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This study aims to investigate the impact of corporate governance compliance, governance reforms and board attributes on operating liquidity of Pakistani listed non-financial firms. The study further tests how these relationships vary in the pre- and post-corporate governance reforms.

Fixed-effect regression model is used on 10 years panel data from 2007 to 2016 for a sample of 170 firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange. Two-stage least squares model is used for addressing the endogeneity problem.

The findings reveal that governance compliance and governance reforms negatively affect operating liquidity. Among the board attributes, board meetings, directors’ remuneration, board foreign diversity and board gender diversity are significantly related to operating liquidity. Further exploration indicates that internal governance mechanisms are less effective to safeguard shareholders from expropriation during weak external governance. This suggests that strong external governance is inevitable to the effectiveness of internal governance mechanisms. Overall, the study findings support the agency theory.

The findings provide valid recommendations to policymakers interested in safeguarding the investors to focus on macro-level governance for making the micro-level governance effective. Further, the results provide the executives with an insight to improve the compliance level with the code of corporate governance.

Unlike prior studies, this study examines the impact of corporate governance compliance and novel board attributes – directors’ attendance at board meetings, number of board committees, directors’ remuneration and board foreign diversity on operating liquidity. Further, the study subdivides its sample period into pre- and post-corporate governance reforms to examine how external governance influences internal governance effectiveness.

This study investigates the impact of board characteristics on the stock liquidity of Pakistani listed non-financial firms for the period 2007–2016.

The study uses fixed-effects regression model on a sample of 170 non-financial firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange for regressing the impact of board attributes on stock liquidity while for addressing the endogeneity two-stage least-square (2SLS) and lagged structure models are used.

The study finds that board meetings (BM), directors' attendance (DAT) at BM, board gender diversity, the number of board subcommittees (NBC) and board foreign diversity (BFD) positively affect stock liquidity. Checking the robustness through 2SLS and lagged structure models, it is suggested that the findings are robust to the problem of endogeneity.

Outcomes of the study signify the role of novel board attributes in improving the stock liquidity which has implications for investors, the board of directors and policymakers.

The authors are the first to investigate the impact of novel board attributes–BFD, directors' remuneration (DR), DAT and the number of board sub-committees on stock liquidity. Up to the best of researchers' knowledge, these board attributes have never been examined before in relation to stock liquidity.

The main aim of this study is to investigate the impact of climate change and water salinity on farmer’s income risk with future outlook mitigation. Salinity and climate change are a threat to agricultural productivity worldwide. However, the combined effects of climate change and salinity impacts on farmers' income are not well understood, particularly in developing countries.

The response-yield function and general maximum entropy methods were used to predict the impact of temperature, precipitation and salinity on crop yield. The target minimization of total absolute deviations (MOTAD)-positive mathematical programming model was used to simulate the impact of climate change and salinity on socioeconomic and environmental indicators. In the end, a multicriteria decision-making model was used, aiming at the selection of suitable climate scenarios.

The results revealed that precipitation shows a significantly decreasing trend, while temperature and groundwater salinity (EC) illustrate a significantly increasing trend. Climate change and EC negatively impact the farmer's income and water shadow prices. Maximum reduction in income and water shadow prices was observed for A2 scenario (−12.4% and 19.4%) during 2050. The environmental index was the most important, with priority of 43.4% compared to socioeconomic indicators. Subindex amount of water used was also significant in study area, with 28.1% priority. The technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution ranking system found that B1 was the best climatic scenario for adopting climate change adaptation in the research region.

In this study, farmers' income threats were assessed with the aspects of different climate scenario (A1, A1B and B1) over the horizons of 2030, 2040 and 2050 and three different indicators (economic, social and environmental) in Northwestern region of Pakistan. Only in arid and semiarid regions has climate change raised temperature and reduced rainfall, which are preliminary symptoms of growing salinity.

The quality of construction projects is mainly dependent on the process quality during the construction phase than product quality. The key factors that influence the process quality of building projects in Pakistan during the construction phase of building life cycle are evaluated from literature. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

The factors were ranked using the traditional relative importance index (RII) and the second synthetic grey relational analysis method. The findings indicate that during the construction phase the selection of an appropriate contractor is the most important factor. The existence of feedback system and quality of shop drawings received from subcontractors are also very significant factors, according to the grey relational model.

