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Students’ progressing to tertiary (undergrad or higher) level education often faces problems due to the change in the educational settings that may directly or indirectly affect their studies and interim results. In addition, they may suffer from low self-esteem, which in turn may result from another set of issues such as negative peers, past poor results, unable to get into a school of choice and so on. Those who have to live away from home to attend a university could have their own set of problems. To provide support many universities have counseling offices to help the students tackle their problems. The counseling officers often give repeated appointments in an attempt to help solve these problems. At the university where the research was conducted, more than 75 percent of the students come from a rural background. These are students who, for the purposes of acquiring their tertiary-level education, have had to move to the city, away from their family. These students are known to have problems such as adjusting to urban life, missing home, managing all household chores by themselves, even a culture shock given the nature of urban life and so on, all of which may affect their studies. Unfortunately, the university under study does not employ a student counselor to look after students coming from rural areas. Therefore, to support such students it was thought that a peer counseling session might help the students help themselves.

A workshop using a collaborative approach to help students solve their own problems was designed and conducted. From three different departments, 78 students with a low Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA < 2.50 out of 4.0) participated in the problem-solving workshop. The students were guided in a collaborative environment where individual problems were first identified anonymously by working in pairs and possible solutions were presented by the students themselves by working in collaborative groups.

The paper proposes a performance-improving model to reduce the dropout rate and ensure graduation with a better CGPA. After six semesters of the intervention, the performance of the participating students was compared against the students with similar profile who did not attend the workshop. The perception of effectiveness of the collaborative guidance model was also measured by taking feedback from students.

The collaborative approach seems to benefit students by empowering them to think on their own to solve study-related problems by themselves. To become a standardized procedure, however, more rigorous testing across a greater cross section and number of subjects would be helpful. This paper provides an initial study of the methodology for further study and use.

As the collaborative approach purely involves peers, it benefits students by empowering them to solve study-related problems by themselves and indirectly help self-esteem development.

The purpose of this study is to explore whether the present measures being taken by the New Zealand (NZ) government are strengthening its non-banking sector effectively to address the recent financial crisis and ensure better financial stability to the economy.

The basic methodology used in this paper is the “documentary research method”. For this study, data has been collected from various published sources; e.g. The Bulletin, the Financial Stability Report and other publications of the Reserve Bank of NZ, publications by Statistics NZ and a number of NZ government Ministries, and some newspapers and magazines, etc.

We find that the NZ government is revamping the non-banking sector by introducing a prudential regime. However, we also find some gaps in the existing regulatory systems that need to be addressed to ensure soundness in the total system.

The basic limitation of documentary research will be applicable to this study. Further research may be carried out to investigate the policy responses of government from banking, corporate governance and other regulatory perspectives.

Our study identifies some gaps in current policy responses along with some suggestions for the future that may be taken into consideration by the respective policy-makers to further strengthen the support provided by policy responses to financial crises.

Our study provides a unique insight into the evaluation of post-GFC policy response and its effectiveness with regard to non-banking sector and, to our knowledge, the first of its kind in NZ in the post-global financial crisis period.

This study aims to investigate the proposed relationships concerning the supply chain collaboration (SCC) practices and knowledge sharing with organizational performance in the pharmaceutical industry of a developing country.

In total, 203 executives working in various pharmaceutical companies of Bangladesh participated in the study. Factor analysis and structural equation modeling were applied to test the proposed research hypotheses.

This study reveals that both knowledge sharing and collaboration practices in the supply chain significantly influence customer satisfaction leading to business competitiveness as evidenced in the superior product quality and new product innovation in this knowledge-intensive industry. It further reveals a statistically significant correlation between SCC and knowledge sharing practices.

This study is performed only on the manufacturers in the pharmaceutical industry from the perspective of a developing country. Future studies could cover other entities operating in a pharmaceutical supply chain.

The findings of the study have significant practical implications due to the fact that the aspect of knowledge sharing exerts influence on customer satisfaction that holds the key to competitive priorities. The managers need to address this issue seriously.

Few studies have been performed vis-a-vis the impact of both SCC and knowledge sharing on the organizational outcomes in the pharmaceutical industry from the perspective of a developing country.

This paper aims at examining the past as well as the current issues responsible for the most recent Arab-uprising.

