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Information literacy (IL) is essential to prepare lifelong learners and a creative workforce in the digital information landscape. This study aims to investigate the effect of IL on the lifelong learning and creativity of medical students in Pakistan.

Survey research design, along with a questionnaire, was used to collect data from students, recruited through a stratified convenient sampling process, from the medical colleges with permission from competent authorities. The administration of the questionnaire was done personally, and a total of 500 responses were received. The data were analyzed by applying descriptive and inferential statistics.

The results indicated that these medical students perceived themselves as information literate in basic IL skills. Furthermore, the IL skills appeared to have a direct, statistically significant, but positive effect on their lifelong learning and creativity.

The research outcomes may inform academia, particularly associated with medical education, to initiate IL instruction programs for medical students to develop IL capabilities.

This research would be an invaluable contribution to the existing IL literature because of the dearth of empirical studies examining the interrelationships between IL, lifelong learning and creativity.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship of information-seeking anxiety (ISA) with socio-academic variables of business students in the digital environment.

A cross-sectional survey using a questionnaire was conducted. The questionnaire, composed of 47 items of Information Seeking Anxiety Scale along with certain socio-academic variables, was administered personally among business students by visiting their classrooms at the Lahore School of Economics, Pakistan. The received 283 responses were analyzed by applying descriptive and inferential statistics such as mean, standard deviation, t-test and one-way analysis of variance.

The results revealed that a large majority of business students were less comfortable in information seeking and experienced anxiety from mild to moderate levels. There were only a few respondents who faced either low or severe levels of ISA. In relationship testing, the students’ socio-academic variables such as program type, gender, school background, geographical background, information communication technology skills and English language competence did not appear to be the predictors of their ISA.

The results of this study should carefully be used while making generalizations for all the business students in Pakistan and abroad as this research collected data from the business students of a single university in Pakistan.

These results have greater implications for the future directions of information literacy as creating awareness and building capacity for skills about the information search process will help in reducing ISA. These findings provided a pragmatic insight that can be used as a guide by information professionals, especially those engaged in information services, to develop a need-based curriculum of information literacy which would ultimately help in the alleviation of anxiety and combating its effects on students’ academic performance.

This study address specifically ISA of business students that would make a worthy contribution to the existing research on ISA as, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no such study has appeared so far.

This research examined the effects of information literacy on lifelong learning, creativity, and work performance among journalists in Pakistan.

Survey research design was applied to conduct this research. The participants were recruited through a stratified convenient sampling process from the press clubs of four provinces (e.g. Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Baluchistan) and the federal capital Islamabad with the consent of relevant authorities for data collection. An online questionnaire was distributed among these journalists and a total of 1,089 responses were received. The data were analyzed by applying descriptive and inferential statistics in SPSS.

The results revealed that these journalists perceived themselves as information literate. The information literacy (IL) skills of journalists appeared to have a direct and positive effect on their lifelong learning, creativity, and work performance. In other words, the lifelong learning, creativity, and work performance of journalists increase as their levels of IL skills increase.

These results generated useful insights for academicians and organizations about the importance of IL in the workplace and its influence on organizational effectiveness and performance in gaining a sustainable competitive advantage. This knowledge might be crucial for media employers to initiate training programs for journalists to impart IL education.

This research would be a worthwhile contribution to the existing research on workplace IL, particularly in the context of journalists' workplace as no such comprehensive study using these variables appeared so far.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-06-2022-0345.

This research examined the effect of information literacy (IL) on academic engagement (AE), cognitive engagement (CE) and academic performance among business students in Pakistan.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted to collect data from business students, recruited through a proportionate stratified convenient sampling technique, of the top 13 business institutions in Pakistan. The questionnaire was personally administered by visiting each institution with permission for data collection. A total of 554 responses were received and analyzed using the partial least squire-structural equation modeling approach.

The results exhibited that these business students perceived themselves as information literate. Furthermore, IL of business students appeared to predict positively their AE, CE and academic performance.

