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The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of leadership style and employee engagement (EE) as drivers of service orientation (SO). The competing models approach used in this study examines three models of influence on SO. The first model evaluates the influence of leadership on SO, the second focuses on the influence of EE on SO and the third explores the influence of leadership on SO through EE. The study provides evidence to support that the relationship between leadership styles and SO is impacted by EE. The results suggest that organizations need to develop systems and processes that focus on the employee and EE for definitive service outcomes. At a theoretical level, the paper provides a direction for further exploration of an integrated theory of leadership and engagement to drive SO in organizations.

This empirical study uses a cross-sectional descriptive design. Hierarchical regression and mediation analysis were applied to process the data that were collected from more than 400 front-line employees from five service sector organizations in the Delhi-National Capital Region (Delhi-NCR) of India using validated instruments.

The results from this study reveal both direct and indirect relationships among the variables. EE emerged as a critical variable that influences SO of employees. EE partially mediates the transformational leadership style-SO relationship and also the passive-avoidant-SO relationship and it fully mediates the transactional leadership-SO relationship. While all relationships of leadership-engagement, leadership-SO and engagement-SO are significant, the mediating effects accentuate the importance of EE in organizations.

Leadership style on its own has a direct bearing on EE and SO of employees, the three associations are significantly impacted under the mediating influence of EE. With EE emerging as a critical factor, organizations need to ensure engaging behaviors are measured and enhanced throughout the employee-life-cycle including hiring, training, rewarding and managing performance. The results of the study suggest that an integrated approach of developing and inculcating leadership styles that drive EE could be the basis for leadership development programs especially in the service sector organizations.

The originality of the paper is derived from the three variables studied in the context of the sample characteristics (front-line employees, young), industry sector (across service sector) and geographical location (Delhi-NCR-India). Not many empirical studies on these variables are available from the region. The empirical evidence on the influence of EE adds weight to the growing strategic importance of EE in organizations. The research also highlights leadership and EE together influence specific employee attitudes and behavior (SO).

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between leadership, employee engagement and service orientation, specific to the private service sector organizations in India. The paper also explores the ability of leadership style and engagement to predict service orientation in the given cross section.

The paper has used a single cross-sectional descriptive design. Purposive sampling has been used to identify respondents who are managers in the private service sector organisations in India. A valid sample size of 106 has been used for the analysis. Instruments used for perceived leadership style are as follows: Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-5X short form); Employee Engagement E3 (DDI) and Service Orientation (Frimpong and Wilson, 2012).

Service orientation is found to be strongly correlated to employee engagement and employee engagement is a strong predictor of service orientation. The other relationships which are significant and moderately correlated are that of transformational leadership and employee engagement and also of transformational leadership and service orientation.

The study highlights the importance and significant role of leadership and employee engagement for higher service orientation in the given cross section. The mediating impact of employee engagement of the leadership style and service orientation relationship could be further explored through path analysis or structured equation modeling techniques.

The research emphasizes that organizations need to focus on employee engagement as much as they focus on customers. The differential advantage to organizations will come through the employees and their behaviors towards customers. Appropriate leadership styles that drive engagement and service-oriented behaviors can be fostered in organizations to drive service performance. The mediating impact of employee engagement of the leadership style and service orientation relationship could be further explored through path analysis or structured equation modeling techniques.

The research is focused in the private service sector organizations in India and data and results support the need to focus on employees for higher scores on customer parameters. The respondents are from a cross section of service organizations and, hence, emphasizing the interplay of the three variables across organizations. The paper supports the critical role of leadership and employees in creating a higher service orientation.

This chapter focusses on ‘emotions’ as one of the most crucial elements of customer experience. Emotions form the basis of experience as well as the basis for assessing, interpreting, understanding and responding to situations, brands, events and organisations as a customer interacts with the organisation or any of the touchpoints throughout their purchase journey. We discuss the psychological context of emotions, the role emotions play in judgement and decision-making in general and more specifically consumer decision-making. In this chapter, we review the extensive literature and theory in psychology and customer experience to explain how customers perceive bundles of cues, selectively perceive and retain information, and how memories keep reinforcing experiences. We discuss the practical implications for business leaders focussing on understanding customers' emotions and utilising the knowledge to create and capture value through customer experience.

This paper aims to investigate the risk-return and volatility spillover within the Tunisian stock market during the COVID-19 pandemic analyzing both the Islamic and conventional stocks’ performance.

Both symmetric (GARCH and GARCH-M) and asymmetric (Threshold GARCH and Exponential GARCH) models are used to analyze the market returns and volatility response. Standard and Poor’s (S&P) index has been used to test both the Islamic and conventional stocks within the Tunisian stock market.

The findings suggest that both Tunisia Islamic and conventional stock markets are highly persistent; however, the conventional stock index showed a negative return spillover on the Islamic stocks during the pandemic. The conventional stock index has also shown a higher exposure to risk for a lower amount of return, and evidence of potential diversification benefit between both indexes was found during the pandemic, whereas the Islamic market showed a positive leverage effect, indicating a positive correlation between past return and future return; the conventional index implied a negative leverage effect.

The value of this paper emerges in studying three main aspects that are specific to the Tunisian stock market. This includes COVID-19 effect of return spillovers, volatility transmission across both conventional and Islamic stock market within the local financial market.

