This research aimed to identify whether improvement in working conditions, children’s classroom behavior and work-life balance can lower teacher burnout ratio in Pakistan’s special schools by using techniques such as emotions regulation. The researcher employed a quantitative research methodology to fulfill the research’s purpose. The data for this research was collected using a questionnaire-based instrument. The confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling techniques were used to test the construct validity and underlying structural relationships. The findings demonstrated that the impacts of all three variables are significant in reducing job burnout in teachers. Emotional regulation helps decrease the impact of working conditions and the children’s behavior. Nevertheless, it does not aid work-life balance as it requires other techniques of emotional regulation. The research is significant as it highlights the importance of overall working conditions’ improvement for teachers working with special needs children. The improvements are essential because the teachers must take extra effort and emotions into their job compared to a typical teacher. The researcher has highlighted the key finding, implications and limitations of this research besides suggesting directions for future research to facilitate peer researchers.

The study examines the determinants of companies' key skills and strategies to understand better how firms can use their resources to achieve success. This study is, therefore, undertaken for this reason to investigate the connections between possible variables. Specifically, it aims to examine the mediating effect of strategic planning on the relationship between technical skills, managerial skills, entrepreneurial skills, business skills, and performance of the small and medium enterprises in Punjab, Pakistan. Data was collected through self-administrative questionnaires with 265 owners/managers of small and medium enterprises in Punjab, Pakistan. PLS-SEM is used to analyze the data and test the hypothesis. The study's findings suggest a significant relationship between managerial skills, entrepreneurial skills, business skills, and strategic planning. Strategic planning mediates the relationship between managerial skills, entrepreneurial skills, business skills, and firm performance for the mediating effect. However, no empirical support has been found from the mediator on the relationship between technical skills and firm performance. This study provides valuable insights into strategic planning's role in improving the firm’s performance to the owners/managers of small and medium enterprises, policymakers, and researchers. SMEs owners/managers should also be encouraged to undertake strategic planning that can encourage them to utilize their resources to improve their performance. Finally, the study concludes with feedback from theory, methodology, consequences, guidelines, limitations, and future research.

Employee voice is perceived as an approach with both significant advantages and disadvantages. The current study aims to analyse the behaviours of supervisors when endorsing the ideas of employees who raise promotive voices and consider the employees positively for the development of quality relationships. Specifically, 970 employees were recruited from various small and medium enterprises (SMEs), including manufacturing and electronics companies, in Pakistan for the current study participation. Data collection was conducted in two stages through two sources (supervisors and subordinates) before examining the collected data on the Mplus software for random coefficient regression analyses. Subordinates’ promotive voice was significantly and positively correlated to the Leader-Member-Exchange (LMX) quality and creative idea endorsement when supervisors interpreted the voice as driven more by performance enhancement motives instead of impression management motives. The findings suggested that performance enhancement motives and impression management motives would produce contrasting material consequences for subordinates. The present study limitations and future research directions were also discussed.

This study examines how strategic financial management boosts SMEs' corporate value and competitiveness in the fast-changing digital economy. As digital technologies change market landscapes, SMEs face unique challenges and opportunities in aligning their financial strategies with digital transformation. This mixed-methods study combines quantitative regression analysis with qualitative interviews with senior management from technology, finance, retail, and manufacturing. Quantitative findings from 129 SMEs show a positive correlation between strategic alignment, innovation culture, and corporate value and financial performance, highlighting the complex but crucial role of digital technology investments and risk management. Qualitative insights emphasise the need to align these investments with strategic goals and foster innovation. This study contributes twice. First, it empirically shows how strategic financial management practises help navigate the digital economy, enriching strategic management and finance literature. Second, it advises SMEs to take a holistic approach to strategic financial management that prioritises digital technology investments and ensures they are strategically aligned, culturally ingrained, and risk-averse. This research shows how financial strategy and digital innovation interact to drive SME competitiveness and value creation in the digital age.

In the era of digital globalization, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly challenged by intercultural communication barriers as they expand into international markets. Simultaneously, advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) offer unprecedented opportunities to overcome such barriers by enhancing linguistic, cultural, and behavioral adaptation. This systematic literature review integrates findings from 131 studies at the intersection of AI, intercultural communication, and SME internationalization, applying both bibliometric and thematic analyses using the Bibliometrix R package. The review identifies four dominant technological domains—machine translation, chatbots, sentiment analysis, and adaptive learning—as primary AI enablers of intercultural competence in SMEs. The findings reveal that while AI holds substantial potential to support international expansion, significant managerial, theoretical, and ethical challenges persist. The study proposes a hybrid approach that combines AI capabilities with human intercultural competence and calls for interdisciplinary research to integrate intercultural theory into AI adoption frameworks. This review contributes to international business scholarship by offering an integrated conceptual foundation and outlining a comprehensive research agenda to guide future studies at this important intersection.

The purpose of this study is to lay its prime focus on the support for creativity that defines the self-analysis of creative capabilities and potential among men and women. Benefitting from the cross-level interactionist perspective, social role theory, and role congruity theory, this research developed an integrated multilevel model to examine gender differences in risk-taking behavior and determine how the contextual factor of support for creativity shapes employees' risk-taking and influences their creativity performance. Data for this study were collected from 347 employees and their respective 98 supervisors of a pharmaceutical company in Jakarta, Indonesia. The proposed cross-level moderated mediation model was tested using data obtained at two points in time from two data sources (subordinates and supervisors) working at a pharmaceutical company. The obtained data were then analyzed with Mplus. Our findings indicate that women may have lower risk-taking than men in organizational contexts. However, support for creativity restores parity between men and women through cross-level moderated mediation, such that support for creativity has a stronger effect on women's risk-taking than that of men, resulting in increased creative performance for women. Research contributions and future research directions are also discussed in the relevant sections.