The voters' choices about political parties have many similarities in how they make their choices about commercial brands. Therefore, political parties are now constantly applying the concept and strategies of brand management to make the political product attractive, appealable, trustable, differentiable, source of long-term relationship and decision-making driver. Furthermore, the political parties have to play an active role in the community's political socialization processes which are relying heavily on the branding strategies. Because, the community's social gregariousness have profound effect on the electorates' propensity to participate in the politics that constitutes the party equity. This study has deeply explored and broadened the concept of party equity analogous to commercial brand equity typology by developing a politics specific brand equity model. This model demonstrates the integration of political brands in voter choice. Empirically, this model has been validated by collecting 550 valid-responses from the constituency of District Gujrat, Pakistan. A careful analysis of these responses through SEM methodology has revealed that political parties vary according to the outcomes of their role in the political socialization process of the communities, loyalty and voters Downloaded by [New York University] at 22:46 29 May 2015 2 attitude. Those parties, that have favorable role in socialization process, have strong party knowledge and thus have high party equity as compare to competing political parties, which have weak position of party knowledge. Similarly, this study provides the roadmap and guidelines for the political parties to manage their party equity. Similarly, the model would be able to facilitate political parties in comparing different constituencies on the basis of their diversified social dynamics and political knowledge and in the development of constituency based manifesto, may also be termed as "Localized Manifesto" to further enhance their vote bank.

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the concept of ecological sustainability is attracting attention of global business community as neoclassical approach continues to fail in delivery. There is now an emerging need to explore new approaches towards balancing ecological and economic returns. The paper extends the philosophy of Permaculture into business domain and explores its compatibility to be integrated with strategic management perspectives. Design/methodology/approach – The study primarily conducts a review of Permaculture and Strategic Management domains and uncovers the compatibility between the two domains while arguing that the integration of Permaculture philosophy in business strategy would achieve sustainability. Findings – Permaculture philosophy is compatible with Strategic Management process for developing business strategies. It can incorporate ecological and social aspects for developing integrated strategy process for sustainability in organizations. Research limitations/implications – Focusing on financial and non-financial value addition contributed by organizations towards community would lead to long-term sustainability of the organization and the community which supports it. Originality/value – The study extends the emerging philosophy of Permaculture into the established domain of Strategic Management. Arguing that simultaneous equilibrium of capacities, resources and demands of stakeholders must be maintained for sustained economic success in business world.

Islamic banking generally referred to as interest free banking has been gaining popularity in the recent past. The main pillar of Islamic finance is prohibition of interest. Unlike conventional banking where interest is an integral part of the banking system, Islamic banking avoids interest in all bank transactions [Samad and Hassan (1999)]. The banking system in Pakistan is undergoing a transition from conventional model of banking to the new concept of Islamic banking, based on principles of Islamic economics. The new system should not only eliminate interestbased transactions but also introduce the concept of “Zakah” a contribution to the poor [Molla, et al. (1988)]. The prohibition of Riba is based on the arguments of social justice and equality.

Performance of Intellectual Capital (IC) in an enterprise is becoming a critical success factor. The paper measures, evaluates and ranks the IC performance of the second largest stock exchange of Pakistan, the Lahore Stock Exchange index companies (LSE-25). It uses popular IC model, Value Added Intellectual Coefficient (VAIC TM ) developed by Ante Pulic in 1998. Six-year data of LSE-25 was obtained from audited financial reports to calculate human capital, structural capital and capital employed efficiency of companies related to different industrial sectors. Findings indicate that oil & gas, chemical and cement sectors show top performance; banking sector shows average performance; and public sector companies show least performance. The study is a pioneering attempt to measure the IC performance in Pakistan using cross sectional data.