BackgroundCOVID-19 break out has created panic and fear in society. A strict kind of lockdown was imposed in Wuhan, Hubei province of China. During home confinement due to lockdown, people face multidimensional issues. The present study explored the psychological impacts of COVID-19 home confinement during the lockdown period and Wuhan’s residents’ attitude toward physical activity.MethodsA cross-sectional online survey was conducted to collect the primary data according to the study objectives. The population was Wuhan residents who were in home confinement. A (...) total of 2280 participant’s reply to the online questionnaire survey and collected data after quantifying the data, about 2200 ; about female, about male, others about, and about were not disclosed their gender participants responses were used for analysis. The collected data were analyzed through appropriate statistical techniques.ResultsAccording to results, H1 is supported with β = −40.793, t = 57.835, p = 0.000, which claimed a negative association between COVID-19 lockdown policy and behavior and attitude. Results for H2 reveals that the COVID-19 lockdown policy have negative influence on emotional control with β = −0.769, t = 46.766, p = 0.000 and it is supported. H3 documented a significant positive relationship between COVID-19 lockdown policy and lockdown period psychological impact, which means lockdown policy, is the main reason to increase the lockdown psychological impact. Further, COVID-19 lockdown policy have negative influence on physical activity and self-belief with β = −0.657, t = 32.766, p = 0.000 and β = −0.620, t = −6.766, p = 0.000 respectively. H6 stated that there is a positive impact of behavior and attitude toward physical activity. The results for H6, behavior, and attitude affecting the physical activity with β = 0.401, t = 10, p = 0.000, which is supported.ConclusionCOVID-19 home confinement created various psychological impacts, negatively affecting the emotional state due to depression and anxiety. Physical activity is the best strategy to manage human nature’s psychological issues, and people’s attitudes were positive toward physical activity during home confinement. However, the lockdown policy also affects physical activity participation negatively, and a sedentary lifestyle prevailed during home confinement. (shrink)

The study aimed to investigate the impact of behavioral biases on herding for Islamic financial products with the mediation of shariah literacy. An adopted questionnaire from several published studies was used to collect data. The data were collected from 410 respondents and were analyzed with SmartPLS. The results for the direct impact showed that self-attribution, illusion of control, and information availability have a positive and significant impact on herding for Islamic financial products while shariah literacy showed an insignificant impact on (...) herding. The results for mediation showed that previously significant and positive impact turned to insignificant when shariah literacy was introduced as mediating variable between the illusion of control, self-attribution, information availability, and herding. From a theoretical perspective, this study would contribute to the existing body of knowledge of financial decision making from shariah literacy point-out. On the other hand, the findings of this study may be useful for investors to avoid herding in the Islamic financial markets. The authors synthesize the contribution made by behavioral finance studies in extending the knowledge of herding behavior in Islamic financial products with a mediating role of shariah literacy. The key limitation of the study includes data that were collected from three districts of Punjab, Pakistan. (shrink)

The objective of this study was to address the paradox of citizenship cost by hypothesizing an indirect rather than a direct effect of altruistic citizenship behavior on employee work–family conflict through coworker support. Data were gathered in a three-wave longitudinal survey of employees from private commercial banks. A multiple linear autoregressive longitudinal mediation model was analyzed with partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results indicate that rather than directly, ACB affects indirectly employee WFC through CWS. This indirect effect is (...) negative, which reflects that the costs of citizenship behavior are paradoxical. The present study contributes to the ongoing debate on the positive and negative outcomes of employee citizenship behavior by providing empirical evidence on the beneficial rather than harmful effect of performing such behavior. For organizational managers, promoting a culture of CWS by encouraging altruistic behaviors can be a most viable strategy to reduce WFC among their employees. The study discusses its limitations and provides future research directions. (shrink)

It was not long ago when technological emergence fundamentally changed the landscape of global businesses. Following that, business operations started shifting away from traditional to advance digitalized processes. These digitalized processes gave a further boost to the e-commerce industry, making the online environment more competitive. Despite the growing trend, there has always been a consumer market that is not involved in online shopping, and this gap is huge when it comes to consumers from developing countries, specifically Pakistan. On contrary, the (...) recent COVID-19 pandemic has brought drastic changes to the way consumers used to form their intention and behave toward digitalized solutions in pre COVID-19 times. Evidence shows that the global e-commerce industry has touched phenomenal growth during COVID-19, whereas Pakistan's e-commerce industry still holds a huge potential and has not fully boomed yet. These facts pave new avenues for marketers to cater to this consumer market for long-term growth. Hence, the study provides insights into how consumers' online buying behavior has transformed during the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of Pakistan. The study presents a framework based on the Technology Acceptance Model and Theory of Planned Behavior. Furthermore, the moderating role of gender and payment mode has also been examined. For the analysis of variables, the partial least squares method was used to conduct structural equation modeling by collecting data from 266 respondents. The results show a significant and positive impact of perceived benefits, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, and social influence on consumers' intention, but they also show an insignificant impact of gender and payment mode as a moderating variable on PEOU-BI and BI-AB, respectively. The results are of utmost significance for Pakistani businesses, marketers, and e-traders to streamline their business practices accordingly. Lastly, the proposed framework demonstrates new directions for future research to work upon. (shrink)

