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This study aims to examine the experiences of UK higher education students and the impact that emergency-imposed changes had on their learning, teaching and assessment (LTA) during the lockdown. It reflects on the views of students on how these changes impacted their education and personal circumstances. It makes suggestions, based on student observations, on how educators might support students’ LTA learning experiences more effectively.

The study uses an anonymous online questionnaire, imposed by lockdown and closure of universities, to gather the views of HE students across the UK on how COVID-19 and lockdown affected their education and personal circumstances. Using a cross-sectional study, participants were asked to complete several questions, providing quantitative and qualitative data which is analysed for the study. A total of 349 participants took part in the questionnaire and data were analysed descriptively.

Key findings suggest that the use of online virtual classrooms as a substitute for traditional face-to-face LTA has its positives and its negatives. The most significant positives are the “flexible assessments” and “digital content” and, in contrast, one of the significant drawbacks is the lack of interactions, this being true for both male and female students. However, as compared to females, males found to be missing “the campus life” more during the lockdown. Finally, the majority of student felt that there was a lack of support from the university and teaching staff during the lockdown. Universities’ governance must take control of how this issue is driven forward and learn from the experience of students.

The study makes three contributions: firstly, using students’ views to open a fresh debate on LTA approaches during the pandemic; secondly, examining the impact on student experiences due to the changes introduced because of lockdown; and finally, suggesting strategies to be implemented by HE management based on the opinions of participating students.

The COVID-19 pandemic is having an unprecedented impact on schools and schoolchildren across the globe. There is still a dearth of studies that investigate this recent phenomenon in a developing country context, and this is true of Pakistan. Much of the population in Pakistan resides in rural settings and a lack of technology and of online provision of teaching for more than one year must have had huge negative impacts on students’ learning. The school dropout rate was already high in rural settings (Geven & Hasan, 2020) and, with school closures, this will likely have increased further, and cause some schoolchildren to lose interest in going back to school. However, no current data appear to exist to corroborate this. Due to the lack of available current quantitative and qualitative data, this study seeks to explore the impact of COVID-19 on schoolchildren’s education in Pakistan by examining recently published related studies. This study employs a literature review technique that gathers data to ascertain the potential overall impact on schoolchildren during the pandemic. The findings reveal that there remains a lack of detailed studies on this important topic and that urgent attention is needed from researchers to assess the scale of the impact. In addition, the review found that many children from rural communities had little to no school engagement due to technology poverty and their families being unable to support home-schooling, either due to family and/or work constraints or a lack of prior education and/or skills. Themes that emerged were that families, especially mothers, struggled to balance both caring and home-schooling duties, pupils from private schools had a better experience than those from public school backgrounds, and many of these reported that online provisions helped students develop new skills. This study may help to improve the understanding of the impact on the lost learning of schoolchildren during the pandemic by guiding practitioners as well as policymakers.

This paper aims to provide a systematic review of the published literature on corporate social responsibility reporting (CSRR). Furthermore, it assesses the main limitations reported in previous CSRR studies and offers recommendations for best practice and future research.

A review protocol was developed to search nine major databases over a decade (2005–2017) using specific keywords. As a result, 221 articles were identified that deal explicitly with CSRR in both developed and developing countries, and a descriptive analysis was undertaken.

Findings of the review show that scholarly work on CSRR across the globe have increased exponentially. However, there still remain quite a few countries and industries that have been underrepresented in CSRR literature. Moreover, methodological- and sampling-related limitations have been noted by a number of scholars in the area. Based on these results, the review provides directions for future research.

The review provides a categorised bibliography of CSRR research on developed and developing countries from 2005 to 2017, covering a range of journals and countries. The review provides state of the art of the CSRR research and highlights the major loopholes in the current literature. This is a valuable study for academics pursuing research on CSRR as it provides a comprehensive and critical discussion on academic research in the field.

The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the probability of default and examine the relationship between default risk and financial performance, with dynamic panel moderation of firm size.

This study utilizes a total of 1,500 firm-year observations from 2013 to 2018 using dynamic panel data approach of generalized method of moments to test the relationship between default risk and financial performance with the moderation effect of the firm size.

This study establishes the findings that default risk significantly impacts the financial performance. The relationship between distance-to-default (DD) and financial performance is positive, which means the relationship of the independent and dependent variable is inverse. Moreover, this study finds that the firm size is a significant positive moderator between DD and financial performance.

This study provides new and useful insight into the literature on the relationship between default risk and financial performance. The results of this study provide investors and businesses related to nonfinancial firms in the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) with significant default risk's impact on performance. This study finds, on average, the default probability in KSE ALL indexed companies is 6.12%.

The evidence of the default risk and financial performance on samples of nonfinancial firms has been minimal; mainly, it has been limited to the banking sector. Moreover, the existing studies have only catered the direct effect of only. This study fills that gap and evaluates this relationship in nonfinancial firms. This study also helps in the evaluation of Merton model's performance in the nonfinancial firms.

