FIRM PERFORMANCE: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE

Majority of firms in the world have controlling shareholders, usually a family or a state and in few other cases, single individual controls manyfirms under an umbrella. The study aimsto investigate the relationship between ownership structure and performance of firms. A sample of 100 firms listed on Karachi stock Exchange (including 50 private and 50 public firms) for time period 2007 to 2011 were used for analysis. Firm’s performance is measured by accounting based measures as well as market based measures. Return on asset, Profitability,Leverage,Asset turnover, Earning per share and Tobin’s Q are taken as independent variableand Equity is used as a dependent variable. The statistical tools Mean, OLS, Correlation and T-Test were used for analysis of data. It was concluded that privately owned firms performs better than publicly owned firms. All independent variables except Tobin’s Q indicated a significant relationship with dependent variable which ultimately contributes toward a higher performance. Statistical differences are insignificant between private and public owned firms

Outsourcing and Organizational Performance in Banking Sector of Punjab, Pakistan

Organizations are more competitive these days .To maintain competitive position, Firms are developing new strategies and introducing new techniques. Outsourcing is widely recommended technique for this purpose. Outsourcing, support functions is a common practice in organizations so that the management can focus on its core functions. Outsourcing helps organization’s to improve their performance. This paper explores the impact of outsourcing on organizational performance in banking sector of Punjab, Pakistan. Key words outsourcing, organizational performance, banking, Pakista

Determinants of Student Satisfaction while working in Groups

The increasing popularity of team structures in business environment coupled with the common practice of including group projects/assignments in university curricula means that business schools should direct efforts towards maximizing team as well as personal results. Yet, most frameworks for studying teams center exclusively on team level outcomes to address organizational needs. Far fewer studies have examined effectiveness at individual team member level in an educational context. The quantitative study on which this paper is based investigated the impact of team process on the effectiveness of individual satisfaction in group work amongst business students in Hong Kong with work group effectiveness and management educational literature providing the theoretical background. The study surveyed 489 university business students and revealed that all three team process factors, namely workload sharing, mutual support and communication play a positive and significant role in individual satisfaction in team settings. Keywords: Individual Satisfaction; Team Process; Workload Sharing; Mutual Support; Communication; Group Work; Teamwork; Student Projec

Impact of Total Quality Management Practices on an Organization Performance

Purpose: Although impact of TQM practices have been founded to improve the organization performance, the management literature has overlooked on the effort of individual level or in form of group outcomes, the purpose of this paper to explore the impact of TQM practices on organization performance in banking sectors. Practices has an impact on three dimensions of employee (physically, psychologically, social) weather well being should be consider as a mediator of the TQM practices and organization performance relationship. Design/ Methodology/ Approach: The paper use qualitative data collected from in depth case study via documents analysis and Sami structured interviews with quality expert’s practices about how to enhance the level of performance. Finding: Thepaper shows that impact of TQM practices can lead to both positive and negative motivation outcomes. Furthermore they create trade-off between the three dimensions of well-beings. While they increase employee well being on one dimension they are dramatic to another. Research limitation/Implications: Due to the scope of the research the paper bounded itself to analyzing three TQM practices. Different trade off may exist for other practices. Practical Implications: Many organization introducing TQM practices assuming that they will improve performance. However, the existence of well being trade-off need to be acknowledges and managed. Originality/ Value: This paper show that for a comprehensive understanding of the effects of TQM practices further studies need to contemplate the different dimension of well being separately, as trade-off may occur between them. It further suggests that well being may be an unexplored mediator of the TQM practice and organization performances relationship. Key words: TQM practices, organization performance, motivatio

Factors affecting online shopping behavior of consumers in Pakistan

Online shopping trend is very popular now days. This process requires a medium for buying goods and services that is internet. There are many factors that can influence consumer’s online buying behavior. These factors may vary from individual to individual. Financial risk, product risk, Convenience, Non-delivery risk and return policies are key factors discussed in this study. Risk of losing money and financial details has depressing effect on online shopping behavior. . Product and convenience risk are essential and considerable risk issues for not shopping online. Key words: Online shopping, Consumer behavior, Pakista

Automated deep bottleneck residual 82-layered architecture with Bayesian optimization for the classification of brain and common maternal fetal ultrasound planes

