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The study aims at providing a reliable system of real-time monitoring for underground mine and tunnels which detects any structural change in the network and reconfigures it for resuming the data delivery process. In high stress environments, e.g. underground mines and tunnels, real-time activity monitoring is an emerging issue. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) play a key role in ensuring the safety of people working in underground mines and tunnels. WSN not only provide real-time monitoring of underground environment but also detects any structural change in the network itself.

In this paper, results of empirical implementation of a re-configurable WSN, capable of self-healing approach, reconfigure the network connectivity upon failure or addition of nodes in the system. An open-source radio-frequency identification standard for WSN, named as DASH7, is used for practical implementation. The proposed system is capable of determining cluster breakage by sudden disruptions caused by roof falls, explosions and node failures, sensor coverage hole, node re-addition to the network and distress priority signal generation by the miner.

The proposed platform contributes to re-attain network state for establishing a communication link with fusion center in terms of: instant and accurate detection of collapse holes, acceptable error rate, time to re-attain network state, rapid distress signal propagation and low deployment cost. This platform is deployed in four different environments of anechoic chamber, hallway, outdoor and underground mine environment, to test the aforementioned scenarios using DASH7-compatible Bitsense Sensor Motes operating at 433 MHz. The effectiveness of the proposed approach has been experimentally validated for the single and multiple adjacent and disjoint node failures in all the four environments.

The number of monitoring systems was implemented for safety assurance in high stress environments before, but the novelty of our platform is long range, cost effectiveness, quick response to any structural change in the network, rapid and accurate data delivery using WSN operated on DASH7 protocol stack.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between employee polychronicity and employee creativity. This study also explores the mediating role of employee resilience in the relationship between employee polychronicity and employee creativity.

This study was based on a quantitative research design, and a survey instrument was used to collect data from doctors and nurses. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and four-step Baron and Kenney (1986) approaches were used to check the impact of nurses’ polychronicity on creativity through resilience.

Results proved that employee polychronicity positively influences employee creativity. The finding indicates that employee resilience acts as a mediator in the relationship between employee polychronicity and employee creativity.

The worth of this study rests on the deeper understanding of the employee polychronicity–employee creativity link in the health-care sector. Moreover, by bringing to the fore employee resilience as a mediator of the polychronicity–creativity relationship, this study provided a new vantage point to explore the intricacies concerned with the relationships between polychronicity, resilience and creativity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of Total Quality Management (TQM) practices on the performance of employees working in higher education institutions (HEIs). It also examines the mechanism through which TQM practices affect the performance of employees.

Data for the current study were obtained from both public and private sector HEIs of Pakistan. In total, 400 questionnaires were distributed among the administrative and academic staff of 3 universities and 240 usable questionnaires were received. Data were analyzed through regression analysis using SPSS.

The results show that the TQM positively and significantly determines employee performance, and the mediating variables of job satisfaction and affective commitment. Both the mediating variables show a mediating role in the TQM/employee performance relationship.

The study has practical implications for universities’ top management to focus on TQM practices that help in building and enhancing satisfaction, commitment, as well as performance of the employees that could ultimately result in better performance of the universities.

This research is an addition to the current literature and the first attempt in this area to the best of authors’ knowledge. This study will help in identifying how important and beneficial it would be for the services organizations to implement the TQM practices and identifying the impact of TQM practices on employee’s job performance.

The main aim of this study is to investigate the impact of climate change and water salinity on farmer’s income risk with future outlook mitigation. Salinity and climate change are a threat to agricultural productivity worldwide. However, the combined effects of climate change and salinity impacts on farmers' income are not well understood, particularly in developing countries.

The response-yield function and general maximum entropy methods were used to predict the impact of temperature, precipitation and salinity on crop yield. The target minimization of total absolute deviations (MOTAD)-positive mathematical programming model was used to simulate the impact of climate change and salinity on socioeconomic and environmental indicators. In the end, a multicriteria decision-making model was used, aiming at the selection of suitable climate scenarios.