In recent times, mobile banking has become the best alternative for transactions associated with payments like bills, fees, and peer-to-peer payments. Therefore, the pace of adoption is increasing day after other. However, the numbers of customers are not equal to the expectations as there are several challenges and threats hindering in the way of excellence and growth of mobile banking. Therefore, this chapter has been written purposively to address all the elements that are associated with the use of mobile banking with special emphasis on Pakistan and other developing sides of Asia. In fact, concern towards Asian sides is mandatory as the continent has the massive charm to attract users towards the use of mobile banking, but there is a need for proper policy and concern from stakeholders in order to give a push to the technology, which is fruitful for society, environment, as well as economy. The study includes an in-depth discussion on factors that need attention to make the study implicative and thorough for conducting further research in the field of Fin-Tech and mobile banking.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of data-driven capabilities on supply chain integration (SCI) and competitive performance of firms in the food and beverages (F & B) industry in Pakistan.

The authors adopt the structural equation modeling approach to test the proposed hypotheses using AMOS 23. Survey data were collected from 240 firms in the F & B industry in Pakistan.

The results revealed that SCI (i.e. internal integration (II) and external integration (EI)) significantly mediates the effect of data-driven capabilities (i.e. flexible information technology resources and data assimilation) on a firm’s competitive performance. In addition to the direct effects, II also has an indirect effect on competitive performance through EI.

The study has several implications for managers in the context of big data application in food supply chain management (FSCM) in a developing country context. The study posits that firms can achieve excellence in performance by governing data-driven supply chain operations. The study also has implications for distributors and importers in the F & B industry. The cloud-based sharing of data can improve the operational performance of channel members while reducing their overall cost of operations. In practice, food franchises largely get the advantage of shared resources of their suppliers in managing orders, payments, inventory and after-sales services.

The study is novel and deepens the understanding about the use of big data in FSCM keeping in view the industry trends and stakeholder’s priorities in a developing country context.

The purpose of this paper is to review Lean Six Sigma (LSS) literature and report different definitions, demographics, methodologies and industries.

This paper highlights various definitions by different researchers and practitioners. A total of 235 research papers has been reviewed for the LSS theme, research methodology adopted, type of industry, author profile, country of research and year of publication.

From the review, four significant LSS classifications were identified that deal with the spread of LSS in different industries followed by observation for classification.

LSS is a strategy for success, but it did not examine its presence in various Industries. From this paper, readers can understand the quantum of its spread before implementing LSS. For academicians, it will be a comprehensive list of papers for research.

This paper reviews 235 research papers for their year, author profile, research methodology and type of industry. Various characteristics of LSS definitions and their theme are also reviewed.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between outpatient satisfaction and the five constructs of healthcare projects’ service quality in Pakistan using Deng’s grey incidence analysis (GIA) model, absolute degree GIA model (ADGIA), a novel second synthetic degree GIA (SSDGIA) model and two approaches of decision-making under uncertainty.

The study proposes a new synthetic GIA model and demonstrates its feasibility on data (N=221) collected from both public and private sector healthcare projects of Punjab, the most populous province of Pakistan, using a self-administered questionnaire developed using the original SERVQUAL approach.

The results of decision analysis approach indicated that outpatients’ satisfaction from the private sector healthcare projects is higher as compared to the public healthcare projects’. The results from the proposed model revealed that tangibility and reliability play an important role in shaping the patient satisfaction in the public and private sectors, respectively.

The study is pioneer in evaluating a healthcare system’s service quality using grey system theory. The study proposes the SSDGIA model as a novel method to evaluate parameters comprehensively based on their mutual association (given by absolute degree of grey incidence) and inter-dependencies (given by Deng’s degree of grey incidence), and tests the new model in the given scenario. The study is novel in terms of its analysis of data and modelling. The study also proposes a comprehensive structure of the healthcare delivery system of Pakistan.

The need to improve energy efficiency as an essential factor for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through green financing is one of the most important issues worldwide. It is even more important for ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries because of their potential for economic growth and the challenge of their environmental problems. This paper therefore addresses the question of whether and how green finance (with the proxy of issued green bonds [GBs]) promotes energy efficiency (with the proxy of energy intensity) in the ASEAN member countries.

The paper runs a two-stage generalized method of moments (GMM) system model for the quarterly data over the period 2017–2020. It also uses a linear interaction model to explore how the pandemic may affect the relationship between green finance and energy efficiency in this region.

The main results only demonstrate the short-term negative impact of GBs on energy intensity. Furthermore, per capita income, economic integration and renewable energy supply can be used as potential variables to reduce energy intensity, while modernization in ASEAN increases energy intensity. Establishment of digital green finance, long-term planning of a green finance market, trade liberalization and policies to mitigate the negative impacts of COVID-19 are recommended as golden policy implications.

The present study has several limitations. First, it accounts for explanatory variables by following a number of previous studies. This may lead to omissions or errors. Second, the empirical estimates were conducted for 160 observations due to the repositioning of GBs in ASEAN, which is not bad but not good for an empirical study.

To the best of authors' knowledge, there has not been any in-depth study focusing on the relationship between energy efficiency and green financing for the case of ASEAN economies.