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This article examines the impact of expatriates' interaction adjustment and conducive work environment (i.e. trust, shared vision and intercultural communication) on the development of a common social identity between expatriates and host country nationals (HCNs) using the social identity theory (SIT). It also investigates whether increased trust, shared vision and intercultural communication mediate the relationship between expatriates' interaction adjustment and development of a common social identity.

Dyadic data were collected from 93 Chinese expatriates and 239 Pakistani HCNs using a three-wave time-lag design. A multilevel model was estimated using Bayesian estimation technique in the Mplus software.

Empirical evidence suggests an inverse relationship between expatriates' interaction adjustment and the development of a common social identity between expatriates and HCNs. Further, trust and intercultural communication led to a positive impact on the group memberships between expatriates and HCNs. However, no support was found regarding the mediating role of trust, shared vision and intercultural communication in this empirical research.

The existing literature focuses mainly on change experiences of expatriates during international assignments. However, the current study goes beyond this and investigates the individualized change experiences of HCNs. Further, empirical evidence in this research found a negative relationship between expatriates' interaction adjustment and the development of a common social identity between expatriates and HCNs, which needs to be examined further.

This study aims to explore the factors that build positive leadership identities in women and reduce woman-leader identity conflict in societies with low gender equality. In doing so, it responds to calls to examine the role of “context” for women aspiring to leadership roles.

The required data were collected through semistructured interviews with 30 senior-level female leaders in the corporate sector of Pakistan and analyzed using NVivo.

Successful professional women are often facilitated by various social and organizational factors that boost their confidence and ability to view themselves positively as leaders, reducing woman-leader identity conflict. The main facilitators observed were egalitarian values practiced at home, male sponsorship in organizations and individual leadership experiences. Furthermore, the age and socio-economic status of women have also emerged as important factors contributing to the success of women leaders in Pakistani society, which is characterized by gender inequality and high power distance.

Organizations committed to developing women for leadership roles and attaining their gender diversity goals need to address the structural and psychological barriers that hinder women’s progress in the workplace. Moreover, men need to be engaged as allies to enable women’s advancement as organizational leaders.

This study highlights how culture, gender norms and significant experiences of women moderate equality lows in patriarchal societies. It aims to demonstrate that women can progress as leaders within a low gender-egalitarian culture in the presence of factors that facilitate the establishment of their identities as leaders, thus reducing identity conflict. In addition, the role that men can play in creating a supportive environment for establishing women’s leadership identities is particularly highlighted in this study.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process of Chinese expatriates’ adjustment in Pakistan through integrating the U-curve model and social identity theory. It has also highlighted the importance of engaging in strong social ties and their contribution in expatriates’ adjustment.

Data were collected through semi-structured interviews from 30 Chinese expatriates working as directors, deputy directors, senior managers, managers and assistant managers in Chinese organizations in Pakistan. After verbatim transcription of all the interviews, data were analyzed using the NVivo software.

The findings of this paper indicate that expatriates’ identities somewhat changed in terms of their behaviors and work habits, while fewer changes were observed in their belief and value system. These changes were related to expatriates’ perceptions of host country groups, attraction to these groups and similarity in beliefs, which resulted in the development of interdependent beliefs and depersonalization. However, a few Chinese expatriates predominantly interacted among themselves at work, and their reduced socialization with Pakistanis lessened their chances of change.

The results of the study suggest that expatriates’ adjustment is a multi-stage process and social identity change is one of the powerful mechanisms through which they adjust in the host country’s environment; hence host organizations should facilitate expatriates in strengthening their bond with local people.

This paper has proposed a model that explains the mechanism of Chinese expatriates’ adjustment in Pakistan through improved interactions between expatriates’ and host country nationals, resulting in minor social identity changes, leading to further positive relationship building, and then major social identity changes.

The study aims to highlight and understand, and bring the human agency into the debate on the theory of normative control. While, the previous literature has highlighted the problem of the missing subject. However, the actual human agency in terms of agential properties has not been seriously addressed. This study is an attempt to overcome this problem of the missing subject.

A two-phase design inspired by retroductive inference was adopted for this study. In the first phase, abduction was used to explore the literature on normative control to highlight the forces of attraction, which may pull the employees to participate willingly within normative control systems. In the second phase, following retroductive inference, agential explanations of the forces of attraction identified in the first phase were explored by venturing into other related fields, e.g. psychology and sociology.

The study highlights four strategies used by organizations using normative control, i.e. comfort zoning, relational bonding, moral trapping and elitist appeal. These strategies rely on attractive forces. These forces of attraction pull employees to participate in the normative control system. The attractive element in the identified strategies is due to the fact that these strategies target specific agential properties, i.e. the need for comfort, sense of belonging, moral agency and pride. Overall, the findings suggest that individuals drive their concerns from culture but in relation to their capacity as needy beings for being enculturated.