These results provided empirical and pragmatic insights for business educators, business librarians and accreditation bodies about IL effectiveness in academia. These findings may also inform policy and practice for IL instruction programs being carried out in business-related educational institutions not only in Pakistan but also in other countries of South Asia as they share similar characteristics.

This research would be a great contribution to the existing literature on IL, especially in the academic context as the interrelationship between IL, AE, CE and academic performance has not been investigated so far.

This study investigated the impact of conspiracy beliefs on fear of Covid-19 and health protective behavior of university students in Pakistan.

A cross-sectional survey using an online questionnaire was conducted at three universities in Punjab (e.g. two public sectors and one private sector) with permission from concerned authorities for data collection. A total of 374 responses were received that were analyzed by applying both descriptive and inferential statistics.

The results indicated the prevalence of conspiracy beliefs and fear of Covid-19 among university students of two public sector universities and one private sector university. Furthermore, the conspiracy beliefs of university students predicted their fear of Covid-19. However, conspiracy beliefs did not predict the health protective behavior of university students.

These results had serious implications for public health in Pakistan demonstrating the critical need for health education and promotion as individual preparedness along with system preparedness is essential to combat Covid-19 pandemic and infodemic. These results are useful for policymakers, healthcare professionals, university administration and library staff for making evidence-based decisions toward health education and promotion related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

It is hoped that the present study would make an invaluable contribution to existing research on promotional health in general and the role of conspiracy beliefs in putting public health at risk in particular as limited studies have been published so far.

This study aimed to develop and validate a list of core technology competencies for systems librarian in Pakistan.

Survey method was used to conduct this investigation. A structured questionnaire, consisting of 52 competency statements categorized into six core technology areas, was developed based on an extensive literature review, experts’ scrutiny and pilot testing. The administration of the survey questionnaire was done though online environments such as related listservs and Facebook pages. The received 62 responses were imported into statistical package for social sciences and analyzed by computing means, standard deviations, Pearson correlation and t-test.

The results indicated six core technology areas where competencies of systems librarians needed to be developed, namely, basic computing, programming and Web publishing, computer networks, cloud computing, database management systems and information systems. The respondents validated 50 statements with an average mean score more than three. Only two statements received mean scores less than three. The results also indicated higher consistency of these statements as the value of Cronbach’s alpha was 0.973.

This research attempted to identify and validate core technology competencies needed for systems librarians in Pakistan. It neither attempted to determine the weightage each competency should have if it was to be included in curriculum nor it intended to identify a detailed content for each core technology competency. In Pakistan, System librarians develop their knowledge and skills with the specialized computer subject by studying on their own, attending training workshops and on job experience. It is therefore worth mentioning here that the knowledge of the needed competencies may be limited.

Library and information science schools need to consider these competencies in developing and designing information curriculum with regard to management of library systems. This set of competencies help academicians in designing need-based curricula and training programs for existing and prospect system librarians in Pakistan.

This study would be a worthwhile contribution to the literature on competencies of information professionals especially systems librarians as no such study appeared providing pragmatic, evidenced and field-based insights toward proposed research area.

Drawing from social exchange theory, the purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of servant leadership on organizational citizenship behavior, turnover intentions and work performance through mediating role of job embeddedness.

The data were gathered from 252 frontline employees of Pakistan's hotel industry in two-time lags with an interval of two months by using purposive sampling. PLS-SEM was applied for the analysis of data and hypothesis testing.

The study ascertained that job embeddedness is a potent mediator between the nexus of servant leadership and aforementioned work outcomes. The study results portray that servant leadership promotes job embeddedness, OCB, work performance and reduces turnover intentions.

Hotel management can use job embeddedness to boost servant leadership and reduce turnover intentions. In addition, management should also increase servant leadership by organizing training and workshops for their managers, which ultimately improves followers' organizational citizenship behavior and work performance.

