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Encouraging innovation in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is one of the government's main policy initiatives at the local, regional, and national levels in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This study's primary purpose is to explore the innovation characteristics, challenges, and factors influencing innovation in the Emirati female-owned nascent, start-up, and established SMEs. A semi-structured interview method was used to explore ten Emirati female entrepreneurs' experiences on innovation and adoption intent, and the data were analyzed using NVIVO software. The analysis reveals that respondents believed in a strong vision, education, and risk-taking attitude as an innovative entrepreneur's essential characteristics. Furthermore, new technology adoption, networking, implementation of new or improved products, processes, marketing, and organizational innovation are considered essential to help entrepreneurs commercialize their innovative business idea. This study's findings will help policymakers and business women's councils identify the specific inhibitors and facilitators linked to innovation. The results will help develop various effective policies to promote innovation among Emirati women-owned SMEs.

The attempt to establish a common European framework for core platforms' duties and responsibilities toward other actors in the digital environment is at the core of the recent scholarly debate surrounding the Digital Markets Act (DMA) proposal. In particular, the everlasting juxtaposition between the “data power” – as emerging from recent cases (Section 2) – that dominant tech companies enjoy and the concept of consumer sovereignty (Section 3) lies at the core of the proposal's attempt to identify digital core platforms as market gatekeepers. Accordingly, this chapter critically investigates the divide between power imbalance and consumer sovereignty in light of the architecture designed by the DMA, with a specific focus on its effectiveness in identifying gatekeepers' power drivers (Section 4). After highlighting the main critical aspects of the pertinent rules, opportunities for fruitful developments are then identified through the reframing of some of the notions considered in the proposal, and namely the role of “lock-in” effects and “data accumulation” (Section 5). Lastly, this chapter suggests that the DMA advancements – while desirable – are bound to be fragmentary in the absence of a wider appraisal of the nature of data power imbalance dynamics in the modern digital markets (Section 6).

Management thinking has seen organisations group product development activities in a number of ways in the quest to improve performance. The implementation of multi‐disciplinary teams has been recognised as a means of rapidly improving the way product development activities are managed. However, such an approach is not without its ills. Moreover, Henderson's research (Henderson, R., “Managing innovation in the information age”, Harvard Business Review, January, 1994, Reprint no. 94105) indicates that what governs product development success is the ability of the company to overcome the boundaries of any organisational grouping, rather than the type of organisation structure adopted. This research seeks to corroborate Henderson's propositions in a number of different industrial settings. Social network analysis helped embody the theory into a specification for a model to visualise and manipulate the informal organisation and the on‐going research activities further developed the specification into a working model that has been trialed in a number of different industrial settings. This paper sets the research context and presents the results thus far, both in the context of knowledge from academic research and practical application of the model. The working model has been able to manipulate the informal organisation by enabling visualisation of “core knowledge communities”, generating discussion, and supplying focus for individuals and teams to manage relationships more effectively and hence improve product development performance. Implications for further use of the model are reported, together with its potential for improving performance in organisational areas external to product development.

This study aims to investigate how e-health system characteristics (information quality, system quality, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness) contribute to the enhancement of medical staff performance, patient care, and doctor–patient relationships at UNRWA-Gaza healthcare centers. It aims at testing an integrative single model comprising Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), D&M model and e-health system utilization.

This study followed the quantitative methodology and the deductive research approach. Data were collected from 241 medical staff who use the system employed in 19 different healthcare centers across the Gaza Strip. Partial least square/structural equation modeling technique was used to analyze the collected data and to test study hypotheses.

Study concluded that information quality of the adopted Health Information System (HIS) has both direct and indirect positive impact on staff performance, only direct positive impact on patient care and only positive indirect impact on doctor–patient relationship. System quality, on the other hand, was found to have negative direct impact and positive indirect impact on staff performance and has both direct and indirect positive impact on both doctor-patient relationship and patient care.

Noteworthy that HIS has availability, speed and error detection and error prevention issues. It is recommended that these shortfalls be addressed together with improving user perception towards ease of use and usefulness of the system.

