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This study examines how chatbots could improve the client experience in the banking sector. Due to their quick and effective customer service, chatbots are becoming more and more popular, but it is still unknown whether they can improve the customer experience. In order to gather data from a simple random sample of Palestinian banking clients in the Gaza Strip, a survey was conducted utilizing the explanatory technique. To test hypotheses, data collected from 337 individuals was evaluated using simple regression analysis. According to the results, chatbots may enhance the customer experience by offering 24/7 availability, prompt support, and customized replies. However, issues with data privacy, lack of human interaction, and chatbot accuracy were also noted. The study comes to the conclusion that chatbots may be an effective tool for increasing customer experience in the banking sector, but their design, deployment, and interaction with current customer service channels must be carefully considered. This study significantly adds to the body of knowledge on chatbots and their potential influence on customer experience. The study offers useful insights into the particular difficulties and potential of employing chatbots in a highly regulated and customer-focused industry by concentrating exclusively on the banking sector. The results show that chatbot implementation in banking needs to be approached thoughtfully and strategically to maximize their potential for improving customer experience while limiting any possible downsides.

This study aims to analyze the challenges facing five Palestinian clusters and to understand their dynamics and level of development. Using multiple sources of evidence, the research questions are answered using semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. Content analysis was used to analyze the data obtained. The five clusters in Palestine are located in a complex environment that imposes a mix of challenges that adversely affect their performance. The challenges facing Palestinian clusters are different in terms of their degree of complexity. The common challenges facing the Palestinian clusters are the fundamental lack of innovative stimulation policies or incentives in the Palestinian ecosystem, lack of trust, unfair competition, limited access to finance, lack of access to promising markets, and the limited collaboration between different parties. More focused policies are suggested to the Palestinian authorities.

This chapter attempts to uncover the decision code of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, based on 12 decisions he made concerning the Middle East during his third term as president, from 2012 until October 2015.

The study was carried out to understand Putin’s line of thought and decision-making, in light of Putin’s increasing importance throughout the last decade, globally and in the Middle East, in particular. After understanding the decision calculus of Putin, it might also be possible to predict his future decisions concerning the region.

Decision rules can be inferred by analyzing a set of decisions. Analysis of such decisions is made in this chapter using the Applied Decision Analysis (ADA) method that uncovers historic decisions, and aims to peer into the mind of the decision-maker.

The results show the main decision rule for each of Putin’s decisions. The work proves that when it comes to foreign issues, the decision code which leads Putin in his decisions is rational. The results also reveal Putin’s strong desire to promote Russia and himself, while using holistic, maximizing, and compensatory processing, as long as his political survival is not compromised.

Purpose – This chapter explores the m+eaning and significance of family business social responsibilities (FBSRs) using a metasystem approach, placing emphasis on the role of the family.

Design/Methodology/Approach – We employ a revelatory case study to investigate the complexity of family business (corporate) social responsibility. The main case, a German shoe retailer, is supplemented by other case illustrations that provide additional insights into FBSR.

Findings – To fully understand social responsibility in a family firm context, we need to include social initiatives that go beyond the actual family business as a unit. This FBSR connects family members outside and inside the business and across generations. As FBSR is formed through individual and family-level values, its character is idiosyncratic and contrasts the often standardized approaches in widely held firms.

Practical Implication – Family businesses need to go beyond the business as such when considering their engagement in social responsibility. Family ownership implies that all social initiatives conducted by family members, regardless if they are involved in the firm or not, are connected. This includes a shared responsibility for what family members do at present and have done in the past.

Purpose – European studies of alternative food networks have covered primarily rural or periurban initiatives that connect producers and consumers directly. For the most part, those studies overlook nonprofit urban community initiatives. This chapter begins to address the gap by presenting preliminary findings from a study that examines the development of community food initiatives that sell green produce in London.

Design/methodology/approach – The first part of the chapter draws on content analysis of literature produced by 15 initiatives and presents a brief overview. The second part presents case study analysis of the organizational, physical, and social context of two of the initiatives.

Findings – The findings indicate that many urban green produce initiatives have an explicit emphasis on the demand side of the producer–consumer connection. Those that emphasize sustainably produced food and fair trade may have difficulty drawing low-income customers, even if located in areas with high levels of deprivation. Initiatives oriented toward basic food access rather than sustainability are expanding their scope to include more “local” food.

Originality/value – Although this study does not represent urban green produce initiatives throughout England or beyond, it provides some examples of how such initiatives can develop and the extent to which they claim social justice and environmental considerations in their efforts. This study is a step toward empirical examination of nonprofit urban green produce initiatives, and contributes to a broader, more inclusive conceptualization of alternative food networks.

