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This study has two primary objectives: (1) to shed light on the mechanism by which authoritarian leadership unfolds its impact on such critical aspects of subordinates' work lives as job satisfaction and in-role performance and (2) to identify the moderating conditions which place limits on the impact of authoritarian leadership on work outcomes.

Data were collected on 552 supervisor-subordinate dyads from the United Arab Emirates. A series of research hypotheses were tested using a mixed-method statistical approach, including CFA and moderated hierarchical regression analysis.

As predicted, authoritarian leadership exerts negative impact on subordinates' job satisfaction and performance through poor quality LMX and weak employee organizational embeddedness. Both LMX and employee embeddedness mediated the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and outcome measures while power distance moderated the relationship of authoritarian leadership with LMX and employee organizational embeddedness. Low power distance orientation was found to exacerbate the negative impact of authoritarian leadership on the quality of both LMX relationships and employee embeddedness.

The study shares limitations of most studies cast in the survey research design.

The findings underscore the importance of work environment in nurturing high quality LMX relationships and employee organizational embeddedness to buffer the negative effect of authoritarian leadership on subordinates' job satisfaction and performance. In high power distance cultures where workplace inequality is largely rationalized, subordinates who perceive their leaders as authoritarian tend to show low job satisfaction and poor in-role performance. These findings illustrate the importance of management intervention in the early stage of recruitment and selection to attract managers receptive to egalitarian leadership approaches who can equip subordinates with appropriate resources to enhance their job satisfaction and performance outcomes.

The study offers valuable new insights into the mechanism by which authoritarian leadership influences work outcomes in a high-power distance culture. It represents first systematic effort in the Middle Eastern context to identify the conditions that mediate the linkage between authoritarian leadership and work outcomes. The study adds value to the literature by investigating the moderating role of power distance at the individual level of analysis. It detects significant differences in subordinates' perception of power inequality in the workplace in a culture viewed as a high-power distance culture and illustrates how such differences in turn shape the quality of LMX and employee organizational embeddedness.

This paper aims to examine managerial decision-making approaches, their antecedents and consequences in the Arabian Gulf context. Using recent survey data, the study offers a critical assessment of prevailing myths about decision-making styles in the Arabian Gulf.

Survey data were collected from a sample of 432 managers working in public and private sector companies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A combination of statistical techniques including confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and hierarchical regression analysis was used to test research hypotheses.

The findings of this study question the myth that UAE or Gulf managers mostly pursue consultative and participative styles of management. Most UAE managers continue to practice an autocratic and a pseudo-consultative style of decision-making, undermining the value of employee input in the decision-making process. The data revealed a strong negative relationship between autocratic management style and a range of personal and organizational outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, performance and innovative human resource management practices pertaining to work-family life balance and diversity programs. Most employees perceived autocratic management style as a major source of job stress, absenteeism and turnover. Socio-demographic characteristics of managers and their work organizations, considered as antecedents of decision-making styles, played a limited role in shaping decision-making approaches or their consequences. Globalization and associated socio-cultural changes that UAE and other Gulf region countries have experienced over the past two decades seem to have only a marginal impact on decision-making styles.

Use of perceptual survey data places some constraints on the generalizability of our findings. Future research may address this issue with multiple data sources including an in-depth case study.

The findings of this research should be of special interest to both domestic and multinational companies in seeking alignment of their management approaches with the emerging competitive business environment in UAE and other Gulf countries. Theoretically, the paper documents the value of the continuum theory of managerial behavior in UAE and the Arabian Gulf context.

The study represents a first major effort to develop and test a comprehensive conceptual model of antecedents and consequences of managerial decision-making styles in UAE, which may be extended to other countries in the Arabian Gulf region. The value-added contribution of the study may be seen in its critical analysis of prevailing beliefs and assumptions about management practices in the Arabian Gulf.

This paper aims to examine the concept of learning organization (LO) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Its objective is to provide initial insight into the potential impact of cultural context on how business managers perceive and interpret the LO theory and practice.

The study was conducted in two phases; the first phase involved a focus group review and discussion of the LO concept and major LO models. With insights gained from the focus group discussions, the second phase of the study developed a number of hypotheses on the potential impact of national cultural orientations on the LO concept, which were tested with managerial responses to a survey.

