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Pakistan ranks third globally in terms of newborn deaths occuring within the first 24 hours of life. With a neonatal mortality rate of 42.0%, it carries the highest burden compared to neighboring countries such as Bangladesh (17%), India (22.7%) and Afghanistan (37%). While there has been a decline in neonatal mortality rates in Pakistan, the pace of this decline is slower than that of other countries in the region. Hence, it is crucial to conduct a comprehensive examination of the risk factors contributing to neonatal mortality in Pakistan over an extended period. This study aims to analyze the trends and determinants of neonatal mortality in Pakistan over three decades, providing valuable insights into this persistent issue.

The study focused on neonatal mortality as the response variable, which is defined as the death of a live-born child within 28 days of birth. Neonates who passed away during this period were categorized as “cases,” while those who survived beyond a specific timeframe were referred to as “noncases.” To conduct a pooled analysis of neonatal mortality, birth records of 39,976 children born in the five years preceding the survey were extracted from four waves (1990–2018) of the Pakistan Demographic and Household Survey. The relationship between risk factors and the response variable was examined using the Cox Proportional Hazard Model. Neonatal mortality rates were calculated through the direct method using the “syncmrates” package in Stata 15.

During the extended period in Pakistan, several critical protective factors against neonatal mortality were identified, including a large family size, improved toilet facilities, middle-aged and educated mothers, female children, singleton live births, large size at birth and longer birth intervals. These factors were found to reduce the risk of neonatal mortality significantly.

This study makes the first attempt to analyze the trends and patterns of potential risk factors associated with neonatal mortality in Pakistan. By examining a large dataset spanning several years, the study provides valuable insights into the factors influencing neonatal mortality.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2022-0604

Exposure to a public health threat of significant proportions made current models inadequate to explain the failure phenomenon in small businesses. Hence, the need to reimagine the phenomenon. Borrowing from the principles of biology, this study extended theoretical and empirical perspectives on the failure phenomenon by unpacking its constituent elements and the measurement metrics using the regeneration lens.

Based on a cohort tracked over time, the study estimated the survival probabilities of small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) with and without regeneration using the Kaplan–Meier method. The study investigated the factors that predict enterprise regenerative capacity using the multivariate Cox proportional hazard ratios.

Rates of interruption in business activity, by month, ranged between 0% and 18% during the follow-up period. True mortality rates hovered between 0% and 4% over the same period. Over three in five SMEs that experienced interruption in business activity without ceasing operations regenerated at some point in time during the follow-up period. The survival probabilities beyond the follow-up period were 0.85 and 0.44 with and without regeneration effects, respectively. Fresh capital injection (+), the introduction of new/improved processes or products/services (+), perceived business outlook (+) and the presence of debt (−) influenced the capacity to regenerate.

The cohort was followed for only six months. There is a need to continue interrogating the failure phenomenon in other contexts over longer periods using the regeneration lens. Bringing on board academia, financial institutions and other SME-related ecosystem players will be strategic.

The approach provides a more nuanced understanding of the life and well-being of enterprises under conditions of disruption. Improving the precision and validity of failure-related statistics enhances their utility in policy and remediation-related discussions.

The results did not show significant differences in SME mortality rates between male and female-owned enterprises. The results provide further evidence that the failure phenomenon is ungendered. As such, financial institutions and the SME ecosystem at large must eliminate perceptual gender biases in the financing and other support to SMEs.

The study used the principles of biology to reimagine the failure phenomenon in small businesses. The approach breathes life into entrepreneurship research and policy.

This study examines the appropriate measures that need to be intensified among African countries to achieve sustainable environment to mitigate climate change.

The study employs panel data covering the period 2000 to 2020 among 54 African countries and Cox proportional hazard model for the analysis.

Estimates indicate that the practice of carbon farming, the development of rooftop gardens, renewable energy production and consumption contribute positively toward achieving sustainable environment, while governance adversely affects this objective of achieving sustainable environment.

The study recommends that governments should enforce the constant practice of carbon farming among these countries through passing laws to enforce its application among farmers and allocate 2% of ministry of agriculture's budget toward financing carbon farming for poor farmers.

Empirical studies have been carried out exploring measures to deal with climate change. Nonetheless, the appropriate measures of achieving sustainable environment to mitigate climate change have less been explored in literature on Africa. Hence, this study fills the gap in existing empirical studies.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-04-2023-0290.

This study aims to develop a model of learning-by-hiring in which knowledge gains may occur at the time of recruitment but also after recruitment when other incumbent organizational members assimilate a recruit’s knowledge. The author’s model predicts that experienced recruits are more likely to catalyze change to their organization’s core technological capabilities.