Management should also work to raise confidence in its medical staff to improve the effect of HIS on medical performance and patient care. It is also recommended that UNRWA should implement crowed management techniques such as queuing systems and on-phone booking to minimize patient waiting time.

The importance of the study stems from its context being conducted in a developing region (Gaza Strip-Palestine) which has a fragile economic, political and social environment with many other complexities. It is also conducted at United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) healthcare centers, which provide medical services to Palestinian refugees. In addition, this study is among the few studies that address the impact of individual e-health success factors on both doctor-patient relationship and patient care constructs. Most previous studies concentrated on the impact of health system adoption as a whole on these two subject variables and one can hardly ever stop at studies that address effect of individual success factors on them. It also integrated both D&M system success model and TAM model with some additional amendments creating and tested a new model.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the differences and similarities that arise between manufacturing and service firms with regard to the impact of business model objectives on marketing innovation activities.

This study focuses on business model objectives and marketing innovations activities. As described by Oslo Manual, marketing innovations involve changes in product design, promotion, placement and pricing. Relationships between business model objectives and marketing innovations are based on the analysis of 9,525 firms, 5,488 of which are manufacturing companies and 4,037 of which are service companies.

Findings reveal distinctive results in the adoption of marketing innovation, depending on the business model objectives being pursued and the type of companies (manufacture or service) considered.

This research goes further than prior studies by identifying more precisely the particularities that differentiate the manufacturing and service sectors.

Firm’s age and size are not significant restrictions to introduce new marketing innovations in manufacturing or service sectors. In contrast, the business model objective to enter a new market is a significant driver of marketing innovations in most cases.

The focus on business model objectives and their impact on marketing innovations is novel. In addition, this study focuses on a large-scale sample that allows us to compare differences between manufacturing and service companies.

This chapter presents a summary of existent evidence regarding the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Minority Ethnic Groups (MEGs) in the United Kingdom Compared to White British, MEGs have historically experienced lower levels of health and socioeconomic outcomes and the COVID-19 crisis seems to have widened these inequalities. In particular, evidence gathered between 2020 and early 2021 suggests that MEGs, and especially MEGs women, experienced a substantive deterioration in mental health. Furthermore, Black and South Asian groups were more likely to contract the infection and die than any other ethnic group. Access to preventative services and healthcare, plus residential and employment segregation seem to be important factors in explaining mortality rates due to COVID-19. Finally, data released by NHS on vaccinations (until August 2021) show that Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities are lagging behind the rest, with a very low proportion of these groups receiving the first dose. Getting everyone vaccinated should be a priority for the Government in order to reduce the impact of COVID-19 and avoid new outbreaks. The evidence collected and summarised in this chapter calls for further attention on, and action to mitigate, the widening gaps in health and socioeconomic attainments across ethnic groups.

Existing descriptions of trust in health care largely assume a straightforward association between a patient’s relationship with a regular provider and his or her trust in health care. I extend status characteristics theory (SCT) and social identity theory (SIT) to suggest greater variability in this association by investigating the role of social differences between patients and their regular providers. Whereas the SIT extension predicts lower trust in dissimilar than similar dyads, the predictions from the SCT extension depend on status in dissimilar dyads. Further, research examining how social differences in patient–provider dyads shape trust largely emphasizes racial differences, but the theories implicate gender differences too.

I analyze a longitudinal dataset of patient–provider dyads offering a conservative test of the extensions.

Results generally support predictions from the SCT extension. Specifically, patients’ status based on differences in either race or gender: (1) is inversely related to their trust in health care and (2) influences the resiliency of their trust, whereby the degree health care met prior expectations matters less (more) for the trust of low (high) status patients than equal status patients.

When patients and providers differ on both race and gender, findings sometimes depart from predictions. This indicates differences in two social categories is a unique situation where the contributions of each category are distinct from that of the other.

This research extends SCT to explain greater variability in the connection between patient–provider dyads and trust in health care, while also showing how gender compares to race.