Theoretically, this study adds conceptual strength to the explanations of normative control. It is suggested that neglect of human agency renders explanations conceptually weak. The study fills this gap in the research. Practically, this study would be beneficial for better design and implementation of normative control. Several studies have pointed out that normative control does not yield the intended results. Out of many reasons, a lack of understanding of human agency is a major cause of unsuccessful attempts to normatively control employees. This study provides some basis to understand the human subject for better design of soft systems of control.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research study that explores agential properties with reference to normative control systems. This study is important for researchers and practitioners.

This paper focuses on the possibilities of the long‐term development of flexible working as a work‐life policy, through understanding the power dynamics between the individual and the organisation. The study presents a framework which summarises the factors influencing the employee‐employer power dynamics, and leads us to the research questions. The methodology involves triangulation in case studies in two organisations based on surveys of representative samples in each organisation (n = 243 and n = 128) and interviews with the management. Findings support the long‐term development of employee‐friendly flexible working. There is a strong desire, and a lack of polarisation of attitudes, among employees for greater flexibility. Certain employee groups with stronger negotiating power have initiated the work‐life debate, but in doing so, they have increased the power of all employees through lowering ideological barriers, and creating knowledge of new possibilities and aspirations. Favourable external pressures and changing business needs also improve the position of employees.

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) technology envisions a network in which sensors continuously operate on and obtained critical physical and physiological readings. Sensors deployed in WBANs have restricted resources such as battery energy, computing power and bandwidth. We can utilize these resources efficiently. By devising a mechanism that is energy efficient with following characteristics, i.e. computational complexity is less, routing overhead is minimized, and throughput will be maximum. A lot of work has been done in this area but still WBAN faces some challenges like mobility, network lifetime, transmission range, heterogeneous environment, and limited resources. In the present years well, contemplative studies have been made through a large body to reach some holistic points pertaining to the energy consumption in WBAN. Thus we/put forward appropriate algorithm for energy efficiency which can vividly corroborate the advances in this specific domain. We have also focused on various aspects and phases of the studies like study computational complexity, routing overhead and throughput type of characteristics. There is still a room for improvement to get the desired energy optimization in WBAN. The network performance mainly relies upon the algorithm used for optimization process. In this work, we intended to develop an energy optimization algorithm for energy consumption in WBAN which is based on evolutionary algorithms for inter-BAN communications using cluster-based routing protocol.

In this paper we propose a meta heuristics algorithm Goa to solve the optimization problem in WBAN. Grasshopper is an insect. Generally, this insect is viewed individually and creating large swarm in nature. Figure 5 shows the individual grasshoppers' primitive patterns in swarm. Figure 7 depicts the pseudo code of Goa. In Goa, experiments are done to view the behavior of grasshoppers in swarm. How they gradually move towards the stationary and mobile target. Through experimentation it is conceived that swarm gradually converge towards their target. Another interesting pattern related to convergence of grasshopper is that it slowly towards its target. This shows that grasshopper does not trapped in local optima. In starting iterations of exploration process Goa, search globally and in last iterations it searches local optima. Goa makes the exploration and exploitation process balanced while solving challenging optimization problems.

Energy efficiency is achieved in the optimization process of cluster formation process. As the use of proposed algorithm Goa creates the optimal number of clusters. Shorter cluster lifetime means more times clustering procedure is called. It increases the network computational cost and the communication overhead. Experimentation results show that proposed Goa algorithm performs well. We compare the results of Goa with existing optimization Algorithms ACO and MFO. Results are generated using MATLAB.

A lot of work has done for the sake of energy optimization in WBAN. Many algorithms are proposed in past for energy optimization of WBAN. All of them have some strengths and weaknesses. In this paper we propose a nature inspired algorithm Goa. We use the Goa algorithm for the sake of energy optimization in WBAN.

This study aims to examine the determinants of the female representations on Chinese listed firm’s boards. This study also investigates the effect of gender diversity on corporate social responsibility activities.

The Tobit regression model is used because the data is censored and using ordinary least square regression can give spurious results. For robust check, the authors also used Heckman’s (1979) two-stage self-selection model to remove the sample self-selection bias.

The authors find that the female representations on the corporate board are positively associated with firm age, firm performance, corporate governance, family ownership, institutional ownership and managerial ownership while negatively related to firm size and state ownership. This study also incorporates predictors of the critical mass of women on the Chinese listed firm’s board. The study also tests the female-led hypothesis and concludes that the female representation increases in firms with female chief executive officer (CEO) or female chairpersons. The Chinese listed firms with gender-diverse board are socially responsible.

The importance of diversity in corporate boards has been demonstrated in light of the agency theory and the resource dependence framework. The results contribute to the previous literature by documenting the determinants of female representations on board, robust by alternative measures of gender diversity, firm size, corporate governance and estimation techniques.

