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This empirical analysis tries to examine determinants of private foreign direct investment (FDI) in Pakistan using the bounds test approach. Main determinants of FDI among them are the size of the market (Q) macroeconomic stability (r), political stability (PRS), real exchange rate (REX) and institutional quality (INQ).

This study used annual time-series data set starting from 1980 to 2016. This study has used time-series data with ARDL and error-correction model (ECM) and examined main determinants of FDI for Pakistan. The study used the Granger causality test (modified WALD test) to identify the causality among the variables.

Moreover, empirical findings indicate the long-run relationship between GDP, trade openness and institutional quality toward FDI. However, political instability, inflation and real exchange rate harm FDI in Pakistan. Furthermore, results of Granger causality indicate that the bidirectional causality running from FDI and Q toward FDI is significant, providing evidence of FDI-led growth hypotheses in Pakistan. This study determines the correlation between FDI and Q (GDP growth) related to the “feedback hypothesis” in the short and long run. This study also concludes that the short-run causal connection among FDI, REX, PRS, r and Q follows the “feedback hypothesis.” This describes that FDI, REX, PRS, r and Q variables are jointly determined and affected together.

This study also explores the causal association between FDI and its significant determinants, by using methods of Granger causality test and the approach of Toda-Yamamoto-DoladoLutkephol (TYDL) to examine the causal relationship and its directions among these variables.

Supply chain quality management (SCQM) has gained less attention in the Arab world, and there is a clear dearth in existing research on this topic, particularly in service organizations. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for investigating the impact of SCQM and associated indicators on organizational performance (OP).

Empirical data have been collected through a survey distributed to a sample of major telecom companies in United Arab Emirates (UAE). To test the conceptual framework, structural equation modeling (SEM) has been used to analyze the data collected from 248 respondents of telecom companies.

The empirical data showed that SCQM practices are significantly correlated with innovation and operations performance. Statistical analysis through SEM also revealed that customer satisfaction has highest direct impact on OP.

External factors (government regulations, policies and culture) also affect the SCQM practices. Hence, future work should incorporate these parameters as well.

This is a contribution to the continuing research into SCQM, giving supply chain managers and designers a practical way for measuring and implementing SCQM practices across service supply chains.

The contribution of this research, through successive stages of data collection, measurement analysis and refinement, is a set of reliable and valid framework that can be subsequently used in conceptualization and measuring quality of service supply chains.

Present work deals with the partial substitution of cement by waste demolished concrete powder (WDP) for reducing the carbon footprints of concrete.

Control specimens and the specimens with 20% WDP as fractional substitute of cement were prepared. The waste powder was thermally activated at 825 °C prior to its use in the mix. The prepared specimens were evaluated in terms of density, workability, mechanical strength, Ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) and rebound hammer (RH).

The results showed that with the substitution, the workability of the mix increased, while the density decreased. A decrement within a 20% limit was found in compressive strength. The UPV and RH results were closely linked to the other results as mentioned above.

The study deals with only M15 concrete and the substitution level of only 20% as a baseline.

The concrete containing 20% WDP is lightweight and more workable. Moreover, its strength at 28 days is 14 MPa, only 1 MPa lesser than the characteristic strength.

The WDP can be recycled and the dumping in landfills can be reduced. This is an important effort towards the decarbonation of concrete.

Previous literature indicates that the WDP has been frequently used as a partial replacement of aggregates. However, some traces of secondary hydration were also reported. This work considers the effect of partial substitution of cement by the WDP.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the dynamic causal relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI), gross domestic product (GDP) and trade openness (TO) on a set of five selected South Asian countries.

This study used newly developed bootstrap auto regressive distributed lags (ARDL) cointegration test to examine the long-run relationship among FDI, GDP and TO for selected South Asian countries for 1975–2016.

The economic growth (EG) is significantly related to TO for Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka and the expansion of TO is crucial for growth in these countries. The results show that all countries (except Bangladesh) found the existence of long-run cointegration between FDI, GDP and TO, whereas FDI is a dependent variable. These results concluded that FDI and TO are contributing to EG in these selected countries.

