Imperatives of sustainable university excellence: A conceptual framework

This study envisions the architecture of a modern era university with sustainable standards of excellence. Sustainable University Excellence is herein defined as the ability of a university to excel in the core areas of knowledge creation and dissemination via the mobilization of human, social, intellectual, and financial capital to serve on socioeconomic and environmental fronts ethically, efficiently, and effectively to secure a sustainable future. Seven core performance domains of a university are explored: Teaching quality, research culture, technological capability building, accessibility, community engagement, internationalization, and environment, which should be prioritize in order to continuously advance along a sustainable excellence continuum. This study provides a self-assessment methodology that universities can employ to compare their performance relative to the aforementioned domains, thus enabling the identification of performance gaps, the knowledge of which is crucial to the formulation of more targeted strategy. This approach allows decision makers to form a more coherent vision for sustainability within institutional and broader contexts. The approach proposed herein incorporates the three aspects of sustainability that form the so-called Triple Bottom Line (TBL)

Emotional Intelligence And Job Stress Among Bank Employees

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Natural disasters and economic losses: controlling external migration, energy and environmental resources, water demand, and financial development for global prosperity

The objective of the study is to examine the impact of natural disasters on external migration, price level, poverty incidence, health expenditures, energy and environmental resources, water demand, financial development, and economic growth in a panel of selected Asian countries for a period of 2005–2017. The results confirm that natural disasters in the form of storm and flood largely increase migration, price level, and poverty incidence, which negatively influenced country’s economic resources, including enlarge healthcare expenditures, high energy demand, and low economic growth. The study further presented the following results: i) natural resource depletion increases external migration, ii) FDI inflows increase price level, iii) increase healthcare spending and energy demand decreases poverty headcount, iv) poverty incidence and mortality rate negatively influenced healthcare expenditures, v) industrialization increases energy demand, and vi) agriculture value added, fertilizer, and cereal yields required more water supply to produce greater yield. The study emphasized the need to magnify the intensity of natural disasters and create natural disaster mitigation unit to access the human and infrastructure cost and attempt quick recovery for global prosperity

Bayesian network based procedure for regional drought monitoring:The Seasonally Combinative Regional Drought Indicator

Drought is a complex natural hazard. It occurs due to a prolonged period of deficient in rainfall amount in a certain region. Unlike other natural hazards, drought hazard has a recurrent occurrence. Therefore, comprehensive drought monitoring is essential for regional climate control and water management authorities. In this paper, we have proposed a new drought indicator: the Seasonally Combinative Regional Drought Indicator (SCRDI). The SCRDI integrates Bayesian networking theory with Standardized Precipitation Temperature Index (SPTI) at varying gauge stations in various month/seasons. Application of SCRDI is based on five gauging stations of Northern Area of Pakistan. We have found that the proposed indicator accounts the effect of climate variation within a specified territory, accurately characterizes drought by capturing seasonal dependencies in geospatial variation scenario, and reduces the large/complex data for future drought monitoring. In summary, the proposed indicator can be used for comprehensive characterization and assessment of drought at a certain region

Urban-rural and socioeconomic variations in lifetime prevalence of symptoms of sexually transmitted infections among Bangladeshi adolescents

Aim: To identify socioeconomic and urban-rural variations in self-reported lifetime prevalence of symptoms of sexually transmitted infections (STI). Methods: This cross-sectional study used data from the Bangladesh Adolescents Survey 2005 conducted on 11,986 adolescents, using a cluster sampling methods. Data were analysed using SPSS applying principle components analysis, multivariate logistic regression analysis, and prevalence ratio (PR) with 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: Self-reported lifetime prevalence of STI symptoms was 11.6%. Urban adolescents had 11% lower prevalence than their rural counterparts (PR(U/R) = 0.89; 95% CI = 0.79-1.00). Probability of self-reported lifetime symptoms of STI was highest among 20-24 years old income-generating male educated workers of mid-socioeconomic status living in rural areas (0.31). Conclusions: The residence (urban-rural) factor is more influential than the socioeconomic factor. Simpler and cheaper mode of screening and case finding tools for STIs would greatly help. Health promotion and education programs can decrease the adolescents' vulnerability to sexually transmitted diseases. © 2014 Gani et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Sustainable Enterprise Excellence: Attribute-Based Assessment Protocol

This paper is intended to design and provide a reliable and valid measurement instrument to aid organizations that wish to self-assess their performance and positioning relative to sustainable enterprise excellence. Recent research trends in performance excellence, quality management, and organizational sustainability have been directed towards integrated management systems (IMS). Sustainable Enterprise Excellence (SEE) is among these integrated management systems. SEE is undergoing ongoing development and its measurement scale is rudimentary, hence it lacks the more sophisticated sorts of measurement scales often used for organizational self-assessment purposes. A scientific approach is used herein to devise a more comprehensive SEE-oriented organizational assessment against six proposed performance results-oriented domains or constructs: governance and strategy, process implementation, sustainability performance, financial performance, innovation performance, and human capital performance. Each organizational performance construct is to be measured by ten attributes-based items. Maturity scale ratings that range from 0 to 10 reflect organizational performance relative to the associated item and the sum of item ratings across a construct reflects performance within the specific domain, the summation of the six construct scores then yields a measure of the overall organizational performance with respect to SEE. The assessment areas against which organization performance compares poorly suggest opportunities for improvement of associated business processes, the achievement of which will contribute to a sustainable future

Minimum Cost Multiobjective Programming Model for Target Efficiency in Sample Selection

In this study, we developed a model which elaborates relationship among efficiency of an estimator and survey cost. This model is based on a multiobjective optimization programming structure. Survey cost and efficiency of related estimator(s) lie in different directions, i.e., if one increases, the other decreases. The model presented in this study computes cost for a desired level of efficiency on various characteristics (goals). The calibrated model minimizes the cost for the compromise optimal sample selection from different strata when characteristic j is subject to achieve at least 1−αj level of efficiency of its estimator. In the first step, the proposed model minimizes the variance for a fixed cost, and it then finds the rise in cost for an αj percent rise in efficiency of any characteristic j. The resultant model is a multiobjective compromise allocation goal programming model

Energy, tourism, finance, and resource depletion: panel data analysis

This study examines the dynamic linkages between alternative and nuclear energy consumption, tourism receipts, bank-specific factors, and environment and resource factors in a heterogeneous panel of countries for the period 1995–2016. The study also addresses the United Nations sustainable development agenda under a resource conservation framework across countries. A two-step differenced Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator is employed for robust inferences. The results show that bank-specific factors substantially reduce resource depletion, whereas international tourism increases energy resource depletion and carbon emissions across countries. Nuclear energy consumption reduces resource depletion, whereas industrial value added increases resource depletion and carbon emissions; thus, it is imperative to devise strong policies for sustainable production across countries. The results of panel causality tests confirm different causality patterns among the studied variables. The study concludes that an environmental and resource conservation process needs sustainable policy instruments, including cleaner production techniques, renewable energy sources, and sustainable production and consumption to achieve green growth