An Agglomeration Benefits of Oil and Gas Firms: An Exploratory Study Through Industrial Cluster

The research investigates the agglomeration pattern of seven national, international oil and gas extraction and production companies through an exploration of oil and gas cluster components and subcomponents. For this exploratory study, data is collected through primary sources via in-depth interviews from managers of national and international oil and gas MNCs working in Sindh, Pakistan and through secondary sources of business reports. The content analysis is adopted to analyze the data. Results of this study reveal that there is strong existence of exploration and production companies which results in agglomeration, however, other components of oil and gas cluster like refineries, marketing companies, supporting institutes, media and government poorly exist in Sindh province of Pakistan. Findings also highlight that the Sindh as a resource-rich region is still underdeveloped due to poor management of resources or because of the absence of ideal oil and gas cluster components and coordination among them in the region.

What Makes a School a Model School? a Comparative Study of Management Practices in Two Schools

Though there is no literature available for defining a model school, yet, someone can find one or two schools’ names as ‘Model School’ in each village in the study context of Gilgit-Baltistan in the public and in private sector. According to the Cambridge University Dictionary the word ‘model’ implies ‘something which a copy can be based on because it is an extremely good example of its type.’ A question arises about what type of education these model schools provide as compared to other schools and to what extent these models are of worth to be replicated. This study was designed to find a common definition of a model school in a large network of schools’ system within the study context. For this purpose the study participants from a declared model school and a non-model school in the said schools’ system were interviewed to get their notions on the concept of a model school and to understand the management practices in six key areas in both the schools by using semi- structured interviews. The notions of a model school, the differences and the union of management practices in both the schools were synthesized to come up to a common definition of a model school in the schools’ system in the study context. The research findings show that a model school is meant to provide additional resources as compared to a non-model school. However, the findings also showed that provision of more resources in a school may not have a significant impact on the students’ learning outcomes. The research findings indicated the differences between the performed and perceived management practices in a model school. The findings also suggested that a one-time investment to make a school a model school is not sufficient unless its sustainability is ensured.