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It has been argued in the literature that quality assurance is a relative concept. In view of the new challenges (and opportunities) created by e-learning institutions in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, this paper aims to explore the dimensions of quality assurance in e-learning and test the psychometric properties of the underlying dimensions.

A sequential mixed methods approach was applied in this study. In the qualitative phase, items were generated using the inductive and deductive approaches. This was then followed by the quantitative phase where data was collected from 275 senior academics, scholars and administrators associated with e-learning institutions in Kuwait, UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The findings of this study revealed that e-learning quality assurance is a multidimensional construct. The dimensions of accreditation, assessment, accountability and benchmarking were identified. Further, the model demonstrated adequacy in its validity and reliability.

In the light of proliferation of e-learning courses in GCC countries, the results of this are invaluable to enable administrators and instructors to design strategy and foster innovation in the domain of quality assurance. E-learning institutions operating in a competitive environment have to design and implement an effective strategy to achieve innovation, uniqueness and diversity in the educational sector of their countries.

This paper has successfully validated an e-learning quality assurance questionnaire, which can be used effectively for evaluating e-learning programmes.

A formidable body of literature has been built up in recent decades suggesting that market orientation helps firms attain their strategic objectives in a dynamic environment. The present study tests market orientation of bank managers operating in Brunei, a small South‐East Asian country endowed with buoyant oil and gas reserves, seeking to carve out a pivotal role for itself in the banking and financial services sector of the region. Four key areas, referred to as variables, in the decision making process have been identified and used to analyse the form of market orientation adopted by bank managers in Brunei. These variables pertain to focus on customers, competition, environmental scanning, and implementation of strategic decisions. Results suggest that the managers sampled for this study are fragmented in terms of market orientation used.

This paper examined the relationships between national culture and strategic behavior in the banking industry in Jordan and U.S. The study first developed a strategic posture and secondly a cultural profile for the top management of the research domain. The strategic posture suggested the readiness for strategic response from managers. The degree of readiness was correlated with the constructed cultural profile of the managers and financial performance of the banks. The study found significant relationships between certain national cultural strategic characteristics, (risk propensity, time orientation, and openness to change, uncertainty avoidance and managerial perception of control over the environment) strategic behavior and financial performance.

The paper aims to examine significant developments in the institutional framework for dispute resolution in the Islamic finance industry in Malaysia. Malaysia, as part of its efforts to consolidate its enviable Islamic finance industry, has strengthened its institutional framework for dispute resolution.

Data for this study were collected from both primary and secondary legal sources. Through a conceptual legal analysis, the institutional frameworks of dispute resolution in the Malaysia’s Islamic finance industry are studied.

The study finds that Malaysia is far ahead of other jurisdictions by a significant margin in spearheading reforms in the emerging global Islamic finance industry. The dispute resolution framework has been largely affected by the recent reforms.

Other jurisdictions may borrow a leaf from Malaysia’s initiative in providing a robust legal framework for dispute management in the Islamic finance industry.

Apart from adopting Malaysia’s framework and possibly adapting it to suit their specific local variations, other jurisdictions may also encourage Islamic financial institutions to incorporate effective dispute resolution processes in Islamic finance contracts.

This study critically discussed most recent developments in the institutional framework on dispute resolution in the Islamic finance industry in Malaysia.

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted work, leading to the adoption of remote work practices and changes in power dynamics and trust. Although managing remote work has received much attention, the impact of the quality of work life on the effectiveness of hybrid workplaces has been less studied. This study aims to examine the relationship between quality of work life and psychological capital among organizational leaders using an artificial neural network (ANN) model.

This study used a cross-sectional quantitative methodology. A structured questionnaire was used to collect 268 responses from organizational leaders using the convenience sampling method. The data collected were analyzed using the ANN model in the Python interface.

The ANN model training and testing revealed that there is a positive relationship between the quality of work life and psychological capital among organizational leaders. The R-squared values for hope, efficacy, resilience and optimism were 85.19%, 82.08%, 78.55% and 81.08%, respectively, in the training set, and 81.30%, 78.95%, 76.52% and 71.41% in the testing set.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous research in the context of studying the relationship between quality of work life and psychological capital among organizational leaders using the machine learning approach – ANN model.

The objective of this chapter is to study the symmetric and asymmetric impact of macroeconomic variables on the Indian stock prices (SPs) of the Bombay Stock Exchange index. This chapter further investigates whether the asymmetric impact of macroeconomic variables on SP is due to the impact of any tail events like the global financial recession. An autoregressive distribution lag and non-autoregressive distribution lag approach is used for the full sample covering the period from January 2000 to June 2019 and later this sample is further subdivided into before and after the crisis period to study the variations in result. The findings show that macroeconomic variables and SP have a symmetric relation in the long run whereas an asymmetric relationship in the short run when the whole sample is analyzed. However when data are segregated into “before and after” crisis period this relationship turns to be asymmetric in long run too, meaning that in the long run, the negative and positive changes in a macroeconomic variable do not affect SPs similarly.

The explosion of social media use such as Facebook among higher education students is deemed to have great potential in widely disseminating environmental sustainability awareness. The paper aims to capture, summarise, synthesise and comment on the role of social media to garner interest of students and staff on environmental sustainability issues.

Systematic literature review technique is adopted, and three selected online databases were searched for relevant papers for review. Specific data were extracted from each paper, and the discussion section was based on the developed research questions.

Higher education needs to fully leverage the ubiquity of social media to extend how environmental sustainability is viewed by the students and staff. Sustainability practices conducted at the university level such as recycling, reduction of electricity and water consumptions and paper reduction in classroom and used to engage students on environmental matters. For staff, social media can be leveraged as to convey the university policy and assist in their quest to become full-fledged green universities.

Some of the limitations of this research include the lack of keyword search using synonyms or related terms equivalent to the term “awareness”, lack of forward and backward searches, and the papers were searched until end of 2013 only. Future research needs to take advantage of the current limitations to investigate this topic and be empirically supported by theories using quantitative, qualitative or mixed-method-based research. Future studies could also develop relevant frameworks to propose an effective use of social media for creating environmental sustainability awareness in higher education.

Propagations of environmental sustainability awareness in higher education would be more effective with the use of social media.

In principle, the increase of environmental awareness level would increase the students’ good behavioural conduct on environmental sustainability.

While the broad topic of environmental sustainability in higher education is widely discussed, the role of social media in shaping environmental sustainability awareness is still under researched. This situation provides a significant potential for exploration by sustainability researchers to craft their investigation on the effective role of social media in creating environmental awareness in higher education.

One of the central themes of education for all (EFA) for the last two decades has been empowerment through access to education. The history of EFA, however, can at best be termed as checkered. EFA has been relatively successful in drawing world attention and improving access to education. However, the question whether world attention and improved access has resulted in empowerment of people in the developing world still remains unanswered.

In this paper we argue that the limited success of EFA can best be examined and analyzed by paying close attention to tension between demands of the global capital and labor market place and nationalist agendas of the developing (post-colonial) state. These tensions affect the EFA agenda in the developing countries in complex ways.

Taking empirical-educational data from Pakistan we demonstrate that demands of the global capital and the labor market had resulted in an increased attention on institutions and programs of study that cater to the needs of the global capital and labor pool. Access to these institutions is limited to certain strata of the society. On the other hand the mass education program in Pakistan is largely defined by the nationalistic agenda of the post-colonial undemocratic state. A net impact of the interplay of these global and national dynamics is that not only the EFA's aim of mass education is hampered but also more importantly education in its present state is not empowering the recipients.