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The purpose of this paper is to identify the potential business opportunities for Middle Eastern entrepreneurs by understanding the Malaysian Muslim’s ways of experiencing and realising value of products originating from Middle Eastern countries.

Phenomenography approach has been used to identify the variations among the Muslim consumers’ ways of experiencing Middle Eastern products.

The authors reported that Muslim consumers considered the country of origin as an important cue that affects their knowing, understanding, judging and acting on products originating from Middle Eastern countries.

Understanding developed from the Malaysian Muslim consumers enabled authors to suggest business opportunities for Middle Eastern entrepreneurs to enter and expand their operations in other leading Islamic countries.

Organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) entails employees’ voluntary commitment to an organisation beyond their contractual responsibilities and has been found to be contributing to an organisation’s success. While the roles of gender and OCB exhibited by employees (as internal stakeholders) are documented, the role of gender in OCB by customers (as external stakeholders) of an organisation, especially within the context of emerging markets, is not found, therefore necessitating further studies. This research aims at bridging this research gap.

In total, 203 male and 194 female customers representing the young working professionals segment rated their level of satisfaction with the relationship that they had with their banking website. They also indicated their willingness to participate in different dimensions of OCB.

Generally, both men and women, who are satisfied with the relationship that they have with the organisation, indicated their willingness to contribute to the organisation by displaying OCB. Contrary to past studies, where women at workplace were reported to be more likely to participate in OCB, the findings from the customer’s perspective revealed that men are more likely to engage in OCB.

The results indicated that OCB is not limited to internal customers (employees) but could also be expanded to external customers. The stereotypes causing females to be perceived as stronger OCB contributors may not remain constant in all types of circumstances.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this appears to be the first study to establish the gender role in OCB from the customer’s perspective in the context of an emerging market.

Bank customers’ perceptions of service quality and service image of Islamic banks may differ from those of conventional banks. The purpose of this paper is to examine the differing perceptions of customers of Islamic and conventional banking systems in an emerging market, which has rarely been addressed and adds to the body of knowledge on this topic. This study also re-examines the SERVQUAL model of customer banking services to measure their impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The study uses responses from a randomly drawn sample of 229 customers from conventional banks and 225 customers from Islamic banks operating in Bangladesh using a structured questionnaire. SPSS and structural equation modeling techniques were employed as statistical tools for data analysis.

Overall, the examined service quality dimensions wield varying effects on client satisfaction mediated through the perceived image of banking services. Islamic bank customers’ perceptions of the level of reliability, responsiveness, security and reputation were significantly higher than those of conventional banks.

This study enhances our understanding of how Islamic banking practices differ from those of conventional banking in terms of service quality and image-related factors. More specifically, the findings of this research explain consumers’ perceived assessment of satisfaction and loyalty in a comparative research setting.

No prior studies have addressed the impact of the individual service quality dimensions on image factors in the context of conventional and Islamic banking in an emerging market, Bangladesh.

This study aims to examine the effect of gender perspectives in organizational leadership and culture on organizational innovations within the oil and gas industry in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The study examined research in the area of organizational innovation and proposed a framework to help practitioners to create an environment that promotes and strengthens innovation thinking at an institutional level.

Based on the literature, a framework of organizational innovation was developed with gender as a control factor. It shows the mediating effect of employee performance management on the independent variables, organizational leadership and culture.

The oil and gas industry in the UAE should be a suitable environment for organizational innovation. Gender differences justify further investigation, especially the implications for female leaders, such as promotion and career advancement.

The results of this study will provide practical insights to executives, strategy-makers and practitioners and enable them to increase innovation among individuals and teams.

This study provides a comprehensive framework to assist practitioners and academics to understand the correlation of organizational innovation in the oil and gas industry.

This paper sets out to investigate the link between market orientation and manufacturing performance for small and medium enterprises in India.

The paper collected the data for this research through intensive surveys of the CEOs or top managers of small and medium‐sized enterprises in India. The paper utilized scales, well established in literature, and revalidated them for the Indian context. It also utilized confirmatory factor analysis for scale validation, and hierarchical regression analysis for testing the hypotheses.

This study found a positive link between two sub‐dimensions of market orientation – customer orientation and inter‐functional coordination – and manufacturing performance. Competitor orientation, however, did not have a positive impact on manufacturing performance. Further, the paper found that firm resources and competitive intensity moderate the relationship between some of the sub‐dimensions of market orientation and firm performance.