Edmund Burke’s speeches and writings during the trial of Warren Hastings—from 1788 to 1795—remain one of the most comprehensive assessments of the effects of colonial trade and territorial expansion on Britain’s nationalist self. A rhetorical reading of his prosecution speeches reveals how they affected the public response to the trial by evoking the sublime and framing terror as the basic feature of Britain’s mercantile imperialist agenda in the colonies. Moreover, by associating Hastings’s governance of Bengal with sublime terror, Burke altered (...) the interpretations of virtue and corruption, thus distancing both Britain and India from the rampant profiteering of the East India Company. Burke’s critique of the degenerative influences of commercial imperialism along with the reformulation of his ideas in subsequent colonial historiography is crucial for assessing how the aesthetics of the sublime conferred greater moral force to the sporadic and fragmented reports about the Company’s abuses of power in India. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and its effects on an individual’s life have altered the consumer behavior. In the context of purchase and consumption, a shift from conventional to green purchase has been noticed. Although the factors underlying this shift were relatively unexplored, the study aimed to identify the factors that influenced a significant role in the green purchases during the outbreak and the relationship of these factors with green purchase behavior. Subsequently, this study investigates and interprets the role of (...) fear of COVID-19, psychological distress, and mortality salience in predicting consumer’s GPB. This research adopted a quantitative methodology using data collected from 432 respondents in various cities across Pakistan. Smart-PLS 3 was used to evaluate the measurement model, structural model, and multi-group analysis. Despite having the negative psychological and physical impact of the pandemic, a significant proportion of customers have switched to healthier and sustainable products. This research revealed that the FCV, PD, and MS plays a substantial role in adopting GPB. All the direct relationships were positive and significant. In addition, MS and PD partially mediate the effect of FCV on GPB. Furthermore, the MGA revealed that the infected respondents were interested in purchasing green products than uninfected respondents due to their FCV; conversely, the PD and MS were higher in uninfected individuals than infected ones. However, there is a vast literature on GPB, but little has investigated the cumulative impact of FCV, PD, and MS on GPB. (shrink)

Nowadays, mobile telephony interruptions in our daily life activities are common because of the inappropriate ringing notifications of incoming phone calls in different contexts. Such interruptions may impact on the work attention not only for the mobile phone owners, but also for the surrounding people. Decision tree is the most popular machine-learning classification technique that is used in existing context-aware mobile intelligent interruption management model to overcome such issues. However, a single-decision tree-based context-aware model may cause over-fitting problem and thus (...) decrease the prediction accuracy of the inferred model. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an ensemble machine-learning-based context-aware mobile telephony model for the purpose of intelligent interruption management by taking into account multi-dimensional contexts and name it “E-MIIM”. The experimental results on individuals’ real-life mobile telephony data sets show that our E-MIIM model is more effective and outperforms existing MIIM model for predicting and managing individual’s mobile telephony interruptions based on their relevant contextual information. (shrink)

This book reflects upon the political philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal, a towering intellectual figure in South Asian history, revered by many for his poetry and his thought. He lived in India in the twilight years of the British Empire and, apart from a short but significant period studying in the West, he remained in Punjab until his death in 1938. The book studies Iqbal's critique of nationalist ideology and his attempts to chart a path for the development of (...) the 'nation' by liberating it from the centralizing and homogenizing tendencies of the modern state structure. Iqbal frequently clashed with his contemporaries over his view of nationalism as 'the greatest enemy of Islam'. He constructed his own particular interpretation of Islam - forged through an interaction with Muslim thinkers and Western intellectual traditions - that was ahead of its time, and since his death both modernists and Islamists have continued to champion his legacy. (shrink)

This essay analyzes a silent short film portraying an urban canoeist. The film suggests that it is possible to make conscious choices about one’s means of conveyance through the city. Using a critical theoretical framework to unpack the implications of the film, this paper argues for the need to imagine unconventional modes of transportation and examine the power structures of automotive hegemony.

