Relationship Between Level of Educational Attainment and Employee Performance: Mediating Role of Individual Religious Affiliation

Purpose: This study empirically investigates the relation between education level and employees’ performance working in public sector universities from the viewpoint of Islamic religiosity when religious affiliations play mediating role. It has been experienced that more educated people are found to be more involved in performing tasks related to the religious affiliations. Due to the fact that people with higher education found less time to complete their religious obligations, they are more involved in alternative arrangements like charity and donations to fulfill the hunger of religious attainments. Therefore, in order to satisfy themselves religiously, they are more involved in religious affiliations. This high involvement in fulfilling religious arrangements impacts their individual job performance which is necessary to explore. Research Methodology: Data was gathered from the public sector university employees of Pakistan. Out of 900 distributed questionnaires, 520 were received with response rate of 73.65%. Regression analysis is performed in order to determine the association between level of education and individual performance. Further, in order to determine the mediating role of religious affiliations, the Barren and Kerry (1984) model is applied. Findings: Using questionnaire survey the results of the study showed that level of education significantly impacts the religious affiliations in positive manner and high religious affiliations increase the individual job performance. The results at this point indicated that an unobservable indicator, like propensity for logical rationale induces individuals for higher education and ultimately high religious affiliations. Recommendations: Based upon the results, it is recommended that religiosity and ethical values in management set up are need to be escorted by public reforms to let the identification of employees to their work values and their obligation to the performance of work-related tasks. Originality: This study would be a clear contribution in the field of human behavior towards making alternative arrangements in order to fulfill religious obligations and at the same time identifying the mediating role of religious attainments in determining their individual performance.

Rfid Tag Antennas for Medical Applications

The modern times are witnessing an unparallel impact of the advancement in the field of information technology on the overall medical care. However, there is still strong around the globe desire to further raise the healthcare standards. Consequently, the research community is pushed to strive for efficient and inexpensive means of automating the healthcare processes. Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags capable of integrating sensing, data storage and communication functionalities in one unit are pivotal for such automation. The present thesis, a small step towards digitalizing the healthcare, explores the utilization of RFID tags for improving the direct (patient) and indirect (non-patient) care processes. Wireless body-centric communication systems, providing a wireless and maintenancefree link between the human body and the surrounding, are the linchpin of the modernday personalized healthcare applications. Antennas are as pertinent to this direct care system as the eyes and ears are to the human body. The core of the research thesis is the design of efficient body-centric RFID tag antennas to boost the wireless healthcare applications. The antennas operate in the microwave band (2.4–2.48 GHz) that is in line with the high data rate requirements of the healthcare processes. In the course of the research work, a wearable antenna for off-body communication and an implantable antenna for in-body communication are designed and tested. The concerned body organ in both the cases is the human arm. The dielectric behavior of the human arm is integrated into simulations through a three-layered numerical phantom, whereas practical measurements utilize a non-homogeneous tissue-mimicking gel phantom. The proposed tag antennas fulfill the required attributes such as low-cost, low profile, miniature and biocompatible, along with countering the dielectric challenges of the human body. The wearable antenna needs to be immune to the on-body impedance detuning and radiation efficiency degradation. On the other hand, implanted antenna should have sufficient gain to establish the in-body wireless communication link. These challenges are the primary focus, as well as the contribution of the thesis. The thesis also highlights the design of inexpensive chipless RFID tags that finds scope in monitoring and management of low-cost medical inventory items (indirect care). The vi i tags encode data into the frequency domain using multi-resonant structures. A broad frequency spectrum is utilized to achieve high data capacity. The integrated broadband transmitting and receiving antennas enhances the read range of the tag. The proposed chipless tag is a useful contribution to facilitate the vision of broad scale deployment of RFID in healthcare systems.