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This study aims to investigate the determinants of localised corporate social responsibility (LCSR) activities in Pakistan. The present study explores factors influencing the corporate sector to promote the welfare of local areas where the company has located its manufacturing plants.

The authors selected 100 companies listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange. Data were collected from the companies’ financial reports issued from 2012 to 2017 (N = 700). The authors analysed the data using fixed- and random-effects regression models to test the factors influencing LCSR activities.

The findings indicate that directors’ ancestry significantly enhances LCSR. This implies that boards with a greater number of directors whose names indicate their relevant ancestry are more likely to engage in LCSR. Moreover, environmental-protection activity by the corporate sector promotes LCSR initiatives. However, Pakistan’s corporate sectors are not promoting the essential aspects of their workers’ welfare, e.g. health and education.

The present study was limited to the directors’ ancestry, environmental corporate social responsibility (CSR), CSR for factory workers and donation. Other factors, such as culture and language, may play an important role in determining LCSR.

The results suggest that the Security and Exchange Commission of Pakistan should emphasise the importance of LCSR to develop rural areas and devise meaningful policy for CSR. These findings provide substantial evidence that regulators and policymakers should encourage the inclusion of LCSR by firms listed on the stock exchange to increase environmental protection through CSR policy.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explore the determinants of LCSR. Moreover, the present study investigates for the first time the influence of directors’ ancestry on rural development in any of Asia’s developing countries, including Pakistan. The findings of this study contribute theoretically and empirically to the literature.

This study aims investigate the effects of electronic human resource management (e-HRM) on communication pace and processing time reduction through the mediation of organizational agility. The study also investigates the moderating role of technological attitude (TA) on the relationship between e-HRM and organizational agility.

The data was collected from 331 information and communication technology (ICT) companies – one respondent from each company working in the Human Resource Management (HRM) department. The data was analyzed through the partial least square structural equational model (PLS-SEM) using WarpPLS7.0 software to test the study’s hypotheses.

We found that e-HRM has positive significant effects on communication pace and processing time reduction through the mediation of organizational agility. Furthermore, TA is found to be positively moderating the relationship between e-HRM and organizational agility.

The study adds significant value to the existing knowledge base on e-HRM by providing empirical insights about the role of e-HRM in optimizing the communication pace and processing time of today’s businesses.

The study also provides invaluable insights to practitioners to replace conventional HR systems with e-HRM to better perform HR functions by optimizing communication pace and processing time in the current fast-paced era.

E-HRM has become an issue of great significance in the contemporary corporate landscape to improve operational efficiency. Despite its widespread adoption in the corporate world, empirical evidence on e-HRM, particularly on its consequences, is still inconclusive.

The current study attempts to bridge the existing gap related to the role of knowledge acquisition from international alliance partners to improve competitiveness by examining the distinct processes of knowledge acquisition and the challenges confronted in this learning process in order to enhance local and international market performance.

Following case-study approach based on systematic combining, the study presents a case of knowledge acquisition and learning in the context of an international consultancy alliance between leading Pakistani and Chinese engineering firms using six in-depth interviews of key engineers to explore the dynamic mechanisms for knowledge acquisition and learning from the Chinese firm. Grounded analysis drawn upon the Straussian version of grounded theory (GT) {{Strauss, 1990 #136} Strauss, 1998 #139} is used for data analysis in this research.

It was found that the processes of explicit and implicit knowledge acquisition from Chinese firms are integrated consultancy working, social and technical adaptability and seeking confirmation about the work done and knowledge/theories and models used in work. However, these processes are quite complex, posing serious challenges for National Engineering Services, Pakistan to acquire the required knowledge, which can be addressed through partners' motivation to share and acquire knowledge, cultural intelligence and friendship and informal association. The study also found that the knowledge acquired from technologically advanced international organizations by the host partner in the international strategic alliance not only provides a competitive edge to the local host in its local market but also builds its capacity to undertake similar projects in other parts of the world, substantially enhancing its market success.

Adding up to the current literature that focuses on knowledge acquisition in a parent-subsidiary relationship, the current research proposes a framework for knowledge acquisition in the unique context of international strategic alliances. The research provides managerial guidelines to manage knowledge acquisition for gaining a competitive edge that would be helpful for the managers in the era of growing interdependence among the organizations across the borders.

Academic dishonesty has been a matter of great concern in higher education for last few decades. The dishonest behavior of students at graduate and undergraduate level has become a severe issue for education and business sectors, especially when the students exercise same dishonest practices at their jobs. The present research aims to address this matter by investigating the perceptions of students towards academic dishonesty and exploring the security and penalties for dishonest acts of students.

A well‐structured questionnaire was used to collect the data from 958 respondents studying at graduate and undergraduate levels in different Pakistani universities.

It has been found that students involve in academic dishonest acts more frequently about which they believe to be less severe. Moreover, they also suggested lower or no penalties for the same dishonest acts which are perceived as less severe.

The results provide a strong implication for academicians to develop the moralities and ethics in students so that institutions may provide ethically cultivated professionals to the business community.