In lattice theory the two well known equational class of lattices are the distributive lattices and the modular lattices. All distributive lattices are modular however a modular lattice in general is not distributive. In this book, new classes of lattices called supermodular lattices and semi-supermodular lattices are introduced and characterized.

This book deals with two important branches of mathematics, namely, logic and set theory. Logic and set theory are closely related and play very crucial roles in the foundation of mathematics, and together produce several results in all of mathematics. The topics of logic and set theory are required in many areas of physical sciences, engineering, and technology. The book offers solved examples and exercises, and provides reasonable details to each topic discussed, for easy understanding. The book is designed for (...) readers from various disciplines where mathematical logic and set theory play a crucial role. The book will be of interested to students and instructors in engineering, mathematics, computer science, and technology. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Behavioral Finance is an evolving field that studies how psychological factors affect decision making under uncertainty. This study seeks to find the influence of certain identified behavioral financial biases on the decision-making process of investors in developing countries. This research examines the moderating effect of Information asymmetry on the two most important and commonly used cognitive biases, namely Anchoring bias and Optimism bias and decision making and investigates whether Risk perception mediates the relationship between them or not. Quantitative research has (...) been conducted using a structured questionnaire for data collection. After completing the pilot study, a questionnaire was designed and sent to investors via online channels. Data has been collected from 317 real estate investors. Mediation analysis has been performed using model 4 and moderation analysis by applying model 15 of Process Macros for the interaction effect. The study investigated that both cognitive biases have a significant positive effect on investors’ decisions and Risk perception also significantly mediates the relationship between them. Consistency with other studies suggests that Information asymmetry has a significant moderating effect. The proposed conceptual model provides insight into how investors’ decisions are influenced by behavioral biases in the real estate sector and enhances the understanding of cognitive biases in the real estate sector. This study is recommended for real estate investors and policymakers of emerging and developed countries. The current study is the first of its kind, focusing on cognitive biases on investment decisions with mediating role of Risk perception and the moderating effect of Information asymmetry. (shrink)

The study is based on validating and exploring the effects of a mega project plan on infrastructure development and Sustainable Project Management. The CPEC has great importance to infrastructure development and economy-boosting. The current study's primary aim is to deal with environmental protection, economic boost up, international relations influencing to the Project's success. The paper also addressed project management as a moderator between environmental protection, economic boost up, international relations, and the CPEC project's success. The primary data has been gathered (...) by using questionnaires, and PLS-SEM has been employed for the analysis. The results revealed that environmental protection, economy boost up, and international relations have a positive association with the success of CPEC. The outcomes also exposed that project management moderating among the nexus of economy boosts up the international relations and success of CPEC. The present study results guided how Pakistan and China make the CPEC project stronger with the efficient implementation of practices required for protecting the environment, with the economic growth and boost up, and good strong relations with foreign countries. This study was an attempt to validate the different factors to check their association with each other in a new environment, resulting in a leading edge for the success of mega projects that influence project management. (shrink)

The purpose of the present study was to explore the direct influence of self-concept and self-imagination on English language learning outcomes. Furthermore, this study examined the mediating role of self-efficacy in the relationship between self-concept, self-imagination, and ELLO. A survey questionnaire of 21 items was used in this study. We distributed the questionnaire through QR code and collected the data from 2,517 participants who enrolled in blended learning courses at the undergraduate level in Chinese universities. The relationship among the variables (...) was measured through SmartPLS-SEM 3.3.3. The outcomes of the present study indicated a direct, positive, and significant connection of self-concept, self-imagination, and self-efficacy with ELLO. Looking at indirect influences, self-concept and self-imagination, positive and significant, influence ELLO through self-efficacy. Thus, self-efficacy was indicated to play a mediating role between self-concept, self-imagination and ELLO. We can conclude that self-concept, self-imagination, and self-efficacy are the main predictors of ELLO in blended learning courses during the pandemic. Additionally, self-concept and self-imagination along with the intervening role of self-efficacy, play a more effective role in improving ELLO. Moreover, this study provided some useful, practical implications, and future research directions. (shrink)

A personalized recommender system is broadly accepted as a helpful tool to handle the information overload issue while recommending a related piece of information. This work proposes a hybrid personalized recommender system based on affinity propagation, namely, APHPRS. Affinity propagation is a semisupervised machine learning algorithm used to cluster items based on similarities among them. In our approach, we first calculate the cluster quality and density and then combine their outputs to generate a new ranking score among clusters for the (...) personalized recommendation. In the first phase, user preferences are collected and normalized as items rating matrix. This generated matrix is then clustered offline using affinity propagation and kept in a database for future recommendations. In the second phase, online recommendations are generated by applying the offline model. Negative Euclidian similarity and the quality of clusters are used together to select the best clusters for recommendations. The proposed APHPRS system alleviates problems such as sparsity and cold-start problems. The use of affinity propagation and the hybrid recommendation technique used in the proposed approach helps in improving results against sparsity. Experiments reveal that the proposed APHPRS performs better than most of the existing recommender systems. (shrink)

