A functional derivative action framework for Pakistan

Company law in Pakistan does not recognise shareholders’ right of derivative action. This situation raises the question as to what extent derivative action, if recognised under the company law in Pakistan, can promote good corporate governance and contribute to reinforce enforcement powers of shareholders as to safeguarding their rights? The purpose of this thesis is twofold. First, this thesis argues that an effective derivative action system could act as a means of disciplining corporate management in Pakistan. Second, it presents it argumentations that other legal and extra-legal managerial disciplinary mechanisms have limitations of their own that support the introduction of a statutory derivative action system in Pakistan. The methodologies used in this thesis are doctrinal, historical, case study, comparative and semi-structured interviews. Doctrinal analysis has been employed when analysing statutes and case law. Case study methodology has been used to exemplify problems of directorial misconduct and providing empirical evidence for carrying out further analysis. A comparative approach has been utilized for which the UK has been chosen for comparative purposes to identify lessons that Pakistan can learn from the UK derivative action system while finding ways for effective use of derivative action system in Pakistan. Semi-structured interviews are aimed at providing an evaluation of the reform proposals. This study contributes to the subject of derivative action in three key ways. First, it provides an in-depth examination of the regulatory framework pertaining to shareholder protection in Pakistan in order to highlight the inherent challenges presented by un-updated legal framework. Second, based on the findings from this thesis, reform proposals are made as to codifying derivative actions, clarifying the procedural route for derivative proceedings and providing a funding mechanism to attract shareholders to bring derivative actions to enforce corporate rights. Third, suggestions proposed in this thesis are supported by both the opinions of the interviewees and original research on judicial experience of other jurisdictions, particularly the UK. The findings made in this study and proposals have implications for law reforms and are expected to inform practitioners, academics, legislators and policy makers on the way forward in reforming shareholder protection in Pakistan. Thus, this thesis would inform reforms in the company law in order to strengthen the enforcement power of shareholders and ensure corporate accountability in Pakistan

Generalized anxiety disorder: can we rest now?

Generalized anxiety disorder is a complex psychiatric syndrome. Current understanding on the epidemiological risk factors, genetic vulnerability and neurobiology of the GAD is beginning to unfold the complexities behind this disorder. This narrative review has attempted to put together the recent advances in the area of GAD research with intent to identify the gaps requiring further research

The Effect of Internal Marketing Dimensions on Organizational Commitment of Employees: An Investigation among Private Banks

The Employees are also the customers of company and they have ability to change the future of organization. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of internal marketing on organizational commitment of employees in private banks of Faisalabad. A model was made to examine the factors affecting organizational commitment and it was tested empirically using a sample of 109. All the respondents were employees of different private banks working on different ranks. The questionnaire strategy was used for this research. Descriptive statistics and regression was run to find the results. The paper found Job satisfaction, Understanding and differentiation and Inter-functional coordination and integration to be the most effective componentsof the internal marketing construct of the research model, making them key influencers of organizational commitment. This study is confined to two things one is organizational commitment “Affective commitment” and other is internal marketing. The branches of private banks in Faisalabad were chosen for this research so the research place of this study is private banks of Faisalabad. Microfinance banks, public sector banks and development finance institutions are not under the shadow of this research umbrella. The paper outlines ways to effectively use internal marketing for making employees committed to bank. A marketing manager or policy maker can follow these outlines for making policy for employees

Associations of controlling behavior, physical and sexual violence with health symptoms

Controlling behavior is often manifested as monitoring, coercing or threatening the partner. Globally, it has been experienced by the women (in range of 5.2% to 56.6%) and often results in their physical and mental ill health. To the best of our knowledge there is no published research on controlling behaviors. Therefore, a cross sectional study was conducted to measure the magnitude of the controlling behaviors and its association to some physical stress symptoms of women. The study was conducted in urban settings of Karachi, Pakistan, using simple random sampling technique. The data was collected by trained midwifes from the 759 married women of aged 25 to 60 years. The data was entered in Epi Info version 6 and analyzed on SPSS version 11. The study showed that the prevalence of pastyear physical and sexual violence is 68% while controlling behavior was experienced by 51.6% of the women. Among the different types of controlling behavior, refusal of the husband to give money for the household chores was the most common. The results of the bi-variate analysis showed that there was a significant association between women who had past-year physical or sexual violence experience with shoulder and neck pain, feeling worthlessness and suicidal thoughts. This study identified that most women in middle and lower socioeconomic groups are exposed to physical, sexual and psychological violence. Furthermore, we found that in addition to exposure to violence, women face controlling behaviors from their partner which restrict their decisions making toward their health

