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The purpose of this paper is to understand what was important to managers of businesses in desert Australia, and in particular, what they needed for the businesses to be successful.

There were two studies. In Study 1, 88 managers of business in remote desert Australia were interviewed. In Study 2, 112 managers who had business in regional desert Australia participated in an on‐line survey.

In both studies, the respondents claimed that their businesses were reasonably successful. In Study 1, the interviewees said that making a living and seeing the business grow were important indices of success. In Study 2, customer/client satisfaction was the strongest indicator of business success. Factors such as safe and all‐weather roads, internet/e‐mail access and reliable power supplies were important to this success. The importance to business success of a number of leadership behaviours was also identified.

Future research needs to encourage a larger number of managers to participate. In addition, suppliers and customers of the businesses need to be included.

This is the first study in which managers were included, because normally, only owner‐managers are involved. It is also the first study of its kind to be undertaken in desert Australia.

The evolving nature of auditing requires that we, as practitioners, frequently review what we do and why we do it. Only by doing so do we prepare ourselves for the next generation of problems, and the solutions we must find. Never has a business environment changed as rapidly as now. Revisions and modifications in our profession occur with such speed that we can no longer depend on institutionalized education to provide the necessary background. To keep pace, we must learn to innovate for constructive growth. This ability to innovate requires us to look at situations and problems from a different perspective to reach new and appropriate conclusions. Demonstrates the need for new thinking in the auditing profession, internal barriers we have that limit our ability to do so, and a brief example of how we can learn to increase our innovative output.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of brand experience on brand equity dimensions in the perspective of customers (including brand identification, physical quality, staff behavior quality, brand awareness, ideal self-congruence and life style-congruence) on brand satisfaction and loyalty in Iranian banking industry.

The author designed the conceptual model of the research based on the existing relationships between the research variables and the proposed hypotheses. By a questionnaire, the opinion of 288 customers and clients of selected branches of Melli and Tejarat banks were collected in two Provinces, including East and West Azerbaijan Provinces. The research hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

The results of the paper showed that the brand experience directly affected all dimensions of brand equity. Also, the results indicated that except for lifestyle congruence, other dimensions of equity directly affected the customers' brand satisfaction.

This paper is significant, because it addresses the experience relationships and brand equity with the perspective of the customers of banks in an Islamic country, which affects the development of branding literature.

The strategic importance of brand identity management has been emphasized in the brand management literature, but studies that examine brand identity sub-components effects on customer resilience to negative information are very few. In this regard, this study aims to examine the effect of brand distinctiveness and prestige as sub-components of identity on young customers’ loyalty and resilience to negative information through the mediating variable of brand attractiveness in the luxury electronics market.

Using a structured questionnaire, data were collected. Based on a five-point Likert scale were asked of consumers and owners of electronic products (mobile phone, tablet and laptop) to indicate their level of disagreement and agreement with series of statements. After an analytic process, 422 valid questionnaires were obtained. The hypotheses were tested by using structural equation modeling.

The results showed that brand prestige and distinctiveness have direct effect on brand attractiveness, which prestige had more influence than distinctiveness. The results indicated that brand loyalty was strongly affected by direct brand attractiveness, and that the effect of brand attractiveness on the resilience to negative information was not significant. Finally, the study results showed that resilience to negative information is affected by brand loyalty.

This study is significant because it is one of the few studies that examines the effect of brand identity on brand attractiveness and consumers’ extra-role behavior, which results in the development of branding literature in the field of luxury products.

This study aims to investigate mustahiq business success using a newly developed index called asnaf muslimpreneur success index (AMSi).

Following Abu Zaharah theory of al-Maqasid al-Shariah, the authors developed the AMSi through literature analyses and expert judges involving three Shariah scholars for improved extensions and applications. Subsequently, the authors conducted the actual survey, which included 17 mustahiq who had been assisted by the zakat institution in running their small and halal businesses in Sabah, Malaysia.

Using the AMSi, the success of asnaf businesses was in the moderate index, implying the success meets the index score of more than 50%. All indexes capturing asnafs’ business experience, asnafs’ business justice, asnafs’ well-being and asnafs’ financial wisdom were greater than the threshold value of 0.5 or 50%, implying that the interaction of the battery items involved in those variables resulted in satisfactory results, indicating that they are relevant and essential in gauging the asnafs’ success level in the development business programme.

The results obtained were at the exploratory level, and for that, more studies related are expected to be conducted in the future, where the coverage of the respondents used is larger to extend the findings, at least.

