Impact of Expectancy Based Dispositional Traits of Self Efficacy and Optimism on Job Satisfaction among University Faculty Members: Mediating Role of Affective Organizational Commitment

The study examined expectation based dispositional personality traits of self-efficacy and optimism as predictor of most discussed work attitude of job satisfaction. Moreover affective organizational commitment is tested for mediation in the predictor-outcome relationship of self-efficacy and optimism with job satisfaction. A sample of 293 faculty members from 33 public and private universities from 4 provinces of Pakistan were utilized. Results indicated a significant and positive relationship between dispositional self-efficacy and organizational commitment. Furthermore level of optimism of faculty members significantly and positively related to organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Organizational commitment fully mediated the path between self-efficacy and job satisfaction and partially mediated the path between optimism and job satisfaction. Current research has important theoretical and managerial implications. Current research emphasized the crucial role organizational commitment play in link between expectancy based dispositional traits and job satisfaction. Managers must understand importance of expectancy based dispositional traits as predictors of job satisfaction and adopt appropriate selection and training interventions to enhance self-efficacy and optimism among workforce. Keywords: Disposition, Expectations, Self-efficacy, Optimism, Organizational Commitment, Job Satisfaction

Psychological capital, contextual demands and resources, work-family linking mechanisms and satisfaction with work-family balance in academia of Pakistan

Satisfaction with work-family balance (SWFB) represents an individual’s subjective appraisal of the overall balance between work and family domains. Despite strong indications that contemporary academic faculty are facing substantial workfamily balance challenges, there is a lack of studies which has explored how their SWFB is shaped. The current study investigated how psychological capital (PsyCap) and job and family demands and resources influence the SWFB of academic faculty in public sector universities of Pakistan. Additionally, the study examined the mediating role of work-family linking mechanisms (WFLMs) that is bi-directional work-family conflict and work-family enrichment, based upon job demands-resources (JD-R) model. A quantitative study was conducted where questionnaires were distributed to 760 faculty members in 20 public sector universities of Pakistan. Out of the 523 returned responses, 444 questionnaires were usable after data screening. Partial least square based structural equation modeling using SMART PLS 3.2.7 was used to analyze the measurement and structural models in this study. The results of hypothesis testing revealed that job demands, job resources, family resources, PsyCap, work to family conflict, work to family enrichment and family to work enrichment significantly affected SWFB. Job demands and job resources was significantly related to both work to family conflict and enrichment. Family demands were significantly related only to the family to work conflict, but family resources significantly predicted both family to work enrichment and conflict. PsyCap was a significant predictor of SWFB as well as four types of WFLMs. Mediation analysis revealed that work to family conflict and enrichment significantly mediate all the proposed paths while family to work conflict did not prove to be a mediator in any of the relationship. Family to work enrichment significantly mediates the relationship between family resources and SWFB. Relative weight analysis revealed that PsyCap was the most influential predictor of SWFB and both directions of enrichment. Overall work-domain factors were more important predictors of SWFB than family domain factors. It was concluded that university administration can enhance faculty’s SWFB in two ways; First, design appropriate interventions to increase faculty’s optimism, hope, resilience, and self-efficacy and therefore enhancing overall PsyCap. Second, they can create a work environment with higher job resources and fewer job demands. A framework based upon JD-R with family-based and personality factors widens the scope of this research’s practical implications to a myriad of professions

Deficiency of Vitamin B-Complex and Its Relation with Body Disorders

Vitamins B denote to some diverse kinds of vitamins which collectively, are recognized as B-complex vitamin. At hand are eight types of vitamins in vitamin B complex; thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pantothenic acid (B5), pyridoxine (B6), biotin (B7), folate (B9) also known as folic acid and cobalamin (B12). B vitamins have a direct impact on body energy levels, brain function and cell metabolism. There is a roundup of four top causes of vitamin B deficiency; a non-balanced diet, excessive alcohol consumption, various medications and gut malabsorption conditions. Deficiencies in these B vitamins can lead to a number of different symptoms like paresthesias, peripheral neuropathy, psychosis and heart attack and stroke over time if the deficiency is not reversed. Vitamins are found in highest abundance in meat, eggs and dairy or milk products such as butter, yogurt and cheese produced from milk of mammals usually buffaloes, cattle, goats, sheep and camels. Most people can get many nutrients they need, including B vitamins, by eating a varied diet of lean meats, grains, fruits and vegetables. This chapter provides an affluent of the most common types of vitamins B, including why body needs these, their deficiency symptoms and which foods contain them

EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF FORENSIC INFORMATION ON EYEWITNESS’ MEMORY AND CONFIDENCE ACCURACY

This study investigated eyewitnesses’ memory and confidence accuracy for action information (what happened at the crime scene), and detail information (descriptions of persons, objects, time and place). In Experiment 1, 89 participants watched a film and participated in one of four conditions: Laboratory discussion, Family discussion, Retell and Control, the first three with five meetings each. Three weeks later all participants open free recalled the events, and confidence judged their answers. The participants showed better free recall and confidence accuracy for action than for detail information. Participants in the two discussion conditions and in the Retell condition recalled more items and those in the Lab-discussion and Retell conditions more correct items for action information, than those in Control group. However, the four conditions did not differ for proportion correct of all action items recalled and confidence accuracy for action items. In brief, Experiment 1 showed that witness discussions and retellings of the experienced event with others improved recall for action information but had had no, or small, effects on confidence accuracy. Experiment 2 investigated recall and confidence accuracy performance for action and detail information using focused questions. Seventy-seven participants watched a film, answered and confidence judged 63 questions about action and detail information about the events. Again, participants showed better memory and confidence accuracy for action information. Overall, the results indicate that, for both free recall and focused questions, witnesses’ recall and confidence accuracy is better for action information than for detail information, thus extra precaution is needed in the forensic system when detail information from witnesses is considered

