Employee Readiness for Change in Public Higher Education Institutions: Examining the Joint Effect of Leadership Behavior and Emotional Intelligence

This study aimed to examine the effects of leadership behavior and emotional intelligence (EI) on readiness for change and to investigate the moderating effects of organizational commitment on the relationship among leadership behavior, EI, and readiness to change. Data was collected using surveys and Partial least squares structural equations modeling (PLS SEM) was employed. The findings of the study indicated that leadership behavior and EI have significant effects on employees’ readiness for change. More importantly, it confirmed the moderating effect of organizational commitment. This study provides an empirical explanation of the joint effect of some crucial change management determinants.     

Political Brand Equity Model: The Integration of Political Brands in Voter Choice

The voters’ choices about political parties have many similarities with how they make their choices about commercial brands. Therefore, political parties are now constantly applying the concept and strategies of brand management to make the political product attractive, appealable, trustable, differentiable, a source of long-term relationships, and a decision-making driver. Furthermore, the political parties have to play an active role in the community's political socialization processes, which rely heavily on branding strategies. Because, the party equity is largely based on the community's social gregariousness that has profound effect on the electorates' propensity to participate in the politics. This study has deeply explored and broadened the concept of party equity analogous to commercial brand equity typology by developing a politics-specific brand equity model. This model demonstrates the integration of political brands in voter choice. Empirically, this model has been validated by collecting 550 valid responses from the constituency of District Gujrat, Pakistan. A careful analysis of these responses through structural equation modeling methodology has revealed that political parties vary according to the outcomes of their role in the political socialization process of the communities, loyalty, and voters’ attitude. Parties that have favorable role in the socialization process have strong party knowledge and thus have high party equity as compared to competing political parties, which have a weak position of party knowledge. Similarly, this study provides the roadmap and guidelines for the political parties to manage their party equity. Similarly, the model would be able to facilitate political parties in comparing different constituencies on the basis of their diversified social dynamics and political knowledge and in the development of a constituency-based manifesto, also termed “localized manifesto,” to further enhance their vote bank.     

The Discursive Construction of Terrorist Group Identity

The media coverage of terrorist acts has been the subject of numerous scientific studies. However, the terrorist groups’ own communication perspectives have not been thoroughly researched. The following article deals with terrorist groups and their use of websites for identity building. We examine the discursive construction of terrorist group identity through critical discourse analysis (CDA). The CDA of online texts from websites of terrorist groups is based on a five macro-strategy scheme. Our sample consists of six terrorist groups, with each group of two sharing different motivations: social-revolutionary, ethno-nationalist, or religious. All the groups analyzed are listed as terrorist organizations by the European Union. The CDA of 27 terrorist websites, purposively sampled, was conducted using two coders per site. Through this analysis, the researchers draw conclusions on strategies employed by terrorist organizations in building identity and how to counter their unregulated propaganda.     

Bangladesh-Pakistan relations: hostage to a traumatic past

Bangladesh-Pakistan relations reached a low point in December 2013 when the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh convicted nine persons of war crimes pertaining to Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, and imposed a death sentence on senior Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Quader Molla. This paper examines the trials in connection to their impact on Bangladesh-Pakistan relations. The analysis in this paper shows that the traumatic break of East and West Pakistan continues to haunt bilateral relations and now has spill-over effects on South Asian regionalism. It also argues that the Awami League-India nexus is another historically persistent factor precluding better Dhaka-Islamabad relations.     

试析中国在苏丹西部达尔富尔地区冲突中的立场

本研究主要关注从2003年到2008年12月中国对苏丹西部达尔富尔地区冲突的立场。苏丹国内和国际上都有人指责中国与苏丹政府之间存在着特殊关系,向苏丹政府提供了无条件的支持。中国也被指责阻碍了旨在推动苏丹政府和平解决达尔富尔冲突、停止该地区蔓延的暴力活动的国际决议。这在很大程度上困扰了中国外交,使中国外交投入了宝贵的精力和时间,来为自己的立场辩护,并在国际舆论面前改善自己的形象。实际上,这是对中国在达尔富尔冲突中立场的误读,忽视了中国立场的转变和为冲突解决所发挥的积极作用。     

Experience of a financial reforms project in Bangladesh

This article reviews the efforts of the Government of Bangladesh aimed at reforming the public sector financial management system as part of overall public administration reforms through a technical assistance project jointly sponsored by the government and the Department for International Development, Government of the UK. It has evolved through initial setbacks into a highly successful project delivering tangible outputs over the last three years, with prospects for future extension until reforms are internalized and become self‐sustaining. Attempts have been made in this article to analyse and evaluate the underlying reasons for the problems in the first year of implementation as well as the factors that contributed to the recovery of the image of the project and its continuing successes in successive phases. The article highlights the lessons learned from the project in its bad as well as good times and suggests that this experience can be of great value to those undergoing the same type of reform experiment. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does public participation matter? Inclusive growth in East Asia

Inclusiveness in economic development has lately emerged as a critical factor for development. This paper adopts an analytical concept of inclusive growth to evaluate East Asia’s economic success. It contests the Western conceptualization of the critical role of public participation in development, and argues that it has played a limited role in terms of inclusive growth in East Asia. Several factors have influenced the outcome of research in this area including the choice of methodology adopted, the challenge of defining and measuring inclusive growth, and the unclear mode and impact of public participation in the process.     

Letters to the Editor

Editor's Note: The following letter is a response to the correspondence between Michael Caroe, son of Sir Olaf Caroe, and Professor Parshotam Mehra, author of The North-West Frontier Drama, 1945–1947. The previous letter from Michael Caroe appeared in the October 2002 edition of Asian Affairs, Vol. XXXIII, Part III (p. 425). This was a response to a letter from Professor Mehra, which appeared in the June 2002 edition, Vol. XXXIII, Part II (p. 247).