Pakistan Journal of Commerce and Social Sciences (ISSN 1997-8553)
Not a member yet
665 research outputs found
Sort by
Measuring the Extent of a High Performance Work System: A Mixed Methodology Approach
Get PDFHigh performance work systems (HPWS) and their effect on firm performance is examined using a single holistic case study design in which the Total Strategic Resource Approach (TSRA) is used to measure the extent of HPWS implementation in a private Pakistani hospital. Using a mixed methodology case approach, it is discovered that Pakistan Hospital & Medical College (PHMC) has begun to implement aspects of an HPWS. Profound weaker human resource areas include information sharing and compensation although improvement is needed in all 12 HR practice areas. Firm performance was measured using perceptual measures of the organization’s employees, and it was determined that the HPWS does have a significantly positive effect on firm performance. The study was also designed to test the reliability of the TSRA for the Pakistani context given its unique cultural setting, and it was confirmed that the TSRA is a reliable model that future researchers can use in order to measure the extent of HPWS implementation in other Pakistani organizations
Maternal Health Care: The Case of Iron Supplementation in India
Get PDFPrenatal care is an essential segment of maternal health-care. In this paper an attempt has been made to examine the socioeconomic determinants of maternal iron supplementation and sufficient maternal iron supplementation as components of prenatal care. Micro-data having 25999 and 19764 observations for two models, i.e. maternal iron supplementation and maternal sufficient iron supplementation respectively has been taken from Indian Demographic and Health Survey (IDHS) 2005-6. To estimate the probability in both the models binary logistic regressions have been employed. The explanatory variables categorized into individual characteristics of the woman, household characteristics, health-related characteristics, community characteristics and regional characteristics have been embraced in the analysis. The results of the first model revealed that probability of iron supplementation is augmented by woman’ education, woman’ age at first marriage, woman’s working status, husband’s age, husband’s education, husband’s presence at prenatal visit, final say on woman’s health (by woman, woman and husband collectively and even husband alone as compared to someone else) and household covered by the health insurance. The birth-order of the child, woman’s living in small city and town as well as wealth index of the household slides down the probability of iron supplementation. The estimates of the second model explained that probability of sufficient iron supplementation is positively influenced by woman’s age at first marriage, woman’s education, husband’s age, husband’s presence at prenatal visit, final say on woman’s health-care (husband alone) and household wealth. The birth-order of the child and small city as place of residence negatively affect the likelihood of sufficient iron supplementation. The study proposed the targeted approach to enhance iron supplementation and sufficient iron supplementation in Indian women. The marginalized households should be targeted through cash transfer programs. Furthermore, the small cities and country sides should also be focused. The awareness and education of woman along with husband’s participation in maternal health care cannot be ignored in policy making
A Study on Attitude of University Academia towards the Use of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education
Get PDFThe present study was conducted with the objectives a). to evaluating general perception of university academia about using open educational resources (OERs) in higher education; b). to examining the attitude of university academia towards the use of OER in enhancing academic, research and learning pursuance; and c). to identifying problems challenges of university academia in using OERs in higher education. The population of the study consists of university teachers (total 556) of the Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan. The sample of the study comprises of 278 (50%) of the population. The survey was undertaken through informed consent of the respondents and the respondents participated voluntarily in the survey; however, the response rate was calculated to be 91% as 253 of the respondents completed the survey. The survey adopted a mixed (quantitative and qualitative) approach of data collection. Therefore, two research tools were prepared for data collection. A questionnaire was prepared on fivepoint rating Likert scale for collecting quantitative data whereas; an interview protocol was prepared for qualitative data collection. The calculated reliability of (Cronbach’s alpha) was 0.805 indicating a high level of internal consistency for the tool with specific sample under study. The interview protocol was finalized through expert opinion. The finalized research tools were administered personally by the researcher –questionnaire was administered on 278 respondents with 91% response rate. Besides it, qualitative data were collected from 58 respondents by using focused group interview technique through