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The financial policies of the modern world corporations and their investment decisions are generally considered as interrelated because the agency problems, associated with the debt level and its maturity structure, give rise to incentives for overinvestment or underinvestment. The present study empirically investigates the linkage between debt maturity structure and firm investment in a financially constrained environment, using Pakistan as a case study, to determine how the institutional environment in which firms operate affect these decisions and their linkage.

The empirical analysis is carried in a panel data setting using panel regression models as the baseline methods. Moreover, generalized methods of moments (GMM) estimators are used, coupled with the instrumental variables approach, for robustness and improving the efficiency and consistency of estimates.

Results suggest that firms rely more on short financing in Pakistan. Thus, given the capital structure which is characterized by higher proportion of short-term financing, the higher level of leverage is less likely to cause underinvestment problem. However, the underinvestment problem do persists in the firms that have higher portion of long-term debt. These findings imply that the debt-overhang problem may persist even in the financially constrained environments where attractive investment opportunities are limited, and long-term financing is difficult to acquire.

This study contributes to the literature by revealing how corporate investment and financing decisions and their linkage is influenced by the institutional environment of the less developed countries which is characterized by underdeveloped financial markets, inefficient legal system and weak investor protection system.

This paper provides a snapshot of educational and economic trends across South Asia with an exploratory and comparative approach. Before COVID-19, South Asia was the world’s fastest-growing regional economy, concurrently achieving major strides in poverty reduction and access to education. Despite the region’s economic and educational accomplishments, the countries of South Asia fall short of international benchmarks in public education expenditure, resulting in a persistent lag in educational quality that hampers individuals, the workforce, and overall economic productivity. The paper highlights themes in the literature, including context-specific evidence for the various theories of economic growth, the returns to education, and educational inputs (e.g., teachers and private schools) that highlight how spending can be leveraged to increase educational outcomes. In addition, it examines the relationship between education, poverty, and marginalization factors that explain why some populations are deprived of education and its benefits. We provide a broad perspective of the dynamics of the economics of education and the related challenges in this region. This discussion aims to enhance the understanding of the inefficiencies in South Asia’s educational systems and, ultimately, in the development of the region’s human capacities.

This study investigates the interaction between organizational strategic factors (Leadership and management support [LMS] and green learning orientation [GLO]) and green innovation performance (GIP), through the lens of resource-based view (RBV) theory. It examines both the direct and indirect impacts of these factors on GIP via green knowledge management (GKM), and explores how green absorptive capacity (GAC) enhances these relationships.

Using Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and moderated mediation analysis, we analyzed responses from 419 individuals across 154 manufacturing firms in Pakistan to understand these dynamics.

Results show that LMS and GLO significantly affect GIP, both directly and indirectly, through GKM. Furthermore, GAC intensifies the impact of GLO on GKM and the influence of GKM on GIP, indicating a moderated mediation effect.

Highlighting the importance of LMS, GLO, GKM, and GAC, the study suggests that focusing on these areas can help firms align their strategies with sustainability goals, enhancing their GIP. These insights can guide policymakers in creating supportive strategies for businesses to improve their GAC, facilitating better knowledge adoption and application.

The research contributes to the RBV theory by clarifying the role of strategic organizational factors in enhancing GIP within manufacturing firms, offering a clearer path to achieving sustainability goals.

Organizations encourage green creativity among their employees to reduce environmental pollution and attain sustainable development. Green, inclusive leadership can produce positive outcomes and influence employees' green innovation. However, green inclusive leadership and green creativity are empirically less examined in the sustainability literature. Therefore, this study theorized a conceptual model based on the organizational creativity theory to explore the influence of green inclusive leadership on employees’ green creativity. It also aimed to explore the intermediating effect of green passion and green absorptive capacity on the relationship between green inclusive leadership and green creativity.

Data were gathered through a self-administered questionnaire-based survey from 540 employees of a manufacturing enterprise in China. The hypotheses were analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique.

The findings reveal that green inclusive leadership positively and significantly influences employees' green creativity. Moreover, the results show that green passion and green absorptive capacity play positive mediating roles in the relationship between green inclusive leadership and green creativity.