UAV-Empowered Disaster-Resilient Edge Architecture for Delay-Sensitive Communication

The fifth-generation (5G) communication systems will enable enhanced mobile broadband, ultra-reliable low latency, and massive connectivity services. The broadband and low-latency services are indispensable to public safety (PS) communication during natural or man-made disasters. Recently, the third generation partnership project long term evolution (3GPPLTE) has emerged as a promising candidate to enable broadband PS communications. In this article, first we present six major PS-LTE enabling services and the current status of PS-LTE in 3GPP releases. Then, we discuss the spectrum bands allocated for PS-LTE in major countries by international telecommunication union (ITU). Finally, we propose a disaster resilient three-layered architecture for PS-LTE (DR-PSLTE). This architecture consists of a software-defined network (SDN) layer to provide centralized control, an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) cloudlet layer to facilitate edge computing or to enable emergency communication link, and a radio access layer. The proposed architecture is flexible and combines the benefits of SDNs and edge computing to efficiently meet the delay requirements of various PS-LTE services. Numerical results verified that under the proposed DR-PSLTE architecture, delay is reduced by 20% as compared with the conventional centralized computing architecture.Comment: 9,

Can HRM be Affirmed as a System? Applying General Systems Theory (GST) on Human Resource Management

General System Theory (GST) has presented some key concepts that Strategic HRM researchers use to link different HR Systems with organizational strategic goals and performance. In order to apply General System Theory’s underpinnings in Strategic HR literature and to establish the point that GST’s key concepts can be used to explore HR systems, it is necessary to first prove that HR as a distinct function of any organization and can be declared as a system. It is possible, if researchers can prove that all or most of the key concepts presented by GST are present in organization’s HR function and thus Systems Theory/Thinking principles can be applied to design and manage HR function. This conceptual paper takes a look at literature and analyzes all related assumptions of general systems theory in the context of HRM and concluded that HRM can be declared as a system

The Effect of Service Quality on Purchase Intention with Mediating Role of Store Image

This study emphasizes to measure the effect of service quality on purchase intention with mediating role of store image. The study majorly focused on paint brands available at stores of Manama, Bahrain. Reliability of data, descriptive analysis and Pearson correlation matrix was calculated by using SPSS. The relationship among study variables is tested trough structural equation modeling (SEM) by using AMOS 24. Results highlighted that there is significant and positive relation between service quality and purchase intention of private label paint brands. Moreover, it was found that store image mediates the relationship between service quality and purchase intention of private label paint brands

The Predictive Validity of Functional Outcome Measures With Discharge Destination for Hospitalized Medical Patients

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the predictive validity for discharge to home or facility of 4 functional mobility outcome measures. DESIGN: Retrospective, observational study. SETTING: Urban, academic hospital in the United States. PARTICIPANTS: Adult patients (N=3999) admitted to medical units between June 1, 2019, and February 29, 2020, with 2 or more recorded scores on each of 4 tools: Activity Measure for Post-Acute Care (AM-PAC) 6-Clicks Basic Mobility and Daily Activity, Henry Ford Mobility Level, and The Johns Hopkins Highest Level of Mobility. INTERVENTIONS: Not applicable. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Mobility scores and discharge destination. RESULTS: For the 3999 subjects, 51.4% went home at discharge and had higher mean scores on each measure than those not returning home. Both early (I) and later (II) time point for each measure had positive predictability for discharge home. AM-PAC 6-Clicks had the highest confidence intervals for early and later recorded scores. The c-statistic value for Basic Mobility I (cut point=16) was 0.74 and for II (cut point=18) was, 0.79. The value for Daily Activity I (cut point=18) was 0.75 and for Daily Activity II (cut point=18) was 0.80). The Johns Hopkins Highest Level of Mobility and Henry Ford Mobility Level measures were less discriminative at initial score (c-statistic 0.704 and 0.665, respectively) and final score (c-statistic 0.74 and 0.75, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Functional outcome measures have good predictive validity for discharge destination. The AM-PAC Basic mobility score appears to have a slightly higher confidence interval than the other tools in this study design