While UAE managers viewed and interpreted the LO concept in several different ways, most qualitative comments emphasized the following four aspects of an LO: workplace learning, organizational learning, learning climate and learning structure. Both sets of data revealed strong linkages between dimensions of national culture and the LO concept. Organizational culture partially mediated the relationship between national cultural orientations and aspects of an LO. Potential barriers to the implementation of the LO concept as perceived by respondents were largely related to national cultural value orientations and organizational cultures. The findings suggested that Western LO models and measurement instruments do not fully capture the socio-cultural reality of UAE-based organizations and the manner in which they view and interpret the LO concept and practices in their specific context.

Being a preliminary and largely reflective in nature, the present study has relied more heavily upon the qualitative data than the survey data.

The findings of this study document the value of culture-specific criteria to monitor the performance of companies in their LO journey rather than using a standardized LO assessment model.

The study represents an initial attempt at enhancing the understanding of the impact of national culture on the development and application of the LO concept and the challenges it faces in the UAE context.

The purpose of this paper is to identify organizational resources that may enhance the performance outcomes of a learning culture; this study was undertaken in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), an emerging economy in the Arabian Gulf region.

A survey questionnaire was used to collect data on a sample of 254 firms from the Emirates of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The target respondents included middle to senior managers working in logistics, operations, finance and general management positions.

The data revealed a positive relationship between learning organization (LO) initiatives and four measures of firm performance considered in the study: employee skills development, product/service innovation, cost-effectiveness and growth in revenues. This relationship was moderated by strategic orientation of the human resource management function and perceived organizational support. Effective HRM strategies and organizational support systems were identified as critical resources that can add substantial value to the performance outcomes of an LO culture. These findings suggest that investing in the development of an LO culture makes a good business sense.

Use of perceptual measures was one of the major limitations of the present study.

The largely positive impact of LO-related programs underscores the strategic importance of the LO concept to maintain superior performance outcomes in the emerging knowledge economy of UAE.

The paper represents an initial effort at making a business case for the LO concept in a non-western context. It brings into focus the role of organizational support and strategically oriented human resource management initiatives in optimizing the performance impact an LO culture.

The objective of this paper is to develop baseline data on knowledge management (KM) initiatives of business organizations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). UAE is a rapidly growing economy in the Arabian Gulf region and it is timely to assess KM initiatives of UAE companies and the barriers and challenges they face in KM adoption and implementation.

A survey research design was used to collect data on KM practices of a sample of companies based in the emirates of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Importance of KM practices is gradually being recognized in UAE and several organizations have initiated a number of KM‐related programs. Most KM initiatives are focused on explicit knowledge, and companies are investing significant resources in building their ICT infrastructure. The study documents the importance of a companywide KM strategy, top management commitment, proactive HRM policies, and a supportive cultural environment as the critical success factors to advance KM practice and theory in UAE.

The study employed a non‐probability sample which limits its ability to generalize findings to the larger population of UAE business organizations.

The study offers much‐needed baseline data on KM initiatives of UAE companies, the benefits they associate with KM and barriers they must overcome to implement KM practices. These baseline data are expected to encourage further research on KM in UAE and other Gulf countries.

The study represents a first systematic and comprehensive attempt at reporting baseline data on KM adoption in UAE.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the critical factors that impact knowledge sharing (KS) and their importance in technology-intensive service organizations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

An extensive literature review was conducted to identify the critical factors for KS in technology-intensive organizations. Then, an analytical hierarchical process (AHP) was applied to prioritize the primary criteria and sub-criteria. This study consists of nine primary criteria and 34 sub-criteria that are relevant to KS in technology-intensive organizations.

The results show that organizational leadership (OL) is the most important factor that impacts KS in technology-intensive organizations, which is followed by organizational culture (OC), organizational strategy (OSY), corporate performance (CP), organizational process (OP), employee engagement (EE) and organizational structure (OST). According to the results, the least impactful factor is human resource management (HRM).

Because the results in this study were only obtained from service organizations, future studies can include manufacturing organizations from different countries and additional success factors. Future studies could also use structural equational modelling methodology for better understanding the relations among these critical factors for KS.

This paper is one of the first in the UAE to examine the broad range of critical success factors for KS in technology-intensive organizations.

Through social media technologies, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can communicate information and respond to competitors with minimal cost. The ability to share and access information can affect SMEs’ performance, but there is little research on the link between SMEs’ social media adoption and their performance. The purpose of this paper is to present a quantitative survey to explore factors that influenced social media adoption by SMEs in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and its impact on performance.

The study used a multi-perspective framework combining technological, organizational and environmental elements affecting SMEs. Survey questionnaires were used to collect data from a random sample of SMEs operating in the UAE. Using partial least squares and structural equation modeling techniques, 144 responses were analyzed.