an interview protocol. The researcher coded quantitative data in Ms-Excel program and analyzed it through mean scores and percentage; whereas the qualitative data were analyzed by grouping the themes. The qualitative and quantitative data analysis revealed that university academia acknowledged the use of OERs in promoting higher education in Pakistan. They affirmed that OERs facilitated them in conducting research, accessing to instructional materials and learning about innovations and developments in their respective disciplines. They were of the view that OERs were freely available to them and provided access to extensive body of knowledge, latest research practices and instructional experiences. However, they faced some technology related problems in accessing to OERs. These problems included bandwidth of internet, intermittent electricity failure, bugs and computer viruses; and finger’s joint pains, backache, headache and computer vision syndrome
Investor\u27s Sentiments and Stock Market Volatility: An empirical evidence from emerging stock market
Get PDFThe concept of efficient market hypothesis has prevailed the financial markets for a long time which says that the prices of the securities reflect all available information. This approach was mainly followed by the rational investors but with the passage of time, the concept of behavioral finance emerged due to some of the major global financial crashes. This concept states that there are investors trading in the market making decisions on the basis of sentiments not on any fundamental information. Such class of traders is called the noise traders and they are mainly responsible for any disruption in the returns of the securities. In this paper we will try to find whether these sentiments of the investors affect the returns of the securities listed on the Karachi stock exchange. We will use the investor sentiment index that uses the six proxies the data on which has been collected mainly from the Karachi stock exchange. Volatility of the stock market returns will be calculated and regressed with the sentimental equation discussed above as the independent variable. This study will help us to find out the extent to which these sentiments influence the stock market returns in weak form efficient market and also it will help us to identify the presence of such irrational noise traders in our financial market
Health Costs of Low Intensity Level Violent and Non-Violent Conflicts in Pakistan
Get PDFThe immediate health cost of violent armed conflict is in the form of deaths and injuries of the combatants as well as civilians. However, these costs are mostly pertinent to major violent internal and international conflicts. Minor violent armed conflicts and nonviolent/latent conflicts do not have as much capacity to kill and injure. However, these conflicts do have the capacity to affect human health in the long run through some less obvious channels. Diversion of resources from health sector to military and changes in the priorities of state and its institutions severely restrict the state’s capacity and willingness to provide health facilities and the people’s capacity to avail these facilities. In this study, the effect of Pakistan’s internal conflict and Pakistan-India conflict on the health of people in Pakistan is analyzed during 1972-2004. Pakistan’s internal conflict and the conflict with India during 1972-2004 are minor violent and non-violent/latent conflicts and it is more probable that these conflicts may affect people’s health through these less obvious channels instead of killings and destruction
Impact of Celebrity Credibility on Advertising Effectiveness
Get PDFAdvertisers often make use of endorsers or representatives as trustworthy sources of persuasion for consumers\u27 attitudes. Promotion of products through celebrities is a trendy advertising practice around the world. The present study judged the impact of celebrity credibility on advertising effectiveness in terms of consumer’s attitude towards the advertisement, attitude towards the brand and their purchase intention. This study also explored the differences of respondent’s responses towards the advertisements of brand through famous celebrities as well as unknown celebrities. Different TV advertisements were used for the experiment. Several statistical tools were applied to test the hypotheses and identify significant differences & the proposed relationships among the variables. Overall findings suggests that the respondents considered the famous celebrities of the brand as the most credible celebrities, having positive impact on consumers attitude towards the advertisement, attitude to the brand and their favorable purchase intentions as compare to the unknown celebrity with less credibility
Factors Affecting Sugarcane Production in Pakistan
