Assessment of Formality, Innovation and Productivity in Small and Medium Enterprises of Pakistan

This study aims to assess the dynamics of innovation and productivity of formally registered small and medium enterprises in Pakistan. It considers learning by doing and learning by schooling theories along with stylized facts about determinants of firms’ ability to practice innovation. This is the first detailed study that considers learning by doing and learning by schooling aspects of firms determining innovation practices. These are considered building blocks of sustainable economic growth and hence the growth processes of the firms. Realizing the state of these aspects provides valuable support to policymakers in developing effective policies for the manufacturing sector. For this purpose, a structural model is used to assess the factors affecting innovation followed by the effects of innovation on the productivity of the firms with reference to formality. The latest data by World Bank collected through Enterprise Survey between May 2013 to May 2015 is used to address the purpose. It is found that novel organizational and management practices promote the innovation of small and medium firms significantly. It is concluded that higher levels of productivity can be achieved through better organizational structure, employee training, the transformation of the internal structure of the production process, export growth, and the development of the business environment in various locations. These findings imply that export-oriented policies, research, and development for SMEs, training provisions for managers and employees, and changes in the hierarchal structure of the old established enterprises are the key elements for SMEs growth in Pakistan. Therefore, it is suggested to promote positive competition among SMEs as it works as a driving force to bring innovation and enhance the capacity utilization of the firms. It is observed that non-exporting firms are less concerned to adopt innovative practices that limit their productivity and growth. Thus, it is recommended to encourage these firms to grow at the par of their exporting counterparts by following their innovative strategies. These strategies bring direct benefits to the firms in terms of productivity and growth and have the potential to ultimately improve the livelihood and socio-economic status of the associated employees. Moreover, with higher levels of growth informal sector may also catch up with the formal sector through the effect of agglomeration economies of the formal firms located in the region

Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty in Mobile Telecumunication

Purpose:This research has been conducted to discuss customer loyalty in mobile telecommunication. Study measures different features of service assortment, price satisfaction, quality, employee service and satisfaction to check which attribute influence the loyalty more in mobile telecommunication. Design/methodology/approach: A survey was conducted in university of Sargodha. For this purpose the questionnaires were filled from the students of different departments of the university who were the customers of any one of the mobile network operators from the five main mobile networks in Pakistan named as Ufone, Telenor, Warid, Zong and Mobilink. The ?ve-point Likert scale was used (where 1 equals strongly disagree and 5 equals strongly agree). Finding:Research found that Price satisfaction, quality, employee service, service assortment and satisfaction positively related to the customer loyalty. Research also found that Service assortment highly affects the customer loyalty among the all independent variables.Limitations:This research includes a limitation that the people under consideration of sample are highly educated and young people.Originality/value:Regardless of the development of new products and services, only some studies have examined customer satisfaction and loyalty in the mobile telecom sector

The Allusions of Behavioral Finance

The deliberation in theoretical finance among the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) and the subject of the behavioral finance is of immense interest. from the time when its emerge, the EMH has been the most significant theory which describes the behavior of the diverse agents in the financial markets and overlooks more or less any prospective impact of human behavior in the investment method. From the end of 1970s and the commencement of 1980s, a rising number of researchers and scholars showed the irregularity of this theory. The anomalies of the recent portfolio models and theories have provoked the development of behavioral finance. Behavioral finance assimilates psychology and economics in finance theory and has its heredity in theground-breaking work of great psychologists Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1979). The rationale of this study is to present a synthesis of the behavioral finance literature over the last two decades. Keywords: Efficient Market Hypothesis, Financial Market, arbitrage, Cognitive dissonance, Regret avoidance Type: Literature Revie

Differentiation of Small Hepatic Hemangioma from Small Hepatocellular Carcinoma with Tri-Phasic Helical Computed Tomography Method

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) ranks second amongst all causes of cancer deaths globally. It is on a rise in Pakistan and might represent the most common cancer in adult males. Among women, HCC is the 7th most common cancer and 6th most common cancer related death. In Pakistan prevalence of HCC varies from 3.7%-16% of malignant tumors and most common cause of HCC is viral hepatitis B, C and D related cirrhosis. Pakistan contributes significantly to global burden of hepatitis C, which is a known risk factor for HCC, and has one of the highest prevalence rates (>3%) in the world. Objective: To find out the difference of small hemangioma from small hepatic cellular carcinoma by using tri- phasic helical Computed Tomography method. Methodology: In this descriptive study, among 81 patients of suspected hepatocellular carcinoma and hepatocellular hemangioma were selected with age and gender discrimination by convenient sampling, at Department of Radiology, UOL Teaching hospital Lahore Pakistan. 128 slice Computed Tomography Toshiba Aquilion machine was used. Results: Out of 81 patients collected with the suspicion of hepatic hemangioma and hepatocellular carcinoma , 41 were females and 40 were males who visited radiology department. It shows 50.6% were females and males were 49.4%. Out of 81 patients, 25 patients came with HHS and 31 were with HCC. 25.9% develop carcinoma on left side, 32.1% on right side, 6.2% on R/L side and remaining 35.8% were Nill. Out of 81 patients 8 develop carcinoma on anterior, 5 on both, 3 on caudate, 5 on lateral,13 on both 4 on middle, 7 on posterior, 6 on segment eight, 1 on segment 4, 1 on segment 7, 1 on segment 2 and remaining 36 sites were nill. 27.5% males develop HCC and 48.8% females develop HCC. Out of 81 patients 36.6% female patients develop HHS and 25.0% male patients develop HHS. Conclusion: In this study we conclude that females develop a large number of HCC and HHS than males. Hepatocellular carcinoma shows enhancement in early arterial and early washout phase while post-contrast images showing capsule-appearance which is relatively specific for HCC. On the other hand, HHS shows uniform enhancement in arterial phase and iso- or hyper-attenuating to liver parenchyma on delayed phase. Keywords: Hepatocellular carcinoma, Hepatocellular hemangioma, Computed tomography DOI: 10.7176/JHMN/73-07 Publication date: April 30th 202

