The Role of Rater Motivation and Training in Effective Performance Appraisal System in Public Sector Universities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Performance appraisal is considered to be the most significant element of performance management but often the former involves controversial practices, among other variables influenced by accuracy and effectiveness. However, it is generally understood that performance appraisal system commonly result into positive organizational outcomes, yet the accuracy of the measuring tools is still an arguable issue with more criticisms. The ongoing matters are measured and tested as a case study approach by paying attention on higher education institutions. Since higher education is progressively playing a vital role in economic competitiveness of a country. Aiming to examine the effect of rater motivation and rater training on performance appraisal process in public sector universities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan and recognized as a critical contribution to organizational and people’s performance. Thus, this study finds the effects and consequences of rater motivation and rater training on performance appraisal system. This study is survey based, 300 questionnaires in total were distributed among the faculty of public sector universities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Pakistan. Out of which 160 were received back recording response rate of 53%. Findings of this study indicate that there was positive and significant relationship between rater motivation and performance appraisal and also between rater training and performance appraisal in public sector universities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The current study offers researchers with the opportunity to search performance appraisal from a new perspective which has never been explored before in a developing country like Pakistan

Activity Based Costing around the World: Adoption, Implementation, Outcomes and Criticism

The purpose of this article is to provide systematic and critical literature review of studies related to activity-based costing around the world. The literature review covers articles from developed and developing countries and is organised to provide insights on four major aspects of ABC adoption, implementation, outcomes and criticism. The adoption of ABC is generally greater in developed countries as compared to developing countries. Among the key benefits of using ABC include better product costing that ultimately increases the profitability and competitiveness of a company. Using ABC results in greater transparency of costs which have implications for planning, controlling and decision making. Successful implementation of ABC is to deal effectively with the specific behavioral, technical and organizational factors. Most of the problems found in the literature were related to the practical, technical and system difficulties of ABC. Due to cultural and organizational issues many companies fail as techniques need modification when used in different settings

Effects of Patriotic Movies on Public Behavior in Pakistan: A Survey Study of Lahore City

Film offers different trends, ideas and traditions. Overall, a film has great impact on public minds and can change their behavior towards a specific issue. Film has the power to create and shape ideas, customs, and styles of viewers on a range of various subjects Accordingly, the contents presented in films including good audio-visual elements can instill better influence on different communities across the globe. Thus, film can form and reform opinion of its publics. The basic objective of the study underhand is to observe the dominant belief among educated audience towards patriotism as learnt from patriotic films. The quantitative methodology was employed for this study and survey was used as a research technique. The Provincial Capital City of Lahore was selected as population of study with four leading universities of the City as Sample. Around 400 respondents both male and female students were selected based on convenient sampling and descriptive statistical analysis was made through SPSS for inferences. It was hypothesized that the views of the audience determine their feelings after watching patriotic films i.e., they are filled with pride, happiness, emotions, motivation and sensitive. The study further aimed to explain the phenomenal change in the behavior of the audiences of patriotic movies. The study explored that the audiences liked various elements presented in movies including music, songs, actions, direction, characterization, dialogue delivery of patriotic orientation etc. The findings of the study further explored that patriotic Urdu movies in Pakistan have a constructive and everlasting influence on viewers e.g., the audience feel entertained and motivated after watching such genre of movies. Most of the respondents believed the patriotic movies which have strong script, dialogues and direction attract the audience the most. The researchers believe that the study underhand may work as a contributing agent and open new horizons for future researchers in this phenomenon

Effect of Medium of Instruction on Students’ Motivation Towards Learning at Secondary Level