Despite a worldwide decline in maternal mortality over the past two decades, a significant gap persists between low- and high-income countries, with 94% of maternal mortality concentrated in low and middle-income nations. Ultrasound serves as a prevalent diagnostic tool in prenatal care for monitoring fetal growth and development. Nevertheless, acquiring standard fetal ultrasound planes with accurate anatomical structures proves challenging and time-intensive, even for skilled sonographers. Therefore, for determining common maternal fetuses from ultrasound images, an automated computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) system is required. A new residual bottleneck mechanism-based deep learning architecture has been proposed that includes 82 layers deep. The proposed architecture has added three residual blocks, each including two highway paths and one skip connection. In addition, a convolutional layer has been added of size 3 × 3 before each residual block. In the training process, several hyper parameters have been initialized using Bayesian optimization (BO) rather than manual initialization. Deep features are extracted from the average pooling layer and performed the classification. In the classification process, an increase occurred in the computational time; therefore, we proposed an improved search-based moth flame optimization algorithm for optimal feature selection. The data is then classified using neural network classifiers based on the selected features. The experimental phase involved the analysis of ultrasound images, specifically focusing on fetal brain and common maternal fetal images. The proposed method achieved 78.5% and 79.4% accuracy for brain fetal planes and common maternal fetal planes. Comparison with several pre-trained neural nets and state-of-the-art (SOTA) optimization algorithms shows improved accuracy

Effects of Fertilizers on Copper and Nickel Accumulation and Human Health Risk Assessment of Vegetables and Food Crops

Despite the fact that fertilizers have been used for millennia for sustainable crop production, this high and considerable dependence on fertilizers heightens environmental concerns with the indirect human exposure due to accumulation of toxins in food chain via soil contamination. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the application of fertilizers to the soil and their effect on the accumulation of copper and nickel in spinach (Spinacia oleracea), garlic (Allium sativum), wheat (Triticum aestivum), maize (Zea mays), and barley (Hordeum vulgare); as well as potential health concerns associated with consuming vegetables cultivated on this contaminated land. Samples of available soil, food crops, and human blood were collected from three different Tehsils: Bhalwal, Sahiwal, and Silanwali and were regarded as site 1, site 2 and site 3 respectively. Urea, farmyard manure, and potassium chloride were delivered to Site 1; urea phosphate, manure, and ammonium sulphate were delivered to Site 2; and superphosphate, ammonium phosphate, and nitrate phosphate were delivered to Site 3. Data was subjected to statistical analysis for computing out ANOVA and correlation. Analysis revealed that minimum copper concentration was found in the soil of T. aestivum grown at Site-1 while the inhabitants of Site 3 had the highest concentration of Cu in their blood. The highest level of HIR was found in the human beings that ate the S. oleracea grown at Site 3. It is strongly advised that fertilizers be used sparingly, as their excessive use can cause human health risks

Assessing the Knowledge and Adherence of Dental Students to Cross-Infection Control Measures

Background: Cross-infection control is extremely pivotal to halt the propagation of contiguous diseases amongst people as they pose a tremendously increasing disease burden on our health care system. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the knowledge and adherence to cross-infection control measures among dental students in public and private institutions in Karachi. Methods: This descriptive study was performed among dental students of public and private sector dental colleges in Karachi from January 2020 – February 2020. The questionnaire assessed the knowledge and adherence of dental students toward cross-infection control protocols during their clinical rotations. The chi-square test was used to analyze the relationship between students’ knowledge and practice of cross-infection control measures. Results: A total of 202 students participated in this study. The students demonstrated adequate knowledge of cross-infection control measures. However, the practice of wearing gloves was positive (98%) in contrast to the use of masks (79%), gowns (46%), and eyewear (13%). A statistically significant relation was seen in their knowledge and attitude toward hand hygiene. The immunization status of students from both government (72%) and private (88%) sectors raised concerns. Although students demonstrated good practice of measures to avoid transmission of contagious diseases (p=<0.001) apart from the use of environmental barrier (36%) (p=0.047) and disinfection (37%) of the working surface. Conclusion: The overall knowledge of cross-infection control was satisfactory among dental students. Efforts are needed to improve the degree of compliance with recognized policies for improving the attitude of students regarding cross-infection measures