Journal of Management Sciences

83-107

Authors: Abdul Raziq and Retha Wiesner

Prior research on high performance management practices (HPMP) has primarily examined the relationship between HPMP and firm performance in the context of large organisations. However, this study examines the relationship between HPMP and Sustainability outcomes (firm performance) in small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) and also within a specific cultural background which is under researched. This research study is related to both theory and practice. The main relevance lies in analyzing the relationship between HPMP and sustainability outcomes in SMEs. This research study relates to theory by applying the resource-based view and configurational approaches used in this study. The study employed a quantitative methodology. Data were collected through a self-administered survey questionnaire. The questionnaire was adopted from a previous validated survey measuring HPMP in Australian SMEs. The target population consisted of SMEs operating in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. Stratified random sampling was applied to collect data from two stratums i.e. manufacturing and service-sector SMEs. A total of 703 firms were selected, contacted by phone, and invited to participate in this survey. Of these firms, 357 SMEs (50.78 percent response rate) accepted the invitation to fill out the survey questionnaire. Most of the respondents who agreed requested that the researcher to visit their organizations personally. The data were analyzed by using Structural Equation Modeling techniques including exploratory factor analysis. The findings indicate a positive significant relationship between HPMP and sustainability outcomes. The link between these HPMP and the sustainability of SMEs demonstrates the value and importance of HPMP in achieving sustainability.

3-23

Authors: Arshian Sharif and Syed Ali Raza

This study investigates the Carbon dioxide emission-urbanization-growth nexus in Pakistan by taking time series data from the period of 1972 to 2013. The study applied three approaches of co-integration (ARDL bounds test, Johansen and Juselius and Gregory and Hansen structural break test) to confirm the valid long-run positive interaction between carbon dioxide emission and urbanization. The robustness of cointegrating vectors are further checked using FMOLS and DOLS tests and the results validate the long-run coefficients. The results of VDM exhibit the uni-directional causality between carbon dioxide emission and urbanization running from urbanization to carbon dioxide emission. It was therefore noted that policies in which the government needs to allocate greater portion to environmental safeguard and energy saving components in the planning, such as encouraging energy saving framework and creating a chain of increasing indicators of environmental protection and energy saving.

34-46

Authors: Thurai Murugan Nathan, Venus Khim-Sen Liew and Wing-Keung Wong

From an economic perspective, energy-output relationship studies have become increasingly popular in recent times, partly fuelled by a need to understand the effect of energy on production outputs rather than overall GDP. This study dealt with disaggregated energy consumption and output of some major economic sectors in Thailand. ARDL Bound Testing approach was employed to examine the co-integration relationship. The Granger causality test of the aforementioned ARDL framework was done to investigate the corresponding causality effect. Results showed that, from year 1980 to 2010, productivity of most scrutinized industries was highly reliant on crude oil and natural gas. However, coal usage in transportation and agricultural industries can be reduced without affecting productivity. Few recommendations are given thereafter for Thailand to better manage their imported and local energy sources.

63-80

Authors: Wajeeha Aslam, Maria Batool and Zia Ul Haq

Advertisement through SMS is a commonly used medium in the era of technology. Companies are utilizing this medium of advertisement quite frequently. Rapid increase of the usage of mobile phones has developed an innovative way of utilizing this marketing tool. Due to the exponential growth in telecommunication industry after introduction of SMS and MMS, this study has been conducted to investigate the consumer attitude towards SMS advertisement and its relationship with behavior. Entertainment, irritation, product involvement and appeal were used in order to investigate the attitude of the consumer. A questionnaire was used to examine the relationships among variables of the study. Overall 350 usable responses were gathered. SEM was used to obtain the results of the overall model. Results of the study indicate that (1) product involvement, appeal and entertainment have a positive impact on attitude towards advertisement. Only irritation was found to be negatively insignificant. (2) Relationship between consumer attitude towards SMS advertising and attitude was positively significant. (3) Positive and direct relationship between attitude and consumer behavior was also found. (4) Permission appeared to be significant on consumer attitude towards mobile advertisement, which confirmed that prior permission is required to gain the positive response of the consumer. (5) Consumers are attracted by rewards therefore monetary benefits was also found to be a significant factor.