This study is particularly relevant for personnel involved in the manufacturing functions as it studies the effect of market orientation on manufacturing performance. It is high time that firms with manufacturing focus realize the value of market forces and revamp various production processes to be more responsive to market needs and demands.

This research looks at manufacturing performance, rather than a firm's financial performance, and thereby helps in understanding the intervening processes that potentially lead to superior firm performance. It also identifies some important contingency factors, enriching the literature on market orientation. Finally, the empirical context of this research is quite novel and useful for European and other foreign firms trying to operate in emerging economies such as India.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of board characteristics (board size, board independence and duality) on the performance of takaful insurance providers with distinguishable muamalah contracts (wakalah and hybrid) moderated by ownership concentration.

The sample consists of 30 takaful insurances. The authors divided it into two subsamples: 18 insurance companies using wakalah contracts provided by Southeast Asia and 12 insurance companies using hybrid contracts provided by the Gulf Cooperation Council over the period 2010–2020. For data analysis, the authors used the partial least squares path modeling method.

The results show that the larger the board of directors and the higher the number of independent directors, the greater the takaful performance in both the wakalah and hybrid subsamples. Nondual functions improve the takaful performance in both the wakalah and hybrid subsamples. The results also reveal that a highly concentrated ownership structure positively (negatively) moderates the relationship between board size and takaful performance in the wakalah (hybrid) subsamples. Moreover, highly concentrated ownership insignificantly (negatively) moderates the relationship between independent directors and takaful’s performance in the hybrid (wakalah) subsample. Furthermore, a highly concentrated ownership structure insignificantly (negatively) moderates the relationship between the nondual structure and takaful performance in the wakalah (hybrid) subsample.

This study contributes to the understanding of the moderating role of a highly concentrated ownership structure between the characteristics of the board of directors and the performance of takaful insurance, which applies wakalah and hybrid contracts. In addition, this study contributes to takaful insurance by determining the appropriate board characteristics that must be adopted to achieve oversight and improve performance. Regulators should appreciate this contribution to the formulation of suitable approaches for efficiently supervising takaful insurance activities.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of the relationship between firm-level governance mechanisms and firm performance using a contingency framework. The contingency framework is based on an integration of agency theory, stewardship theory, resource dependence theory and stakeholder theory of firm governance.

The authors test the arguments on a sample of all the listed firms on the New Zealand Stock Exchange between 2004 and 2007. Given the longitudinal nature of the data, the authors employ random effects, generalized least square estimation to run the regression models.

The authors find that the presence of internal directors, CEO duality, board size and presence of professional directors leads to superior firm performance. A lack of ownership concentration leads to agency problems resulting in inferior performance. However, the positive effect of board independence on firm performance reduces in firms that have a high-ownership concentration. Additionally, a high-ownership concentration attenuates the positive effects of board size and board competence.

This study helps reconcile some of the conflicting findings on firm governance-performance relationship. As the findings suggest, the effectiveness of a particular governance mechanism (such as board members) may depend on the presence or absence of another governance mechanism (such as ownership concentration). The integrative, multi-theoretic model that the authors propose in this paper is a unique contribution to the governance literature.

This paper aims to highlight an Indian festival’s contribution to cultural and economic well-being.

This study utilizes a qualitative approach to analyze the impacts of Ganesh Chaturthi festival, which is annually celebrated over a period of two weeks across the nation.

The study shows that the Ganesh Chaturthi festival fosters national cohesiveness, promotes communal harmony, preserves family values, helps maintain national identity, revitalizes the economy and fosters cultural tourism.

This paper provides useful insights for policy makers, local government, businesses and community leaders for deriving optimal benefits from the annual Ganapati festival.

The Indian economy is developing very rapidly, and yet there is limited published literature available on the contribution of festivals to these developments.

The purpose of this paper is to review the digital piracy literature and present the positive impacts of digital piracy and its benefit to businesses. A great deal of the literature discusses the consequences of digital piracy, but, in most cases, the focus is on the negative consequences.

The authors draw on both the theoretical and empirical academic literature on digital piracy so as to analyze the ways in which digital piracy positively contributes to digital businesses.

The paper provides information on the positive consequences of digital piracy and demonstrates that the benefits include product diffusion, network externality, innovation, cost reduction, an effective promotional and publicity vehicle, and technology standardization.

This paper investigates potential benefits of digital piracy and provides insights which may offer a fuller picture of the consequences of digital piracy.