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Recognising the significance of international trade in economic growth, this research explores the drivers of exports in South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation countries from 2008 to 2021. The study employs the export demand model and the augmented exports supply model and utilises pooled time-series data. This study questions whether export supply decisions are based on traditional trade model factors, emerging trading realities or macroeconomic variables. The model based on fixed effects evaluates the connection between exports and their possible drivers. Traditional export supply models suggest determinants like production capacity, variable cost and relative pricing influencing South Asian export supply performance substantially. Changes in trade, for example, have a substantial impact on export supply, demonstrating that the trade liberalisation procedure promotes growth in exports, compression in imports and technological advancement. The worsening state of the energy industry and growing levels of corruption have proved to be significant deterrents to export supply decisions. The results verify foreign direct investment's positive and medium influence on the expansion of exports. Other variables, however, such as GDP and its growth, Official Development Assistance (ODA), development expenditure, indirect taxation, labour supply and the exchange rate of currencies, have a positive impact on the flow of exports. Furthermore, the data corroborate the notion that increased savings have a significant beneficial influence on the flow of exports. The study proposes that concerned governments examine their export policies and adopt new policies adapted in accordance with changing circumstances with the goal of increasing and enhancing the performance of exports.

Two essential components, a robust information technology (IT) infrastructure and faculty training in student-centred pedagogies and technology usage, are necessary for effective blended learning designs. Many universities invest in IT infrastructure such as bandwidth, high-end subscriptions, servers, SMART boards, projectors, Wi-Fi enhancement, learning management systems, IT support, and other tools. Faculty training is crucial and includes instruction on using the new infrastructure and adopting pedagogical methods associated with blended learning. This study’s primary objective is to explore the challenges and pedagogical transformation towards blended learning designs in India. The research also investigates the impact of social context and emotional support on blended learning. It examines the mediating role of technostress among teachers between hybrid mode transformation and blended learning. The study’s results will provide critical insights for academic institutions’ higher management to encourage the adoption of learning designs and blended techniques by their employees during unforeseen events in the future, utilizing effective leadership and management skills. The study aims to assist academic institutions in meeting the demand for experiential learning in the classroom by incorporating blended learning. It acts as a bridge between industry expectations and academic outcomes. The study uniquely addresses the need for increased student engagement in the classroom.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) eliminates non-value-added (NVA) and essential non-value-added (ENVA) waste through radical process redesign to improve organizational operations. Comprehensive research integrating BPR tools is needed to understand their benefits for manufacturing firms. This research presents an integrated BPR-simulation framework tailored to the manufacturing sector to maximize process improvements and operational excellence.

The BPR design methodology adopts a systematic, multi-stage approach. The first phase involves identifying a specific improvement process aligned with BPR's core objectives. This phase analyses and redesigns workflows to optimize task sequences, roles, and stakeholder interactions while eliminating redundancies and inefficiencies via Workflow Process Reengineering. Visual process mapping tools, including VSM and simulation, pinpoint areas of waste, delay, and potential enhancement. The second phase follows the workflow analysis and aims to improve efficiency and effectiveness by redefining roles, rearranging tasks, and integrating automation and technology solutions. The redesigned process undergoes evaluation against key performance indicators to ensure measurable improvements are achieved. The final phase validates the proposed changes through simulation models, assesses the impact on key performance metrics, and establishes the necessary infrastructure for successful implementation. The proposed model is empirically validated through a case study of a leading apparel company in Vietnam, confirming its effectiveness.

The findings reveal that NVA activities are being eliminated, and ENVA activities in key departments are significantly reduced. This yielded a substantial improvement, reducing 25 out of 186 combined ENVA and NVA operations in the sewing facility, involving a decrease of 15 ENVA operations and the removal of 10 NVA operations. Consequently, this led to an 8.5% reduction in the proportion of ENVA operations, accompanied by a complete 100% elimination of NVA activities.

The single case study limits generalizability; thus, expanded implementation across diverse manufacturing sub-sectors is required to establish validity and broader applicability of the integrated framework.

The experimental results highlight the proposed model's effectiveness in optimizing resource utilization and its practical implementation potential. This structured BPR methodology enables organizations to validate, evaluate, and establish proposed process changes to enhance operational performance and productivity.

The study assessed the role of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) in the performance of graduate-owned small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Specifically, the paper focused on how graduate owners’ confidence in identifying and commercializing new business opportunities and create new commodities according to the market demand influences both, the financial and non-financial performance of graduate-owned SMEs.

The study employed a cross-sectional survey design, in which 228 SME graduate owners majored in entrepreneurship were involved through online structured questionnaires. The relationship between the variables was determined by using partial least squares structured equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results indicate that entrepreneurial self-efficacy of graduate SME owners influence the financial and non-financial performance of their SMEs. Specifically, financial performance values have a ß-value of 0.576 and a p-value of <0.0001, non-financial performance values have a ß-value of 0.275 and a p-value of <0.0001.

