database was selected for data retrieval. A comprehensive search strategy was adopted to retrieve 863 publications contributed by LIS authors affiliated with the Arab countries. VOS viewer, Biblioshiny, BiblioAnalyitics, Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel were used for data visualization and analysis.

This paper presents the dynamics and the state of the LIS research in the Arab region published between 1951 and 2021. The results of the study have highlighted an upward trend in the growth of the publications, especially in the past four years. The largest number of studies were published in the year 2020. The country-wise analysis ranked Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as the top LIS research producing countries with five and four researchers, respectively. The Kuwait University, the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and the Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University were the three most productive organizations. Academic libraries, social media, bibliometrics, information-seeking behavior, information literacy and knowledge management were identified as the major areas of interest for the researchers. Internet and open access were topics that had gained recent popularity, while the digital library, research data management, green librarianship, link data, cloud computing, library leadership, library automation and artificial intelligence were identified as areas requiring further attention. Furthermore, the single-author pattern was found to be the most preferred pattern.

The findings of this study would help prospective researchers in choosing the neglected areas of research that require further investigation. They would also help policymakers in identifying factors that need more attention and allocation of research funds.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comprehensive bibliometric study that presents a holistic picture of the LIS research in the Arab region.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of support price on wheat production in Pakistan during the period 1971–2016.

To capture the effect of support price on wheat production, the authors estimated the long-run linkage by using the ARDL bounds testing approach to cointegration.

This study confirmed the presence of a positive and long-term effect of area under cultivation, support price and fertilizer consumption on wheat production through ARDL bounds test. The results showed that both in the long run and short run, support price plays an important role in the enhancement of wheat production. The authors also found that the coefficients of the area under cultivation and fertilizer consumption variables were statistically significant and positive both in the long run and short run.

The use of the ARDL approach that examines the long-run and short-run effects of support price on wheat production in Pakistan makes the current study unique. An emerging economic literature suggests that only limited research has been conducted in this area.

The purpose of this study is to understand the practice of Dawah among Muslims by discovering its perceived motives and benefits that can be replicated to organizational settings. Furthermore, the motives and benefits of performing Islamic Dawah are tied together to establish a Dawah based framework to foster ethical decision making in organizations.

This qualitative study is based on interviews conducted among 40 male Muslims from Pakistan. The sample consists of Muslim scholars having strong religious knowledge, younger people and old-age Muslims. The data collected through the interviews are transcribed and content-analysed by using multiple coding schemes.

The Islamic Dawah-based framework is based on five elements, which are self-reform, transcendence, complacency, dutifulness and pridefulness. The findings reveal that Muslim scholars put much emphasis on sharing of Islamic faith and livelihood among the members of the community, while the common people, both from the younger and older generations, are more concerned with establishing their own understanding of the Islamic value system and self-improvement. Aside from the spiritual impact that Dawah has on them, the role of family members in stimulating the practice of Dawah is highlighted.

The study has managerial relevance in a way that the highlighted themes represented by a framework can be replicated to an organizational setting to impart a culture of ethicality which is purely based on Islamic tradition. The roles of peers, CEO and self-correction are pivotal to establishment of an ethical workplace culture.

This study extends marketing knowledge in general and internal marketing knowledge specifically by presenting a first-ever Islamic Dawah-based model to foster workplace ethics.