223 - 241

Authors: Reema Frooghi, Syeda Nazneen Waseem, Sahar Afshan, Zubair Shah

The shift towards technological era has caused services to adopt technology to increase customer satisfaction. Although much work has been done on offline brand dimension of newspapers and its effect towards website satisfaction, website trust and website loyalty; this paper focuses on how offline brand dimension of newspaper effects website satisfaction, website trust and website loyalty in Pakistani context. The mediating effect of Offline Brand Dimension of newspaper on Website Trust and Website Satisfaction has also been studied in this paper. Offline Brand Dimensions has been studied as a result of four factors which include: Brand Trust, Brand Satisfaction, Attitudinal Brand Loyalty and Behavioral Brand Loyalty. SPSS 21 and AMOS 21 have been used for data analysis. Exploratory Factor analysis through SPSS 21 and Confirmatory factor analysis through AMOS 21 has been conducted. To study the hypothesis path analysis has been carried out and mediation analysis has also been done to study the mediating effect. Survey research has been carried out through questionnaire. Sample size included 321 respondents. The respondents included those people who use online newspaper. The result indicates that Offline Brand Dimensions have a significant and positive impact on Website Trust and Website Satisfaction but has an insignificant impact on Website Loyalty; whereas Website Loyalty is the result of Website Satisfaction and Website Trust. There also exists full mediation of Offline Brand Dimensions on Website Trust and Website Satisfaction. This research will help to devise strategies for increasing readers’ loyalty and satisfaction.

102-123

Authors: M. Tahir Suleman, Muhammad Talha Amin

This study examines the impact of sectoral foreign direct investment on industrial economic growth of Pakistan, by means of Cobb-Douglas production function. Three sectors were used namely manufacturing, construction, mining & quarrying for panel data during period of 1997 to 2011. This study used three standard panel unit root tests; PP statistics panel unit root, ADF statistic, IPS panel unit root test. Moreover, to test the co integration between the variables , three different types of test were used for the panel co integration test based on Johansen fisher, Kao residual cointegration, Pedroni residual cointegration tests to find the long run relationship between sectoral FDI and industrial economic growth of Pakistan and the. Results revealed that sectoral FDI has positively and significantly affect the industrial growth of Pakistan.

185-204

Authors: M. Maqbool-ur-Rahman

: The study uses overall index of globalization developed by Dreher (2006) in which all three types of integration were utilized such as political, economic and social integration. The data of three south Asian countries like Pakistan, India and Bangladesh were taken for the period from 1981 to 2011. Initially, stationary properties of selected variables were checked through conventional unit root tests such as Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) and Phillip Perron (PP) test followed by ordinary least square (OLS), granger causality is applied and finally long-run relationship among variables were confirm by employing Johansen test of cointegration i.e. trace test and max-Eigen test. The study has very good model explaining variance in GDP growth. Probability value of F-stat is less than 0.05 which recognize that all the independent variables are regarded good to forecast the changing in dependent variable. The outcomes of Durbin Watson tests state that there is no autocorrelation in the chosen variables. Coefficients of independent variables are positive and significant. The outcomes of Johansen test of cointegration established a long-run equilibrium association among economic variables. It is clear that globalization and GDP both influence each other and illustrates bidirectional causality in India while Pakistan and Bangladesh show unidirectional causality between globalization and GDP. It is statistically found that overall index of globalization may affect the rate of growth. It has been recommended that authorities and government should realize the importance of globalization as factor of growth and concentrate on their weak component of globalization besides economic integration.

73-112

Authors: Chen Zonghao

This paper examines the impact of the listing of index futures trading on spot market volatility, market efficiency and volatility asymmetric responses. In order to model the effects of the introduction of index futures contracts, a modified GJR-GARCH model has been applied to examine the structural change of conditional variances before and after the introduction of index futures trading in S&P500, Nikkei 225, ASX all Ordinaries, and an equally weighted international portfolio. Additionally, this study adopts the coefficient dynamic tests to examine whether the identified impacts of index futures are consistent over time in both the individual indices and the international portfolio. In the post-futures period, we found that an increase in conditional volatility and market efficiency in Japan, and an increase in the equally weighted international portfolio. In the U.S. and Australia, however, no significant structural change on conditional variance is observed. The identified increase in volatility and market efficiency in the international portfolio are consistent over time.