Accession Number: ATLA0001712108; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 71-86.; Language(s): English; General Note: Bibliography: p 86.; Rev from an article in The Islamic quarterly.; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

_The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam_ is Muhammad Iqbal's major philosophic work: a series of profound reflections on the perennial conflict among science, religion, and philosophy, culminating in new visions of the unity of human knowledge, of the human spirit, and of God. Iqbal's thought contributed significantly to the establishment of Pakistan, to the religious and political ideals of the Iranian Revolution, and to the survival of Muslim identity in parts of the former USSR. It now serves (...) as new bridge between East and West and between Islam and the other Religions of the Book. With a new Introduction by Javed Majeed, this edition of _The Reconstruction_ opens the teachings of Iqbal to the modern, Western reader. It will be essential reading for all those interested in Islamic intellectual history, the renewal of Islam in the modern world, and political theory of Islam's relationship to the West. (shrink)

The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930) is Muhammad Iqbal's major philosophic work: a series of profound reflections on the perennial conflict among science, religion, and philosophy, culminating in new visions of the unity of human knowledge, of the human spirit, and of God. Iqbal's thought contributed significantly to the establishment of Pakistan, to the religious and political ideals of the Iranian Revolution, and to the survival of Muslim identity in parts of the former USSR. It now (...) serves as new bridge between East and West and between Islam and the other Religions of the Book. With a new Introduction by Javed Majeed, this edition of The Reconstruction opens the teachings of Iqbal to the modern, Western reader. It will be essential reading for all those interested in Islamic intellectual history, the renewal of Islam in the modern world, and political theory of Islam's relationship to the West. (shrink)

Digital Health Technologies (DHTs) are currently the subject of much debate both in terms of their technological frontiers as well as their ethical, legal and societal implications (ELSI). Regulation of such technologies as medical devices currently lacks behind their level of adoption. Digital Twins are the next evolution step of such DHTs and provide an opportunity to anticipate and act on ELSI before adoption again leaps before the necessary review. This paper introduces the concept and use cases of digital twins (...) in medicine, then frames the debate through the lens of related technologies, machine learning and personalized medicine, and maps ethical challenges stemming from those. Finally, we lay out how digital twins may change and challenge the future practice of medicine. (shrink)

Includes an introd. of 49 p. by S. G. Abbas.

Drawing on the conservation of resources theory and contingency theories of leadership, this study aims to investigate how sustainable leadership influences employees' wellbeing through employee resilience and to examine the moderating effect of environmental turbulence on the “sustainable leadership-employees' wellbeing” relationship. Data were collected from 593 employees and 373 supervisors adopting two-wave design among small and medium-sized enterprises in China. The authors used structural equation modeling to empirically test the hypothesized model in this study. The research shows that SL is (...) significantly related to the employees' WB in SMEs. Regarding mediating effect, SL also indirectly influences employees' WB through ER. Moreover, the impact of SL on employees' WB becomes more prominent in the presence of lower ET. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no prior study is available about the integrated relationship of SL, ER, ET, and employee WB. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay traces the ambivalent work of ghurba (estrangement, exile, alienation) across four ethnographic scenes: Orthodox Christian activists in austerity Beirut refuse to abandon the corrupted world; a Syrian Islamic scholar in Jordan insists on the patient work of rehabilitation; Orthodox ascetics in a monastic community outside Tripoli turn to the hidden alienation borne in the world; and a Muslim calligrapher in Canada relinquishes the guarantee of ethical relation. Taken together, these scenes form a tableau of estrangement in the shared (...) vocabulary of Eastern Christianity and Islam. Drawing on Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah–in its articulations of soul, community, and world always already shadowed by their undoing–we then situate these four scenes along spatio-temporal axes of destruction and production, city and desert, paradise and hellfire: a purgatorial topology which modulates what Agamben calls the contemporary destruction of experience. (shrink)

