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Describes the results of research carried out in a large commercial telecommunications organisation where the information systems group was undergoing a change from developing systems in a traditional third generation environment to a fourth generation development environment. Exposes a number of difficulties, notably ′people problems′ associated with innovation. Concludes that even where the technical aspects should lead to increased efficiency, this might not be the end result.

The impact of climate change (CC) has become the most defining issue of the present times. From an increase in temperature to food and water scarcity, the adverse effect of CC is faced globally by all countries on an unprecedented level. Environmentally polluting industries are considered one of the primary contributors to the problem of CC. This chapter aims to provide an understanding of the emerging global threat of CC and various strategies that environmentally polluting firms could undertake to tackle the climate change crisis.

Based on the review of the literature, this chapter presents deliberation on the climate change crisis and various strategies for environmentally polluting industries to tackle CC issues.

This chapter presents a bird's eye view of the CC issue and various strategies that could be undertaken by environmentally polluting industries to address the CC crisis.

This chapter should be very useful for policymakers, practitioners and corporations to understand the issue of climate change and global warming and its implications. Further, it will also help polluting companies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and address the adverse impact of their business activities.

Considering the dearth of sector-specific studies based on climate change, this chapter is one of the few studies that explore CC strategies in the context of polluting industries.

There has been a dramatic rise in the use of online food delivery apps (FDAs) services since the COVID-19 pandemic. Though online FDAs have contributed significantly to the rise in demand for products from the gourmet industry, little is known regarding the factors that inspire customers to order from online FDAs, subsequently influencing customers’ satisfaction. Considering the knowledge gap, this study utilizes the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model to conceptualize the factors: stimuli (eWOM, online reviews and online deals as external stimuli, and late-night craving and convenience as internal stimuli) that determine the organism level (i.e. customers’ inspiration) to subsequently generate the response (i.e. customers’ satisfaction).

We collected the data from 388 users and analyzed it via partial least squares – structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results reveal that online reviews, deals, late-night food cravings and convenience positively determine customers’ inspiration and satisfaction. In contrast, eWOM fails to impact customers’ inspiration directly and indirectly, affecting customers’ satisfaction through inspiration. Besides, customers’ inspiration positively mediates the relationship between stimuli (e.g. online reviews, online deals, late-night cravings and convenience) and customers’ satisfaction.

This study is novel in that it explores the impact of internal (late-night craving and convenience) and external (eWOM, online reviews and online deals) stimuli on customer inspiration and subsequently predicts customer satisfaction. We also expand prior studies on food delivery apps by studying customer inspiration as a mediating mechanism between internal and external stimuli and customer satisfaction.

The connection between critical thinking and students' reliance on Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been examined in this chapter. While there are many educational advantages to AI technology, it has been demonstrated that a heavy dependence on it may impair autonomous problem-solving and critical thinking skills. The research highlights the necessity of incorporating a critical thinking approach into educational programs to assist students in scrutinizing, analyzing, and assessing AI technologies. For data analysis descriptive and correlational analysis were conducted to test the research hypothesis. Furthermore, by honing their critical thinking skills, students will be able to question data supplied by AI, recognize potential biases, assess the validity of sources, and make defensible conclusions. Additionally, the findings show a positive relationship between using AI and critical thinking toward transformation of innovative learning. This study highlights the importance of critical thinking abilities in navigating an AI-driven society by demonstrating a link between higher critical thinking capabilities and a stronger desire to employ AI technology. It is advised that lawmakers and educational institutions give the integration of critical thinking abilities in curricula top priority considering these findings. Furthermore, future studies should focus on the difficulties in integrating AI into classroom environments and the long-term impacts of a critical thinking approach on AI dependence. This chapter's main contention is that critical thinking is necessary for the ethical use of AI, autonomous reasoning, and independent decision-making.

This research aims to inspect the existence of the “environmental Kuznets curve” (EKC) in the presence of foreign direct investment (FDI), financial development (FD) and urbanization throughout 1972–2018 for Pakistan.

For time series analysis, Phillips and Perron (PP) and Augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF) unit root tests are used to confirm the level of integration. For robustness, Kim and Perron (2009)’s structural break unit root test is employed, which identifies the order of integration in the presence of structural break years. Further, combined cointegration analysis is performed to confirm the existence of a long-run association between underlying variables. Furthermore, autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) analysis is employed for the robustness of the cointegration approach.

The cointegration analysis confirms the existence of a long-run association among variables. The authors find a positive and significant impact of urbanization, FD and foreign development on environmental degradation in the long run. Similarly, only FDI increases environmental degradation in the short run. In addition, the authors find an inverted U-shape relationship between economic growth and environmental quality which, further, confirms the presence of EKC in Pakistan.