This study offers practical implications for Chinese manufacturing enterprises, where green inclusive leadership is essential to enhance green passion, green absorptive capacity and green creativity among employees.

Drawing upon the organizational creativity theory, this research study is novel because it is one of the few empirical research studies to explore green inclusive leadership and green creativity in Chinese manufacturing enterprises. It further establishes the positive mediating role of green passion and green absorptive capacity in the relationship between green inclusive leadership and green creativity.

This study aims to assess mental health literacy (MHL) in the general population using six case vignettes related to depression, mania, psychosis, conversion disorder (CD), obsessive compulsion disorder (OCD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Each vignette had nine items related to MHL. The sample comprised 4,590 young adults conveniently selected from twin cities in Pakistan. Participants’ responses were converted into percentages and percentiles to find MHL levels.

The men had moderate MHL in depression and inadequate MHL in the remaining five illnesses. The women had adequate MHL in depression and moderate MHL in mania, psychosis, OCD and PTSD while inadequate in CD. Comparing item-wise understanding, the participants had an adequate understanding of identifying the illness, who could suffer and whether the illness was treatable. However, they struggled with naming the illness, knowing about it and how to treat and identify the person who can treat it.

The findings of this study are helpful for mental health professionals, policymakers and individuals who identify the target areas for engagement and improving MHL in the general population.

This study provides data about MHL related to six mental illnesses, unlike previous studies focusing on a few illnesses. This study recommends awareness sessions, community workshops and engaging social and electronic media for improving MHL and seeking help from relevant health professionals for mental illnesses instead of spiritual healers and witchcraft.

Teacher Education has been transforming throughout the world to cater to the emerging needs of quality education. Significant developments have taken place nationally and internationally in political, economic, and cultural fields, influencing education in general and teacher education in particular. The quality of education depends to a great extent on the quality of teachers. And, the quality of teachers depends on the way they are educated and trained. Pakistan has a vast education sector and a huge teaching force but teacher education in the country has not been keeping pace with modernization and development globally. Teacher education curricula, dissemination, evaluation and implementation revolved around traditional models for decades. However, there has been a growing realization to reform the teacher education system lately. The education policy (2009) of Pakistan indicates such realization on the part of the stakeholders. This chapter reports on an important teacher education reform program, which is based on collaboration between the government of Pakistan and the USAID. The Teacher Education Project (TEP), assisted by USAID, is a reform initiative that aimed at restructuring and modernizing teacher education in Pakistan. This chapter aims to provide insights into the objectives, importance and achievements of the project in terms of shaping the future direction of teacher education in Pakistan. It reports on the substantial structural and policy changes that took place in teacher education under the project. This chapter also highlights the possible challenges in the way of useful implementation and sustainability of this and similar education reform initiatives in Pakistan.

This study aims to predict customers’ intention (INT) to visit green hotels through an extended norm activation model (NAM) framework. The extended NAM includes environmental concern (EC), price consciousness (PC) and aesthetic values (AEV).

A quantitative survey design was used to collect 340 valid responses from customers in Pakistan. Partial least square - structural equation modeling was used to assess the hypothesized relationships.

The results show that EC and awareness of consequences have a significant ascription of responsibility (AR) and personal norms (PN) towards INT. The results confirmed the moderating effect of PC on the relationship between PN and INT and the moderating effect of AEV on relationship between PN and INT and AR and INT. The findings indicate that PN does not mediate the relationship between AR and INT. These findings indicate that customers are aware of the consequences of resource depletion and environmental pollution that result from the unsustainable hotel practices. Therefore, customers tend to visit aesthetically green hotels at affordable prices.

The study proposes that green hotels should design marketing strategies in a way that increases customers’ awareness and concern towards environmental issues. Marketing campaigns focusing on environmental aspects of green hotels enhance its green reputation and motivate customers to visit green hotels. In addition, managers must consider enhancing the beauty of hotels at a competitive price.

This is the first study to use an extended NAM by integrating EC, average variance extracted and PC to predict customers’ INT towards green hotels. The extended NAM framework provides comprehensive understanding of the relationships between EC, AR and PN regarding visiting green hotels. In addition, the study emphasizes on AEV’s crucial role in influencing customers’ INT to visit green hotels.