Trump’s foreign policy outlook and his rhetorical predispositions suggest that the American foreign policy is about to undergo drastic changes in terms of substance matter of policy. The arrival of Trump at the helm of affairs has built a conventional perception of gradual American retreat from the Obama’s rebalancing policy and its pacific-centric outlook. Any abrupt change in this policy of rebalancing will have serious repercussions for the regional economic, political and security architecture designed by America since world-war II. In (...) this context, Offensive Realism, that takes system level variables as the primary determinants of foreign policy of great powers, offers a valuable framework to understand and explain the future course of Obama’s policy of rebalancing under the incumbent administration. To this end, this article is aimed at delving into the theoretical and historical reservoirs related to the US foreign policy along with the current practices of Trump administration to test the claims of continuity or transformation in the US foreign policy of rebalancing in the Asia Pacific region. This article asserts that Obama’s rebalancing policy would continue in the future with certain tactical adjustments related to the implementation of policy. (shrink)

Traditionally, mainstream psychology mostly presented religion in a negative light. However, recent years have witnessed a growing realization that religion has a substantial role to play in improving physical and mental health. Given the importance of religion, the American Psychological Association has division 36 “Psychology of religion.” But the perspective of mainstream psychology does not acknowledge the spiritual nature of human beings and their connection to God. Islamic psychology is one of the religion-based perspectives which acknowledges it. This perspective has (...) also attracted the attention of Western psychologists. Three different trends have been identified in this area: the Islamic filter approach, the comparison approach, and the Islamic psychology approach. However, despite more than 40 years of work, there is a considerable lack of progress in the development of this paradigm. The present article discussed the emergence and challenges in the development of this new perspective. Moreover, we suggest that the research paradigms of Western social and behavioral sciences are useful for developing Islamic psychology. (shrink)

The constitution of Pakistan contains wide range of provisions for the protection of labour rights. Pakistan has been bestowed with 70 labour laws along with 90 rules and regulations thereunder. In spite of these labour laws along with rules and regulations, labour force is facing multifarious challenges that posit direct threat to their legal recognised rights. In this regard this study was carried out to study the main hurdles that labour rights encountered in historical perspective. Moreover, in the wake of (...) devolution plan through 18th amendment to the constitution of Pakistan, what problems in respect of enforceability and legality have arisen? Labour laws promulgated in various Pakistani regimes have been discussed to figure out what really prevented successive governments to ensure minimum protection to labour strata of the nations. The article concludes with some recommendation that are sin-qua-non in current globalization where rights have emerged as the most sacred instruments in the hands of weaker portion of a society. (shrink)

One of the goals of happiness research is to identify the key factors that influence it. Therefore, the present research is designed to examine the determining factors of subjective wellbeing in Pakistan. The present research is conducted by collecting the data of 1,566 households in Punjab, Pakistan, using the ordered logit and tobit model. The findings of this research confirm that income, education, government effectiveness, no perceived corruption, and perceived institutional quality improve wellbeing, while lower trust in family and friends, (...) poor health status, living on rent, and dissatisfaction with the services of hospitals lower the level of wellbeing. But individuals with more social ties, who face barriers in health services, live more happily satisfied with their lives. Crime victimization and worrisome terrorism also lower the level of SWB. Findings of research strongly emphasize policymakers and government institutions to improve their quality and take essential measures for improving the governance structure. (shrink)

Authentic leadership has appeared as a significant field of research. Building on social exchange theory that explicates how individuals mutually mechanize reciprocation and eventually establish a trust-based relationship, we postulated a positive relationship between authentic leadership and followers' organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). Based on a two-wave time-lagged design, the data were obtained from 270 employees working in the private banking sector of Pakistan. We found that authentic leadership is positively associated with subordinate’s OCB, as well as, leads to a higher (...) level of both affective and cognitive-based followers' trust. The results also indicated that both affective and cognitive-based trust positively mediated the relationship between authentic leadership and OCB. The implication for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

The current study investigates whether tournament incentives motivate chief executive officer to be socially responsible. Furthermore, it explores the role of sub-national institutional contingencies [i.e., state-owned enterprises vs. non-SOEs, foreign-owned entities vs. non-FOEs, cross-listed vs. non-cross-listed, developed region] in CEO tournament incentives and the corporate social responsibility performance relationship. Data were collected from all A-shared companies listed in the stock exchanges of China from 2014 to 2019. The study uses the baseline methodology of ordinary least squares and cluster OLS regression. (...) Moreover, firm-fixed effects regression, two-stage least squares regression, and propensity score matching deal with the endogeneity problem and check the robustness of the results. The results provide reliable evidence that tournament incentives motivate CEOs to be more socially responsible. On the other hand, sub-national institutional contingencies positively affect the association between CEO tournament incentives and CSRP. The findings have important implications for companies and regulators who wish to enhance CSP by providing incentives to top managers. (shrink)