Social media adoption had no effect on SMEs’ performance. These findings could help managers and decision makers in the SME sector to try to keep pace with research on social media innovations, and enable them to benefit from social commerce as it becomes more ubiquitous.

This has implications for social media experts and anyone wishing to encourage social media use by SMEs.

The study developed a suitable multi-perspective framework covering various factors that may affect social media use. It also tested the framework empirically on a sample of SMEs from the UAE.

This study was undertaken to explore obstacles to market orientation in the retail small- and medium-sized retail enterprises (SME) sector of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a rapidly growing economy in the Gulf region. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The study used a triangulation data collection approach, including a case study, participant observation, and a questionnaire-based survey. Five research hypotheses were developed on context-specific impediments to market orientation, identified by means of in-depth interviews with owners/operators of SMEs, their channel partners and customers, and were tested with survey data.

The study revealed a weak market orientation among UAE-based retail SMEs. An undifferentiated competition, limited resource infrastructure, and a short-term planning horizon occurred as the major impediments to the development and implementation of a market orientation. SMEs that preferred to maintain the status quo, and those who perceived UAE ' s commercial environment as lenient and pro-business, also expressed a lack of interest in the marketing concept and market orientation as a competitive strategy.

The study supports the contention that social-structural conditions and business practices can create formidable barriers to a market orientation in emerging markets. The findings call for shifting the current research focus from intra-organizational antecedents of market orientation to context-specific factors that may impede or facilitate market orientation.

The study unravels a unique set of impediments to market orientation in UAE ' s retail sector and thus contributes to the ongoing interest of marketing scholars in expanding the range of possible antecedents of a market orientation. The findings of this study should be of special interest to foreign business firms aspiring to enter the growing retail sector of UAE and other emerging markets in the Gulf region.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of knowledge management dimensions (i.e. knowledge acquisition, knowledge dissemination and knowledge responsiveness) on green innovation. The study also seeks to determine whether these relationships are mediated by the environmental awareness in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the UAE.

Data were obtained from a sample of 194 SMEs (two informants from each firm that consist of 388 top managers) in Abu Dhabi, UAE. In this cross-sectional study, convenience random sampling was used. The positivism approach was adopted using a hypothetical statistical induction method. Validated measurement scales were used to measure the study constructs adopted from previous studies. Data were analysed using a quantitative approach with Smart partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) 3.0.

The results of the study indicated a positive and significant association between knowledge acquisition, knowledge dissemination and knowledge responsiveness with green innovation. Moreover, the data analysis confirmed that environmental awareness mediates the relationship between knowledge dissemination and green innovation. However, no mediation role of environmental awareness in the relationship between knowledge acquisition and knowledge responsiveness with green innovation was found.

Knowing how to manage knowledge effectively is considered to be one of the most important aspects of green innovations. Nonetheless, there was a dearth of literature highlighting the relevance of knowledge management for long-term organisational success. The results of this study present practical implications for SME professionals. Green innovation with the support of environmental awareness may help a firm understand and implement the importance of knowledge management into their administrative operations. They can subsequently become eco-innovative ecologically, economically and socially.

This is one of the very few studies that examine the effect of knowledge management dimensions (knowledge acquisition, knowledge dissemination and knowledge responsiveness) on green innovation in UAE SMEs.

The purpose of this study is to explain the opinions of the Muslim jurists available in the fiqh books so that they may be compared with the approaches adopted by modern scholars for defining the concept of riba. It is argued that the method of jurists was different from the one adopted by the modern Muslim jurists and Islamic economists. The new method dichotomizes riba into those of the Quran and Sunnah. On the contrary, jurists of four Sunni schools considered the Quran and Sunnah in this regard as a single whole, and they saw Sunnah as the elaboration of riba. By explaining the similarities shared by different fiqh schools, it is explained that there is no need for a definition of riba.

The paper uses the method of content analysis. The authors have consulted the authentic fiqh manuals of the four Sunni fiqh schools to substantiate the objectives.

One of the major findings of this paper is that interest charged in loan transactions, including bank loans, is riba according to the four Sunni fiqh schools. Moreover, the paper also shows that the similarities among the four Sunni fiqh schools are far more significant than the often-highlighted disagreements among them regarding the concept of riba. The methodology adopted by modern Muslim scholars seems to add confusions around the concept of riba.

The paper discusses views of only four Sunni fiqh jurists.

The paper explains the common methodology followed by the jurists for understanding riba, the significant similarities resulting from their common method, the link between the concept of riba and different types of financial transactions within the framework of the jurists and that combining several fiqh schools at a time is a contradiction-ridden methodology.