Characterizing Circular Supply Chain Practices in Industry 5.0 With Respect to Sustainable Manufacturing Operations

The current research investigated the significance of circular supply chain practices in Industry 5.0 with respect to their sustainable manufacturing operations. Through a comprehensive review of the literature, the current study identified key circular supply chain practices and their potential benefits for Industry 5.0. The findings indicated that closed-loop supply chains, sustainable sourcing, product design for circularity, and waste reduction may assist Industry 5.0 firms to achieve their sustainability objectives while enhancing the operational efficiency. Moreover, the study also highlighted the challenges associated with the implementation of circular supply chain practices including the necessity for collaboration among supply chain partners, investment in new technologies and infrastructure, and the development of new skills and capabilities. From a practical and managerial perspective, the implications suggest that firms aiming to adopt circular supply chain practices in Industry 5.0 should prioritize collaboration and coordination, make investments in new technologies and infrastructure, and foster the acquisition of new skills and capabilities. To complement this research, future studies could employ empirical research methods in order to validate the findings and recommendations as well as explore potential barriers to the implementation of circular supply chain practices in Industry 5.0

A Study on Teacher’s Perception about Components of English Handwriting in Pakistan

Handwriting is an essential of school activities for the school going children. Good or legible handwriting remained a constant task for the teachers and students during the whole day. The teachers recognize the legible handwriting at a gland due to their routine work in the schools. The teacher’s criterion that lies behind their decision of good handwriting was a question to answer in this study. The purpose of this study was to identify the components of legibility from the teachers’ perspective. Referencing handwriting experts and a literature review, key variables were categorized and organized onto a 5-point Likert Scale questionnaire. Teachers’ responses to the various legibility criteria were then tallied with regards to primary school students. Mean, standard deviation, exploratory factor analysis and path diagram statistics were applied to the ordinal data. It was concluded that twelve components were important for the legibility of handwriting of primary school students. These include Readability, Margin, Similarity, Line, Space, Size, Shape, Roundness, Form, Slant, Alignment and Recognition

Transition to periodic behaviour of flow past a circular cylinder under the action of fluidic actuation in the transitional regime

This study focuses on the numerical investigation of the underlying mechanism of transition from chaotic to periodic dynamics of circular cylinder wake under the action of time-dependent fluidic actuation at the Reynolds number = 2000. The forcing is realized by blowing and suction from the slits located at ±90° on the top and bottom surfaces of the cylinder. The inverse period-doubling cascade is the underlying physical mechanism underpinning the wake transition from mild chaos to perfectly periodic dynamics in the spanwise-independent, time-dependent forcing at twice the natural vortex-shedding frequency.This work has been financed by the Spanish and Catalan Governments under grants FIS2016-77849-R and 2017-SGR-00785, respectively. The authors also thankfully acknowledge the computer resources at MareNostrum and Calendula accessed through grants RES-FI-2017-2-0020 and RES-FI-2017-3-0009, respectivelyPostprint (published version

Learning the Structure of Auto-Encoding Recommenders

Autoencoder recommenders have recently shown state-of-the-art performance in the recommendation task due to their ability to model non-linear item relationships effectively. However, existing autoencoder recommenders use fully-connected neural network layers and do not employ structure learning. This can lead to inefficient training, especially when the data is sparse as commonly found in collaborative filtering. The aforementioned results in lower generalization ability and reduced performance. In this paper, we introduce structure learning for autoencoder recommenders by taking advantage of the inherent item groups present in the collaborative filtering domain. Due to the nature of items in general, we know that certain items are more related to each other than to other items. Based on this, we propose a method that first learns groups of related items and then uses this information to determine the connectivity structure of an auto-encoding neural network. This results in a network that is sparsely connected. This sparse structure can be viewed as a prior that guides the network training. Empirically we demonstrate that the proposed structure learning enables the autoencoder to converge to a local optimum with a much smaller spectral norm and generalization error bound than the fully-connected network. The resultant sparse network considerably outperforms the state-of-the-art methods like \textsc{Mult-vae/Mult-dae} on multiple benchmarked datasets even when the same number of parameters and flops are used. It also has a better cold-start performance.Comment: Proceedings of The Web Conference 202

The influence of socioeconomic status on job and life satisfaction among low-income employees in Johor Local Authorities

Many studies have found that a low socioeconomic status has a negative impact on welfare. However, contextual evidence on this issue in Malaysia is scarce. Therefore, this study attempts to quantitatively examine the effect of socioeconomic status on life and job satisfaction among low-income employees working in the public. The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), Work Domain Satisfaction Scale (WDSS), and Socioeconomic Questionnaire were presented to 265 respondents chosen using a convenience sampling technique. The data were then analyzed using SPSS 26.0 and SmartPLS 3.0 equation modeling. The results show that socioeconomic status had a positive effect on life satisfaction (t = 4.581; p .001) and job satisfaction (t = 3.423; p .001). Thus, this study contributes to the provision of better insights into the socioeconomic status factors that determine life and job satisfaction, especially among low-income employees working in the public sector in Malaysia

Capital inflows and economic growth in Pakistan

This study intends to investigate the impact of foreign capital inflow on economic growth of Pakistan during the period of 1985-2010. The empirical analysis is based on multiple regression technique. Results show that foreign direct investment (FDI), foreign portfolio investment (FPI) and remittances are positive and significant relationship with economic growth. While foreign aid shown significant but negative relationship with economic growth. Finding further suggests that foreign direct investment, foreign portfolio investment and remittances enhance the economic growth. And it is recommended that country like Pakistan should enhance the domestic resources to break the vicious circle of foreign aid