The present study aimed to investigate the effect of medium of instruction on students’ motivation towards learning at secondary level. It comprised of 1456 respondents as a sample of the study which were conveniently selected from public and private sector secondary schools from the district Kasur of Punjab province.Motivation scale towards learning by Sultana, (2014) having 20 Likert type items with a reliability coefficient value 0.85 was used for data collection.Findings of the study revealed that the medium of instruction had no significant effect on motivation level of students towards learning. On the basis of gender there was found no significant effect on motivation level. There was significant difference between English and Urdu mediums urban respondents’ motivation level as urban English medium students had significantly higher motivation level than urban Urdu medium students. There was significant difference between English and Urdu mediums rural respondents’ motivation level as rural Urdu medium students had significantly higher motivation level than rural English medium students. It was recommended that the findings of the study should be refined for further implications through further longitudinal studies with more data from other provinces of Pakistan

SMEs Intention towards Use and Adoption of Digital Financial Services

The purpose of this study is to analyses the SMEs owners and managers intention towards use and adoption of digital financial services in South Punjab, Pakistsan. SMEs are considered key contributors to economic activity, as a key-source of employment, growth, and invention. SMEs perform significant role in the system of national financial regulation all over the world, Jobs creation, and contributing to modernization in the financial regulation are significant exertions to achieve ecological sustainability and more growth in access to finance. Access to finance in emerging countries is one of core issue in development of SME sector as well as obstacle in economic growth. Microfinance institutions are considered a good manifesto to enhance access to inclusive finance as well as stress-free access to finance and financial literacy for SMEs to support economic growth but in Pakistan, to obtain these finances not easy for SMEs sectors. SMEs are unfortunately still struggling due to lack of inclusive finance and financial literacy. Recently financial institution introduced digital financial services at micro level that provide access to financial services to each and every citizen in the country without any restriction. To accomplish the purpose of the research, the data was acquired from the SMEs owners and mangers with a sample of 232 chosen randomly of South Punjab, Pakistan. In this research study, merged two best theories; the theory of planned behavior and technology acceptance model was used to describe their behavior. Multiple statistical tests run to check the normality by using Shapiro-Wilk test, reliability and multicollinearity of the data to test the assumptions of regression and correlation. Finally, the results of this intended study revealed that there is a moderate significant but positive relationship between the SMEs owners and managers intention towards use and adoption of digital financial services. The Government of Pakistan should create finance related awareness program, training, technical institution and make a rules and regulation. Further this study suggests to researchers that focus on internal and as well as external factors of SMEs in Pakistan

Impact of Climate Change on the Number of Threatened Species: International Evidence

Global warming is the price for economic development. Rapid industrialization produces greenhouse gases that trap the heat and make the earth warmer. The rise in temperature and changes in precipitation resulted in extreme weather conditions. Global climate change affects both physical and biological environments and the impacts on biodiversity is directly and indirectly. The direct effects of climate change includes the increased in temperature and precipitation that affect individual organisms, populations, species distribution and ecosystem compositions and functions. The indirect effects of climate change are through increased salinity and extreme weather events such as floods, cyclones and droughts that will have a profound negative impacts on the forest and biodiversity. The present study investigates the impact of climate change on the number of threatened species as proxy for biodiversity loss using a cross-national data consisting of 98 countries. We have estimated the impact of temperature, precipitation and the number of natural disasters occurrences on the number of threatened species, in particular birds, fishes, mammals, plants and reptiles. As control variables, we have considered government effectiveness (proxy for good governance) and the level of economic development (proxy for wealth). By employing Ordinary Least Square (OLS) with robust standard error and quantile regressions analyses, our results suggest that all three climate change indicators – temperature, precipitation and the number of natural disasters occurrences increase the number of threatened species (biodiversity loss). Higher economic development also affect the number of threatened species positively. On the other hand, good governance such as government effectiveness reduces the number of threatened species. Thus, practicing good governance, promoting conservation of the environment and the control of greenhouse gasses would able to mitigate biodiversity loss

Prevalence of Poor Sleep and Relationship of Physical Exercise with Sleep among Male Adult Exercisers

