Impact of Corporate Environmental Responsibility on Firm’s Financial Performance: Moderating Role of Organizational Slack and Industry Competition

Due to speedy trade and industry expansion in the emerging economies it is creating stern environmental corrosion. Effluence makers’ enterprises are mostly responsible for environmental deterioration. Therefore, it is the responsibility of those firms to take steps to control this corrosion in the environment. This research explains the effect of corporate environmental responsibility (CER) on corporate financial performance (CFP) with the moderating effect of organizational slack and industry competition. Data was collected from annual reports of 50 KSE 100 index companies from 2012-2019, containing total 450 observations. Dynamic penal model was used to test the study hypothesis by using Eviews, different pre and post estimations are applied to confirm the data validity. Empirical results indicate that corporate environmental responsibility has significant positive effect on corporate financial performance, while the moderating effect of organizational slack is negative. Industry competition has significant positive moderating effect on the relationship, i.e., if there is high competition in industry then firms will invest more in environment to attract more consumers and to create good will in market. The study reveal that those firms will lead where competition is high and who will focus on their responsibility towards environment.

Impact of Leadership Empowerment on Job Satisfaction of Female Teachers of Girls Colleges of Sindh Mediated by Work Engagement

Purpose- This study aims to determine the role of leadership empowerment and work engagement in predicting job satisfaction of female teachers of Government Girls Colleges of Sindh, Pakistan. Design/Methodology/Approach- The study has utilized survey questionnaire consist of 36 items to collect data from 360 female faculty members of Government Girls Degree Colleges of Sindh. Findings- The data was analyzed by using SPSS for descriptive analysis and Smart PLS software was used to extract the inferential statistics. The results have confirmed the research objectives and answered all research questions for addressing the problem statement. Thus all the hypotheses were found supported. The work engagement was predicted by leadership empowerment at the rate of 29% and job satisfaction was predicted by leadership empowerment at the rate of 32%. Thus the work engagement has played a role of partial mediation. Originality/Value- Job satisfaction considered as most researched job outcome in HR. In service sector the female teachers job satisfaction has not attain serious efforts of researchers and management of girl’s colleges to address their problems effectively. In this context, this study has figured out possible solution of female teachers’ problems.

Behavioural biases in Personal Financial Management and Perceived Financial Satisfaction: The Role of Speculative Risk

This study is design to examine the impact of behavioural biases on perceived financial satisfaction and determined the role of Speculative Risk between these variables. Using structured questionnaire study collect the data from respondents and then analyzed the same by using Reliability Analysis, Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with the help of SPSS and AMOS. The result of study disclosed that Financial self-efficacy and Reliance on expert has significant effect on financial satisfaction, while financial socialization has no significant effect on financial satisfaction. Beside this, study revealed that Speculative risk partially mediate the relationship of financial self-efficacy and reliance on experts with financial satisfaction. Beside this , moderating role of speculative risk was observed between IV’s and DV’s .Study revealed that speculative risk significantly moderates the relationship of financial socialization and Financial satisfaction. This study is important for financial managers, policy makers and individual investors.

Impact of Globalization on Aggregate and Agricultural Employment in Pakistan

This study has empirically investigated impact of globalization on aggregate and agricultural employment in Pakistan for the data period 1986-2017. Globalization is proxied by variables trade openness, foreign direct investment, workers’ remittances and exchange rate. Other explanatory variables are real GDP, gender based wage gap and labor force. The study has applied Johansen’ cointegration technique and Error Correction Model to estimate the long run and short run relationships. The findings of the study indicate that in the long run trade openness has negative whereas FDI has positive effect on aggregate as well as agricultural employment in Pakistan during the data period. Interestingly, exchange rate and workers’ remittances affect aggregate and agricultural employment differently. Other important finding is that real GDP and gender based wage gap also deteriorate aggregate and agricultural employment in Pakistan. The study concluded that globalization in the form of trade openness has not supported employment whereas FDI enhanced employment in Pakistan. Policy makers need to consider sector specific effects of globalization while designing policies to achieve inclusive growth in Pakistan.

How Organizations Can Use High Performance Work Practices To Augment Employees’ Performance Oriented Behaviors?

We examine the relationship between high performance work practices and employee performance mediated by employee involvement, motivation, and satisfaction. We collected data on adapted scales from 292 heads of departments of various public and private sector institutions from Pakistan. The results indicated a positive and significant impact of high performance work practices on employee involvement, motivation, satisfaction, and performance. Besides, results also supported the mediation of employee involvement and motivation. However, the relationship between employee satisfaction and performance was not found significant and similarly, its mediation was also not established as we expected. The study is first of its kind, where a composite model of high performance work practices was tested for its employee-related outcomes. Moreover, the mediation of employee involvement and employee motivation in the relationship between high performance work practices and employee performance is also a noteworthy contribution of the current research in the Pakistani context. The results are generalizable to public and private sector higher education institutions of Pakistan but can also be used in other organizations with caution.

Are Pakistani Business Schools Fulfilling the Requirements of Pakistan’s Growing IT Industry?