The results revealed that precipitation shows a significantly decreasing trend, while temperature and groundwater salinity (EC) illustrate a significantly increasing trend. Climate change and EC negatively impact the farmer's income and water shadow prices. Maximum reduction in income and water shadow prices was observed for A2 scenario (−12.4% and 19.4%) during 2050. The environmental index was the most important, with priority of 43.4% compared to socioeconomic indicators. Subindex amount of water used was also significant in study area, with 28.1% priority. The technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution ranking system found that B1 was the best climatic scenario for adopting climate change adaptation in the research region.

In this study, farmers' income threats were assessed with the aspects of different climate scenario (A1, A1B and B1) over the horizons of 2030, 2040 and 2050 and three different indicators (economic, social and environmental) in Northwestern region of Pakistan. Only in arid and semiarid regions has climate change raised temperature and reduced rainfall, which are preliminary symptoms of growing salinity.

The rate of cesarean sections has been rapidly increased in the last few decades in all the developing as well as developed countries. The rate of cesarean sections determined by the World Health Organization has been crossed by many countries, like Brazil, India, China, USA, Australia, etc. Similarly, this rate has also increased in Pakistan. The purpose of this paper is to explore and identify the factors that are responsible for the rising rate of cesarean sections in Pakistan.

These factors are categorized under medical and non-medical factors. The medical factors include the obesity of mother, age of mother, weight of the baby, umbilical cord prolapse, fetal distress, abnormal presentation, dystocia and failure to progress. The non-medical factors include financial incentives of doctors, time convenience for doctors, high tolerance to surgery, patient’s preference toward cesarean section, private hospitals, public hospitals, income status of patients, rural areas, urban areas and the education of patients. To identify the critical factors, data have been collected and a multi-criteria decision-making technique, called Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory, is used.

The result shows that the medical factors that are responsible for the rise in the rate of cesarean sections are umbilical cord prolapse, age of mother and obesity of mother. On the other hand, the non-medical factors that are the reasons for the increase in cesarean sections are the large number of private hospitals and the unethical acts of the doctors in these hospitals, preference of patients, and either the unavailability of doctors or poor conditions of hospitals in rural areas.

Cesarean section is an important surgical intervention and is considered to be very essential in the cases of existing as well as potential medical problems to the mother or the baby. Cesarean section is also performed for non-medical reasons. In Pakistan, the number of private hospitals has increased and these hospitals provide good health care. However, these hospitals do not work under the rules and regulations set by the government. The doctors in private hospitals perform unnecessary cesarean sections in order to fulfill the demands of private hospital’s owners. In addition to this, it is also found that, nowadays, most women prefer to give birth through cesarean section in order to eliminate the pain of normal vaginal delivery.

Social development is the ultimate goal of every nation, and climate change is a major stumbling block. Climate Risk Index has documented several climate change events with their devastations in terms of lives lost and economic cost. This study aims to link the climate change and renewable energy with the social progress of extreme climate affected countries.

This research used the top 50 most climate-affected countries of the decade and estimated the impact of climate risk on social progress with moderation effects of renewable energy and technology. Several competing panel data models such as quantile regression, bootstrap quantile regression and feasible generalized least square are used to generate robust estimates.

The results confirm that climate hazards obstruct socioeconomic progress, but renewable energy and technology can help to mitigate the repercussion. Moreover, improved institutions enhance the social progress of nations.

Government should improve the institutional quality that enhances their performance in terms of Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law and Control of Corruption to increase social progress. In addition, society should use renewable energy instead of fossil fuels to avoid environmental degradation and health hazards. Innovation and technology also play an important role in social progress and living standards, so there should be free hand to private business research and development, encouraging research institutes and universities to come forward for innovation and research.

The ultimate goal of all human struggle is to have progress that facilitates human beings to uplift their living standard. One of the best measures that can tell us about a nation’s progress is Social Progress Index (SPI), and one of many factors that can abruptly change it is the climate; so this study is an attempt to link the relationship among these variables and also discuss the situation where the impact of climate can be reduced.

Although social progress is an important concept of today’s economics discussion, relatively few studies are using the SPI to measure social well-being. Similarly, there is consensus about the impact of climate on people, government and crops but relatively less study about its overall impact on social progress, so this study attempts to fill the gap about the relationship between social progress and climate change.

