Why Social Protection is Not Enough to Effectively Address Poverty Reduction in Pakistan

Pakistan is behind many other countries in the Asia region in reducing poverty. Dedicated poverty reduction Programmes so far were mainly done by NGOs using livelihood and microfinance approaches and since 2008 through the Benazir Income Support Programme’s cash transfer scheme. Recently, the office of the Prime Minister established Ehsaas Strategy which combines the various poverty reduction and social protection approaches in the country under one Programme. This paper argues that a stronger focus on effective income generating poverty reduction Programmes would be needed to make poverty reduction more successful.

Organizational Justice and its Relationship With Employee Work Outcomes: the Mediating Role of Self Concept and Psychological Capital

Organizational justice has been preferred for its instrumental, relational and deontic approaches. It is a lens through which employees gather important information about the allocation of resources, interpersonal treatment, organizational procedures and eventually frame cognitive as well as emotional reactions. However, the existing literature is more focused on the distal attitudinal and behavioral outcomes but less attentive to underlying proximal motivations. On basis of extant literature review and arguments grounded in the Social information Processing theory, Social Identity Theory and Conservation of Resources Theory, this study identifies that Self-Concepts (Individual, Relational and Collective) and Psychological Capital act as explanatory mechanism for the influence of organizational justice on job satisfaction, job performance, turnover intentions, OCBI and OCBO. This research model expands the scope of organizational justice research and views it as a social context between organization and employees that leads him/her to feel satisfied with their jobs, deliver good performance, stay with their organizations and display discretionary behaviors. But the influence of organizational justice on job Performance, job satisfaction, OCBO, OCBI, Turnover Intentions is not direct: in this process the employee takes cue from the fairness conditions and formulates his/her relational self-concept as well as Psychological Capital capabilities. Thus relational self-concept fully mediates between interactional justice and job performance, OCBI while partially mediates between Interactional justice and Job Satisfaction as well as OCBO. Furthermore, Psychological Capital partially mediates between Interactional Justice and Turnover Intentions, OCBO while it fully mediates between Interactional Justice and Job Performance, OCBI. Main objective of this study was to test a theoretical and structural model that hypothesizes mediation of tripartite self-concepts and Psychological Capital in the influence of Organizational justice on job satisfaction, job performance, OCBO, OCBI and Turnover Intentions. In addition, this study also identified direct relations between the study variables; of these the influence of interactional justice on both Psychological Capital and Relational self-concepts are important hypotheses, because there is almost no literature available in this context. A survey based methodology was used to test the model; standardized scales were used as measures for the twelve study variables. A pilot study was conducted to test the scale properties. viii A sample of 518 employees was drawn from the education, Telecommunication sector, oil and gas sectors. The model was tested by following the steps of Structural Equation Modelling. The findings of this study advance available knowledge on the selected job outcomes and provide impetus to research in this domain by identifying relational self-concept and Psychological Capital as intervening variables. The study thus extends the application of both relational self-concept and Psychological Capital as organizational variables capable of translating the effects of interactional justice on these five job outcomes. Key words: Interactional Justice, Psychological Capital, Self-Concepts, Job Satisfaction, OCBO, Organizational Justice.