Object detection models have gained considerable popularity as they aid in lot of applications, like monitoring, video surveillance, etc. Object detection through the video tracking faces lot of challenges, as most of the videos obtained as the real time stream are affected due to the environmental factors.

This research develops a system for crowd tracking and crowd behaviour recognition using hybrid tracking model. The input for the proposed crowd tracking system is high density crowd videos containing hundreds of people. The first step is to detect human through visual recognition algorithms. Here, a priori knowledge of location point is given as input to visual recognition algorithm. The visual recognition algorithm identifies the human through the constraints defined within Minimum Bounding Rectangle (MBR). Then, the spatial tracking model based tracks the path of the human object movement in the video frame, and the tracking is carried out by extraction of color histogram and texture features. Also, the temporal tracking model is applied based on NARX neural network model, which is effectively utilized to detect the location of moving objects. Once the path of the person is tracked, the behaviour of every human object is identified using the Optimal Support Vector Machine which is newly developed by combing SVM and optimization algorithm, namely MBSO. The proposed MBSO algorithm is developed through the integration of the existing techniques, like BSA and MBO.

The dataset for the object tracking is utilized from Tracking in high crowd density dataset. The proposed OSVM classifier has attained improved performance with the values of 0.95 for accuracy.

This paper presents a hybrid high density video tracking model, and the behaviour recognition model. The proposed hybrid tracking model tracks the path of the object in the video through the temporal tracking and spatial tracking. The features train the proposed OSVM classifier based on the weights selected by the proposed MBSO algorithm. The proposed MBSO algorithm can be regarded as the modified version of the BSO algorithm.

The purpose of this study is to frame the dimensions of the external institutional environment, namely, cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative dimensions as the main actors in the organisational field. More precisely, Libyan commercial banks have been identified as empirical evidence, to identify constraints of the institutional environment governing the behaviour and decision-making of commercial banks, when adopting Islamic financial transactions.

A questionnaire has been designed for 14 Libyan commercial banks which is distributed to the Board of Directors, managers, directors of departments, and personnel. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and the measurement model by using the first-order and second-order confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) have been applied as essential steps to embody the conceptual framework and test the research hypotheses.

The results of the EFA indicated sufficient correlation among the dimensions of the external environment. The CFA supported this study’s hypotheses. The modelling showed that the cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative dimensions are institutional constraints impeding Libyan commercial banks’ adoption of Islamic financial transactions. Interestingly, the findings of the CFA align with the EFA findings in supporting the conceptual framework of the research. They portrayed that the cultural-cognitive dimension has been identified by explicit and implicit cognition.

This study systematically embodies the dimensions of the external institutional environment, namely, cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative dimensions, as the main factors in the organisational field to be conceptually rich lenses to investigate social considerations to reinforce institutional thought broadly. The results of this study were consistent with extant Islamic financial literature, reflecting symmetry and similarity across commercial banks, particularly at the first stage of adopting Islamic financial transactions.

The unsustainable practices of hotels have greatly contributed to ecological imbalances, encompassing excessive energy and water consumption, improper waste disposal and inadequate resource management. Information publicity (IP) plays an effective role in influencing tourists' intentions to visit green hotels. Therefore, the current study has incorporated IP into the value-belief norm (VBN) framework to examine tourists' intentions to visit green hotels.

This study is a correlational research design, and the purposive sampling technique was employed for the data collection. The study used 355 valid data and analyzed them via partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The study results show that egoistic values have the greatest impact on pro-environmental beliefs (ENBs). In addition, the results indicate the impact of ENB and IP on personal norms (PNs), leading toward the intention to visit green hotels.

This study helps hotel managers devise and execute effective marketing strategies for green hotels. Hospitality marketers should pay more attention to values, orientations and IP, emphasizing the significance of these factors in increasing the visits of customers to green hotels.

IP, an important factor that informs tourists about hotels that are environmentally friendly, has been neglected in the tourism research. This research examines the significance of IP in developing ENBs and influencing the PN of tourists.