BackgroundIn Pakistan, drug promotion practices, ethical or unethical, have rarely been in the spotlight. We aimed to assess the perception and barriers of medical representatives (MRs) and doctors (MDs) regarding ethical promotion of pharmaceuticals in Pakistan.MethodsA cross sectional survey was conducted in seven major cities of Pakistan for 6-months period. Self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. Logistic regression and five-point Likert scale scoring was used to estimate the perceptions and barriers.ResultsCompared to national companies (NCs), the medical representatives (MRs) of (...) multinational companies (MNCs) strongly believed that their companies follow World Health Organization (WHO) (OR; 5.31, p = 0.0005), International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA) (OR; 6.45, p = 0.0005) and national codes of ethics (OR; 5.84, p = 0.0005). MNCs trained their MRs (OR; 6.68, p = 0.0005), provide accurate and valid scientific data (OR; 4.01, p = 0.007) with adequate system of accountability and controls on product samples (OR; 1.96, p = 0.047), while, NCs sponsor social or entertainment activities, seminars and conferences, and all sort of facilitation in form of gifts of their choice and clinic renovation for medical doctors (MDs). MDs perceptions were similar to MRs mentioned above, yet strongly agreed that companies offer cash payments or equivalents to MDs. The MRs of NCs/mncs and MDs agreed/strongly agreed that no external accountability, profiteering, pressure on sale targets, job insecurity, condoning unethical promotion by high-ups’ and business promotion by junior MDs were the predominant barriers.ConclusionIn conclusion, MRs of MNCs and MDs believed that MNCs follow certain codes of ethics in the promotion of pharmaceuticals, while NCs tend to be more profit oriented and even condone unethical promotion. All stakeholders, MRs, MDs and companies, might pose certain barriers, intentionally or unintentionally, in ethical promotion. (shrink)

Orthodox economics operates within a hypothesized world of perfect competition in which perfect consumers and firms act to bring about supposedly optimal outcomes. The discrepancies between this model and the reality it claims to address are then attributed to particular imperfections in reality itself. Most heterodox economists seize on this fact and insist that the world is characterized by imperfect competition. But this only ties them to the notion of perfect competition, which remains as their point of departure and base (...) of comparison. There is no imperfection without perfection. In Capitalism, Anwar Shaikh takes a different approach. He demonstrates that most of the central propositions of economic analysis can be derived without any reference to standard devices such as hyperrationality, optimization, perfect competition, perfect information, representative agents, or so-called rational expectations. This perspective allows him to look afresh at virtually all the elements of economic analysis: the laws of demand and supply, the determination of wage and profit rates, technological change, relative prices, interest rates, bond and equity prices, exchange rates, terms and balance of trade, growth, unemployment, inflation, and long booms culminating in recurrent general crises. In every case, Shaikh's innovative theory is applied to modern empirical patterns and contrasted with neoclassical, Keynesian, and Post-Keynesian approaches to the same issues. Shaikh's object of analysis is the economics of capitalism, and he explores the subject in this expansive light. This is how the classical economists, as well as Keynes and Kalecki, approached the issue. Anyone interested in capitalism and economics in general can gain a wealth of knowledge from this ground-breaking text. (shrink)

Very few studies have investigated the movement in stock returns that result due to changes in oil prices. In recent years due to cooling down of China, unveiled oil reserves of Iran, decreasing demand worldwide and discovery of shale gases the world has experienced a large fall in the oil prices. These changes are also affecting performance of manufacturing and other associated companies in countries all over the world. Pakistan has also been affected by these changes in many ways. Especially, (...) the returns on stock markets have been affected a lot by the variations in the oil prices. This paper using monthly data set from years 2014 to 2016 of the non-financial firms operated in Pakistan Stock Exchange, investigates the effect of variation in oil prices on returns on stock. Results from the panel data analysis indicate a negative relationship between the variables. Since, Pakistan is an oil importing, movement in the prices contribute towards affecting the production cost in a positive manner which in turn affects the execution of the enterprises as well as returns of the stocks negatively. (shrink)

History and criticism on the work of Sir Muhammad Iqbal, 1877-1938.