Physical exercise has been suggested to show beneficial effects for various diseases and also for sleep. This study aims to assess the prevalence of sleep problems, and the relationship of physical exercise with sleep health among adult male exercisers. A total of 199 randomly selected athletes (all males) took part in this study. All participants responded to a questionnaire consisted of items related to demographic information that also included sports participation level, and playing experience. Self-reported sleep quality and physical exercise were using PQSI and three items concerning exercise frequency, intensity, and duration. The analysis revealed following main findings: 1) a significant negative correlation between physical exercise and sleep medication, 2) a significantly negative relationship between sports/ exercise participation level and sleep disturbance, 3) an 3.7 average global score of PSQI in total sample, 4) Exercise frequency was negatively correlated with daytime dysfunction whereas exercise intensity was negatively correlated with sleep disturbance and sleep efficiency but positively correlated with daytime dysfunction, 5) and prevalence of poor sleep in 22 % participants. There is some possibility to suggest that exercise may improve sleep health among adult male exercisers. The increased exercise frequency more positive impact to improve sleep but the relationship between exercise intensity and sleep remains inconclusive. existence of sleep problems in athletic population essentially require further attention for reducing the prevalence of poor sleep using other approaches along with continue doing exercise for good sleep

Corporate Governance and Stock Price informativeness: Evidence from an Emerging Market

Emerging markets usually have weaker legal and governance environment. The weaker enforcement of investor protection laws leads to a poor information environment. Using data of all the listed non-financial firms from Pakistan stock exchange (PSX), we document the relationship between corporate governance variables and stock price informativeness. The results from two-stage least squares (2SLS) reveal that controlling shareholders in the form of block holding plays an effective role in improving informativeness. Due to the presence of these block ownership, the institutional investors remain largely short term investors and act passively. This behavior of institutional investors encourages managers to extract more cash flows leading to higher synchronicity. These findings suggest market regulators develop such a corporate governance mechanism that not only ensures investor protection but also advise firms to reduce information asymmetry by better disclosure and transparency. More specifically, in the Pakistani context, traditional corporate governance mechanisms through board room regulations may not improve informativeness, and regulators need to regulate the ownership regulations, including family ownership and controlling shareholders

Impact of Food Security Initiative on Sustainable Development in North Eastern Nigeria

Can human being survive without food? No doubt, food is life; hence, food has become an instrument of national power. It is within that imperatival need for food that this paper takes a cursory look at the issue in all its ramifications. The paper with a comprehensive review of food security initiative on sustainable development in North Eastern Nigeria (Sponsored by TETFUND). The results of this study may indicate positive and significant relationship between food security elements: Availability, Accessibility, Adequacy and sustainable to access to food with sustainable development. The study used primary source of data collection through the administration of questionnaires among various government agencies, corporate organizations, Non- governmental, buyers as well as sellers within the North Eastern Nigeria. Various statistics tools to include descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and regression analysis were used to analyze the data.  The study recommends that stake holders, government authorities’ should on promoting food security in order to achieve sustainable development. Donor agencies should channel resources in ensuring food security for sustainable development in developing countries especially in Nigerian and in particular the North Eastern part. Moreover, increased productivity should be directed towards keeping pace with the growing population and through improvement in technology, there would be sufficient food available in the countr

Nexus between Foreign Remittance and Economic Growth in Bangladesh

Objective: The aim of this study review the current literature for determining the nexus between foreign remittance and economic growth in Bangladesh. Foreign remittance plays a pivotal role for economic growth in developing countries. It has taken a considerable attention to promote economic development compared to others sources of capital inflows such as aids, loans and foreign direct investments due to direct impact on socio-economic acceleration in a country. As a developing country, Bangladesh is one of the top 10 remittance-recipient countries in the world. Recently, the trends of remittance inflow are shrinking due to geopolitics and Middle East crisis. Methodology: Previous studies were reviewed, made literature matrix for findings literature and methodological gaps. Results: The evidences in the literature reveal that the nexus between foreign remittance and economic growth is inclusive and ambiguous for direct or indirect transmission channels through the inclusion of other variables in the analysis as financial development, investment, trade, consumption and poverty alleviation. Implications: Therefore, remittances inflow not only enhances economic growth and development but also reduces poverty in the labor exporting country