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The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of action learning programs on individual performance improvement and career progression in a large banking sector organization in the UAE.

A conceptual model was proposed and measured the outcomes of the action learning program variables in a public sector bank in the UAE. A total of 106 employees of the organization who had participated in a certified management program (CMP) have responded to the survey.

The outcomes of action learning program variables, such as self-efficacy, teamwork and performance management, were found to have an influence significantly on individual performance improvement.

As the current study was focused on banking sector only, similar studies from other industries/sectors (e.g. trading, services, etc.) can be taken up for further research by including antecedents and consequences of participants of action learning programs.

This study could offer specific guidance to managers as to how and what type of education and learning programs to be provided to their team members for competency development and career progression.

As the UAE economy is growing and population staying in the region is becoming multicultural, there is an ample need for managers to foster learning and education environment in various organizations to change culture and managerial practices toward achieving organizational objectives.

The study is original and provides value and direction for managers and senior management on talent development processes.

Managers are responsible for implementing reasonable accommodation (RA) for people with disabilities (PwD). Yet, little is known about the extent to which managerial views of RA shape attitudes toward PwD. The study draws on conservation of resources (COR) and job demands and resources (JD-R) theories to examine the relationship between managerial views of RA availability and implementation ease on attitudes towards hiring PwD.

In total, 162 full-time managers at a large New Zealand (NZ) healthcare organisation completed an online survey. Moderated multiple regressions were conducted to test the main effects and interactions between perceptions of RA process and attitudes towards hiring PwD.

The study results indicate that line managers held positive attitudes towards hiring PwD when they viewed RA implementation as easy, particularity around the provision of flexible work arrangements.

This study shows the importance of gaging managers' views of RA processes to understand their attitudes toward PwD and highlights potential linkages between managerial perspectives on RA, PwD experiences in the organisation and the effectiveness of disability support and inclusion initiatives.

RA availability from the organisation is insufficient to elicit positive managerial attitudes toward hiring PwD. Policies and procedures that reduce RA implementation complexity are expected to foster positive managerial attitudes toward PwD and improve employment outcomes for this employee group.

This study is the first to test how managerial attitudes towards hiring PwD are influenced by views of RA availability from the organisation and of RA implementation ease. It also provides a multidimensional measure that captures managerial views of RA availability from the organisation and RA implementation ease.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

Research has demonstrated that public organizations commonly adopt performance measurement systems to assess the operational accountability of service delivery. This same research, however, has revealed that public managers struggle with using performance measures for improving service performance and for determining long-term budget needs. One plausible explanation for the limited use of performance statistics is found in the strategic management literature on the evolutionary theory of routine. It suggests that private firms make decisions by identifying alternatives to base routines for process innovation rather than relying on the traditional theory of profit maximization. By applying the routines-based perspective to public organizations, this article presents a model of results-based management where performance of service delivery represents our proxy for profit and where performance measures serve primarily to monitor the performance of selected service dimensions. The results of output, outcome, and efficiency measures are then used to support performance, financial, and strategic management, including the selection and implementation of strategies to alter the base routines of service delivery. These new routines, created under the boundaries of rational choice, often have substantial budgetary implications over time when they change the calculus between resource consumption and service provision.

The purpose of this paper is to explore consumers’ preference for responsible labels in the specific case of well-known brands. The research examines the propensity of consumers to consider self-declarations carried out by the company itself in comparison with independent certifications organised by an external third party.

An empirical study involving 134 French consumers by means of a conjoint analysis method was conducted, and the case of Nespresso coffee was tested.

The results show that self-declaration (Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality) positively influences consumer preference. Moreover, this positive effect is equivalent to that of independent certification (Fair Trade Max Havelaar).

This study’s contribution gives a better insight into the consumers’ response to eco-labelling. It suggests the existence of an interaction effect between the brand and the responsible label. But, a future research needs to be conducted to gain better understanding of this interaction effect.

The results suggest that a strategy of promoting a well-known branded product based on self-declaration would be effective. They offer additional insights to managers on the eco-labels’ efficiency.

Contrary to the literature which suggests the superiority of the effect of certifications organised by a third party, this research shows that this finding is not valuable in the case of a well-known brand. Self-declaration may be preferred by consumers in the same way as independent certification. This research is one of the rare research to stress the need to consider brand when exploring eco-labelling issue.

Anti-racism has been practiced in various ways, with varying degrees of effectiveness. This chapter engages with the body of scholarship that focuses on approaches aimed at promoting anti-racist actions, policies and social change. It discusses some of the main anti-racism strategies that have been deployed across different countries and examines anti-racism practices in interpersonal, intergroup and community settings. These approaches encompass civil rights campaigns, legislative and policy interventions, affirmative action, diversity and inclusion training, prejudice reduction, intergroup contact, organisational development and holistic anti-racism approaches. Some anti-racism practices and policies, such as awareness campaigns, social marketing and diversity training, also extend to digital platforms, with social media and multimedia networks deployed to broaden the reach and impact of anti-racist endeavours. This chapter specifically engages with local anti-racism movements and draws principles for broader implementation of anti-racism policy and practice. It concludes with a brief discussion of the effectiveness of contemporary anti-racism approaches.

