Browsing by Author "Ahmed F. Siddiqi"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Academic counseling: a positive analysis for investigating the role of teacher-student interaction at business schools
    (Global Business Review, 2005) Ahmed F. Siddiqi
    The study investigates the relationship between cognitive and affective outcomes of the quality of teacher-student interaction at different business schools in Pakistan. As early as 1936, Kurt Lewin recognized that the environment was a determinant of human behaviour and performance. Following Lewin s work, Murray proposed a Needs-Press model in which situational variables found in the environment account for a degree of behavioural variance. Attempts were also made to study situational variables found in the environment that affect the learning process, on the one hand, and students professional performance, on the other. A multistage stratified random sampling plan was used to select a sample from business schools at Lahore, Islamabad, Multan and Karachi. Stratification was done first at the ownership level, where the two strata consist of public and private sector schools. At the second stage, three strata were made according to the students' background, where students coming from English-medium schools, semi-English-medium schools and vernacular-medium schools were placed in three strata. In the third stage, the stratification was done on a gender basis. In the final stage, students were selected using systematic sampling. Such a multi-stage stratification plan permitted us to do an in-depth analysis of the whole process of teacher student interaction. The study identifies the types of interactions that are most likely to enhance students progress in business administration courses. It also identifies the important factors inhibiting or encouraging, teacher-student interaction. Further, it provides suggestions to enhance this interaction process.
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    Designing out a malignant supply-chain
    (2007) Ahmed F. Siddiqi
    Management of supply-chains is a pivotal successfactor for any organization in a knowledge-based economy. Efficiency of a typical supply-chain depends on an identically optimal performance of its each and every component, while any comparatively weak component may desolate the whole performance. One way out is intelligent application of already proved-efficient statistical experimental designs. The present article is attempting to treat supplychain management as a system of quantifiable components and then use designed experiments, not only to improve its performance but to guard against the malignant effects of any miscreant component. The article attempts to explain guiding principles involved in planning, executing, and analyzing designed experimentation in the domain of supply-chain management. Some specific statistical plans are also discussed for their comparative merits and demerits in the field of supply-chain management.
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    Gaps in management education: a case study of university of management and technology
    (2010) Abdur Raouf; Rukhsana Kalim; Ahmed F. Siddiqi
    This paper aims to identify the gaps in management education highlighted by 3 primary stakeholders: students, faculty and alumni. The study tries to address the issue of relevance and compatibility of management education and investigates areas of improvement perceived by respondents. The paper assumes that business departments of universities have to bring changes in learning strategies to meet the requirements of stakeholders. This research takes UMT (University of Management and Technology) as a case study and presents gaps in management education. Data are collected from all the 3 stakeholders: students, faculty and alumni of MBA (Master in Business Administration) program offered at UMT. The survey is administered using an exclusively-designed research instrument and the data set of 211 students, 55 faculty members and 145 alumni is analysed using appropriate statistical techniques. The management of business schools should develop an integrated and well-coordinated mechanism to share common vision and strategies among stakeholders. A need to revise current MBA curriculum is identified, which emphasizes on the development of different types of skills among MBAs to make the program compatible with the existing corporate sector. The universities dealing in management education are recommended to redesign their curriculum in a more integrated and coordinated way in anticipation with aspiration of the existing corporate sector, which would then help reduce the identified gaps among stakeholders. The management of business schools should have a continuous assessment mechanism incorporating the feed back of all stakeholders, particularly students, faculty and alumni. The paper makes a fruitful contribution to the existing academic literature through an empirical investigation in Pakistani environment. A critical discussion is carried out, and gaps in management education are highlighted, which may motivate management institutions to revise their curriculums.
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    Important determinants of child labor: a case study for Lahore
    (American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc., 2013) Ahmed F. Siddiqi
    Child labor is a persistent problem both for developing and developed countries. Academic literature holds a household responsible for this phenomenon where poverty, literacy level, and the de facto demography are considered important. A factor model is attempted in this study to investigate dynamics of child labor in a society in terms of these household characteristics. The model reveals that household-poverty-driven factors are the most serious while the household demography is the second most serious factor in the dynamics of child labor in Lahore. Shockingly, household literacy does not have any role to play, at least not in Lahore. The results will help policymakers to work in the domain of poverty to mitigate child labor, and also urge them to align societal factors, which shape household demography.
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    Measuring the learning organization�s construct in Pakistan: a case of public sector educational institutes
    (European Journal of Social Sciences, 2011) Rana Zamin Abbas; Hasan Sohaib Murad; Abdul Ghaffar Ghaffari; Ahmed F. Siddiqi; Zulfqar Ahmad; Zia Ur Rehman; Muhammad Ashraf
    Purpose: This paper focuses upon assessing the learning levels of Pakistani organizations1 particularly on those aspects which are prominent and verifiable in Pakistani context. Design/Methodology/Approach: The paper in hand first reviews all the relevant literature for distilling the main features of learning organization’s construct which are used in the questionnaire. The research used Marsick & Watkins, (2003) questionnaire as an instrument. Research findings: Factor analysis after survey filters five dimensions of the construct learning organization. namely; learning climate, employees’ participation, systematic employee development, leadership, and incentives of most positive kinds (rewards), for learning which are found in different proportions in public sector organizations.
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    An observatory note on tests for normality assumptions
    (Journal of Modelling in Management, 2014) Ahmed F. Siddiqi
    Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss how numerous tests that are available in statistical literature to assess normality of a given set of observations perform in normal and near-normal situations. Not all these tests are suitable for all situations but each test has an exclusive area of application. Design/methodology/approach – These tests are assessed for their power at varying degrees of skewness, kurtosis and sample size on the basis of simulated experiments. Findings – It is observed that almost all these tests are indifferent for smaller values of skewness and kurtosis. Further, the power of accepting normality reduces with increasing sample size. Originality/value – The article gives guidelines to researchers to apply normality assessing tests in different situations.
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    Outlier robust draper and lin designs
    (2011) Ahmed F. Siddiqi
    Design robustness to a single outlier is studied for Draper 1990 designs by introducing and applying minimax outlier effect criterion. The criterion uses outlying effect of design points and attempts to minimizes the maximum outlying effect for a design point to have design with almost equal outlying effects and the design is adjusted for maximum outlying effect. Resultant outlier robust Draper & Lin designs have been exhibited as more compact, so less resource intensive,as compare to the other existing equivalent designs.
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    The structure of scientific knowledge
    (Elsevier, 2007) Ahmad Raza; Ahmed F. Siddiqi
    This paper makes a theoretical critique of the concept of scientific knowledge. The classical conception of scientific knowledge has been discussed and analyzed in the first section. In the second section, emerging conception of the scientific knowledge has been explored. The author hopes to show on the basis of veritable critique from different philosophers of science as well as scientist (Kuhn, 1967, Polanyi, 1983, Prigogine, 1984), that the structure of scientific knowledge, the way it is interpreted and legitimized, is not only shaped by the personal and cultural orientations of its practitioners but also by the larger cultural context, in which it is carried out.