The main contribution of this study is the solution for the impact of climate risk. Climate risk is not in human control, and we cannot eliminate it, but we can reduce the negative impacts of climate change. Moderator impact of renewable energy decreases the negative impact of climate change, so there is a need to use more renewable energy to mitigate the bad consequences of climate on social progress. Another moderator is technology; using technology will also mitigate the negative consequences of the climate, so there is a need to facilitate technological advancement.

The study hypothesized that the impact of board diversity on financial distress (FD) is not direct but rather mediated by the firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of CSR as a mediator in the board diversity–FD relationship.

The study examined six board diversity dimensions – age, gender, nationality, education and tenure in 81 nonfinancial Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX)-listed firms from 2010 to 2021. The CSR engagement of the sample firms is evaluated using a multidimensional financial approach and the likelihood of FD is computed using Altman’s Z-score. The system-generalized method of moments estimator is used to meet the study objectives. In addition, several tests are run to determine the robustness of the study’s findings.

Based on the procedure for mediation analysis outlined by Baron and Kenny (1986), the authors found that CSR is significantly inversely associated with the likelihood of FD. Second, board diversity variables age, gender and national diversity were positively associated with CSR. Third, board age, gender and national diversity are significantly inversely related to FD. Finally, it was found that there is partial mediation between board age diversity and FD, whereas full mediation is shown between board age diversity and FD and between board nationality diversity and FD.

This study provides practical insights into PSX’s board diversity for companies, regulators and policymakers.

This research studies the connection between board diversity and FD. In addition, the current study extended the analysis by testing for the first time the mediating role of CSR in the diversity–distress relationship, particularly in the context of an emerging economy.

The purpose of the current flow configurations is to bring to attention the thermophysical aspects of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) Williamson nanofluid flow under the effects of Joule heating, nonlinear thermal radiation, variable thermal coefficient and activation energy past a rotating stretchable surface.

A mathematical model is examined to study the heat and mass transport analysis of steady MHD Williamson fluid flow past a rotating stretchable surface. Impact of activation energy with newly introduced variable diffusion coefficient at the mass equation is considered. The transport phenomenon is modeled by using highly nonlinear PDEs which are then reduced into dimensionless form by using similarity transformation. The resulting equations are then solved with the aid of fifth-order Fehlberg method.

The rotating fluid, heat and mass transport effects are analyzed for different values of parameters on velocity, energy and diffusion distributions. Parameters like the rotation parameter, Hartmann number and Weissenberg number control the flow field. In addition, the solar radiation, Joule heating, Prandtl number, thermal conductivity, concentration diffusion coefficient and activation energy control the temperature and concentration profiles inside the stretching surface. It can be analyzed that for higher values of thermal conductivity, Eckret number and solar radiation parameter the temperature profile increases, whereas opposite behavior is noticed for Prandtl number. Moreover, for increasing values of temperature difference parameter and thermal diffusion coefficient, the concentration profile shows reducing behavior.

This paper is useful for researchers working in mathematical and theoretical physics. Moreover, numerical results are very useful in industry and daily-use processes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the novel aspects of activation energy in the nonlinearly convective flow of Walter-B nanofluid in view of Cattaneo–Christov double-diffusion model over a permeable stretched sheet. Features of nonlinear thermal radiation, dual stratification, non-uniform heat generation/absorption, MHD and binary chemical reaction are also evaluated for present flow problem. Walter-B nanomaterial model is employed to describe the significant slip mechanism of Brownian and thermophoresis diffusions. Generalized Fourier’s and Fick’s laws are examined through Cattaneo–Christov double-diffusion model. Modified Arrhenius formula for activation energy is also implemented.

Several techniques are employed for solving nonlinear differential equations. The authors have used a homotopy technique (HAM) for our nonlinear problem to get convergent solutions. The homotopy analysis method (HAM) is a semi-analytical technique to solve nonlinear coupled ordinary/partial differential equations. The capability of the HAM to naturally display convergence of the series solution is unusual in analytical and semi-analytic approaches to nonlinear partial differential equations. This analytical method has the following great advantages over other techniques:

• It provides a series solution without depending upon small/large physical parameters and applicable for not only weakly but also strongly nonlinear problems.

