The Making of Benazir Income Support Program

The Benazir Income Support Program (BISP), introduced in 2008-09, is a unique cash support scheme for economically stressed families. Its uniqueness arises from several facets. The cash transfers are provided only to women aged over 18 years and have been ever married. It is unconditional and aimed at supplementing income as opposed to alleviating poverty. It was politically neutral, given that the facility to identify potential beneficiaries was extended to all parliamentarians, irrespective of party affiliation. A set of filters, applied electronically, ensured objectivity in beneficiary selection. Disbursement mechanism was automated to ensure minimal leakage. This paper outlines the process of the preparatory work that went into designing BISP – the conceptual debates, the beneficiary identification and disbursement procedures, etc. – involving a combination of high quality research with political decision making. It also addresses the debates surrounding BISP, cites independent empirical studies that show that the parliamentarian-based beneficiary selection mechanism was efficient and equitable and did indeed cover the deserving, and also responds to the variety of criticisms. ______

Exploring Authentic Leadership in Relation to Organizational Development of Public and Private Sector Universities

The purpose of this study is to explore authentic leadership attributes (ALA) in relation to organizational development (OD) of public and private sector universities. The ALA are self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing information, ethical perspective, and positive psychological capital. The components of OD are work engagement, job satisfaction, teachers professional trainings, follower leader interaction and follower authentic leadership development. Authentic leadership (AL) is a new construct in the educational leadership domain and has been developed in the recent organizational context in order to avoid the un-ethical practices of leaders within the organization. This study uniquely classifies authentic leadership theory from other leadership theories. Further, it coherently differentiates the intrapersonal (unveils how a person''s life experiences, motivations, and worldview shape one''s moral reasoning) from the interpersonal dimension (stresses the value of integrity, character and psychological capital as well as the ability to outwardly convey and genuinely model trust and transparency). The objectives of the study were to; investigate ALA of educational leaders, investigate the existing status of OD, compare and measure ALA and OD in public and private sector universities; and to explore process of transformation of leader into authentic leader. Research questions were formulated for the study. The population of the study was (6975) university leaders and teachers of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The sample of the study was 967 from 13 universities. Simple random and purposive sampling technique were adopted for selection of sample. The present study used the modified form of Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ) developed by Walumbwa, Avolio, Gardener, Wernsing, & Peterson (2008), self- developed questionnaire of teachers and interview protocol to collect data. Applying a convergent parallel mixed methods design containing two theoretical strands of data: (i) quantitative from ‗The university leaders and teachers+ Pilot Study‘, comprising questionnaires n=967 participants [484 male/483 female]; and (ii) qualitative from indepth interviews with n=30 of these participants [15 male/15 female]. The study utilized the conceptual framework of Authentic Leadership Theory. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for analysis of gathered data using SPSS software version 21. Percentage, Mean, Standard Deviation, independent sample t-test, one way ANOVA, Pearson‘s rank correlation and thematic analysis were practically used on the data. The findings show that the subjects have common shared preferences for certain ALA that are worldwide and all-inclusive. It was found that the r value (.355) which was significant at .000 showed a significant average level correlation in public, r value (.519) which was significant at .000 showed a significant large correlation in private sector and r value (.426) which was significant at .000 showed significant medium level correlations between authentic leadership and organizational development at university level. It was also found that there was significant difference in the male and female ALA and its influence on OD. Based on these findings, it is recommended that it may be well to conduct research study on the authentic leadership at primary level, secondary level and college level both at private and public sectors as these areas are in great need of authentic leadership because these sectors suffered a lot due to unethical attitude of the leaders. It is also recommended that all leaders and teachers must work in disciplined ranks to repel evil. They must choose between good and evil, with their consequences in the coming life. If they did well, they did well for themselves; if they did evil, they did it against themselves. The researcher had adopted mixed methods approach for the study. The attention of the future researchers is concentrated to employ qualitative or quantitative approach. The study notes the significance of personal growth for professional growth and argues that being true to oneself does necessarily lead to authentic leadership development.