This study investigated the association between structural conditions and social incentives and their effect on the ethnic composition of mobile social networks. Regarding structural conditions, we examined the role of the ethnic group’s size, socioeconomic status, and heterogeneity of the city in which the business was located. Regarding social incentives, we investigated the social diversification hypothesis, which expects that residentially and socially segregated minority groups will take advantage of mobile communications to diversify their mobile communication ties with outgroup members.

Two data sets were used. The first was the aggregation of the mobile communication patterns of business customers as measured by one of Israel’s mobile phone operators in April 2010. The database included 9,099 call data records. The second was a data set of the social characteristics of 103 Israeli cities from the Israeli Bureau of Statistics. Both data sets were merged according to the place of residence of each customer.

Israeli Arab businesses in homogeneous Jewish and mixed cities operate in an environment with more structural opportunities to create outgroup ethnic ties than Arab businesses in homogeneous Arab cities. Jewish businesses in ethnically mixed cities have more outgroup mobile ties than comparable businesses in homogenous Jewish cities.

We expand previous models and suggest a structural diversification approach in which ethnic mobile social networks vary across homogeneous and ethnically mixed cities. These variations result in different social incentives as the diversification approach assumed, as well as different structural conditions, as the structural approach indicates.

The potential advantage of extreme value theory in modeling management phenomena is the central theme of this paper. The statistics of extremes have played only a very limited role in management studies despite the disproportionate emphasis on unusual events in the world of managers. An overview of this theory and related statistical models is presented, and illustrative empirical examples provided.

Emotions are recognised as central to all aspects of human experience. Yet, in some cultures and across various professional domains, there is a tendency to suppress emotions and limit their perceived significance. The development of research in neuroscience has allowed for a better understanding of how different parts of the brain interact and function, connecting emotions and cognition. However, despite the advancement in neuroscience, many leaders continue to embrace data-driven decision making, distancing the role of emotions in these critical processes.

This study seeks to better understand how school leaders define leadership and to reflect on the role of emotions and emotion management in two collectivist transitional societies: Liberia and Palestinian Arabs in Israel. A total of 14 school principals (seven from each country) were interviewed for this study. A Restorative Practices framework, combining a focus on cognitive (rational) and emotional (affective) components was used to analyse the data.

The results indicate that a high level of emotional involvement when discussing decisions related to individual students and an effort to suppress emotions when discussing professional decisions related to teachers or the institution. Differences were found in the way emotions were handled in relation to school level (elementary vs. high school), gender, stakeholder (students, teachers) and the principal’s development stage (experience). The Liberian participants perceived a conflict between western culture and the local culture with regard to newly implemented educational policies.

This paper uses the case of Islamic banking in Amman, Jordan, to assess the wide moral range of expectations, levels of satisfaction, and means of evaluating banks’ “Islamicness.”

The information is gathered from interviews conducted during over 21 months of ethnographic research and one month in participant observation and research access as an intern at the Middle East Islamic Bank (MEIB) in Amman, Jordan.

I found three modes for evaluating “Islamicness” when actors decide whether or not to become customers of Islamic banks.

These modes demonstrate that Islamic banking is no longer the cultural protectionism of a relatively homogeneous community of Muslims. Rather it is a fraught and tense field for actors’ debates about types of moralities in the markets and modes of moral assessments of “Islamicness.”

The amplification of the individual and individual choice and authority in the moral assessments of Islamic banking may ultimately serve to unseat prior dichotomous theoretical framings of morality’s presence or absence as “Islamic” or “not Islamic” and “good” and “bad.” By unleashing to individuals the construction of morality in the markets, moral rights and wrongs, and moral evaluations, fragmentation of moral consensus in market practices will occur.

In this study, the authors develop in-depth understanding of how refugee entrepreneurs navigate institutional voids in market participation in Malaysia. The authors employ an inductive research design consistent with recent research investigating adversity and disadvantaged entrepreneurship. The findings of this study reveal that refugees adopted different, gendered approaches to navigate institutional voids in market participation. The women refugees in this study anchored towards safety by leveraging legitimacy of market intermediaries (e.g. social ventures and refugee support organisations) to gain protection for entrepreneurial activities and access markets while conducting their labour at home. The men refugees in this study engaged in harbouring – concealing entrepreneurial activities in the local community or under others’ identities to protect income-generating opportunities. The findings of this study thus provide nuance and demonstrate plurality in how refugee entrepreneurs navigate institutional voids, contributing towards more holistic understanding of refugee entrepreneurship, offering insights for development agencies, policy-makers, and other institutions on how to support refugees’ entrepreneurial activities.