The research is focused on the behavioral pattern of achievement-oriented leadership and its relationship with achievement motivation and the application of organization culture on cooperative (KUD & Kopontren) in ecosystem level (mountainous, upland, & coastal areas) in West Java. The results of the research show that the behavioral patterns of leadership of the chairman and manager (KUD & Kopontren) are not yet achievement-oriented on all ecosystem levels in West Java the achievement motivation of cooperative personnel is relatively low and the (...) application of cooperative organization culture is generally limited. There is positive correlation among the three research variables and the behavioral patterns of achievement leadership is significantly different in two kinds of cooperative (KUD & Kopontren), albeit having no significant difference on achievement motivation and the application of cooperative organization culture variables. In addition, there is extreme correlation in the three variables of the research on the coastal areas compared with the mountainous and upland areas especially those near the town. Hence, in West Java the results of research concludes that cooperative (KUD & Kopontren) has not yet been done profesionally, not achievement-oriented with weak initiative and low civilization. Accordingly, it is required to have a change of cooperative leadership pattern being oriented in achievement and application of cooperative organization culture based on moral and Moslem religion. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to evaluate on how good traditional house design is able to give residential satisfaction levels and could contribute towards habitability in Shibam, Yemen. House design in this study is a subject dealing with efficient space-function design of the house layout which shows cultural aspects of the community. Houses in Shibam typify the traditional architecture which reflects to the structure of family, and social and cultural realms. The houses comprises mid and high-rise mud brick house (...) types, considered as one of the earliest high-rise house type built in the world. Today, the city of Shibam with mid and high-rises mud brick house types is recognized as one of the heritage sites under UNESCO’s World Heritage Lists. The literature study is conducted to understand the definitions of the title, which is important to identify the measurable factors for the research analysis. The study finds that diwan, dining area, bedrooms, bathrooms, corridor and storage, courtyard and balcony, and the composition of the rooms’ layout are important measurable checklist’s factors under category of space planning and function. There are two types of the research analyses which are qualitative and quantitative analysis. The qualitative analysis is a study by the researcher based on the researcher’s observation on the house design during the site visit while the quantitative analysis is from the respondents’ answers (300 respondents) on their satisfaction level from the research questionnaires. With high average scores of 94% in qualitative and 90% in quantitative analysis on satisfactory level, it shows that both results of qualitative and quantitative analysis support the research assumption. In that light, within the ambit of this study, the house design in Shibam can and does serve as a reference. (shrink)

A journalist and a political philosopher of international repute, Walter Lippman was the author of more than twenty books, scores of essays, and countless newspaper editorials, articles, and columns. This book attempts to discover and state Lippmann's philosophy of international politics as it developed over the years 1913 to 1963.

This study adds to the growing research exploring the consequences of knowledge hiding in organizations. Drawing from the social exchange theory and the norm of reciprocity, this paper examines the direct and indirect—via distrust in supervisor—relationships between supervisor knowledge hiding and supervisee organizational citizenship behavior directed at the supervisor in the context of the Middle East. Using a supervisor–supervisee dyadic design, two-source data were obtained from 317 employees of 41 Saudi firms. The findings suggest that supervisees’ distrust in their supervisors (...) mediates the significant and negative relationship between SKH and supervisees’ OCB-S. Furthermore, the significant and positive relationship between SKH and distrust in supervisor is more pronounced for foreign workers than for local workers. This study provides empirical support and a better understanding of the existence and consequences of SKH for local and foreign workers and also discusses the theoretical and practical implications of the findings. (shrink)

New concepts of Muhammadiyah in teaching Islamic values for socio-economic and political development in Indonesia.

In this paper we critically review recent developments in policies, practices and philosophies pertaining to the mediation between science and the public within the EU and the UK, focusing in particular on the current paradigm of Public Understanding of Science and Technology (PEST) which seeks to depart from the science information-transmission associated with previous paradigms, and enact a deliberative democracy model. We first outline the features of the current crisis in democracy and discuss deliberative democracy as a response to this (...) crisis. We then map out and critically review the broad outlines of recent policy developments in public-science mediation in the EU and UK contexts, focusing on the shift towards the deliberative-democratic model. We conclude with some critical thoughts on the complex interrelationships between democracy, equality, science and informal pedagogies in public-science mediations. We argue that science and democracy operate within distinct value-spheres that are not necessarily consonant with each other. We also problematize the now common dismissal of information-transmission of science as inimical to democratic engagement, and argue for a reassessment of the role and importance of informal science learning for the lay public, provided within the framework of a deliberative democracy that is not reducible to consensus building or the mere expression of opinions rooted in social and cultural givens. This, we argue, can be delivered by a model of PEST that is creative and experimental, with both educational and democratic functions. (shrink)

This book provides an alternative foundation for the measurement of the production of nations, and applies it to the US economy for the postwar period. The patterns which result are significantly different from those derived within conventional systems of national accounts. Conventional national accounts seriously distort basic economic aggregates, because they classify military, bureaucratic and financial activities as creation of new wealth, when in fact they should be classified as forms of social consumption which, like personal consumption, actually use up (...) social wealth in the performance of their functions. The difference between the two approaches has an impact not only on basic aggregate economic measures, but also on the very understanding of the observed patterns of growth and stagnation. In a world of burgeoning militaries, bureaucracies, and sales forces, such matters can assume great importance at the levels of both theory and policy. (shrink)