This research contributes to applied economics in many ways: the combined effect of urbanization, FD, FDI and economic growth on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission is checked simultaneously. To avoid ambiguity, this study constructs the FD index through the principal component analysis (PCA). Moreover, the role of structural breaks has been considered through the analysis. Novel Bayer-Hanck combined cointegration analysis is employed to detect the existence of long-run relationships among underlying variables.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has a critical role in boosting agricultural productivity and the growth of emerging economies. The relationship between FDI inflows and environmental factors has not received much attention in identifying its impact on agricultural output. Using annual time series data from 1990 to 2023, this study examines the causal association and short- and long-run effects of FDI inflows, forest coverage and CO2 emissions on the agricultural productivity of the India, China and US (ICU) economies. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) results confirmed that FDI inflows have a significant and positive impact on Indian and Chinese agriculture productivity, whereas CO2 emissions adversely affect US agriculture productivity in the long run. In the short run, CO2 emissions led to agricultural productivity in both China and the US economies. The bound test and error correction model (ECM) result also confirmed the long-run connection and convergence of the equilibrium path among the studied variables except India. The findings of the Granger causality test showed a unidirectional causal link between agriculture productivity and FDI inflows and forest coverage in India and a bidirectional causal link between CO2 emission and agricultural yield and forest coverage and CO2 emission in the Chinese agriculture sector. The study also revealed a unidirectional causal association between forest coverage and agricultural output and between FDI, CO2 emissions and forest coverage in the US agriculture sector. Policymakers were advised to encourage FDI in the agriculture sector and expand the use of environment-friendly technology to decrease carbon emissions and promote forest coverage for sustainable growth and higher agricultural production.

This study aims to investigate the efficiency of Indian commercial banks from 2002 to 2018 using the stochastic frontier analysis.

This study uses the parametric approach of the stochastic frontier to examine the technical efficiency of banks acknowledging exogenous shocks, omitted variables and measurement errors, filling a gap in the existing financial literature. The scope of this study was constrained to 71 scheduled commercial banks to make it manageable and productive with 1,036 observations.

The results show that the mean technical efficiency of new private banks remained constant at 92.7% during the study period because of technology diffusion in banking systems. The technical efficiency of the nationalized, old private and foreign banks has enhanced over the period because of the efficient utilization of various innovative information technology services such as mobile banking, cheque truncation system, magnetic ink character recognition. However, the foreign banks are still laggards with a mean technical efficiency of 81.7%. The empirical findings suggest that new private sector banks depict higher efficiency than nationalized, old private and foreign banks.

This study’s sample represents all categories of banks (public, private and foreign) including the banks that merged or consolidated during the period of study. To achieve the desired results, the authors incorporate the consolidated and merged banks in their data set. Further, the authors excluded all scheduled small finance banks and scheduled payment banks from their analysis, as these entities commenced operations post-2015. Additionally, the authors also excluded regional rural banks because of their distinct mandate aimed at servicing the rural populace and agricultural sector.

This study contributes to the literature on the performance of conventional banks in general and emerging markets, in particular, using the most recent data and covering a relatively long period using the stochastic frontier approach.

The banking industry, which is one of the most significant industries when taking into account both deposit sizes and employment statistics in Turkey, is one of the country's primary economic drivers. In this regard, it is highly important to evaluate banks as it is necessary to present to what extent they use their resources efficiently. The main purpose of the study is to analyze the efficiencies of Turkish banks by the two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) and Malmquist productivity index (MPI).

The authors aim to analyze both the efficiency and productivity of Turkish banks by two-stage DEA and the MPI, which enable decomposing into sub-sections of production processes. Hence, more detailed insight into the Turkish banking system can be presented through two-stage efficiency and production approaches.

DEA results indicate that two out of three state-owned banks achieved resource efficiency while none of the investigated banks performed profit efficiency throughout the investigated period. Besides, average resource efficiency is found higher than average profit efficiency in Turkish banks. MPI results reveal that both technological and technical improvement prospects exist for Turkish banks.

The original contribution of this paper is to employ two-stage DEA and the MPI, which reflect both the static and dynamic performance of the Turkish banking sector. In this regard, this study aims to be a pioneer by both reflecting the static and dynamic performance analysis of Turkish banks.

This study aims to investigate the status of library and information science (LIS) education in Pakistan, as well as LIS progress, level of employment and issues, infrastructure and facilities, challenges faced by LIS institutions and future prospects of the profession.

A total of 115 permanent/regular and visiting academic members from different Pakistani institutions/universities participated in the research. A mixed-method was used, and data was collected through questionnaires and interviews. The data was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively.

This study’s results showed that assistant, associate and associate professors have been very involved in producing high-quality research articles and producing quality graduates. This study also found that there are several problems with LIS education in Pakistan, such as a lack of qualified teachers, resources and facilities. This study provides all the answers to these problems. They are useful for LIS teachers and students in Pakistan because LIS education has been around for a long time, but there are still some problems that need to be fixed. The results could have an immediate effect on the direction, ability to survive and future of LIS education in Pakistan.

Previously, different studies have been conducted on evolution and challenges to the LIS profession, but to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study has been reported based on the professional experiences in other Universities of Pakistan. According to the research, the findings are crucial for LIS professors and students in Pakistan. In addition, the research investigates the challenges faced by LIS teachers in Pakistan. It concludes with suggestions on how to address some of these problems. It is also said that Pakistan must develop universal standards for LIS to close the gap between what users want and what library workers can do.