Measures for the improvement of process quality in Pakistan are suggested. The results from both methods are not entirely comparable; however, if one considers uncertainty in data, then the second synthetic GRA-based ranking should be preferred over RII in decision making.

The study is pioneer in the evaluation of key factors influencing process quality during building construction projects in Pakistan using a set of traditional and novel methods. The results of this study are significant in improving the process quality during different phases of construction.

Pakistan is one of the most climate change and natural disaster-affected countries in the globe, where the lives and livelihoods of people are repeatedly affected due to these natural disasters. Over the past few decades, the country has been impacted by numerous devastating floods, droughts, and storms. As a result, households face enormous complications, particularly those dwelling in disaster-prone areas. Therefore, this study intends to explore the status of household vulnerability and resilience practices of hazard-prone communities in Pakistan from existing literature. This study has identified the 17 most relevant documents. It argues that household vulnerability is increasing consistently with the increasing rate of disaster intensity. Frequent flooding, landslide, erosion, and crop loss are the leading causes of household vulnerability. This study reveals five types of household vulnerability components which look into several livelihood vulnerability indicators of Pakistani households. Moreover, the study unfolds that the main causes of disaster vulnerability are widespread crop loss, a lack of water, loss of soil fertility, and low socioeconomic situations. The major vulnerability components of dwellers are exposure (increasing summer duration, the rapid increase of population house build-up in the riparian areas, and increasing occurrence of hailstorms), sensitivity, low access to education facilities, human loss, diseases infestation, food insecurity, and social conflict), and less adaptive capacity (social networks, migration, poor emergency services, multiple income sources, and less access to the health facility). To address the household vulnerability, this study has also identified four key aspects of resilience, like social resilience, economic resilience, institutional resilience, and physical resilience. The findings will effectively help to understand the dynamics of household vulnerability and resilience and its measurement and management strategy from developed indicators.

This paper aims to examine the effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on customer orientation and competitive advantage.

Data were collected from 368 retail banking customers in Pakistan and analysed using partial least squares-based structural equation modelling.

Firstly, the research findings indicate that CSR has a positive and significant effect on customer orientation. Secondly, CSR and customer orientation were found to be the antecedents of competitive advantage.

Managers can use CSR activities strategically to enhance the perceptions of a firm’s customer orientation in their minds. This can then lead towards achieving a competitive advantage over rivals. The trend of being socially responsible, as well as customer-orientated, can lead to a healthy ecosystem within the industry, which in turn will benefit its stakeholders.

Firstly, this is one of the pioneering studies that investigate the relationship between CSR and customer orientation. Secondly, it examines the under-explored roles of CSR and customer orientation as antecedents of competitive advantage.

In the swiftly evolving business landscape, environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations have gained exceptional prominence, as stakeholders increasingly emphasize accountability and sustainability. This study aims to meticulously probe the intricate interplay between ESG factors, financial performance and the distinct corporate governance landscape that characterizes the Nordic region's crucible of proactive societal and environmental commitment.

The authors begin with a data set of 899 Nordic firms across Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. Using the Thomson Reuters database, they refine this data set by excluding non-regional headquarters and entities without ESG scores or year-long financial data. This resulted in a focused data set of 1,360 firm-years spanning a decade, forming the foundation for investigating the link between ESG factors and financial performance in Nordic firms.

Drawing upon empirical data, the authors systematically dissect the correlation between specified financial ratios and ESG scores on the bedrock of sustainability evaluation. The findings underscore a partially significant, yet robust relationship between ESG endeavors and financial performance metrics. Furthermore, the intricate interplay of corporate governance dimensions’ reveals intriguing correlations with financial indicators among the surveyed Nordic enterprises. However, the findings also reveal an intricate weave that underscores the ESG and financial performance nexus.

This study addresses stakeholders’ theory and unique positions and contributes to the current discussion on sustainability reporting literature by providing empirical evidence of ESG influences on firm profitability through board characteristics in the specific context of the Nordic region. The sample for this study encompasses firms listed in Nordic countries; thus, the results may not be generalizable to unlisted firms and other countries or regions.

This study suggests that Nordic firms are advanced in reporting ESG in response to diverse stakeholder demands as part of their regular activities. This study provides valuable insights for diverse stakeholders including researchers and regulatory bodies.