In order to improve the performance of graduate-owned SMEs, universities should strive to equip graduates with self-confidence, which will enable them to utilize their entrepreneurial competences acquired through the entrepreneurship course programs. This will enable them to tackle business environmental challenges and be able to run successful businesses.

The results of this study extend the use of the self-efficacy theory in explaining the performance of graduate-owned SMEs in Tanzanian. Further, the study focused on ESE as a specific domain developed from entrepreneurship learning for entrepreneurial outcomes. Therefore, the study engaged graduate entrepreneurs who majored in entrepreneurship, which has not been the focus in most studies.

This paper introduces a novel method to improve building safety management by leveraging building information modeling (BIM) and adaptive information retrieval techniques. The integration aims to overcome the limitations of traditional safety management methods in connecting construction processes with risk management efficiently.

The proposed method involves developing industry foundation classes (IFC) ontologies and integrating them with a safety document ontology to form a comprehensive BIM-based safety context framework. Custom reasoning rules and an inference engine are constructed to enable automatic context-aware safety information retrieval. The methodology is demonstrated through an adaptive information retrieval system using job hazard analysis (JHA) documents.

The implementation of the BIM-based adaptive information retrieval system shows significant improvements in identifying and managing construction risks. By mapping job-specific risks to corresponding safety measures, the system enhances risk detection and management tailored to particular construction tasks. The results indicate a marked improvement in the precision and accuracy of safety assessments and recommendations, aligning them closely with planned construction activities and conditions.

This paper offers an innovative approach to construction safety management through the development of a BIM-facilitated context-aware information retrieval system. This approach provides a more intelligent and automated framework for identifying and managing risks in construction projects. By focusing on specific job steps and related risks, the system enhances the effectiveness and accuracy of safety measures, contributing to better overall building safety management.

In light of the inequality in access to farming land and the high prevalence of child malnutrition in Sudan, there is a lack of empirical research on the relationship between land ownership and child nutritional status. This study aims to examine the influence of agricultural landholding on the nutritional status of children under the age of five in rural Sudan.

The study utilizes data from Sudan’s 2014 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), covering a sample of 10,753 rural children. The empirical analysis uses the two-stage least squares (2SLS) approach, adopting various estimation methods and model specifications for robustness check and comparison.

The results demonstrate that agricultural land has a positive and significant effect on reducing child malnutrition, signifying that children from families with agricultural land are less susceptible to malnutrition in Sudan. When examining the male and female sub-samples separately, the findings indicate a positive influence of land ownership on child malnutrition in the female sub-sample, while no significant impact is observed in the male sub-sample. This indicates a gender disparity in the effects of land ownership on child nutrition, with girls benefiting more from access to agricultural land compared to boys.

The study has several significant contributions. First, this is the sole study that examines the impact of agricultural land ownership on child malnutrition in Sudan. Second, considering the gender variations in nutritional status, investigating the influence of land ownership on child nutrition across genders addresses a significant gap in the current literature. Finally, the findings resulting from this study can contribute to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030, precisely focusing on SDG2 Goal 2: Zero hunger and SDG 10: Goal 10: Reduced inequalities.

The purpose of this paper is to verify how distributed cognition enhances collaborative problem-solving in the context of projects.

Using qualitative research and in-depth interviews, a sample of 32 project managers with experience in traditional and agile methods acting in Brazil and internationally participated in the research process. The analysis process, utilising coding techniques, involved stages: open, axial, coding and selective coding. These stages encompassed the evaluation of categories based on a hierarchy, in order to determine an appropriate level of abstraction that properly explains theoretical findings.

The results indicate that distributed team cognition is significant for collaborative problem-solving. The data from the interviews allowed the proposal of a model of cognition, and the identification of the elements that support it.

Understand how aspects of distributed team cognition can impact the behaviours of the project professional and contribute to problem-solving in the project environment.

The elements observed affects the collaborative problem-solving by presenting a model of distributed cognition, which is composed by directed communication, collective interaction, trust building and collaborative behaviour.

This study aims to assess the sources of COVID-19 information respondents relied for COVID-19 pandemic information access and use, forms of misinformation and their influence on COVID-19 vaccine uptake hesitancy among frontline workers.

A Google Form developed questionnaire, distributed conveniently through link shared through WhatsApp groups was used to collect data from frontline workers from Dar es Salaam and Dodoma cities. Analysis was done using a binary regression analysis.

It was found that it was not the source that mattered for one to be hesitancy or not on COVID-19 vaccination, but the extent to which the information the source channels was manipulated or false.

Relying only Google Form questionnaire sent through a link on WhatsApp may have compromised the quality of information gathered and the quality of conclusion. Another study may have conducted through researcher administered questionnaire to a bigger sample to increase conclusion reliability and validity.

This study urges that to increase the COVID-19 vaccine uptake, it is important to ensure that the quality of information from the revealed dependable sources is checked to avoid possible consequential disquiet resulting from misinformation.