The results obtained can become a yardstick to gauge the success of asnaf muslimpreneurs in Sabah, East Malaysia.

This study introduces new measures of asnaf muslimpreneur success model, where mustahiq business is brought into play.

Briefly reviews previous literature by the author before presenting an original 12 step system integration protocol designed to ensure the success of companies or countries in their efforts to develop and market new products. Looks at the issues from different strategic levels such as corporate, international, military and economic. Presents 31 case studies, including the success of Japan in microchips to the failure of Xerox to sell its invention of the Alto personal computer 3 years before Apple: from the success in DNA and Superconductor research to the success of Sunbeam in inventing and marketing food processors: and from the daring invention and production of atomic energy for survival to the successes of sewing machine inventor Howe in co‐operating on patents to compete in markets. Includes 306 questions and answers in order to qualify concepts introduced.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

This paper aims to identify external factors that are critical to the success of estate surveying business in Lagos State, Nigeria.

Primary data were collected with the aid of questionnaires from estate surveying firms in the study area. Using a sampling interval computed as 1.93-2, 186 firms were selected from the 359 estate surveying firms based in the study area. The sampling interval required that, after the first selection, every subsequent second estate firm in the group (List) was selected for the survey. Data collected were analysed with the aid of criticality assessment index method such as the Relative Criticality Index and Criterion Criticality Score.

The result showed that it was critical for an estate surveying to interdepend with surrounding businesses and maintain good corporate social responsibility for it to succeed. Also, good social relations of the practitioners with the society was found to be an external factor critical to success. In addition, the study found the need to use the advantage of ICT for real estate marketing as an external technological factor for success. It was also found that the economic situation of the immediate locality of the firm and the economic buoyancy of the nation at large influenced both the planning for and the execution of real estate activities of the firm.

Limiting the findings of the study to external factors alone could subject the findings of the study to bias. Further research targeted at identifying internal factors will provide a balanced view.

The study will serve as useful tools for existing and upcoming real estate practitioners to chart a performance course for their businesses. It will help estate surveyors to understand what to place more emphasis on if they will succeed in business.

The findings from this study will provide the estate surveyors and valuers and the professional body with data on things that are critical to their success in business and enhance the practice of real estate management.

With data from the 2003 and 2005 National Minority Business Owners Survey, we examined the extent to which minority business owners differ from nonminority business owners in their reported use of adjustment strategies, and the relationship between the use of adjustment strategies and perceived business success. The sample consisted of 193 African American, 200 Mexican American, 200 Korean American, and 210 white business owners. Mexican American and Korean American business owners reported higher levels of adjustment strategy use than African American and white business owners. The ordinary least squares show that reallocating family resources to meet business needs and reallocating business resources to meet family needs were negatively associated with perceived business success, whereas hiring paid help was positively associated with perceived business success.

Organizations are fast adopting new technologies such as automation, analytics and artificial intelligence, collectively called intelligent automation, to drive digital transformation. When adopting intelligent automation, there is a need to understand the success factors of these new technologies and adapt agile software development (ASD) practices to meet customer expectations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the success factors of intelligent automation and create a framework for managers and practitioners to meet dynamic business demands. Total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) framework is a suitable approach to integrate quantitative measurement with qualitative semi-structured interviews capturing the context of the individual organization environment.

This paper identified agility factors and their interrelationships using a TISM framework. TISM results were validated using a one-tailed t-test to confirm the interrelationships between factors. Furthermore, the agility index of a case project organization was assessed using a graph-theoretic approach (GTA) to identify both the triggering factors for agility success and improvement proposals.

Results showed that leadership vision, organization structure and program methodology were driving factors. The TISM model was validated statistically and the agility index of the intelligent automation case project organization was calculated to be79.5%. Here, a GTA was applied and the triggering factors for improvement of the agility index were identified.

The limitations of the study are described along with the opportunities for future research as the field evolves through the rapid innovation of technology and products.

The increasing role of digital transformation in enterprise strategy and operations requires practitioners to understand how ASD practices must be planned, measured and/or improved over time through the implementation of automation, analytics and artificial intelligence programs. The TISM digraph provides a framework of hierarchical structure to organize the influencing factors, which assists in achieving organizational goals. This study highlights the driving factors which contribute to the success of intelligent automation projects and project organizations.

This is a first attempt to analyze the interrelationships among agility factors in intelligent automation projects (IAP) using TISM and the assessment of the agility index of a case IAP organization using a GTA.