The main aim of the study was to empirically investigate the mediating role of organizational commitment (OC) and person–organization fit (POF) between the causal relationship of supportive work environment (SWE) and employee retention (ER). One thousand questionnaires were sent to the targeted population included employees of all chains of multinational fast-food brands (restaurants) in Lahore, Pakistan. The restaurants were selected from clusters by using a cluster sampling technique. Questionnaires were comprised of multiple items adopted from former studies to obtain responses using quantitative methodology. For statistical analysis and to test the proposed hypothesis, the partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was employed through Smart PLS 2.0 M3 software. The study’s findings elucidated that SWE has a positive and significant association with ER. In addition, OC and POF acted as mediators between the relationship of a SWE and ER. This study presented implications for human resource (HR) practitioners that they should endure developing mechanisms for imparting a SWE to foster healthy exchange relationships with people, which in turn will result in ER. This article significantly contributed to the extant literature on the relationship of the SWE and ER while highlighting the critical factors to be noticed for retaining key employees. This study also explicated the limitations and scope for further research.

Identification of the most significant factors for evaluating road risk level is an important question in road safety research, predominantly for decision-making processes. However, model selection for this specific purpose is the most relevant focus in current research. In this paper, we proposed a new methodological approach for road safety risk evaluation, which is a two-stage framework consisting of data envelopment analysis (DEA) in combination with artificial neural networks (ANNs). In the first phase, the risk level of the road segments under study was calculated by applying DEA, and high-risk segments were identified. Then, the ANNs technique was adopted in the second phase, which appears to be a valuable analytical tool for risk prediction. The practical application of DEA-ANN approach within the Geographical Information System (GIS) environment will be an efficient approach for road safety risk analysis.

Abstract:Road safety assessment has played a crucial role in the theory and practice of transport management systems. This paper focuses on risk evaluation in the Asian region by exploring the interaction between road safety risk and influencing factors. In the first stage, a data envelopment analysis (DEA) method is applied to calculate and rank the road safety risk levels of Asian countries. In the second stage, a structural equation model (SEM) with latent variables is applied to analyze the interaction between the road safety risk level and the latent variables, measured by six observed performance indicators, i.e., financial impact, institutional framework, infrastructure and mobility, legislation and policy, vehicular road users, and trauma management. Finally, this paper illustrates the applicability of this DEA-SEM approach for road safety performance analysis.

Employee's performance is the major issue in an organization. Our study focuses on to find out the impact of performance appraisal on employee's performance and also analyses that motivation affects the relationship of performance appraisal and employee's performance. Twohypotheses are analyzed by using sampling techniques; we were select 150 numbers of employees as sample by using simple random sampling among the banks of Dera Ghazi Khan.Primary data were collect through standard questionnaire. For analyzing data, we applied correlation coefficientthrough IBM SPSS and Amos Software. Results presentedthere is positive relationship between performance appraisal and employee's performance. Motivation as a moderator positively affected the relationship between performance appraisal and employee's performance. Divisional banks can use appraisal system as a strategic approach by integrate it with business policies and HR practices and can improve the performance standers of its employees.

The research was motivated by the fact that a wide gap between the realization of cash waqf accumulated and the calculation of cash waqf potential in Indonesia is still wide open. Based on the previous research, one reason influencing the sluggish of cash waqf implementation is people's perception on the cash waqf. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the factors that influence perceptions of waqif on cash waqf.This research was a kind of descriptive-correlational research that seeked the relationship between education level, income level, mazhab and the information media of cash waqf as independent variables and perceptions of waqif on cash waqf as the dependent variable. Based on data analysis, it was known that from the four independent variables tested, the levels of education have a greater probability in comparison with other variables (income level, mazhab, media information) and it is statistically significant.DOI: 10.15408/ess.v4i1.1953

The saturation ageing tensile stiffness (SATS) procedure is the first laboratory asphalt mixture durability protocol to combine moisture damage and oxidative ageing during the conditioning of asphalt mixtures prior to mechanical testing. However, the application of the SATS procedure has tended to be predominantly targeted at base materials with relatively 'hard' binders and overall high stiffness modulus requirements and is considered potentially too severe for more standard asphalt mixtures. This research study focused on understanding the effect of changes to the SATS conditioning parameters on the relative moisture damage assessment performance of asphalt mixtures, particularly 'softer' binder, high binder content and, finally, low air void content mixtures. Using four different aggregate types, together with 'hard' 10/20 pen and 'softer' 40/60 pen bitumen, the parameters of pressure, temperature and duration were altered, either one at a time or in combination, to arrive at a suitable combination for testing more commonly used 40/60 pen material. The optimum combination of parameters to allow the SATS procedure to be used for a wide range of typically used asphalt mixtures was found to be 0.5 MPa pressure, 858C temperature and 24 h duration. The revised SATS durability conditioning protocol was still able to successfully discriminate between 'poor' moisture susceptible aggregate and 'good' material.

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A set of syndiotactic polypropylene samples with tailored degree of stereoregularity and uniform distribution of stereodefects, obtained via organometallic catalysis, was used to study the relation between the syndiotactic pentad concentration and the viscoelastic plateau modulus in the melt state. The plateau modulus was found to increase with increasing the degree of stereoregularity, indicating that syndiotactic polypropylenes of different stereoregularity produce a different entanglement density of the amorphous phase. The change in plateau modulus was highly nonlinear for large values of syndiotactic pentad contents, suggesting that the presence of even a relatively small number of defects along the syndiotactic backbone significantly alters the space filling attitude of the polymer chain in the melt. This result, which confirms and extends those already obtained from experiments and numerical simulations, points out to the concept that the dynamics of macromolecular chains is largely controlled by the relative configuration of consecutive stereoisomeric centers along the chain, thus providing a link between chain dynamics and molecular architectur