This study is one of the first attempts to investigate the causal relationship and address the short and long dynamic among FDI, GDP and TO regarding five south Asian countries such as Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Users contribute to online communities by posting and responding to discussion threads. Nonetheless, only a small fraction of threads gain popularity and shape community discourse. Prior studies have identified several factors driving thread popularity; however, despite their prevalence, the role of emotional expressions within discussion threads remains understudied. This study addresses this gap by investigating the impact of thread starters’ valence and embedded discrete emotions of anger, anxiety and sadness on thread popularity, drawing on the negativity bias and the emotion-as-social-information theories.

Using two samples from Reddit, this study employs negative binomial regression analysis to examine the hypothesized relationships.

The results demonstrate that negativity in thread starters significantly influences thread popularity; however, the expression of discrete emotions impacts popularity variously. In some contexts, such as COVID-19 vaccination subreddits, embedded anger in thread starters decreases thread popularity, whereas anxiety and sad expressions enhance it. In other contexts, such as professional discussions (e.g. r/Medicine subreddit), anger and anxiety expressions increase thread popularity, while sad expressions have no significant influence.

The study is limited by its focus on specific emotions and contexts. Future research could examine a broader range of emotions, post-content modalities and the impact of cultural and linguistic differences.

This study contributes to theory by offering a new definition of thread popularity and enhancing our understanding of the impact of emotions in online discussions. It also provides practical implications for online community members and moderators seeking to promote discussion posts that help achieve community goals.

Despite the growing interest in closed-loop manufacturing, there is a lack of comprehensive frameworks that integrate product development, production processes, people and policies (4Ps) to optimize sustainable manufacturing performance. This study investigates the influence of the four Ps of closed-loop manufacturing systems (product development, production processes, people and policies) on sustainable manufacturing performance (SMP).

To investigate the influence of the four Ps on SMP, a hybrid analytical model was employed, combining structural equation modeling (SEM) with artificial neural networks (ANN). Data were collected through a structured survey administered to 353 manufacturing firms in Malaysia. SEM was used to assess the relationships between the variables, while ANN was employed to capture nonlinear relationships and improve prediction accuracy.

The research findings demonstrate that product development practices, including eco-design, life cycle assessment and resource planning, exert the most significant influence on SMP. Furthermore, implementing green and lean manufacturing techniques, energy modeling and material utilization/toxicity planning significantly enhances sustainability outcomes. While the social setting (employee motivation, turnover and work–life quality) does not directly impact SMP, it plays a pivotal role in facilitating the implementation of internal environmental policies. Moreover, environmental management practices, both mandatory and voluntary, serve as intermediaries between the four Ps and SMP within closed-loop manufacturing systems.

The findings offer valuable insights for policymakers, industry leaders and manufacturing organizations. By prioritizing product development, implementing green and lean manufacturing practices and fostering a positive social setting, organizations can significantly enhance their sustainable performance. Additionally, the study highlights the importance of effective environmental management practices in mediating the relationship between other factors and SMP.

This study contributes to the literature by providing a comprehensive framework for understanding the factors that drive sustainable manufacturing performance. The hybrid SEM-ANN model offers a robust and innovative approach to analyzing the complex relationships between the four Ps and SMP.

This study examines whether a firm’s management earnings forecasts affect its technical innovation activities. Our study also examines whether the cost of debt plays a mediating role between the management earnings forecasts and the innovation nexus.

We obtained data from 1,032 Chinese non-financial firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 2005 to 2022 (i.e. 18,576 firm-year observations). We used various econometrics techniques, such as Heckman’s (1979) two-stage selection method and two-stage least square, to examine the relationship between management earnings forecasts and the firm’s technical innovation activities.

