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Although the research stream in the area of career plateau acknowledges its ramifications, yet investigation on how this phenomenon can be reduced is sparse. This study aims to address this gap by illuminating the role of proactive personality (PP) as a factor of minimizing plateau via playful work design (PWD), career adaptability (CA) and perceived work-life balance (PWLB).

A cross-sectional study design was applied and structural equation modelling was used to assess the hypothesized relationships among PP, CA, PWD, perceived work design and career plateau. A total of 338 employees from public and private universities were sampled from February 2020 to July 2020.

The results highlighted that CA mediated the relationship between PP and PWLB, as well as, PWD mediated the association between PP and PWLB. Further, the authors got support for both serial mediation paths i.e. PP, CA, PWLB and career plateau and PP, PWD, PWLB and career plateau.

The findings of this study provide much needed ways to overcome career plateau in the academic sector. Moreover, the use of multiple serial paths has enhanced the underlying factors of PP and career plateau nexus.

This study aims to examine the key entrepreneurial roles (financial literacy, risk tolerance and competency) in the financial performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Pakistan and the mediating effects of locus of control and spiritual and emotional quotients.

The study data was collected from 541 SMEs in Pakistan (the target population) through a survey and analysed with partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The findings revealed that the key entrepreneurial characteristics were positively related to locus of control and spiritual quotient and elevated the financial performance in entrepreneurship. It was also reported that locus of control and spiritual quotient mediated between key entrepreneurial characteristics and financial performance. In this regard, emotional quotient strengthened the existing relationships between key characteristics, locus of control and spiritual quotient.

This study highlighted sustainable implications for SMEs to develop an effective mechanism and improve financial performance through guidelines that emphasized entrepreneurial characteristics and behaviours towards positive entrepreneurial ventures. This study also enabled policymakers to design policies that catalysed SME performance in Pakistan.

This study contributed a novel concept of key entrepreneurial characteristics by introducing a characteristics tool kit. Consequently, information on a unique framework (by integrating entrepreneurial characteristics and financial performance) and literature on spiritual quotient and locus of control in entrepreneurship were enriched. Contributions to the regulatory focus theory and four-phase Rubicon model in the study context were also made.

The study aims to describe the impact of supervisor’s and co-worker’s ostracism on the employee's responses (emotional, psychological and behavioral) through the mediation of employees' efficacy needs and relational needs. Moreover, psychological capital is treated as a moderator to handle the adverse responses of ostracized employees.

The study employed a three-wave quantitative research design to gather data from employees and their respective supervisors who belonged to various healthcare units (N = 510) using self-administered close-ended questionnaires. After that, SmartPLS software was used to analyze the data through a structured equation modeling (SEM) technique.

The empirical results of the study endorsed that ostracism adversely (negatively) affects employees' responses (comprised of emotional, behavioral and psychological). Moreover, the results revealed that employees' needs (efficacy and relational) mediate the relationship between ostracism experienced by employees (supervisor’ and co-workers’ ostracism) and their emotional, behavioral and psychological responses. In addition, it is also evidenced that employees' psychological capital improves the negative association between employees' needs and responses.

The literature in this domain is scarce, and the theoretical stance is weak due to the traditional approaches that are more concerned with the outcomes rather than analyzing the employee's conditional what they are going through. The present study enhances the knowledge of the transactional mode of coping and its application to ostracism in the workplace. The results of the current study may also support the practitioners in formulating interventions to foster a favorable workplace environment.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss positive spillovers of this project, especially for Pakistan because the majority of the literature discusses challenges associated with China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

This study reviews the available literature to assess the role of CPEC in the sustainable economic development of Pakistan.

This study indicates that CPEC is an ambitious development project because it needs a larger restructuring of the economy of Pakistan and it will be productive with the successful blend of policy changes and participation of the business community in Pakistan. This project primarily creates a huge amount of foreign direct investment for Pakistan, at the same time, it will also create greater trade opportunities to China by giving access to a new market for its trading goods.

