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The current paper is an attempt to evaluate the role of CBOs in promoting citizen participation in the decision-making process of local government institutions of Gujranwala, Punjab, Pakistan. Among the most used evaluation techniques of participatory citizenship, the researchers have used an outcome driven approach based on “social goals.” Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which CBOs have been effectual for the promotion of participatory citizenship in decision making of local government institutions in Punjab, Pakistan. In addition, the paper also explores the influence and success level of CBOs in incorporating the preferences and needs of public in decision-making of local government services.

For this purpose, data have been collected through a self-administered survey questionnaire including both open and close-ended questions. A total of 424 questionnaires were collected from citizens, local government officials and CBO members. Standard survey techniques such as frequency distribution and comparative analyses were used for data analysis.

In assessing the role of CBOs in educating all the stakeholders and the general public as well as to ascertain the incorporation of public needs and values into local government decision making, the paper finds that the effectiveness of CBOs is very low to fulfill its objectives. The study suggests the need to have more programs to educate CBOs, enhance public awareness campaigns and also to put into place proper mechanisms to incorporate and evaluate the public needs.

This paper fulfills the much-needed research gap by the exploring the unknown contribution of CBOs in Pakistan. The paper has added value to the current literature by highlighting that unless there is strong political will and eagerness of local bureaucracy to give up their powers, the inclusion of citizen participation through CBOs in decision making of local government would just be a futile exercise.

Scientists in Pakistan are currently developing biofortified wheat varieties to address widespread zinc deficiency, especially among women and children in poorer rural households. The purpose of this paper is to understand how the productivity and efficiency of small-scale and marginal wheat farmers can be improved so that their households may benefit from zinc-fortified varieties.

The authors estimate a stochastic frontier production function model with data from a survey of wheat farmers conducted in Punjab, Pakistan in 2011.

The productivities of the newer varieties of wheat were significantly greater than the older varieties, as expected. Farmers growing wheat in the rice-wheat and cotton-wheat zones tend to be more efficient than farmers from the mixed zone. Farmers who wait to adopt a leading variety are not less efficient than earlier adopters, but the longer the time until they switch varieties again, the more inefficient is their wheat production. Older farmers tend to be more technically inefficient than younger farmers, but the effect of education is not statistically significant. Wheat farmers with access to extension advice are more efficient. Farmers whose land suffered from severe salinity or severe toxicity are less productive and less efficient than others.

The authors find no differences in technical inefficiency effects associated with growing the four most popular varieties, either grown alone or with other varieties – suggesting that no single leading variety should be targeted for biofortification. In contrast to some earlier studies, the authors find that small-scale farmers tend to be less technically efficient. This result underscores the need to specifically target this group in promotional programs, and also to complement these with reinforcement of agronomic recommendations.

This project is part of the HarvestPlus program to determine the appropriate variety or varieties to biofortify with zinc so that Pakistan’s population can have better health and well-being. Further, the results show that there it is desirable to undertake further studies to improve the productivity and efficiency of wheat farmers in the Punjab, Pakistan to increase the health and well-being of the population in general.

This study is a part of the doctoral dissertation that proposes concrete measures to improve health-care information outreach program for rural health-care professionals in primary and secondary health care in Punjab, Pakistan. This study aims to report on the barriers to accessing and using online health-care information from rural settings of the Punjab province of Pakistan.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted in primary and secondary health-care settings in the Punjab province of Pakistan. The study’s population consisted of the rural primary care physicians (PCPs), who were geographically dispersed across 2,873 different remote health-care settings across Punjab. These practice settings included 2,455 basic health units, 293 rural health centers, 89 tehsil headquarter hospitals and 36 district headquarter hospitals.

Limited internet access, non-availability of required equipment and lack of training facilities were identified as the main barriers. PCPs’ gender, previous enrollment in post-graduation programs and type of health-care facility were significant factors in the perceived barriers related to both “non-availability of required equipment” and “inadequate training facilities on the use of information resources”.

The findings of the study hold some important practical implications for different stakeholders. This study identifies and addresses the barriers to accessing and using health-care information for PCPs in rural settings. The success of the health-care information outreach program in Punjab, Pakistan, should rely on the eradication of these barriers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first large-scale study in Pakistan that assesses the barriers and proposes ways to overcome these barriers to effectively access and use health-care information.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the vulnerability to food insecurity in rural Punjab, Pakistan.