• It guarantees the convergence of series solutions for nonlinear problems.

• It provides us a great choice to select the base function of the required solution and the corresponding auxiliary linear operator of the homotopy.

It provides a series solution without depending upon small/large physical parameters and applicable for not only weakly but also strongly nonlinear problems.

It guarantees the convergence of series solutions for nonlinear problems.

It provides us a great choice to select the base function of the required solution and the corresponding auxiliary linear operator of the homotopy.

Brief mathematical description of HAM technique (Liao, 2012; Mabood et al., 2016) is as follows. For a general nonlinear equation:

where N denotes a nonlinear operator, x the independent variables and u(x) is an unknown function, respectively. By means of generalizing the traditional homotopy method, Liao (1992) creates the so-called zero-order deformation equation:

here q∈[0, 1] is the embedding parameter, H(x) ≠ 0 is an auxiliary function, h(≠ 0) is a nonzero parameter, L is an auxiliary linear operator, u_o(x) is an initial guess of u(x) and u ˆ ( x ; q ) is an unknown function, respectively. It is significant that one has great freedom to choose auxiliary things in HAM. Noticeably, when q=0 and q=1, following holds:

Expanding u ˆ ( x ; q ) in Taylor series with respect to (q), we have:

If the initial guess, the auxiliary linear operator, the auxiliary h and the auxiliary function are selected properly, then the series (4) converges at q=1, then we have:

By defining a vector u → = ( u o ( x ) , u 1 ( x ) , u 2 ( x ) , … , u n ( x ) ) , and differentiating Equation (2) m-times with respect to (q) and then setting q=0, we obtain the mth-order deformation equation:

where:

Applying L⁻¹ on both sides of Equation (6), we get:

In this way, we obtain u_m for m ⩾ 1, at mth-order, we have:

It is evident from obtained results that the nanoparticle concentration field is directly proportional to the chemical reaction with activation energy. Additionally, both temperature and concentration distributions are declining functions of thermal and solutal stratification parameters (P₁) and (P₂), respectively. Moreover, temperature Θ(Ω₁) enhances for greater values of Brownian motion parameter (N_b), non-uniform heat source/sink parameter (B₁) and thermophoresis factor (N_t). Reverse behavior of concentration ϒ(Ω₁) field is remarked in view of (N_b) and (N_t). Graphs and tables are also constructed to analyze the effect of different flow parameters on skin friction coefficient, local Nusselt number, Sherwood numbers, velocity, temperature and concentration fields.

The novelty of the present problem is to inspect the Arrhenius activation energy phenomena for viscoelastic Walter-B nanofluid model with additional features of nonlinear thermal radiation, non-uniform heat generation/absorption, nonlinear mixed convection, thermal and solutal stratification. The novel aspect of binary chemical reaction is analyzed to characterize the impact of activation energy in the presence of Cattaneo–Christov double-diffusion model. The mathematical model of Buongiorno is employed to incorporate Brownian motion and thermophoresis effects due to nanoparticles.

Transformational and transactional leadership have become a fascinating issue for research since the work of Burns (1978) and Bass (1990). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the usefulness of the concept of transformational leadership using examples of political leadership from South Asia. It is argued that the construct of transformational leadership is practically non-existent. And, if the concept of transformational leadership exists, it cannot be specifically applied to the leaders who gain popularity and achieve their goals. It is also argued that positive and negative connotation with transformational and transactional leadership, respectively, is false. The popular leadership may be good for “one-point agenda,” but not necessarily transform the system.

Qualitative methods, historical analysis, and discourse analysis have been employed to understand the leaders’ actions and behaviors.

The discussion around the empirical examples show that the popular-successful leadership does not necessarily a transformational leadership even though the leadership achieves the goals.

The popular or so-called transformational leadership may be good to achieve one-point agenda, but it may not bring the required change and fruitful results to all stakeholders if it is not backed by a transactional strategy. Future research may turn the attention in three directions: whether or not the achieved goals were transformational or transactional; evaluation of leaders’ behavior from the perspective of consequential leadership; and the role of transactional leaders in the growth and strengthening of micro and macro organizations.