This study provides an understanding of stakeholders about the association of ESG and sustainability practices with firm profitability, which might lead to making the world a better place.

While illuminating the multifaceted ESG-financial performance nexus, this study reveals its intricate nature. This complexity accentuates the compelling need for further exploration to decode the exact outcomes and myriad factors contributing to the array of correlations observed. Through this comprehensive inquiry, this research advances the understanding and underscores the pivotal role of a focused investigation. This study seeks to harmonize ESG practices and financial performance seamlessly within the Nordic business realm.

The rise in malaria deaths discloses a decline of global malaria eradication that shows that control measures and fund distribution have missed its right of way. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to study and evaluate the impact and control of malaria on the independent states of the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) region over the time period of 2010–2017 using Deng’s Grey incidence analysis, absolute degree GIA and second synthetic degree GIA model.

The purposive data sampling is a secondary data from World Developmental Indicators indicating the incidence of new malaria cases (per 1,000 population at risk) for 45 independent states in SSA. GIA models were applied on array sequences into a single relational grade for ranking to be obtained and analyzed to evaluate trend over a predicted period.

Grey relational analysis classifies West Africa as the highly infectious region of malaria incidence having Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Benin, Liberia and Gambia suffering severely. Also, results indicate Southern Africa to be the least of all affected in the African belt that includes Eswatini, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Mozambique. But, predictions revealed that the infection rate is expected to fall in West Africa, whereas the least vulnerable countries will experience a rise in malaria incidence through to the next ten years. Therefore, this study draws the attention of all stakeholders and interest groups to adopt effective policies to fight malaria.

The study is a pioneer to unravel the most vulnerable countries in the SSA region as far as the incidence of new malaria cases is a concern through the use of second synthetic GIA model. The outcome of the study is substantial to direct research funds to control and eliminate malaria.

This study intends to assess the research trends on natural disasters and their contribution to the various fields of policy decisions in India by conducting a bibliometric analysis between 2008 and 2022. The Scopus database was used to extract pertinent literature. The key relevant terms were used to seek relevant papers based on the query of two searches, ‘Natural disaster and India’ scenarios combined by the Boolean operator ‘AND’. Microsoft Excel and VOSviewer-Var1.6.16 were used to assess bibliometric indicators. The database yielded 1,293 papers in all, with 14,584 citations. There were 262 single authors and 1,031 multi-author documents among the publications that were retrieved, with an average of 11.28 citations per document. After 2016, there was a dramatic growth in the total number of publications. The journal articles were the leading source of the particular literature, and this study extracted approximately 858 journal articles from the Scopus database. About 713 and 580 articles were open and closed access, respectively. Earth and planetary sciences (28.07%), social science (31.01%), and environmental science (30.39%) had a higher proportion of papers than other topics. The most impactful authors were Rajib Shaw and Filip K. Arnberg from Keio University, Japan, and Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden. Besides, the most funding institutions were from India (39.33%), China (13.11%), and the United States (11.9%) for natural disaster research, in the case of India. The current baseline information on natural disaster-related literature in the context of India showed that this field is growing rapidly but with inadequate research collaboration and low productivity as needed. Research collaboration in this field needs to be strengthened to improve the solid response to natural disasters in any place in India. In addition, there is a need to expand the research focus in this field to include associated indicators.

Creativity and innovation have been buzzwords of managerial discourse over the last few decades as they contribute to the long-term survival and competitiveness of firms. Given the non-linear, causally ambiguous, and intangible nature of all innovation-related phenomena, management scholars have been trying to uncover factors that contribute to creativity and innovation from multiple lenses ranging from organizational behavior at the micro-level to strategic management at the macro-level. Along with important and insightful developments in these research streams that evolved independently from one another, human resource management (HRM) research – especially from a strategic perspective – has only recently started to contribute to a better understanding of both creativity and innovation. The goal of this chapter is to review the contributions of strategic HRM research to an improved understanding of creativity at the individual-level and innovation at the firm-level. In organizing this review, the authors rely on the open innovation funnel as a metaphor to review research on both HRM practices and HRM systems that contribute to creativity and innovation. In the last section, the authors focus on more recent developments in HRM research that focus on ambidexterity – as a way for HRM to simultaneously facilitate exploration and exploitation. This chapter concludes with a discussion of future research directions.