The economic significance of gender diversity stirred the firms to increase female representation. The policymakers can understand the reasons for female underrepresentation in Chinese boards and can reform the regulation to enhance governance quality, non-state ownership and risk aversion among the listed firms.

This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the key predictor of the world’s largest emerging economy, specifically the study focuses on the firm specific determinants, different governance attributes, ownership structure and firm risk measures. This study also seeks to answer if the presence of a female in the Chairperson or CEO position encourages the firms to hire more female directors or not?

Along with rapid development in the green supply chain fields, questions have been raised about the direct effects of internal and external drivers. Recent evidence suggest that organizational culture is a prerequisite for the understanding of green supply chain management (GSCM). However, there has been limited examination of organizational culture in the green supply chain research area. The purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between green supply chain management (GSCM) and organizational culture.

To do so, a bibliometric analysis is carried out. The search was conducted in the Scopus database by using different keywords. The records found were scanned and refined bringing the total number of documents to 46. A descriptive analysis covering influential authors, leading journals, contributing organizations and most popular words used in titles and keywords, using the Biblioshiny app, followed by a content analysis have been conducted.

The findings show the following: most of the influential studies were conducted by only a few researchers. The publications within the field started to increase during 2012–2020. It is worth mentioning, that the USA and UK universities have a strong research contribution among all, and there are seven core publishing journals that lead the field such as cleaner of production and sustainability. The content analysis revealed some aspects and shed light on two main topics: organizational culture as a driver or a barrier toward GSCM; and the organizational culture contribution role on the impact of GSCM on performance.

This paper only addresses GSCM with organizational culture based on a small sample of papers. Furthermore, this study needs to be expanded with empirical research on the topic. It would be interesting to assess the effects of national culture within the same research area. More broadly, researchers may also need to explore the various databases instead of focusing only on Scopus database case of this paper, using various keywords.

This study plays an important role for managers and firms, and also this study is contributing in increasing the understanding of the role of cultural factors on implementing the GSCM practices and getting the highest benefits from it.

This paper holds significant contribution for scholars, especially for those who are interested in cultural issues within the management field, and for managers by enlightening a critical element to concentrate on for the betterment of green sustainability within their firms. Considering this, future research suggestions are identified.

This paper aims to explore on stagnation point flow of Ag-CuO/water over a horizontal stretching/shrinking cylinder by adding the effect of chemical reaction, B together with the magnetic field, M.

A set of reduced ordinary differential equations from the governing equations of partial differential equations is obtained through similarities requirements. The resulting equations are solved using bvp4c in MATLAB2019a. The impact of various physical parameters such as curvature parameter, ϒ, chemical reaction rate, B, magnetic field, M and Schmidt numbers, Sc on shear stress, f′′0 local heat flux, -θ′(0) and mass transfer, -∅′(0) also for velocity, f′(η), temperature, θ(η) and concentration, ∅(η) profiles have been plotted and briefly discussed. In this work, some vital characteristics such as local skin friction, Cf, local Nusselt number, Nux and local Sherwood number, Shx are chosen for physical and numerical analysis.

The findings expose that the duality of solutions appears in a shrinking region ( ε < 0). The value of skin friction, heat transfer rate and mass transfer rate reduction for existing of M, but in contrary result obtain for larger ϒ, B and Sc. Furthermore, the hybrid nanofluid demonstrates better heat transfer compared to nanofluid.

The hybrid nanofluid has widened its applications such as in electronic cooling, manufacturing, automotive, heat exchanger, solar energy, heat pipes and biomedical, as their efficiency in the heat transfer field is better compared to nanofluid.

The findings on stagnation point flow of Ag-CuO/water over a horizontal stretching/shrinking cylinder with the effect of chemical reaction, B and magnetic field, M is new and the originality is preserved for the benefits of future researchers.

The novel mechanical, chemical and thermodynamics characteristics of both single- and multi-wall carbon nanotubes (CNTs) make them a subject of much attention for the scientists and engineers from all domains. Fluid flows subject to CNTs are significant in biomedical engineering, energy storage systems, domestic and industrial cooling, automobile industries and solar energy collectors, etc. Keeping such effectiveness of CNTs in mind, this paper aims to examine peristaltic flow subject to CNTs in an asymmetric tapered channel. Both single and multiple walls CNTs are considered. The viscosity of nanomaterial depends on nanoparticles volume fraction and temperature. Total entropy rate through second law of thermodynamics is calculated. Heat source/sink and nonlinear heat flux are accounted.

The complicated flow expressions are simplified through lubrication approach. The velocity, temperature and entropy expressions are numerically solved by the built-in-shooting method.

The solutions for entropy generation, temperature and velocity are plotted, and the influences of pertinent variables are examined. The authors noticed that entropy generation is an increasing function of the Brinkman number.

The originality of this work is to communicate peristaltic CNTs-based nanomaterial peristaltic flow of viscous fluid in an asymmetric channel. No such consideration is yet published in the literature.