Coal Consumption: An Alternate Energy Resource to Fuel Economic Growth in Pakistan

This study is an attempt to revisit the causal relationship between coal consumption and economic growth in case of Pakistan. The present study covers the period of 1974-2010. The direction of causality between the variable is investigated by applying the VECM Granger causality approach. Our findings have exposed that there exists bidirectional Granger causality between economic growth and coal consumption. The Cumulative Sum (CUSUM) and Cumulative Sum of Square (CUSUMSQ) diagrams have not found any structural instability over the period of 1974-2010

Educational Opportunities for Juveniles in Punjab, Pakistan - An Equity Concern

Juveniles makes an excluded group in a society. Mainstreaming them is one of the crucial objectives to be achieved through education. Provision of equitable educational opportunities, facilities and training to juveniles’ mental, moral, social and psychological development within borstal institutions has significant role in making them productive citizens for Pakistan’s society. The study rationalized that equity is a basic instrument to analyse educational facility for juveniles’ rehabilitation and mainstreaming. The study’s focus was to explore and analyse educational opportunities apropos of equity for juveniles in borstal institutes.Purposive sampling was used for conducting in-depth interviews from 26 juveniles, which was the total strength out of104 prisoned juveniles in the borstal institute, Faisalabad. The qualitative analysis revealed that although teaching-learning process had been taking place for juveniles but the system lacked in provision of equitable educational opportunities in the institute. Further, the data showed that teachers, reading materials, stationeries, laboratories and furniture, which are essential elements in carrying out teaching-learning process, were largely missing in the borstal institute and juveniles jail. In the light of the evidences gained, the study presents some practical suggestions for provision of equitable educational opportunities for juveniles in the borstal institute and jail of Punjab, Pakistan

How Different Behavior of Bosses Affect the Organization Performance

The behaviors of bosses in the organization determine the good and bad performances of employees. The purpose of this research is to identify behaviors of different bosses in various situations. Actually people or employees must be guided by bosses, who have a clear sense of direction. A group discussion approach has been adopted by the researchers in which department of management sciences of The Islamia University Bahawalpur has been taken for the discussion on boss behaviors. A qualitative approach has been adopted for content analysis of performance evaluation of employees in this university. Research has been taken from teaching staff of university and results are analyzed for the basis of group discussion. Results have shown that by compare and contrast method to evaluate the responses of teacher about their boss. Research have also shown that factors like displaying moral courage ,abusive supervision ,keep commitments and opportunity learn and grow are the potential hindrances in performances of teacher in this department .Proposals and implications for this department have also been discussed in order to improve the performance. Keywords: Human resource management, organization performance, teacher’s evaluation, work environment, bosses behavior, Department of management sciences Islamia University Bahawalpur (DMS, IUB

A novel homozygous missense variant in MATN3 causes spondylo- epimetaphyseal dysplasia Matrilin 3 type in a consanguineous family

Peer reviewe

Comparative study on data searching in linked list & B-tree and B+tree techniques

There are many methods of searching large amount of data to find one particular piece of information. Such as finding the name of a person in a mobile phone record. Certain methods of organizing data make the search process more efficient. The objective of these methods is to find the element with the least time. In this study, the focus is on time of search in large databases, which is considered an important factor in the success of the search. The goal is choosing the appropriate search techniques to test the time of access to data in the database and what is the ratio difference between them. Three search techniques are used in this work namely; linked list, B-tree, and B+ tree. A comparison analysis is conducted using five case databases studies. Experimental results reveal that after the average times for each search algorithms on the databases have been recorded, the linked list requires lots of time during search process, with B+ tree producing significantly low times. Based on these results, it is clear that searching in B- tree is faster than linked list at a ratio of (1: 5). The searching time in a B+ tree is faster than B- tree at the ratio of (1: 2). The searching time in a B+ tree is faster than linked list at the ratio of (1: 8). With that, it can be concluded that B+ tree is the fastest technique for data access

A multihoming-based mobility management scheme to reduce registration delay on proxy MIPv6 domain in NEMO

Registration delay is a significant issue for mobile network due to increase traffic load with handoff latency at the time of frequent movement from one subnet to another of Mobile Router (MR) in NEMO Basic Support protocol (NEMO BSP). Hence, a network-based localized protocol (i.e. PMIPv6) is integrated with NEMO in order to solve these matters. Yet, combining this network-based localized protocol for inter mobility handoff (i.e. movement among different access technology) in NEMO environment is a challenging issue as both MR and its MNNs must be taken into consideration. Therefore, this paper proposes a multihoming-based Early Proxy Binding Update scheme in NEMO (EPBU-NEMO) which is based on FPMIPv6 with predictive mode to reduce registration delay during inter mobility handoff. Moreover, numerical framework is formulated to evaluate the outcomes of the EPBU-NEMO scheme. Lastly, it determines that EPBU-NEMO scheme outperforms the standard NEMO BSP related to signaling cost regardless of increasing the number of MRs as well as cell residence time