The main purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between credit risk and financial performance in non-financial firms.

In order to test the relationship between Altman Z-score model as a credit risk proxy and the Return on Asset and Equity as indicator for financial performance with control variables leverage, liquidity and firm size. Least Square Dummy Variable regression analysis is opted. This research's sample included 69 non-financial companies from the Pakistan Stock Exchange KSE-100 Index between 2012 and 2017.

This study establishes the findings that Altman Z-score, leverage and firm size significantly impact the financial performance of the KSE-100 non-financial firms. However, liquidity is found to be insignificant in this study. Altman Z-score and firm size have shown a positive relationship to the financial performance, whereas leverage is inversely related.

This study brings in a new and useful insight into the literature on the relationship between credit risk and financial performance. The results of this study provide investors, businesses and managers related to non-financial firms in the KSE-100 index with significant insight about credit risk's impact on performance.

The evidence of the credit risk and financial performance on samples of non-financial firms has not been studied; mainly it has been limited to the banking sector. This study helps in the evaluation of Altman Z-score's performance in the non-financial firms in KSE-100 index as well.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on small and medium-size enterprises’ (SMEs') performance by exploring the role of mediating variables such as brand trust (BT) and brand loyalty (BL) in the context of an emerging market.

Based on a extend literature review on CSR, BT and BL studies, the authors evaluate the impact of those construct on SMEs’ performance in an emerging market. The paper follows a quantitative approach. In total, 247 responses were collected from 300 samples. The Smart Partial Least Squares SEM (version) was used to analyze the data of the SMEs of Vietnam in the year 2020.

The findings revealed significant and positive relationships among the variables in the model, such as CSR and firm performance (FP), CSR and BT, CSR and BL, as well as the mediating effect of BT and BL between CSR and firm performance.

First, the sample was composed of small business from different segments, thus the respondents' perspective about CSR can differ according the impact of the business on society. Therefore, future studies could address businesses from a single segment to get a deeper understanding of their knowledge and involvement with CSR. Second, a cross-cultural study in emerging countries can be a rich venue for future research. Third, this study was developed through a quantitative approach; thus, the future research can apply qualitative approach or mixed methods to extend the study findings.

Managerial level of firm should prioritize noneconomic-related CSR; however, those will ultimately drive financial indicators of FP. The result is reasonable because firm simultaneously keeps committed with its stakeholders by delivering the committed qualification, transparency in operation and consistency in communication, environment respect, employee development and social welfare integrated directly into business activities. Those will result in creating love, trust and admiration from stakeholder, customers for brand and firms will get their engagement and support in many ways. This implication suggests that firm should incorporate CSR strategy into their core business activities and practice properly toward its stakeholders.

This study contributes to the CSR literature in emerging context by shedding light on the roles of CSR in FP with the mediation roles of BT and BL. Most CSR studies focused on Western context as developed economy, thus less attention has been paid for emerging economy. While there is increasing interest CSR in Vietnam, traditional culture and its distinctive economic and political structure has had a great influence on CSR in Vietnam. Thus, this study is important and meaningful for business practitioners, investors, shareholders and policymakers toward sustainable development for firms and Vietnam as a whole.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that explores the mediating role of BT and BL between CSR and FP for SMEs. The findings of this study may be of great implications to entrepreneurs, top management with respect to strategic perspectives to drive their businesses and to improve their FP in a sustainable direction in contexts of emerging markets. In addition, this finding may be of great interest to motive SMEs' managers to engage with CSR actions where those businesses are situated during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. By that understanding, Government may consider for policy reforms/innovation/groundbreaking to leverage businesses to promote their strengths toward sustainable development in the new economic settings. The findings of this study may be of significant contribution to SMEs in Vietnam and in others in emerging economies.

The objective of this research work is to design a data-based solution for administering traffic organization in a smart city by using the machine learning algorithm.

A machine learning framework for managing traffic infrastructure and air pollution in urban centers relies on a predictive analytics model. The model makes use of transportation data to predict traffic patterns based on the information gathered from numerous sources within the city. It can be promoted for strategic planning determination. The data features volume and calendar variables, including hours of the day, week and month. These variables are leveraged to identify time series-based seasonal patterns in the data. To achieve accurate traffic volume forecasting, the long short-term memory (LSTM) method is recommended.

The study has produced a model that is appropriate for the transportation sector in the city and other innovative urban applications. The findings indicate that the implementation of smart transportation systems enhances transportation and has a positive impact on air quality. The study's results are explored and connected to practical applications in the areas of air pollution control and smart transportation.

The present paper has created the machine learning framework for the transportation sector of smart cities that achieves a reasonable level of accuracy. Additionally, the paper examines the effects of smart transportation on both the environment and supply chain.