The objective of this study is to investigate how country risk, different political actions from the government and bureaucratic behavior influence the activities in industry supply chains (SCs) in emerging markets. The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of these external stakeholders’ elements to the demand-side and supply-side drivers and barriers for improving competitiveness of Ready-Made Garment (RMG) industry in the way of analyzing supply chain. Considering the phenomenon of recent change in the RMG business environment and the competitiveness issues this study uses the principles of stakeholder and resource dependence theory and aims to find out some factors which influence to make an efficient supply chain for improving competitiveness. The RMG industry of Bangladesh is the case application of this study. Following a positivist paradigm, this study adopts a two phase sequential mixed-method research design consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. Qualitative field study is then carried out to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. A survey is carried out with sample of top and middle level executives of different garment companies of Dhaka city in Bangladesh and the collected quantitative data are analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling. The findings support eight hypotheses. From the analysis the external stakeholders’ elements like bureaucratic behavior and country risk have significant influence to the barriers. From the internal stakeholders’ point of view the manufacturers’ and buyers’ drivers have significant influence on the competitiveness. Therefore, stakeholders need to take proper action to reduce the barriers and increase the drivers, as the drivers have positive influence to improve competitiveness.

This study has both theoretical and practical contributions. This study represents an important contribution to the theory by integrating two theoretical perceptions to identify factors of the RMG industry’s SC that affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. This research study contributes to the understanding of both external and internal stakeholders of national and international perspectives in the RMG (textile and clothing) business. It combines the insights of stakeholder and resource dependence theories along with the concept of the SC in improving effectiveness. In a practical sense, this study certainly contributes to the Bangladeshi RMG industry. In accordance with the desire of the RMG manufacturers, the research has shown that some influential constructs of the RMG industry’s SC affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. The outcome of the study is useful for various stakeholders of the Bangladeshi RMG industry sector ranging from the government to various private organizations. The applications of this study are extendable through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

Madan Mohanka set up Tega Industries Ltd in 1976 to manufacture abrasion-resistant rubber mill lining products used in the mining and mineral processing industries. In 2006, as part of its inorganic expansion strategy, Tega bought a mill-liner company in South Africa. Buoyed by this growth, two acquisitions were made in Australia and Chile in the year 2011. However, post-acquisition, several managerial, legal and commercial problems crept up in its manufacturing facilities in Chile, leading to financial downturn in Tega's fortunes in 2016 and compelling it to either plan a revival or divest its interest in its Chilean Plant.

As the Arab/Muslim-Israeli animosity case is attracting international attention, citizens of non-Arab and non-Muslim countries around the world, referred to as third-country nationals (TCNs), are increasingly joining the boycott against Israel. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of empathy for the citizens of the countries offended by Israel, namely Palestine and Lebanon, as a potential factor affecting TCNs decision to boycott Israeli products.

In total, 20 in-depth interviews were conducted with non-Arab, non-Muslim, and non-Israeli informants from different national and religious backgrounds, supported by secondary data sources. The qualitative grounded theory approach was employed to analyse data in order to answer the research questions.

TCNs decision to boycott Israeli products is affected by their empathic concern for the citizens of Palestine and Lebanon rather than by animosity towards Israel. Such concern is evoked by their awareness of the animosity case and further strengthened by their self-transcendence/universalism values and interaction with the case which activate their altruism towards the citizens of the offended countries, and consequently motivates them to relieve or reduce the suffering of these citizens by avoiding Israeli products. Greater emphasis is given to the Arab/Muslim-Israeli animosity case as a result of the greater empathic emotional impact it generates compared to other cases.

This is an original attempt to distinguish empathy from animosity as a factor which can affect TCNs decision to buy from a country engaged in hostile actions against another country other than their own. As the boycott campaign against the country under examination is growing internationally, this study can help international marketers in setting strategies to either exploit or combat the boycott campaign.

This study examines whether Shari’ah approved companies with majority Muslim directors adopt better corporate governance (CG) than non‐Shari’ah approved companies with majority non‐Muslim directors and whether the performance of the former is better than that of the latter. The objective of this study is to determine whether religious factor has an influence in adopting corporate governance mechanisms and in performance. Performance of the companies is measured in relation to three perspectives, namely, Shari’ah compliance, environmental performance, and social performance. This study used secondary data and the leading 50 firms were selected from each group based on their market capitalization for the year 2002. The proxies for good corporate governance are CEO non‐duality, the proportion of non‐executive directors on the board, and the proportion of independent non‐executive directors on the board. The proxies used to measure Shari’ah compliance are the ratio of prohibited income to total income and the ratio of prohibited expenses to total expenses. The variables used to measure the environmental and social performance are certification of ISO 14001 and OHsas 18001, respectively. The results generally showed that there is little significant difference between the CG and performance of Shari’ah approved companies with majority Muslim directors and non‐Shari’ah approved companies with majority non‐Muslim directors, although the former is marginally better for both, in a few instances.