Poverty is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon with many forms and causes. It is normally measured quantitatively by using income criterion. But understanding poverty only in terms of income criterion can misrepresent its nature and underlying causes. It is a much broader and deeper issue of deprivation mainly associated with both quantitative and qualitative aspects. It is essential to place considerable values on both quantitative and qualitative aspects in understanding poverty. Thus, vulnerability is one of the criteria which is used to understand poverty in these two aspects.  Vulnerability is a constant companion of material and human deprivation, given the circumstances of the poor and the near-poor or non-poor. It means the probability of being exposed to a number of risks. It is generally accepted that poor people are more vulnerable in various circumstances than non-poor people due to many reasons. Thus, this paper attempts to analyse the nature of vulnerability of the poor and non-poor households and the root causes leading to their level of vulnerability. For this purpose, Neboda West Grama Niladhari Divison of Dodangoda Divisional Secretariat in Sri Lanka was selected for the study. A sample of fifty households was selected for the study by following stratified random sampling technique. Questionnaire and the in-depth interviews were used for data gathering. In order to examine whether there is a significant difference between poor and non-poor households regarding quantitative aspects of vulnerability, mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variation and the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used. For analysing qualitative aspects of vulnerability relating to these two groups absolute and percentage values were used. As the findings, this study disclosed that there is a significant difference between poor and non-poor households regarding vulnerability.  As its quantitative aspects income and its variability and as the qualitative aspects ownership to physical assets, education, income diversification, links to networks, safety nets and access to credit market significantly vary between these two groups by confirming significant difference of the ability to face adverse shocks.

The work described in this thesis was carried out by me under the local supervision of Senior Professor M.M. Karunanayake, and a report on this thesis has not been

Job satisfaction is a common but important theme discussed at organizational level. It refers to the attitude and feelings that the people have about their work. Main concern of every organization is to maintain the satisfaction of the employees so that the organizational goals can be achieved successfully. Job satisfaction of the employees can be determined by many factors. Among them, leadership style followed by the leaders is also one of the important factors. Leadership style is the manner and approach of providing direction, implementing plans and motivating people.Many scholars have addressed the impact of leadership styles on the job satisfaction of employees in different manner. But, literature on this topic in the context of Sri Lanka has not sufficiently developed. There are only few studies covered the subject of leadership in Sri Lanka particularly limiting to few sectors. Therefore, this study attempts to fill that gap of the knowledge by addressing how leadership styles affect job satisfaction of the employees, particularly in a garment factory in Sri Lanka. Methodologically, deductive testing theory approach was followed by this study. Theory was developed by the literature based on the pilot study.  As the pilot study confirmed that three major leadership styles such as democratic, autocratic and transactional style are followed by the leaders, the impact of these three styles on the job satisfaction of employees were examined by giving a questionnaire to a stratified random sample of 60 employees. Basic hypothesis of the study was that the transactional leadership style should be the most significant in determining the job satisfaction according to human nature. But the outcome of this study confirmed that the impact of democratic style was statistically more significant than autocratic and transactional styles by rejecting the initial hypothesis.

This article stresses the importance of spatial factors for entrepreneurial orientation of rural entrepreneurs, rendering a critical review of existing literature. Even though the social system and institutional context have been regarded as highly important in the entrepreneurial orientation of rural entrepreneurs, the spatial context is also equally important. Thus, the hope is that the paper would show avenues for the exploration of spatial factors affecting entrepreneurial orientation to the potential researchers.