Even with its expanding nature, IT industry in Pakistan has been neglected by the researchers and no research has been conducted to understand the needs of this industry with regards to the required employability skills in business school graduates. This is research conducted to understand the extent to which business schools are satisfying the needs of the IT industry for which 15 IT firm HR managers were interviewed. It can be concluded that the most important and sought after employability skills by IT firm HR managers are interpersonal communication skills and lifelong learning skills. It was surprising to note that even though IT firms realized the high standard of foreign universities they felt that graduates from high ranking Pakistani universities were a better option for them as they understood the dynamics of Pakistani market. Even though all firms were dissatisfied by low ranking business schools, there were still those that gave equal opportunity to all business school graduates and gauged them in isolation regardless of their business school. The paper at the end provides recommendations for Pakistani business schools that would help them to place themselves among world’s top ranking business schools.

Systemic Approach to Failure Analysis: A Study of Sociotechnical Organization

The paper is an attempt to explore systemic approach to accidents analysis within sociotechnical organization. Unsafe behaviors can result in systemic failures and accidents. The research data came from within an industrial radiography organization where radiation source is used to detect cracks or hidden flaws within machinery and welding joints. The radioactive source can cause severe detrimental effects, even death, if not used safely. This paper is on two isolated events happen in the same company, Industrial Services Private Limited (not real name). The company top management was dealing with the financial crisis and to maintain quality of its services and the safety of staff. The leadership of the company made several business and operational decisions to manage the financial crisis. During that time, several near miss incidents took place, but the first major incident took place when the radiography gamma projector, along with the radioactive source, fallen out of the vehicle because of improper back door closure of the vehicle. In the second incident, the radioactive source remained unshielded after a radiography job, this caused overexposure to radiography workers. The paper provides an opportunity to understand how an organization’s leadership can create conditions for errors and mistakes that result in poor safety culture and ultimately the accident which resulted the system failure and operation shutdown. The paper also tries to propose a conceptual framework to improve safety culture within the sociotechnical systems for the future research in this area.

A Downside Risk Analysis of Inflation Hedging Capabilities of Individual Assets and Optimal Asset Allocation

The objective of this study is to examine the inflation hedging capabilities of most widely used asset classes in Pakistan. It also attempts to find out the possibility of creating an inflation protected optimal asset mix. The sample consists of monthly data of cash, gold, stocks, foreign currency, real estate and inflation from 2005 to 2015. The major sources of data are SBP, World Bank and Pakistan Statistics Bureau. The downside analysis of these assets concludes that cash act as an inflation hedge for all the investment horizons. The findings showed that the Gold and stocks also have inflation hedging abilities in short run which extend to medium term investment horizon for gold only, while stocks appear to be a good inflation hedge for longer investment horizons. This study also suggests that investors can strategically create optimal portfolios that are hedged against inflation.

Impact of External and Internal Negative Feeling on Consumers’ Desire for Revenge and Negative Word of Mouth

Service failure is a common problem that creates feelings of displeasure and dislike among consumers towards the service. Such feelings trigger negative word of mouth (NWOM) and desire to take revenge due to the anger and regret they feel caused by the service failure. However, there seldom any research on these emotional aspects of service failure in Pakistan related to consumers’ motivation regarding such dire actions has been conducted in Pakistani context. This study therefore has examined the effects of negative emotions on the consumer's desire for revenge and spreading of negative word of mouth set off by having a bad experience using the delivery service of foodpanda[1]. The sample size comprised of 280 participants. The questionnaire consisted of four sections based on four constructs. SPSS and SmartPLS softwares were used to test and analyze the validity, reliability, measurement and structural model. The results highlighted that anger and regret had a positive and significant effect on NWOM. The study further found that anger and regret had no significant effect on the desire for revenge. Similarly, no such relationship was identified between revenge and NWOM. Likewise, there was no significant relationship between revenge and NWOM. [1] Foodpanda is a food delivery service

Impacts of Workplace Stress: An Exploratory Cross-Sectional Study of Oil and Gas Sector in Pakistan

Working eternally from the shoreline is all around considered as a distressing profession where work environment stress is accepted as a noteworthy danger aspect for mental ailment. Then again, stress-related writing relating to this part is scant. The aim of present research is to investigating the impacts of work-stress among the individuals working in managerial cadres of oil and gas sector organizations at Pakistan. A self designed instrument was used to gather information for this cross-sectional examination. Measure's legitimacy was built up by ascertaining Cronbach's alpha (0.914). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with Principal Component Analysis extraction method and Oblimin with Kaiser Normalization rotation method was applied on the collected information. Barlett test of sphericity and the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) proved the suitability of factor analysis as an explanatory apparatus for the analysis of the collected data. EFA distinguished four components for the impacts of work-stress: Psychological; Performance; physiological, and Cognitive. These components explained 73.62% of total variance. The component Psychological was the most noteworthy component. This investigation has not just recognized the significant impacts of work-stress in seaward oil organizations at Pakistan yet in addition gave an organized rundown of these factors. Discoveries of the investigation will support analysts, arrangement creators, bosses and the specialists to devise and execute pressure avoidance and development technique. This is the ever first work of its sort in Pakistan.