The continuous-time parametric hazard rate regressions predict core technological change in a long panel (1970–2017) of US biotechnology industry patent data. The author uses over 140,000 patents to model the evolution of knowledge of over 52,000 scientists and over 4,450 firms. To address endogeneity concerns, the author uses the Heckman selection method and does robustness tests using a difference-in-difference analysis.

The author finds that a hire’s prior research and development (R&D) experience helps overcome inertia arising from her or his new-to-an-organization “distant” knowledge to increase the likelihood of core technological change. In addition, while the author finds that incumbent organizational members resist technological change, experienced hires may effectively induce them to adopt new ways of doing things. This is particularly the case when hires collaborate with incumbents in R&D projects. Understanding the effects of hiring on core technological change, therefore, benefits from an assessment of hire R&D experience and its effects on incumbent inertia in an organization.

First, the author does not recommend managers to hire scientists with considerable distant knowledge only as this may be detrimental to core technological change. Second, the author recommends organizations striving to effectuate technological change to hire people with considerable prior R&D experience as this confers them with the ability to influence other members and socialize incumbent members. Third, the author recommends that managers hire people with both significant levels of prior experience and distant knowledge as they are complements. Finally, the author recommends managers to encourage collaboration between highly experienced hired scientists and long-tenured incumbent organizational members to facilitate incumbent learning, socialization and adoption of new ways of doing things.

This study develops a model of learning-by-hiring, which, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is the first to propose, test and advance KM literature by showing the effectiveness of experienced hires to stimulate knowledge diffusion and core technological change over time after being hired. This study contributes to innovation, organizational learning and strategy literatures.

The study aims to determine the outcomes of mentorship in an online game system, as well as the characteristics of good mentors.

A combination of anonymized survey measures and in-game behavioral measures were used to power longitudinal analysis over an 11-month period in which protégés and non-mentored new players could be compared for their performance, social connections and retention.

Successful people were more likely to mentor others, and mentors increased protégés' skill. Protégés had significantly better retention, were more active and much more successful as players than non-protégés. Contrary to expectations, younger, less wealthy and educated people were more likely to be mentors and mentors did not transfer their longevity. Many of the qualities of the mentor remain largely irrelevant—what mattered most was the time spent together.

This is a study of an online game, which has unknown generalizability to other games and to offline settings.

The results show that getting mentors to spend dedicated time with protégés matters more than their characteristics.

Good mentorship does not require age or resources to provide real benefits.

This is the first study of mentorship to use survey and objective outcome measures together, over time, online.

The crux of this paper is to unveil efficient features and practical tools that can predict credit default.

Annual data of non-financial listed companies were taken from 2000 to 2020, along with 71 financial ratios. The dataset was bifurcated into three panels with three default assumptions. Logistic regression (LR) and k-nearest neighbor (KNN) binary classification algorithms were used to estimate credit default in this research.

The study’s findings revealed that features used in Model 3 (Case 3) were the efficient and best features comparatively. Results also showcased that KNN exposed higher accuracy than LR, which proves the supremacy of KNN on LR.

Using only two classifiers limits this research for a comprehensive comparison of results; this research was based on only financial data, which exhibits a sizeable room for including non-financial parameters in default estimation. Both limitations may be a direction for future research in this domain.

This study introduces efficient features and tools for credit default prediction using financial data, demonstrating KNN’s superior accuracy over LR and suggesting future research directions.

Resilience has evolved as a dynamic process in the entrepreneurship field. The purpose of this paper is to outline a comprehensive structure to analyse the patterns and trends in the publications of the existing literature at the junction of entrepreneurship and resilience. With the help of bibliometric and network analysis, this study offers insights into the topic that have not been evaluated and assessed by previous reviews.

A computerised search of 104 papers was performed using the Scopus database, and graphical visualisation of the bibliographic material was developed using VOSviewer software.

This comprehensive bibliometric mapping helps in the graphical visualisation of publication evolution of the domain along with identifying present research trends and possible future directions. There is not much collaborative research in the field, as most prolific thinkers work in isolation or in pairs. Hence, there are limited publications in top-rated journals. Future researchers need to work collaboratively to produce high-quality papers. Developed nations make a sound contribution to the field. The exact significance of resilience in entrepreneurship is yet to be determined due to a wide variety of themes that reflect the multi-disciplinary nature of the domain.

Uncovering the trends and developments of the field, this study provides a global perspective and potential themes lying at the junction of resilience and entrepreneurship. Hence, this study provides a robust roadmap for future researchers interested in this area.