This study established that CPEC will improve the economic growth and trade, enhance regional connectivity, overcome energy crises, develop infrastructure and establish people-to-people contacts in both the countries, which will further help to improve the tourism sector.

This study is undertaken to examine the antecedents and role of big data decision-making capabilities toward decision-making quality and environmental performance among the Chinese public and private hospitals. It also examined the moderating effect of big data governance that was almost ignored in previous studies.

The target population consisted of managerial employees (IT experts and executives) in hospitals. Data collected using a survey questionnaire from 752 respondents (374 respondents from public hospitals and 378 respondents from private hospitals) was subjected to PLS-SEM for analysis.

Findings revealed that data management challenges (leadership focus, talent management, technology and organizational culture for big data) are significant antecedents for big data decision-making capabilities in both public and private hospitals. Moreover, it was also found that big data decision-making capabilities played a key role to improve the decision-making quality (effectiveness and efficiency), which positively contribute toward environmental performance in public and private hospitals of China. Public hospitals are playing greater attention to big data management for the sake of quality decision-making and environmental performance than private hospitals.

This study provides guidelines required by hospitals to strengthen their big data capabilities to improve decision-making quality and environmental performance.

The proposed model provides an insight look at the dynamic capabilities theory in the domain of big data management to tackle the environmental issues in hospitals. The current study is the novel addition in the literature, and it identifies that big data capabilities are envisioned to be a game-changer player in effective decision-making and to improve the environmental performance in health sector.

This study examines the relationship of positive career shocks and career optimism. The mediating role of career decision-making self-efficacy (CDSE) between positive career shocks and career optimism and the moderating role of consideration of future consequences – immediate (CFC-I) between CDSE and career optimism are checked.

Through cluster sampling, cross-sectional data from 192 professionals of electronic media industry were collected via an electronically administered questionnaire. For preliminary descriptive data analysis, SPSS version 21 was used. SmartPLS version 3.0 was used for testing the proposed hypotheses.

The results showed that positive career shocks have a relationship with career optimism via CDSE. Also, CFC-I moderated the relationship of CDSE and career optimism such that the relationship of CDSE and career optimism was stronger at higher level of CFC-I.

The study provides implications for the career consultants, human resource professionals and senior management of organizations. All these stakeholders can strive to build an inventory of positive career shocks. Also, shifting to a surprised business model of announcing compensations and promotions is another area to work on. The results of this study further suggest disengaging the fresh potential employees in the initial processes of recruitment. Interdepartmental coordination of health and safety department and human resource management department is also a very important implication for this study to highlight the positive aspects of being optimistic.

The study is among the few empirical studies which investigates the relationship between positive career shocks and career optimism via CDSE. Also, in light of the latest call of various empirical works in the domain, this study adds a moderating variable, i.e. CFC-I in predicting career optimism. Furthermore, contrary to the conventional approach of applying students' data on career models, this study tests the proposed career model on data collected from professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to present the application of Hilbert–Huang transform (HHT) for fatigue damage feature characterisation in the time–frequency domain based on strain signals obtained from the automotive coil springs.

HHT was employed to detect the temporary changes in frequency characteristics of the vibration response of the signals. The extraction successfully reduced the length of the original signal to 40 per cent, whereas the fatigue damage was retained. The analysis process for this work is divided into three stages: signal characterisation with the application of fatigue data editing (FDE) for fatigue life assessment, empirical mode decomposition with Hilbert transform, an energy–time–frequency distribution analysis of each intrinsic mode function (IMF).

The edited signal had a time length of 72.5 s, which was 40 per cent lower than the original signal. Both signals were retained statistically with close mean, root-mean-square and kurtosis value. FDE improved the fatigue life, and the extraction did not affect the content and behaviour of the original signal because the editing technique only removed the minimal fatigue damage potential. HHT helped to remove unnecessary noise in the recorded signals. EMD produced sets of IMFs that indicated the differences between the original signal and mean of the signal to produce new components. The low-frequency energy was expected to cause large damage, whereas the high-frequency energy will cause small damage.

