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This study aims to explore sustainable development and business success (BS) through decision-making (DM) in Pakistan’s circular economy.

This is a co-relational study in which the researchers used cross-sectional data collected from the managers of Pakistan’s manufacturing industries. Accordingly, the authors based this study’s findings on 373 valid samples.

This study’s structural equation modeling results reveal that DM has a positive and significant effect on sustainable development, which comprises competitiveness, business performance enhancement, flexibility, customer satisfaction and technology development. Moreover, DM positively and significantly affects BS.

This study’s findings support sustainable development, strengthen the socioeconomic conditions and bring about the industries’ well-being through DM. In addition, these findings demonstrate the need for the circular economy to tackle industrial challenges and simultaneously open up economic and environmental growth opportunities for society.

This study offers the original contribution from a circular economy perspective; there needs to be more empirical evidence among managers of manufacturing industries. Besides, this study provides DM’s role in achieving sustainable development in the presence of BS, which has disappeared in an integrated way, particularly in a circular context.

This paper aims to analyse how financial literacy (FL) is conceptualised and operationalised in the Indian context.

A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) protocol. Thirty-six articles published between 2010 and 2020 were considered for analysis. The FL conceptualisation was examined based on knowledge, ability, skill, attitude and confidence elements. The FL operationalisation was analysed using the modified version of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 model for organising the domain for an assessment framework.

The findings indicate that, despite offering operationalisation details of the FL, 13 out of 36 studies did not include a conceptual definition of FL. Of the 23 studies that mentioned a conceptual definition, 87% are primarily focused on the “knowledge” element and only 39% have combined knowledge, ability/skill and attitude elements in defining FL. As in the developed countries, the Indian studies also preferred investment/saving-related contents in their FL measures. The volume of content focusing on the financial landscape is meagre amongst the FL measures used in India and developed countries. The survey instruments of most studies have been designed in the individuals’ context but have failed to measure the extent to which individuals apply the knowledge in performing their day-to-day financial transactions. Further, it was found that 20 out of 36 studies did not convert the FL level of their target groups into a single indicator or operational value.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that explores the FL’s assessment practices in India. Further, this study offers new insights by comparing the contents of FL measures used in Indian studies with those used in developed countries.

Data librarianship, or data-driven librarianship, is the combination of information science, data science and e-science fields and is gaining gradual importance in the library and information science (LIS) profession. Hence, this study investigates the data librarianship core concepts (motivational factors, challenges, skills and appropriate training platforms) to learn and successfully launch data librarianship services.

A survey method was used and the data were collected through online questionnaire. Purposive sampling method was applied and 132 responses were received with 76 respondents from the public and 56 from the private sector universities of Pakistan. The statistical package for social sciences (SPSS version 25) was used, and descriptive and inferential statistics were applied to analyzed the data.

LIS professionals understand the importance of data-driven library services and perceive that such services are helpful in evolving the image of the library, helping with the establishment of institutional data repositories/data banks, developing data resources and services for library patrons and especially researchers, and receiving appreciation and acknowledgment from the higher authorities. The major challenges that emerged from the data were: missing data policies, limited training opportunities for data librarianship roles, no additional financial benefits, lack of infrastructure and systems, lack of organizational support for the initiation of data-driven services, and lack of skills, knowledge and expertise. Data librarianship is in its early stages in Pakistan, and consequently, the LIS professionals are lacking basic, advanced and technical data-driven skills.

The policy, theoretical and practical implications describe an immediate need for framing data policies. Such policies will help the libraries or any other relevant entities to store the data and assign metadata and documentation in such a way that it is easy to retrieve and reusable for others.

This is the first study in Pakistan to investigate the perceptions of LIS professionals about data librarianship core concepts: motivational factors, challenges, skills and appropriate training platforms to grasp data-driven skills and successfully launch library services.

Studies focusing on the growth of indigenous construction firms (ICFs) are getting dated, and unreflective of recent policy changes in developing countries. This study sought to analyze critical barriers to the growth of ICFs and obtain an unsupervised parsimonious grouping of the barriers for policy improvements.

A mix of quantitative and qualitative research methods was adopted for the study. ICFs in Nigeria were cross-sectionally surveyed based on a set of firm growth barriers obtained from literature and refined by focus group discussion. Descriptive (means, standard deviations, percentages) and inferential (Kruskal-Wallice and Mann-Whitney U test) statistics were used in the analyses of the data. Factor analysis was used to group the variables.

Results showed that “declining” ICFs are more negatively impacted by low construction mechanization/use of labor intensive methods, inadequate geographical reach of operations, and inadequate flow of jobs/low demand than “stunted” and “growing” ICFs. The three main domains of critical barriers to the growth of ICFs were identified in descending order of importance as low patronage, difficulty accessing funds, and business management incapacity.

The study recommends improvements in access to funds for ICFs by increasing the percentage of advance payments, and creating a pool of equipment for easy hire by ICFs. ICFs are advised to seek information on tendering opportunities outside their regions of domicile in order to increase their patronage.

This study reveals differences in the impacts of growth barriers on ICFs at different growth levels. This study also clarifies persisting barriers to the growth of ICFs [primarily construction micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs)] from a developing country perspective using a longer list of variables.