Hotel management can use job embeddedness to boost OCB, work performance and reduce turnover intentions. In addition, management should also increase servant leadership by organizing training and workshops for their managers, which ultimately improves followers' citizenship behavior and work performance.

There are numerous calls for research to ascertain as well as sparse literature available whether job embeddedness act as a mediator in the nexus of servant leadership and work outcomes or not. The current study fills these voids and contributes to the literature by empirically examining the mechanism of job embeddedness between servant leadership and the work outcomes.

This research paper attempts to empirically examine the relationship between the performance of the banking industry and foreign direct investment (FDI), thereby helping the readers contemplate one of the least explored areas of the existing literature associated with the idiosyncratic characteristics of FDI resulting from its interaction with the efficient banking performance of the host country. The study has focused on the economy of Bangladesh because of its significant amount of FDI inflows from the rest of the world and its adoption of many liberalization policies, especially in the banking sector and in the areas of international business and trade.

The study, to produce unbiased estimates, employed the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model for analyzing the time series data collected from reliable sources.

The key outcomes of the study reveal that the sound performance of the banking industry appears to be counterproductive for FDI inflows, which is a bit unconventional insight. In the context of Bangladesh, trade openness, inflation rate and infrastructural development seem to be the dominant factors behind the rising inflows of FDI. Market size appears to be an insignificant determinant of FDI inflows.

This is a unique study because of its focus on the unexplored area in the literature.

Leaders have been facing serious challenges in managing organizations during COVID-19, which has brought the need for implementing sudden technological change across the globe. Hence, it was important to identify effective leadership styles to successfully manage the transformational process during the period. Therefore, the current study aims to explore and compare the effectiveness of transformational and ethical leadership (EL) in terms of achieving organizational goals during COVID-19 in public and private sector organizations in Pakistan.

Comparative research was carried out to find out the effectiveness of transformational and EL during and pre-COVID-19 in public and private sector organizations using the lens of social exchange theory. Data was collected from 214 respondents representing 67.6% of public and 32.4% of private sector organizations of Pakistan at two different points in time. Detailed comparative analyses were conducted in AMOS version 24 to assess the effectiveness of leadership styles before and during COVID-19 times.

On the whole, transformational leadership (TL) was found to have a greater impact on organizational effectiveness (OE) in comparison with EL in both pre-and during COVID-19 situations. Moreover, the effectiveness of TL significantly increased and the same decreased for EL during COVID-19. Additional analyses indicated that TL was effective for the private sector and EL for public sector organizations during COVID-19.

The study has not considered the mediating mechanisms of employee motivation, engagement and performance in the relationship between transformational and EL styles and OE, which can be explored in the future.

These results have important implications for private and public sector organizations and suggest that the adoption of a TL style will generate better results in the private sector and an EL style in public sector organizations to achieve OE in uncertain situations such as COVID-19.

The study shows that leadership with more care and concern for humanity tends to perform better in terms of generating results for OE. Therefore, both transformational and EL are based on individualized consideration for employees and are effective during COVID-19 in private and public sector organizations in Pakistan.

The study has carried out the comparative analyses in three different ways, including leadership styles (transformational and ethical), type of organization (private and public) and time frames (pre and during COVID-19), which is a true contribution of the research in the Pakistani context.

Most aspects of brand loyalty rely heavily on brand awareness. However, the information processing of brand awareness in customers, which is significant in buying decisions or customers' feedback experiences, is still unknown in the available literature. This study investigates how dynamic brands awareness affect customers in buying what they buy and how they buy them. The current study's entire goal is to comprehend the phenomenon of customer preferences and choices in the Nigerian context. The study asserts that there is a need to provide critical information that will improve customers' hypotheses testing in making a choice and preferences in creating brand awareness. It is necessary for brand builders and marketers to achieve and maintain the ultimate level of awareness through great gift items, pricing tactics, sales promotion, and sponsorship of programmes and events creatively and consistently. Meaningful customer relationship management programmes and activities must be established to constantly improve brand awareness.