As the world is striving toward combating the COVID-19 or at least lessening its effects, this paper is of its own kind, using the theory of informative fictions to guide the assessment of the sources of information and the extent to which they influence misinformation on COVID-19 vaccine uptake hesitancy.

It is generally known that the perforated section such as the castellated section is good to sustain distributed loads but inadequate to sustain highly concentrated loads. Therefore, it is possible to design the opening in a different arrangement of web opening to achieve section efficiency, thus improving the strength and torsional behaviour of the section with web opening. This study aims to focus on the finite element analysis of I-beam with and without openings in steel section dominated to lateral-torsional buckling behaviour.

In this work, the analysis of different sizes, shapes and arrangements of web opening is performed by using LUSAS application to conduct numerical analysis on lateral-torsional buckling behaviour. This involves three diameter sizes of web opening, five types of opening shapes and two criteria of the model.

The section with c-hexagon web opening was placed about 200-mm centre to centre and 100-mm edge distance, contribute to 7.26% increase of buckling capacity. For the section with 150-mm centre to centre and 50-mm edge distance, the occurrence of local buckling contributes to decrease of lateral buckling section capacity to 19.943 kNm, where pure lateral-torsional buckling mostly occurred because of prevented section. Besides that, the web opening diameter was also analysed. The web crippling was observed because of the increase of opening diameter from 0.67 to 0.80 D.

This contributes to a decrease in buckling capacity as figured in the contour of the deformed shape. For Model 1, an increase of buckling capacity (31.46%) is observed when the opening diameter are changed from 0.67 to 0.80 D.

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted the global economy, disrupting supply chains, causing job losses and altering consumer demand. In Malaysia, the real estate sector has been notably affected, with increased property impairments and overhang due to unprecedented uncertainty. Understanding these effects is crucial for policymakers and investors to prevent real estate and banking crises. This study aims to analyse the relationships between macroeconomic factors during the pandemic on property impairments and overhang, providing insights for maintaining macroeconomic stability. The findings will inform strategies for mitigating economic shocks, identifying opportunities, and guiding real estate policies in Malaysia and potentially globally.

This research article uses a time series ARDL regression analysis to examine pivotal macroeconomic factors including income, housing process, interest rates and unemployment on property loan impairments and property supply overhang in Malaysia. ARDL is effective to measure and analyse time series data, especially to understand the lagged impacts of macroeconomic factors. This can be seen by various economists in analysing macroeconomic factors affecting non-performing loans or the real estate finance using regression analyses both in Malaysia and other regions. The observations are gathered before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, spanning a five-year period with monthly frequency from 2018 to 2022.

The study emphasizes the critical importance of effectively managing unemployment and implementing policy interventions, such as moratoriums, to stabilize the economy and reduce the risk of loan impairments during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, this study highlights a significant inverse relationship between income per capita and loan impairments, underscoring the necessity for policies that promote economic growth and income equality. Initiatives targeting job creation, education and skills development can elevate income levels, thereby decreasing loan impairments. Lower lending interest rates during the pandemic also help mitigate the risk of loan impairments by facilitating borrowing, stimulating economic activity and enhancing financial well-being. Furthermore, the study suggests that while lower interest rates incentivize property developers and investors, understanding the intricate interaction between housing prices and supply is crucial for policymakers and stakeholders to effectively manage the housing market and ensure adequate housing supply, especially during crises.

This paper provides insight for policymakers, regulators, investors and property consultants into the dynamic effects of key macroeconomic factors amidst a global recession in how they impact the real estate market with regards specifically to all types of property loan impairments and property supply overhang. The observations are limited to the COVID-19 period, spanning five years with monthly data from 2018 to 2022. This understanding can facilitate the development of targeted strategic monetary policies and investment decisions in case of future recessions.

Policymakers should prioritize initiatives such as moratoriums and job creation programs to mitigate economic downturns. Additionally, financial institutions need to adjust lending practices in response to lower interest rates, while stakeholders in the housing market must understand the complex dynamics between housing prices and supply to ensure a balanced market. Overall, addressing underlying economic factors and implementing targeted policies are essential for building resilience and promoting sustainable economic growth amidst challenging circumstances.

Initiatives aimed at fostering income equality, creating employment opportunities and ensuring housing accessibility contribute to greater social cohesion and well-being. By promoting financial inclusion and building resilience to crises, societies can mitigate the adverse social impacts of economic challenges such as unemployment and housing affordability. Overall, addressing socioeconomic disparities and promoting inclusive growth are essential for fostering a more equitable and resilient society.

The originality and uniqueness of this study lie in its comprehensive analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on loan impairments and housing supply. While previous studies have focused on the pandemic’s effects on specific segments of the real estate market or property prices, this study provides a broad overview of its impact on property loan impairments and housing supply overhang. Finally, this study highlights the social and practical implications. Overall, this study offers a distinctive analysis of COVID-19’s impact on the real estate market and its implications for policymakers, real estate professionals and investors.