We find a positive relationship between management earnings forecasts and the firms' technical innovation. We also find that the cost of debt mediates the relationship between management earnings forecast and technical innovation. Further analysis indicates that frequent earnings forecasts provide incremental information regarding a firm’s future value and cash flows, thus reducing the volatility and uncertainty in cash flow calculations. Our findings are robust to several tests.

Our study has implications for policymakers, practitioners and high-level management of Chinese firms, enabling them to understand the relationship between management earnings forecasts and firms' innovation activities.

Depleting reserves of crude oils and their adverse environmental effects have shifted focus toward environment friendly and biobased lubricant base oils. Natural oils and fats act as good lubricants but they have low oxidation and thermal stability which makes them unsuitable for modern day uses. This paper aims to produce trimethylolpropane ester biolubricant from cottonseed oil and study the effects of its use in spark ignition (SI) engines.

In this work, cottonseed oil is converted to TMP lubricant by a two-step based catalyzed esterification. The lubricants thermophysical properties are then analyzed and a 20% blend with synthetic poly-alpha olefin is used in an spark ignition engine.

The produced lubricant has viscosity @100^oC of 4.91 cSt, a viscosity index of 230 and a flash point of 202^oC. When used as a 20% blend in a petrol engine, the rate of oil deterioration was reduced by 18%, however, the overall wear increased by 6.7%. However, this increase is offset by its improved environmental impacts.

In its current state, such a biolubricant can be used as an additive to most commercially available lubricants to improve oil deterioration characteristics and environmental impact. However, further work on improving biolubricant’s wear characteristics is needed for the complete replacement of mineral oil-based lubricants.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new conceptual framework for service organizations to achieve sustainable business performance through strategic quality orientation and innovation capabilities on the basis of relevant literature review and integration of various innovation and business sustainability theories and models. The study tests if the strategic quality orientation enhances innovation capabilities in terms of exploitation and explorative innovation, which, in turn, can lead to sustainable business growth. Mediating impact of innovation capabilities between strategic quality orientation and sustainable business growth relationship is also examined.

A conceptual framework was developed to test and establish these relationships. Results were analyzed based on 442 questionnaires collected from five different service industries of Pakistan, and the structural equation modeling technique was used to empirically test the conceptual framework.

The results indicate that strategic quality orientation directly affects innovation capabilities and sustainable business growth and also indirectly impacts sustainable business growth through its effect on innovation capabilities.

The study suggests service organizations can jointly implement quality and innovation using a structured approach, with strategic quality orientation as the foundation. In this way, they can leverage from their strategic quality management, supplier relationship, corporate quality culture, continual improvement and people management in order to ensure innovation and sustainability in their business growth.

The study integrates strategic quality orientation and innovation capabilities, and validates a new organizational framework through empirical examination which can be used by service organizations to ensure their sustainable business growth.

This paper aims to explore key management actions for implementing security on the cloud, which is a critical issue as many organizations are moving business processes and data on it. The cloud is a flexible, low cost and highly available technology, but it comes with increased complexity in maintaining the cloud consumer’s security. In this research, a model was built to assist strategic decision-makers in choosing from a diverse range of actions that can be taken to manage cloud security.

Published research from 2010 to 2022 was reviewed to identify alternatives to management actions pertaining to cloud security. Analytical hierarchical process (AHP) was applied to rate the most important action(s). For this, the alternatives, along with selection criteria, were summarized through thematic analysis. To gauge the relative importance of the alternatives, a questionnaire was distributed among cloud security practitioners to poll their opinion. AHP was then applied to the aggregated survey responses.

It was found that the respondents gave the highest importance to aligning information security with business needs. Building a cloud-specific risk management framework was rated second, while the actions: enforce and monitor contractual obligations, and update organizational structure, were rated third and fourth, respectively.

The research takes a general view without catering to specialized industry-based scenarios.

This paper highlights the role of management actions when implementing cloud security. It presents an AHP-based multi-criteria decision-making model that can be used by strategic decision-makers in selecting the optimum mode of action. Finally, the criteria used in the AHP model highlight how each alternative contributes to cloud security.