This essay is to invite a new form of theorizing Baldwin’s intellectual archive beyond a work of protest or as being contributory to Queer writing. I argue that Baldwin’s thought often in the form of the polemic is a form of non-violent resistance. Baldwin’s contestation against whiteness and the methods of Black erasure in general and Black male annihilation in particular is why he is challenging the complexity of protest. In pushing against traditional or what has become traditional ways of (...) analyzing Black thought, my essay highlights why figures like Baldwin are read in fragmentation. Hence, my insistence on Baldwin being categorized as a Gender/Genre theorist more so than a Queer theorist. Because his writings are on the erasure of Black Male existence within and outside of heteronormative spaces. (shrink)

Kameron Carter’s reading of Black life as matter, as the imaginary, and as an innovation of possibilities enmeshes Black theology, Black womanist/feminist thought, Black Diaspora and Black American Studies, Philosophy, and Queer of Color Critique to reveal how the project of the western world erases Black physical and intellectual legacy. A project that is anti-black, anti-other, anti-difference that erases the legacy of the physical and intellectual aspects of Black contributions to the western world. His book is an invitation to think (...) through what Black ontology would look like outside of white western constructions of religion and social scripts. Carter’s radical shift from being beyond the long durée of enslavement, colonization, segregation, and its afterlives scripts an (anti)blackening because of the western project of erasure works to undo such a project. The book is working against the social ontology of being a fragmented object that is plasticized, fetishized, and dissolved into a state of non-being. It is a project that disrupts and decolonizes previously constructed (anti)blackening architecture by creating a blueprint that asks for Black matter as an incomplete project because it must include imagination and innovation. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to trace some lines of thinking towards a conceptualization of the uniqueness of the creative work of museums, the mode of creativeness that belongs exclusively to museums, or at least that museums are capable of by virtue of the types of materials and forms as well as activities unique to what will be referred to as museography. This is linked to the question of what it is that constitutes the uniqueness of museum work as (...) a professional field. The article characterizes the uniqueness of museum professional knowledge primarily in terms of a mode of creativeness, or bricolage in Levi-Strauss’s sense, mediated through the museographic form, and applied to the chance assemblies of materials to generate museum-specific modes of engaging questions—across science, culture, and society—particularly through creating unique temporal arrangements, or durations, that provoke thought, learning, and engagement on museographic terms. Museography’s originality, it is argued, consists in a bricolage that works through the museum’s unique material and form to create learning resources and encounters, museographic assemblages that depart from a conception of linear time as the space of evolutionary narrative to facilitate the experience of Bergsonian durations. (shrink)

Transformational leadership impacts on project and organizational success are well established. However, many underlying factors that make TFL effective are still missing. Therefore, we formulated hypotheses and tested the mediating role of trust and job satisfaction in linking TFL to project success. A time-lagged methodology was used to collect quantitative data using a structured questionnaire from 326 project manager-team member dyads working in Pakistan’s public sector. Our results showed that TS, JS, and TFL significantly impacted project success. Moreover, we found (...) that TS and JS mediate the relationship between TFL and PS. These findings highlight the importance of trust and job satisfaction as mechanisms that translate TFL into the success of projects for organizations. (shrink)

The study examines and theorizes the importance of strategic attribute constructs as applied to Pakistan’s banking sector by identifying their roles in enhancing organizational performance and the mediating effect of organizational commitment. The current study adopted quantitative research designs and methods to determine structural relationships between the proposed constructs. A total of 10 hypotheses were tested underpinned by the Resource-Based View of the Firm and Social Exchange theories. The strategic attributes studied were significantly and positively related to, and enhance, organizational (...) performance if the banks: focus on strategic positioning, fostering a strong organizational culture, strategize internal marketing practices, and boost organizational commitment. The findings supported the mediating role of organizational commitment between strategic attributes and organizational performance. This study contributes to existing literature and supports prior research while filling in gaps in the literature concerning developing countries. (shrink)