Get PDFThis study was undertaken to identify the factors affecting sugarcane production in Pakistan. Data were collected from 387 sugarcane growers from Sindh, Punjab and NWFP province. Data were collected during the period 2007-08. The study reveals that the costs of inputs of sugarcane i.e. urea, DAP, FYM, land preparation, seed and its application, weeding and cost of irrigation were the important factors which influenced on the returns of sugarcane growers. The effectiveness was examined by using the CobbDouglas production function; MVP and allocative efficiency were calculated. The coefficient of multiple determinations R2 was 0.9249, which indicated that 92% variation in the cost of inputs was explained by all explanatory variables and the adjusted R2 was 92%. The F-value was 666.94 and was highly significant at 5% level of significance, indicating that the regression model was well fitted. The high prices of inputs, low price of output, delay in payments and lack of scientific knowledge were the major problems in sugarcane production. In order to enhance the productivity of sugarcane in the country, government should solve the identified problems to increase the income of sugarcane growers
Counterproductive Behavior at Work: A Comparison of Blue Collar and White Collar Workers
Get PDFCounterproductive behavior at workplace has emerged as a major area of concern for researchers, theorists and managers in organizations due to its heavy cost and disruptive nature. Every organization thus endeavors to limit the effects and pervasiveness of these detrimental behaviors. This research investigates the magnitude of counterproductive work behaviors in a group of 400 blue collar and white collar workers. Three self reported instruments used in this study are, Minnesota Job Satisfaction Scale, the Interpersonal Conflict Scale (ICAW) and the Counterproductive Work Behavior Checklist (CWB-C). Results are deduced by applying several techniques of descriptive and inferential statistics such as mean rank analysis, independent samples t-test, Pearson correlation and regression. Results show that a statistically significant difference exists in the magnitude of counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) in blue and white collar workers. A high degree of job satisfaction and minimal degrees of interpersonal conflicts and counterproductive work behaviors are found in white collar workers. While, low level of job satisfaction and high degrees of interpersonal conflicts and counterproductive work behaviors are reported in blue collar workers. The results of the study also bring forward the predictability of CWB on the basis of the magnitude of interpersonal conflicts and job satisfaction. It is concluded that the job satisfaction has a diminishing effect on counterproductive behaviors
Impact of Macro-economic Variables on Share Price Behavior of Karachi Stock Exchange
Get PDFThis study has been conducted with a view to find out the relationship and impact of macroeconomic variables i.e. 3-Months, 6-Month and 12 Month Treasury Bill Rate (Proxy of Interest Rate), Consumer Price Index, Wholesale Price Index and Sensitive Price Index (Proxy for Inflation) with Karachi Stock Exchange—KSE 100 Share index. Monthly data has been collected from the period of July 2001 to June 2010. Coefficient of correlation and regression analysis have been used to test the hypothesis. The study examined the impact of inflation indices, interest rate (treasury bills), on KSE movement. The results showed that there was significant relationship between macroeconomic variables and KSE-100 Share index. The study further revealed significant impact of treasury bills on KSE-100 index
The Financial Integration: An Empirical Analysis of Pakistan and UK
Get PDFIn this paper, integration of financial markets in Pakistan with those in United Kingdom, have been investigated. For this purpose we have tested the presence of co integration among Call money Rates (CMR) and t-bills rates (TBR) of Pakistan and UK.
Our data consist of monthly rates of the entire domestic (Pakistan) and foreign (United Kingdom) variables. Variables selected for analysis are T-Bill Rate (TBR), Call Money Rate (CMR), Exchange Rate (Rs/$) and London Inter Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR). The sample period is 1st Jan 2000, to 31st Dec 2008, which includes 96 monthly observations for each variable used. All the variables are expressed in Natural Logarithm. The sources for data collection are State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Economic Survey of Pakistan, and IMF CD-2009.
In this study we use co-integration approach to examine the integration of returns in both domestic and foreign markets. One of the pre-requisites for undertaking the cointegration framework is that the variables that are expected to have long-run relationship should have the same order of integration: For short run causality, we have estimated Vector Error Correction model.
Results obtained from exchange rate are not integrating with short-term. Based on cointegration tests, the empirical results find co-integration among four variables (t-bill rate Pakistan & call money rate Pakistan, call money rate Pakistan & call money rate United Kingdom and t-bill rate Pakistan and t-bill rate United Kingdom). Vector error correction model suggested long run and short run relationship between all variables. These results thus recommend that there is a link amongst domestic and foreign market.
The paper is an original work and emphasizes whether the financial liberalization undertaken in Pakistan since 2000 has created integration among domestic and foreign market. Further to analyze if there is any relation or co-movement among the rate of returns in Pakistan and UK