The research paper is pioneer in its nature to explore the academic dishonest acts of students and their perceptions regarding some of the dimensions of academic dishonest and integrity in Pakistani university students.

The aim of the researchers in this endeavor is to identify the challenges and obstacles faced by beginning teachers in higher education. This study also explores practical implications and what adaptation can be utilized in order to have high performance of the beginning teachers.

Researchers have applied qualitative and quantitative technique to collect and interpret data. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted from the 40 beginning teachers of the case study university in order to identify various hindering factors of high performance.

Research results indicate that by addressing the 11 major hindering factors of beginning teachers' high performance, i.e. less teaching exposure, overburden, strict evaluation, lack of training, insufficient material and supplies, lack of effective communication, student counseling problems, classroom discipline problems, difficulties in assessing students' work, least expectations of career in teaching and misbehavior of students, the performance level of beginning teachers in higher education can be enhanced.

The current research addresses the most neglected area about teachers' performance management, that is problems of higher education teachers in their early careers. This exploration of beginning teachers' hindering issues can play a vital role in developing human resource development strategies in universities. The present research can prove to be a significant initiator for beginning teachers as they will get a glimpse of what problem areas they could face.

This bibliometric study is steered to compute the impact of literature published on cloud computing within the fields of information science and library science. The research has been conducted on concentrating the term “Cloud Computing” to search the literature published in both fields, i.e. information science and library science from the time span 2007 to August 2023. This study aims to investigate the top productive country, organizations and highly cited publications.

The period of the exploration was from 2007 to August 2023 for bibliometric analysis and data was collected from the ISI Web of Science. Total 401 documents were retrieved and analyzed to highlight the year-wise distribution of documents type, year-wise most cited articles, prominent journals of the subjects, productivity of organizations, impact of countries and cooccurrences of keywords. The results are grounded on the basis of documents types (articles, early access articles, proceeding papers, book review, editorial material, news items and reviews).

The findings reveal that the most productive year of publication on cloud computing services was 2013. The top productive source is “International Journal of Information Management.” The articles entitled “Assessing the determinants of cloud computing adoption: An analysis of the manufacturing and services sectors” found as the most cited article and the significant increase in citations is also noteworthy. The most productive organizations on the topic include “Islamic Azad University of Iran,” “University Cologne of Germany” and “University Nova Lisboa of Portugal.” The results confirmed that the USA dominates in the production of research on “Cloud Computing Services” and the most repeated keyword in the literature is cloud computing. The research articles are the most cited sources of research.

This bibliometric research is an original piece of work that has been conducted to measure the research production in the field of information science and library science during 2007−2023. This piece of work is valuable for those who want to study the literature on cloud computing in the area of information science and library science.

This study aims to identify critical capabilities to address unforeseen and novel disruptions, such as those instigated by COVID-19, and explore their role as essential enablers of supply chain resilience and responsiveness, leading to improved performance.

The structural equation modeling technique was employed for analyzing the proposed associations using survey data from 206 manufacturers operating during the COVID-19 pandemic in a developing country, Pakistan.

Key findings show how improvisation and anticipation act distinctly yet jointly to facilitate supply chain resilience and responsiveness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, data analytics capability positively affects anticipation and improvisation, which mediate the effect of data analytics on supply chain resilience and responsiveness.

The findings contribute to the theoretical and empirical understanding of the existing literature, suggesting that a combination of improvisation, anticipation and data analytics capabilities is highly imperative for enhancing supply chain resilience and responsiveness in novel and unexpected disruptions.

This is the first study to examine the impact of data analytics on improvisation and anticipation and the latter as complementary capabilities to enhance supply chain resilience and responsiveness. The empirical investigation explores the interplay among data analytics, improvisation, and anticipation capabilities for enhancing supply chain resilience, responsiveness, and performance during the unforeseen and novel disruptions, such as brought to bear by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Single-valued neutrosophic sets (SVNSs) are efficient models to address the complexity issues potentially with three components, namely indeterminacy, truthness and falsity. Taking advantage of SVNSs, this paper introduces some new aggregation operators (AOs) for information fusion of single-valued neutrosophic numbers (SVNNs) to meet multi-criteria group decision-making (MCGDM) challenges.

Einstein operators are well-known AOs for smooth approximation, and prioritized operators are suitable to take advantage of prioritized relationships among multiple criteria. Motivated by the features of these operators, new hybrid aggregation operators are proposed named as “single-valued neutrosophic Einstein prioritized weighted average (SVNEPWA) operator” and “single-valued neutrosophic Einstein prioritized weighted geometric (SVNEPWG) operators.” These hybrid aggregation operators are more efficient and reliable for information aggregation.

A robust approach for MCGDM problems is developed to take advantage of newly developed hybrid operators. The effectiveness of the proposed MCGDM method is demonstrated by numerical examples. Moreover, a comparative analysis and authenticity analysis of the suggested MCGDM approach with existing approaches are offered to examine the practicality, validity and superiority of the proposed operators.

The study reveals that by choosing a suitable AO as per the choice of the expert, it will provide a wide range of compromise solutions for the decision-maker.