تتميز هذه الدراسة عن صوفية الغزالي. رحمة الله. بأنها حققت النظرة المعرفية التي يتبناها، ومناهج البحث التي تسندها وتبعاً لهذا فإنها وفقت في ملاحقة واستنباط معالجة العديد من القضايا التي حفل بها فكره، وهي متشعبة ونجحت في وضعها في مكانها المناسب من البنية المنطقية والمنهجية في فكره. فأثبتت، من غير شك.بأن خطاب الغزالي متماسك الرؤى متلاحم الأجزاء، على عكس ما أشيع عنه الأمر الذي خفف حدة الإشكالية التي اصطبغ بها وساعد، وبالتالي، على تخليصه مما ألحق به من أوهام أو الصق (...) به من مثالب. وفضلا على هذا فقد لفتت الدراسة الانتظار إلى أهمية ( سياسة العلم) التي أخذ بها الغزالي وصمم على أساس منه خطابه، وبينت دورها الخطير في تشكله. كما أنها حللت مفهوم (النور) عنده وهو مفهوم مركزي في خطابه. حيث بينت أنه لا يخرج عن العقلانية بحال. وكذلك تحققت من ركون الغزالي إلى الظاهر البرهاني والتزامه به. قبل أن يتجاوزه في محاولة الارتياد وتأسيس عقلانية أرحب وأرقى كان الغزالي رحمه الله يتطلع إليها وبهذا فقد جاءت هذه الدراسة جديدة حقاً على مستوى الدراسات التي عالجت فكر عالجت فكر الغزالي. واستطاعت أن تغير مفاهيم عدة أشاعتها تلك الدراسات. وبينت تهافت بعض الآراء التي تضمنتها، الأمر الذي يوضح ما قام به الباحث. وإذا نضع بين يديك عزيزنا القارئ هذه الدراسة، فإننا نسأل الله عز وجل أن يوفق الباحث في إعداد دراسات أخرى تنحو ذات المنحى، فتستخرج البنى المعرفية والمنهجية لمفكرين آخرين متميزين في تراثنا العظيم، لتعميق وعينا به، وتدبر آفاقه والله نسأل التوفيق والسداد. (shrink)

Museum professionalism remains an unexplored area in museum studies, particularly with regard to what is arguably the core generic question of a sui generis professional knowledge base, and its necessary and sufficient conditions. The need to examine this question becomes all the more important with the increasing expansion of the museum’s roles and functions. This paper starts by mapping out the policy and organizational context within which the roles of museums have expanded in the UK. It then situates the discussion (...) of museum professional knowledge within a cross-disciplinary matrix bearing on the question of what is professional about occupations classified—or classifiable—as professions. Against the backdrop of the current organizational context of the museum as well as theories of professional knowledge, it highlights the ways in which museum work, more specifically museography, poses a distinctive set of questions compared to other ‘professional’ fields; the paper thus homes in on the question of what it is that constitutes the uniqueness of museum professional knowledge in relation to museographic practice and the type of professional knowledge and expertise that can sustain it and enact its creative and educational potentials and affordances. (shrink)

The article is a brief analysis of Cornell’s Imaginary Domain (1995) as an intervention into decolonizing intersecting systems of oppression. Cornell’s Imaginary Domain forces us to think of the intersecting factors that retain systems of power. It isn’t just about one form of oppression but all systems of oppression that separate us. However, creating a shared struggle to find and embody wholeness in response to the historical traumas of slavery, segregation, and systems of anti-Black oppression is fraught with tensions.

Motivated by the social and environmental challenges resulting from the COVID‐19 pandemic, this research examines the influence of the “big five” personality traits; extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism on sustainable social responsibility with a mediating role of bricolage. We collected empirical evidence from 245 family‐owned SMEs. The results indicate that the personality traits do not directly influence sustainable social responsibility, although the traits (except extroversion) influence bricolage. Moreover, we found that open, conscious, and agreeable personalities indirectly contribute to sustainable (...) social responsibility, with bricolage as a mediator. Our findings encourage enterprises to focus on those personality traits during crises (especially COVID‐19) that empower people to effectively manage existing resources (e.g., bricolage) and protect their stakeholders. Family‐owned SMEs need to assign resource utilization tasks to family members having personalities of openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism because these kinds of people have high capacities for bricolage. (shrink)

This paper compares the incidence of the diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) among White and Asian children with reference to data obtained from thirteen local education authorities (LEAs) in England. It begins by outlining some of the theoretical debates associated with the definition, diagnosis and prevalence of ASD. The empirical component underpinning this work uses logistic modelling to ascertain whether the proportion of children with a statement of special educational need (SEN) for ASD is different for Asian and for (...) White children and whether the proportion of children with a statement of SEN for ASD varies between LEAs. The discussion speculates as to possible reasons for the differences found and identifies areas for further research. (shrink)

The aim of the study is to reveal the underlying structure of issues of university students taking online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic period. The overall design of the study includes a review of contemporary literature and field survey for data collection and analysis. Discourse of literature coupled with expert opinion has been employed for identification of issues. Interpretive Structural Modeling is used for the determination of intra-issue relationships and analyzing the underlying structure. Cross impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (...) is used as a technique for classifying issues on the basis of driving–dependence power. Results of the literature show that there are 21 major issues faced by the students taking online classes. ISM shows that lack of institutional guidelines, lack of regulators’ guidelines, stress of pandemic situation, and abrupt start of online classes are the most critical issues. MICMAC analysis reveals that there is no autonomous issue, 4 are independent, 6 other issues are dependent, and the remaining 11 are linking. This is a valuable study having practical implications for regulators, students, parents, and society to understand the current problem. It is an original attempt that contributes toward literature in the form of a structural model and a diagram of classification of issues. (shrink)