The Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences

Impact of Corporate Governance Practices on Earnings Management Strategies

Muhammad Arif — 2024-09-23

The study investigates the relationship between good corporate governance factors, including board size and board composition, which represent the
number of non-executive directors, CEO and chairman duality with inflating or deflating income, known as earnings management. A set of 100
manufacturing companies listed on KSE has been investigated over four years (2019-2023) to analyze the intended relationship. Quality of corporate
governance has been measured by allocating values to each variable, whereas earnings management is measured on the basis of discretionary accruals by
using the Modified Cross Sectional Jones model. Results obtained through the weighted Least Square (WLS) Method of estimation point out a positive
relation between the number of directors on board and discretionary accruals, a negative relation between board composition and earnings management,
while duality of CEO shows a positive relationship with earnings management. The overall result of the study shows a significant impact of corporate governance practices on earnings management.

Business, Family, and Frontier: Reading Family Histories of Frontier Business Community

Faiz Ali — 2024-09-23

Family histories of the frontier business community constitute a genre on the interstices of history and literature. They offer resources for and sites of
reimagining frontier scholarship, the northwest frontier in this case. They represent the voices of those frontier communities who, despite having a
critical role in the social, political, and economic history of the colonial frontier, have remained mainly excluded or left to low margins. Literature
from and regarding such communities has yet to be addressed and is limited in scope and scholarship. To bring ‘commercial’ construction of frontier, this
paper undertakes a critical reading of five selected texts exploring three aspects - context, nature, and contribution of these works. The study
concludes that such indigenous narratives constitute useful sources for and offer insights into future research on the significant role of commercial
communities in critical reading and understanding of the colonial frontier.

Lollywood, blasphemy, and Lynching: An Analysis of Pakistani Media

Farooq Sulehria — 2024-09-23

Public lynching or murdering anybody accused of blasphemy in Pakistan has been occurring for the last about twenty years. However, of late, these
incidents have occurred more frequently. The critics have justifiably attributed these extra-judicial killings, in a country where blasphemy can send one to the
gallows, to a growing radicalization of the society. This radicalization, in turn, has been explored in a number of ways. Top-down Islamization, Afghan Jihad,
textbooks and other such factors have been highlighted to explain the hegemonic hold fundamentalist ideas have gained in Pakistan. However, no
attention has been paid to the role of cultural apparatus in promoting fundamentalist ideas in general and death-to-blasphemer discourse in
particular. By offering a discourse analysis of three feature films on the blasphemy theme, this paper foregrounds the importance of Pakistani film
industry, Lollywood, in popularizing, legitimizing and reinforcing a discourse that unapologetically promotes death-to-blasphemer discourse.

Gothic Spaces in Pinter’s The Room and The Birthday Party

Salma Khatoon — 2024-09-23

One obvious preoccupation both Theatre of the Absurd and Gothic Studies share is their responsiveness to the inner workings of the human mind; another is that both exhibit tendencies of repressed emotions and individual experiences by capturing social dysfunctions. These psychoanalytical underpinnings are the defining traits of both gothic fiction and absurdist literature. Using qualitative research methods and close textual analysis, this article unfolds the painful social layers of Harold Pinter’s plays. The repressed fears, deep-seated anxieties, and behavioral imbalances resulting from a claustrophobic atmosphere, often a room or a damp chamber, texture their world. To do this, a close textual reading approach is adopted. The theoretical grid for the article is Freud’s theory of Uncanny and his concept of Unhomely. Also, the plays have been approached through Vidler’s (1992) idea of Architectural Uncanny. Although the amount of scholarship available is fertile, no exhaustive study of Pinter’s plays has been conducted from this perspective. The study is unique in that Pinter’s works have not been previously analyzed through the critical lens of gothic theories. The article’s main argument is that the motifs, tropes, and trappings that are scattered throughout the body of Pinter’s dramatic works evoke a strong image of a dark Gothic world characterized by excessive anxiety and frustration. The article explores the effect of the uncanny produced through such psychological and social derangement and, from the gothic perspective, examines how Pinter’s dramaturgy conjures up the terrifying psyches of the characters. The gothic analysis shows how the characters in an absurdist play take defensive positions and strategies against the social world. The article further interlinks gothic terror psyches and fears to highlight the ensuing sense of displacement characters feel in the light of the theory of uncanny and homely. This article analyzes three early plays of Pinter: The Room, The Birthday Party, and The Caretaker. Gothicity in Pinter’s plays emerges as a strong impulse, a driving force through which Pinter puts across the social invasion, oppression, injustice, and individual freedom.

Women of Partition 1947: Aftermath lives in Pakistan

Noreen Fatima — 2024-09-23

Partition 1947, if one side provided salvation from the prolonged colonial rule, the other, it brought mass-level displacement. Females were the major sufferers of this forced migration, a major group that scholars have historically neglected. Countless maidens turned into mothers; brides became widowed. Drawing on previously untapped and rich unpublished memoirs, including archival data, vernacular old newspapers, assembly debates, and declassified documents, this paper considers the role of the state, society, and charitable institutions in the lives of these women. It intends to analyze how women’s self-identity was targeted twice during migration and recovery. Thus, they had to bear physical, mental, psychological, and emotional torture. It highlights how state’s respect is prioritized over female self-respect. It also explores the circumstances they had to face after the partition. It answers the question of how, besides the state, male strata of society, charitable institutions took a keen interest in humanitarian grounds for the permanent shadow of assaulted ladies—related with these philanthropic steps, what sorts of socio-economic security was grunted to destitute ladies. This article argues that the acceptance ratio, sympathy, consolation, and cooperation for destitute women was larger in West Punjab than in East Punjab. This articulates that the early days of compassion laid the modern benevolence in the early years of Pakistan. It then posits such questions: what was the attitude of families and society after acceptance? Did they were owned virtuously, or did other fates await them?

Corporate Governance Ownership Structure and Firm Performance: Evidence from Commercial Banks

Hamid Ullah — 2024-09-19

This study examines the impact of corporate governance and risk management processes on the firm performance. The data has been taken from 23 leading
commercial banks in Pakistan from 2010 to 2017. The performance, ownership, governance, and credit risk variables are taken to measure the firm
performance. The multiple regression results show that board size, Audit committee independence, director ownership, institutional ownership, foreign
ownership, associate ownership, and NPL are positively associated with Return on Equity (ROE), while block holding, capital adequacy ratio, and board independence are negatively correlated with the ROE. Further, the board size, audit committee independence, director ownership, associate ownership,
board independence, and NPL have a positive association with the Earning per Share (EPS), and the institutional ownership, foreign ownership, block
holding, and capital adequacy ratio have a negative association. Lastly, the audit committee independence, foreign ownership, associate ownership, and
capital adequacy ratio are related positively to Return on Assets (ROA), while the rest of the variables like board size, director ownership, institutional
ownership, block holding, board independence, and NPL are negatively correlated.