Search results

This paper aims to examine how to support use of design in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by developing a new design support service. Design is emerging as one of the major themes of modern business development. However, most organisations – especially SMEs – view incorporating design as problematic.

This paper presents the service development process as a case study and contributes to the discussions on service development projects realised in the Living Lab context and enhancing the use of design among SMEs. The project had two basic assumptions as a starting point: using design is beneficial for SMEs’ business and business advisors are the best channel for reaching these SMEs. The basics of service design process and several tools such as the service design blueprint, the business model canvas and problem interviews were utilised to develop a service concept and to test it among target SMEs.

It is difficult to find SMEs that need design and are not yet served by the current regional or national service offerings. The findings demonstrate the importance of user involvement in the beginning of service design process.

Limited sample size may impact the generalisability of the results. Increasing the sample size of companies might provide new insights not yet discovered in this study.

Policymakers can benefit from the insights on design support service development when designing new services for SMEs. Co-design processes that are elemental to the Living Lab approach could also benefit the development of public business-to-business (B2B) services.

This study aims to analyze access of cotton growers to Sustainable Livelihoods Assets Pakistani Punjab.

This study uses the department for international development (DFID’s) sustainable livelihoods framework (DFID) (1999). Where data collection was done by using a well-structured questionnaire from 200 randomly selected cotton growers of the district Muzaffargarh. There are five livelihood assets (human assets, natural assets, financial assets, physical assets and social assets) in the SLF, this study has used three different indicators/proxies for each asset except natural assets, where four indicators were used to capture the salient features of the respondents’ access to that assets. Each indicator was given a weight by using the entropy technique to keep the consistency of the quantification. Livelihood assets indices were calculated in case of each livelihood asset for conducting Livelihood Assets Pentagon Analysis. Value of livelihood index ranged from 0–4.

Livelihoods Assets Pentagon analysis shows that cotton growers do not have proper access to all five livelihood assets. The asset with the highest capacity were social assets (sustainable livelihood index value = 0.3994), followed by natural assets (0.3294), financial assets (0.2511), human assets (0.2143) and physical assets (0.0897).

This study uses the SLF developed by DFID for analyzing factors affecting access to livelihoods assets of cotton growers in Pakistani Punjab. Sustainable agriculture and sustainable rural livelihoods lead to sustainable livelihoods where environment quality is taken into consideration. The study contains significant and new information.

About half of the 16% adolescents in the world experience menstruation. Menstrual hygiene management (MHM) is a health concern and challenge especially in humanitarian situations as experienced by Myanmar Rohingya refugees living in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. This study aims to assess knowledge, practice and influencing factors for MHM among Rohingya refugee adolescent girls of 14–18 years.

The study used both quantitative (a cross-sectional survey with 340 adolescent girls through a structured questionnaire) and qualitative (7 in-depth interviews with adolescent girls and 2 focus group discussions with the mothers) approaches. Quantitative data, analyzed using STATA version 13.0, were supported by qualitative data, grouped into themes and presented as matrix.

Around 51% adolescent girls learned about menstruation after menarche, at the mean age of 12 years, from their mothers and older sisters. About 75% used sanitary pads as absorbents which they got mostly as relief material or bought from local stores (83%); the rest used cloths and other materials (25%). About 57% of the respondents disposed of their absorbent by burying. Those who used reusable absorbents washed them with soap and water (40%) and mostly dried them indoors (17%). Factors influencing healthy MHM practice included the use of absorbent, privacy, disposal, washing and drying of clothes, physical activities, hygiene and pain management. Adolescents with secondary or higher education were four times more likely to have better MHM practice (odds ratio = 4.27; confidence interval = 1.19–15.31) than those with no formal schooling.

This paper is based on a research undertaken as part of academic requirement.

This paper is an attempt to analyze the study of low female work participation rate in Pakistan due to the religious, traditional, cultural values, the colonial ideology and the evolution of social institution that restrain women entry into the labour market.

In order to explore the objectives, the paper develops the classification of male and female age groups into three main categories, and analyze with the help of descriptive and mean methodology.

The findings of this paper show that the women are suffering from market discrimination and hence are pushed to separate low‐paid and low‐status jobs. Majority of women are employed in the unorganized sectors. Mostly, women are concentrated in sector known for low level of productivity, less income stability and low security of employment due to their dual role at home and workplace. Organized services sector is mostly government services, and provides employment to a small proportion of women. The rate of unemployment among women is consistently higher than that of men, both in rural and urban areas.

The statistics are reflective of two hard‐core realities. The first factor is that women with no education or with some basic education are allowed to work due to intensive poverty and high rate of inflation; and the second factor is that the existing socio‐cultural norms continues to strengthen gender discrimination and are a source of a massive wastage of the human capital available in the country.

An analysis of structure of women employment reveals some qualitative improvement in the employment, due to high literacy rate and educational levels.

Increasing levels of female labour force participation rate is a poverty‐induced phenomenon; a larger part is to be traced by improvement in literacy and education levels of women. There is some qualitative improvement in the employment, as women's share in secure and better paid jobs in the organized sector appears to be higher. With the increase in educational levels of women, faster growth of women's employment is observed in modern sectors and white‐collar jobs. Government machinery, non‐governmental organizations and progressive political parties should focus on the education of women if they want to enhance the status of women in Pakistan by implementing special schemes and programmes for absorbing them into different occupations, particularly in organized sector so as to improve their structures of employment as well as status of jobs.

Classification of male and female age groups is done into three main categories, i.e. age ten to 14, 25‐29 and 55‐59 for young, adult and old groups, respectively. This paper provides the clear picture of women problems and causes.