The empirical evidence based on regression and correlation together with tabular presentations suggests that the issue of Arab-uprising can be examined from both theoretical and factual evidence. Both theoretical and empirical findings testify the extremely high interrelationships existing among the determinants and co-determinants of Arab-uprising. Based on the three most fundamental pre-requisites for living a life with satisfaction based on personal honour, dignity, voice, peace, justice and equality of opportunity, the economic, political and socio-cultural components are found to be neglected in the Arab World. The constraint of data limited the scope to use systematically available and reliable independent variables, in particular, warranted by any sophisticated empirical model.

The findings will have policy directions for the policy-makers/politicians to address the serious issues involving empowerments. It is argued that the ad hoc solution based on buying the dissent of the critics using handouts is not a long-term sustainable solution to the problems. The findings are also expected to create social consciousness among those who are most concerned to see the changes in the society for betterment where every citizen can stand for his honour, dignity and voice, justice and equality.

It is expected that the general reader can understand the issues raised in this paper, internalize the ideas and create an overall environment to redirect the policy frameworks for resolving the social problems without conflict.

This paper aims to study institutions, human capital and economic growth in developing countries.

The study applies dynamic system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) and simultaneous quantile regression on a panel of 120 developing countries for the period of 1996-2014.

The findings show that human development and institutions do have a significant positive effect on economic growth. Interestingly, institutions and human development have a significant negative interactive effect on the economic growth of developing countries. This paper argues that incremental investment in human development would impact economic growth negatively in the presence of weak and dysfunctional institutions because additional stock tends to be employed in rent-seeking and socially unproductive activities.

The policy makers should bear in mind the critical role played by the institutions and the initial stage of growth of a country in making their education and health policies more effective.

The most important novelty is the study of various transmission channels: political, economic and financial institutions through which human development affect economic growth in developing countries. This paper also studies the Islamic economic development concept and empirically investigates whether Muslim countries are different from their counterparts. Moreover, this study extends the existing empirical growth literature by simultaneously applying dynamic system GMM and quantile regression techniques.

The origin of perfumery can be traced back to the true cradle of human civilization and culture in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. The world’s first referenced chemist was a perfumer named Tapputi-Belatekallim who lived in Babylon more than 3,000 years ago. She used her intimate knowledge of chemistry to develop various formulations and techniques to revolutionize the process of perfumery creation. Similarly, Ajmal is one of the first companies in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to have pioneered the science and art of perfumery creation. This case study describes the inspiring journey of Ajmal Perfumes which began in the farms of a small village located in Hojai, Assam, to becoming a world-class perfumer with a global reach of over 45 countries. From “Farm to Flacon,” (Flacon a.k.a glass bottle) the company’s perfect control over their seamless value chain has enabled them to sustainably grow their business while maintaining high standards of quality. Their performance across five major dimensions (finance, market, processes, people, and corporate social responsibility [CSR]) is used to gauge their success. In this case analysis, the strategic framework behind the success of Ajmal Perfumes is captured. Transformational Leadership (TL), Customer Centricity (CC), Intrapreneurial Behavior (IB), Total Quality Management (TQM), Innovation Success (IS), Absorptive Capacity (AC), and CSR are identified as their key drivers of success. A critical review of existing literature related to success drivers was also undertaken that brought forward knowledge gaps and future areas of research in the domain of TQM and AC.

This paper aims to investigate the natural convection fluid flow and heat transfer in a finned/multi-pipe cavity.

The cavity is filled with the CuO-water nanofluid. The Koo–Kleinstreuer–Li model is used to estimate the dynamic viscosity and consider Brownian motion. On the other hand, the effect of the shapes of nanoparticles on the thermal conductivity and related heat transfer rate is presented.

In the present investigation, the governing parameters are Rayleigh number, CuO nanoparticle concentration in pure water and the thermal arrangements of internal active fins and solid bodies. Impacts of these parameters on the nanofluid flow, heat transfer rate, total/local entropy generation and heatlines are presented. It is concluded that adding nanoparticles to the pure fluid has a significant positive influence on the heat transfer performance. In addition, the average Nusselt number and total entropy generation have direct a relationship with the Rayleigh number. The thermal arrangement of the internal bodies and fins is a good controlling tool to determine the desired magnitude of heat transfer rate.

The originality of this paper is to use the lattice Boltzmann method in simulating the nanofluid flow and heat transfer within a cavity included with internal active bodies and fins.