HHT and EMD can be used in the strain data signal analysis of the automotive component of a suspension system. This is to improve the fatigue life, where the extraction did not affect the content and behaviour of the original signal because the editing technique only removed the minimal fatigue damage potential.

Consumers are giving greater attention to the selection of food due to the improvement in income and urbanization. Meanwhile, in recent years, the vegetables' farmers in Malaysia have been reported using an excessive quantity of pesticides. The vegetables exported to Singapore and China have been rejected in 2018 and 2017 due to the presence of excessive levels of pesticides. Such incidences have created massive concern to improve the safety standard of the vegetable industry. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate consumers' willingness to pay for food safety attributes of tomato.

Discrete choice experiments has been used, and 490 respondents have completed the survey.

Results suggested that consumers were willing to pay RM4.18 more for wholesome tomato relative to slightly damage tomato. Consumers also were willing to pay RM2.75 more for organic tomato relative to inorganic tomato. They were also willing to pay RM2.30 and RM1.29 more for certified and tomato sold at supermarket relative to uncertified and tomato sold at the wet market, respectively. The willingness to pay for safety attributes of tomato also varied according to the income, age and education level of the consumers.

If the farmers can respond effectively to the changes in consumers demand, it can be translated into business opportunities.

This research able to provide relevant information related to the consumers' willingness to pay for food safety attributes of tomato in Malaysia.

The dynamic global environment has increased the requirement of multidisciplinary entrepreneurial engineers. While studying entrepreneurial aspects of engineers, researchers have not considered inherent variability due to engineering majors. This study investigates the impact of entrepreneurial motivation (EM) on entrepreneurial intentions (EIs), to analyse the inherent entrepreneurial potential of engineering majors. The impact of entrepreneurial education has also been studied to proffer recommendations for policymakers.

The design of this study is a survey conducted with 342 undergraduate students from three major engineering institutions in Pakistan using a close-structured questionnaire. Moderation analysis examines the entrepreneurial potential of different engineering majors. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) has been conducted to compare the EIs of different engineering majors and regarding the impact of entrepreneurial education on EIs.

The engineering major's role in the transformation of EM to EIs is multifaceted. EIs of students of a few engineering majors were found high. Entrepreneurship education improves the overall EIs of engineering students.

Outcomes of the study are useful for academia and policymakers to engage students of particular engineering majors, identified as entrepreneurial, in advanced entrepreneurial education and expose them to potential start-ups to have better value addition in specific sectors.

This is the first study in which engineering majors have been examined to bring insights about inherent entrepreneurial potential. This inherent entrepreneurial potential needs further exploration by academic researchers. The study has provided the base for future studies to institutionalize entrepreneurial education for different engineering majors.

The current environment is unhelpful to female entrepreneurs, and they need to overcome numerous barriers when starting their own businesses. In this study, the researchers investigated the significant barriers that Pakistani female entrepreneurs require to overcome in this respect.

In this study, the researchers used a quantitative study and they used a questionnaire to survey the respondents and collect cross-sectional data. The researchers targeted female students who were undertaking bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in different Pakistani public and private sector universities. Accordingly, the researchers based this study’s findings on the usable samples received from 498 Pakistani female students.

The researchers used a structural equation model (SEM) in this study and its findings highlight that aversion to risk (ATR) has an insignificant impact on entrepreneurial inclinations (EI). In addition, fear of failure (FoF), lack of resources (LoR), aversion to hard work and stress (ASH) and the lack of social networking (LSN) have negative and insignificant effects on EI. The ATR factor has an insignificant effect on entrepreneurial success (ES), whereas FoF, LoR, ASH and LSN are negative and insignificant predictors of Pakistani female students’ ES.

This study’s findings may help Pakistani women to overcome the barriers to ES. In this respect, the researchers recommend that the Pakistan Government and policymakers develop significant strategies to provide the conducive business environment and to financially support Pakistani women to start their own businesses. Furthermore, this study’s findings contribute greatly to the vast amount of current literature and help to overcome the entrepreneurial conditions and barriers that potential entrepreneurs from advanced and developing countries experience frequently.

This study’s findings provide empirical evidence of EI and ES in Pakistan.