Primary data of 1,152 households were collected. The extent of food deficiency was measured using dietary intake assessment method (seven days). Value at Risk (VaR) and conditional Value at Risk (cVaR), a method widely used for risk analysis in financial institutes, were applied to assess the vulnerability to food insecurity.

In total, 23 percent of the sample households were measured as food deficient. The VaR and cVaR results identified that the lowest 3 percentiles (up to 30 percent) were at risk to become food deficient without any seasonal shortages. In case of shocks, up till sixth percentiles (60 percent) will be as at risk of food deficiency. This study suggests that multi-period data, at least quarterly, are required to predict vulnerability. It is suggested that a blanket policy is not a good approach. Once the most vulnerable households are identified, a targeted approach must be opted.

Generalizing the results of one week’s calorie calculations may produce biased results that may mislead the policy process. A multi-period data collection is costly and cumbersome. The application of VaR and cVaR helps overcome this issue. Furthermore, this is one of the initial studies to apply these methods to food security analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive view of barriers that restrict the adoption of new specializations and courses in the higher education institutions of Southern Punjab, Pakistan.

Quantitative methods were used to get the responses from the respondents of different institution of target areas. Results were further analyzed with the help of statistical tools. In total, 203 respondents were approached to fill the carefully designed questionnaire.

Results of the study clearly show four major factors, including internal barrier, external barrier, cultural barrier and leadership barrier, that are restricting the introduction and adoption of new specialization courses in higher education institutes of Southern Punjab. Suggestions at the end are made to address the restrictions.

The current study states only six higher education institution of Southern Punjab, which is a kind of limitation itself. This study is conducted by taking into account the needs and trends of the businesses and markets; student perspective is not taken about the situation in this study, which is an another limitation of the study. To get more accurate and validated results, the higher education institutions located in other areas of Pakistan could be studied, which was not done in this study because of time and resource limitations.

This study may prove worthy to bring a positive and practical shift in the Pakistani higher education system. This study may also prove beneficial to show the actual picture of the situation to national leaders, academician and policy maker so that things are taken seriously to actually align the Pakistani higher education system with the emerging market demands and trends. Suggestions made in this study may provide comprehensive guidelines to the academic strategists to uplift the higher education institutions of Pakistan up to the international standards and requirements, so the Pakistani higher education institutions can get a respectful place in the international academic rankings.

The paper highlights the restrictions and helps the institutions to introduce new specialization courses.

This study aims to investigate the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on student’s learning primarily concentrating on the following factors: including availability, accessibility and user-ability of using ICT resources. This investigation will highlight the role of ICT in the pedagogical activities of students, especially in their learning.

A questionnaire was designed to comprehend the questions related to the objectives and a sample of 275 students through convenience sampling technique was selected that was enrolled in various degree programs of the University of the Punjab, Pakistan. Primarily the descriptive analysis was made and data were presented in tabulated form. However, for inferential analysis, the Pearson correlation test was applied to determine the relationship among the dependent and independent variables including (availability, accessibility user-ability and student’s learning) and to test the hypotheses of the study.

The findings disclose that students at the University of the Punjab have access to various kinds of ICT applications and resources. Moreover, they have an adequate number of ICT equipment available for their use and they are familiar with various kinds of ICT applications and resources which they use in various educational tasks during their studies. A strong positive linear correlation exists between availability, accessibility and user-ability of using ICT resources and the student’s educational learning. This confirms that ICT plays a significant role in the student’s educational accomplishments. It helps students in searching, retrieving and consulting various types of information sources. It also helps them in completing their educational tasks in a quick manner. Students at all levels also see it as a matter of great importance to acquire ICT-related skills as this can help them to be more productive in their educational accomplishments.

This study concludes that availability, accessibility, adequacy and user ability to use the ICT resources positively impact students learning. Therefore, it is highly recommended for students to learn ICT-related skills and to make the best use of the different communication technologies in their pedagogical activities. Moreover, if academic institutions in Pakistan give more emphasis on developing ICT-based infrastructure and ICT skilled manpower then this can also bring fruitful results in the learning process of student’s educational endeavors.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between management support, quality infrastructure, staff training and the effectiveness of quality enhancement cells (QECs) established in higher education institutions.

