Cross cultural perspectives of decision-making and control in multinational corporations operating in ASEAN

Kajian ini membincangkan isu-isu persekitaran budaya negara ASEAN dan cabaran-cabarannya terhadap pengurus-pengurus korporat multi-nasional. Kajian ini melaporkan penemuan terhadap corak membuat keputusan, kawalan dan pengurusan budaya serta aspek gelagat. Walaupun penemuan ini mempunyai persamaan dengan kajian lain, namun terdapat perbezaan dalam corak membuat keputusan, kawalan dan pengurusan budaya serta aspek gelagat

Impact of Foreign Direct Investment on Economic Growth in Pakistan

The paper examines the Impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth in Pakistan. The study has used data from 2000 to 2010 by using Two- Stage least squares method of simultaneous equations the results have been estimated. The results show that there exists a negative relationship between economic growth, proxies by gross domestic product (GDP) and foreign direct investment in Pakistan. Domestic investment, exports size and political stability were found to be very appropriate in locational choice of foreign direct investment in Pakistan. The enhancement of foreign direct investment in Pakistan government should ensure political stability and encourage more domestic investment and also make sure about trade globalization and foreign direct investments policies in today’s era for attracting more foreign direct investment in Pakistan. Keywords: FDI, GDP, Exports Growth and Domestic Investment

Sustaining livelihoods by improving urban public transport

This article was published in the journal, Proceedings of ICE, Engineering Sustainability [© Thomas Telford Publishing] and is also available at: http://www.thomastelford.com/journals/This paper reports on application of the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach to the wider impacts of urban public transport on the lives of the urban poor in developing countries. In applying the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach to the research data, transport is considered as an asset within the Sustainable Livelihoods framework. It draws upon findings of case studies undertaken between 2001 and 2003 in Colombo (Sri Lanka), Faisalabad (Pakistan) and Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania). Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, the study looks at price, affordability, accessibility and quality of public transport services

Factors Impeding Online Shopping: An Arab World Perspective

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that impede online shopping in the Arab region. This region has witnessed a fast growth in internet usage and offers a lot of potential for online retailing. The study is conducted in Saudi Arabia, which is the largest market in the Arab region. This study investigates the barriers to online shopping in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Empirical research is used to determine the difference in the barriers to online shopping by the shoppers and non-shoppers. Results based on a survey indicate that the major factors that impede online shopping are digital concerns, financial security concerns and online store barriers.  Non-shoppers express more profound concerns than online shoppers. The paper discusses the implications of these and makes recommendations. The study provides valuable insights into online shopping in Saudi Arabia that has not been previously investigated. From a practical point, findings of this study will be particularly useful to online retailers, shoppers, financial institutions and telecommunication service providers

Factors Impeding Online Shopping: An Arab World Perspective

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that impede online shopping in the Arab region. This region has witnessed a fast growth in internet usage and offers a lot of potential for online retailing. The study is conducted in Saudi Arabia, which is the largest market in the Arab region. This study investigates the barriers to online shopping in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Empirical research is used to determine the difference in the barriers to online shopping by the shoppers and non-shoppers. Results based on a survey indicate that the major factors that impede online shopping are digital concerns, financial security concerns and online store barriers.  Non-shoppers express more profound concerns than online shoppers. The paper discusses the implications of these and makes recommendations. The study provides valuable insights into online shopping in Saudi Arabia that has not been previously investigated. From a practical point, findings of this study will be particularly useful to online retailers, shoppers, financial institutions and telecommunication service providers

Design and Implementation of Lightweight Certificateless Secure Communication Scheme on Industrial NFV-Based IPv6 Virtual Networks

With the fast growth of the Industrial Internet of Everything (IIoE), computing and telecommunication industries all over the world are moving rapidly towards the IPv6 address architecture, which supports virtualization architectures such as Network Function Virtualization (NFV). NFV provides networking services like routing, security, storage, etc., through software-based virtual machines. As a result, NFV reduces equipment costs. Due to the increase in applications on Industrial Internet of Things (IoT)-based networks, security threats have also increased. The communication links between people and people or from one machine to another machine are insecure. Usually, critical data are exchanged over the IoE, so authentication and confidentiality are significant concerns. Asymmetric key cryptosystems increase computation and communication overheads. This paper proposes a lightweight and certificateless end-to-end secure communication scheme to provide security services against replay attacks, man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, and impersonation attacks with low computation and communication overheads. The system is implemented on Linux-based Lubuntu 20.04 virtual machines using Java programming connected to NFV-based large-scale hybrid IPv4-IPv6 virtual networks. Finally, we compare the performance of our proposed security scheme with existing schemes based on the computation and communication costs. In addition, we measure and analyze the performance of our proposed secure communication scheme over NFV-based virtualized networks with regard to several parameters like end-to-end delay and packet loss. The results of our comparison with existing security schemes show that our proposed security scheme reduces the computation cost by 38.87% and the communication cost by 26.08%

Sustaining livelihoods by improving urban public transport

This paper reports on application of the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach to the wider impacts of urban public transport on the lives of the urban poor in developing countries. In applying the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach to the research data, transport is considered as an asset within the Sustainable Livelihoods framework. It draws upon findings of case studies undertaken between 2001 and 2003 in Colombo (Sri Lanka), Faisalabad (Pakistan) and Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania). Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, the study looks at price, affordability, accessibility and quality of public transport services

Fighting corruption in infrastructure delivery in Nigeria

Fighting corruption in infrastructure delivery in Nigeri