Asian Research Journal of Arts & Social Sciences

Purpose: This study is to explore spiritual values and practices among the women business leaders in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Sri Lanka.

Methodology: A qualitative study based on snowball sample of ten women business leaders in SME sector. Semi-structured interviews were conducted for data collection and thematic analysis was used to data analysis.

Findings: The study found ten common spiritual values (integrity, trust, endurance, forgiveness, sympathy, altruism, humility, gratitude, hope and sympathetic joy) and seven spiritual practices (care and concern on others, respecting ideas of others, open communication, listening responsively, appreciating others, self-awareness and understanding others and protecting of five precepts in Buddhist teachings) among the women business leaders in SMEs in Sri Lanka. As notable contextual findings, it was found that the spiritual value of sympathetic joy and practice of protecting of five precepts which are Buddhist teachings.

Research Implications: Findings implied that growing spiritual values among women leaders and practicing them contributes merits in terms enhanced support and loyalty towards the organization.

Research Limitations and Future Research Suggestions: There are limitations pertaining to the small sample size. Further researches can be done in spirituality among the male business leadership in SMEs.

Local governments have been created as agents of local development in which the people in the local areas are given greater opportunities to influence policies and programs that directly affect their well-being and thereby reducing their poverty levels. But the implementation of the policies and programmes is bedeviled with many problems. Key among them is the issue of financing the local development projects in order to reduce rural poverty. The government of Ghana attempted to reduce this problem when it introduced a development fund in1994 known as the – District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) to encourage local governance and deepen Government’s commitment to decentralization in general and fiscal devolution in particular. The study therefore, seeks to assess the impact of District Assembly Common Fund on Local Government Development in the Adaklu District Assembly in the Volta Region of Ghana. The study mainly adopted qualitative methods of research to obtain information on the experiences of the poor people in the Adaklu communities selected as study areas. Interview guides were used to obtain information from the people in the communities, staff of the Assembly and some heads of the decentralized departments. A major finding of the study is that the assembly did not involve the rural people in the poverty reduction programmes in the district.

Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites (SNS) that recreates face-to-face interactions on the web by allowing people to interact publicly or privately. Many people use Facebook as a way to stay in contact while others use it to develop new connections. The objective of this study was to investigate how Facebook serves as medium in preserving romantic relationships of faculty members, staff and students of the university. The study used a descriptive-survey and correlational research designs to determine if there  is a relationship between the variables. A questionnaire was utilized to determine  respondents’ use of Facebook and status of romantic relationships in terms of partner  surveillance, relationship satisfaction, self-disclosure and social intimacy. The results revealed  that Facebook influence the preservation of romantic relationship as the study found a slight positive relationship between the partner surveillance and relationship satisfaction. The increase in partner surveillance will lead to an increase of relationship satisfaction; hence the absence of it can push a relationship into a negative state. However, other important factors like affectionate communications can lead to relationship satisfaction. Therefore, it was recommended that a strong communication/interaction between couples is needed in maintaining romantic relationship; there is a need of a school program to guide the students, faculty and staff in handling healthy relationship and affectionate communication shall be given value in maintaining romantic relationship.

Background: Training of primary care practitioners is one of the most implemented interventions in medical international development programmes targeting non-communicable diseases (NCD). Yet in many cases their effectiveness is below expectations. One potential cause of this is that they struggle to account for local context, especially when working with ethnic minorities. Here we begin to address this gap through a qualitative case-study of how local contextual factors have impacted the success of a World Health Organization (WHO) healthcare training programme on Type 2 diabetes with an ethnic minority group in rural central Vietnam.

Design: A qualitative case-study collected data during 2018. We conducted 25 semi-structured interviews, two focus groups, and participant observation with patients, healthcare professionals, and members of a local non-governmental organisation involved in the programme. We used thematic coding to identify important contextual factors and how they helped or hindered programme delivery. Next, we synthesised each of these themes in a narrative style, drawing on the rich detail provided by respondents.

Results: We found that, despite using a notionally decentralised approach, the effectiveness of the training was hindered by social, political, and economic determinants of health which influenced the inhabitants’ relations to healthcare and diabetes. Particular barriers were the political perceptions of minorities, their economic access to services, the healthcare prejudices toward ethnic rural populations and the rigidity of medical training.

Conclusions: Given the similarity of our case with other WHO NCD programmes, we view that our findings are of wider relevance to global public health policy and practice. We suggest that better recognising and addressing local contextual factors would make such programmes more polyvocal, grounded, and resilient, as well as enabling them to better support long-term transformative change in public health systems. We conclude by discussing methods for implementing this in practice.

Aims: The study assessed the perception of the coastal inhabitants of Winneba on climate change and its impacts.

Study Design: This study is descriptive in nature and employed both qualitative and quantitative approaches.

Place and Duration of Study: This research was conducted in Winneba, Ghana in February 2020.

Methodology: The survey method of research was employed in this study. An annual mean temperature timeseries data of Winneba from 1980- 2017 to supplement respondents' subjective views. In addition, community interactions were conducted to get personal information from the inhabitants about the impacts of climate change. 152 inhabitants were sampled through the convenience and the purposive sampling techniques. The convenience technique was used to select 148 respondents and 3 fishermen, and 1 fish seller selected purposively.  This was done through questionnaire administration and interviews. Community's interactions centred on inhabitants' perception of climate change and its impacts.

Results: The study found that temperature in the Winneba community has increased. The study again found diverse views on the most serious impact of climate change in the community. While some attributed it to rising temperatures, others attributed it to sea level rise and coastal erosion. The study also revealed that although many of the inhabitants lamented about rising temperatures as it disrupts their daily activities and cause diseases, sea level rise and erosion has also played a devastating role on the environment which needs to be addressed.

Conclusion: Local community perception and knowledge on climate change is important. Increased knowledge and awareness influence a community’s choice of mitigation and adaptation to climate change impacts. A comprehensive policy framework on climate change awareness creation and education should, therefore, be implemented and made available to local coastal community members.