Data were acquired via a structured questionnaire dispatched to faculty members across 12 public and private universities, primarily situated in Punjab, Pakistan. Among the 200 questionnaires distributed, 180 were retrieved and 140 were deemed valid. The proposed relationships were examined using SPSS–25 and PLS–SEM.

The results show a positive and significant relationship between management support, quality infrastructure and staff training with QECs' effectiveness. The study also highlights that the effectiveness of QECs is “Good” in only two of the 12 universities, while in most universities it is “Barely Acceptable”. Furthermore, QECs' effectiveness is slightly better in public universities compared to private institutions.

The study employs convenience sampling and a cross-sectional approach, focusing on faculty members from 12 universities, primarily in Punjab, Pakistan. To enhance future research, larger samples and probability-based sampling should be considered, while involving quality managers and students for a broader perspective.

The research suggests policymakers and university leaders should strengthen their support by providing resources, quality infrastructure and training for academic and administrative staff. This would enhance the effectiveness of QECs and improve the overall quality of education in both public and private universities.

This study contributes to the literature on quality assurance in higher education by emphasizing the significance of QECs concerning management support, quality infrastructure and staff training – areas that are often overlooked in Pakistani universities.

Motivation of the employees is extensively considered as an antidote for the overall success of the organizations. This study primarily aims to investigate the impact of motivation on the job performance of university librarians in Pakistan.

Quantitative research design followed by a survey method under an extended theory of motivation was applied. Data were collected from 123 professional librarians of 79 university libraries in Punjab province, Pakistan. The study tested hypotheses having used regression statistical test through Statistical Package for Social Sciences Software (Version 26).

Results of the study revealed that motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic), the expectation of benefits, satisfaction of meta needs and challenging situations have a strong positive impact on the optimum job performance of university librarians.

This research has theoretical implications for the researchers and practical insights for human resource managers to get maximum outcomes for organizational development. The results of the study may be generalized to the university libraries of other countries having similar socio-economic and cultural situations.

This study developed a framework based upon empirically tested hypotheses that might be used as drivers for different motivation practices to augment employees’ commitment to the organizations.

Although the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an inspiring catch all in the eyes of researchers and practitioners, little from its psychological and behavioural consequences has been focused. This study aims to examine the relationship between CSR and organizational citizenship behaviour and the underlying mechanism between this relation using organizational identification and organizational commitment as mediating variables.

A questionnaire-based survey was given to 486 Malaysian employees of the hotel industry.

First, instruments were checked regarding its unidimensionality by applying confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and then, structural equation modelling (SEM) was applied to test the model. SEM confirms that organizational commitment (OC) mediate the relationship between CSR and organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB), while organizational identification (OI) mediate the relationship between CSR and OC.

The study selected sample from Malaysia hotel industry, the results might be different if samples are taken from a geographically different area.

The study has theoretical and practical implications for hotel managers to enhance employees’ identification, commitment and extra-role behaviour.

The study revealed underlying mechanism between CSR and OCB by incorporating OC and OI as mediating variables.

The main aim of this paper is to evaluate the satisfaction level of researchers with electronic resources as well as the uses, purposes, reasons and problems faced by them in using of these resources in the context of Pakistani Universities.

This paper opted for a quantitative study using a questionnaire for survey. Response rate was 80 per cent and data were analyzed from 261 researchers of two universities of Pakistan. Five-point Likert scale ranked from “Dissatisfied” (5) to “Extremely Satisfied” (1) was used to evaluate the satisfaction level of researchers.

The paper found that mostly researchers were “Very Satisfied” with electronic resources though they faced problems in using of these resources.

Research scholars from Faculty of Arts, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, and Bahauddin Zakariya University of Multan, Punjab, Pakistan, were included in this paper.

This paper advances knowledge about the current status of the use of university library electronic resources, helps librarians in Pakistani university libraries understand the information need of the researchers more specifically, and provides some guidelines for the efficient and effective use of these resources.

This paper fulfils the identified need of researchers and indicates how researchers can utilize electronic resources in a better way.