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Informed by the resource-based and resource-advantage theories, this study, a comparative study, aims to examine the core dimensions of nation brands – culture, tourism, exports, foreign direct investment, migration and governance – from the company-based brand equity perspective in a sample of 48 countries clustered into three groups (strong, moderate and weak nation brands) from 2011 to 2019 to identify the most critical predictors of nation brand strength in each cluster.

A clustering technique was applied to the modified Country Brand Index to cluster the included countries into strong, moderate and weak nation brands. The authors were then able to analyze each cluster in an effort to explore the relative importance of the predictor variables and determine if that importance varied across the clusters.

This approach revealed novel findings of great importance to policymakers and academics. The results indicate the resources that contribute the most to nation brand equity in each cluster. Such information can guide policymakers in effectively leveraging these strategic resources. First, the cultural dimension was a more critical predictor concerning countries with moderate and weak nation brands than countries with strong brands. Second, tourism exhibited the highest predictive importance concerning all the clusters. For academics, these findings help foster a better understanding of the determinants of nation brand strength, as aligned with the resource-based and resource-advantage theories.

The findings of this study contribute to the literature concerning nation brand management, particularly the stream related to nation brand equity monetization.

This study aims to examine the relationship between global renewable energy consumption and economic growth in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries from 2001 to 2019.

This paper used a panel regression model to study the six GCC countries over the period from 2001 to 2019.

As expected, the findings indicated a significant and negative relationship between global renewable energy consumption and GCC economic growth. Additionally, there was a positive and significant relationship between GCC economic growth and the control variables, specifically labor, capital, CO₂ emissions and non-renewable energy production.

The results are of great importance to policymakers in GCC oil-exporting countries, as expected growth in renewable energy consumption will lower their economic growth in the future. Hence, they should first diversify their economy and lower their dependence on oil. Second, these countries can invest in solar energy through international joint ventures, especially with North African countries in close proximity to Europe, to become leaders in solar energy production.

How global energy consumption is related to GCC countries’ economic growth remains unclear, not only in GCC countries but also in many oil-exporting countries around the world, so future studies are needed. Furthermore, GCC governments will be able to create appropriate policies for the green economy and achieve their objectives if they have a comprehensive understanding of how global growth in renewable energy demand affects GCC economies.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the role of the strategy tripod premises, mediated by future foresight and its effect on merger effectiveness in the higher education industry.

A quantitative survey method was implemented, with the data provided by senior managers of 14 universities that went through a merger from the years 2013–2016. The proposed model was tested using partial least squares (PLS) of structural equation modeling (SEM).

The results indicate that government support, competitive intensity and knowledge creation capability relate positivity to merger effectiveness, and these relationships are mediated by future foresight competence.

The study provides a better understanding of merger effectiveness in the higher education industry by identifying the role of future foresight competence in the application of strategy tripod and its contribution on merger effectiveness. Results indicate that future foresight competence contributes to the merger effectiveness and enables the effective implementation of the strategy tripod dimensions in higher education mergers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the global financial crisis (GFC) on Morocco’s export performance employing a gravity model framework.

The authors investigate trade flows between Morocco and its 18 major trading partners from 2001 to 2015. The authors employ a trade gravity model using a first-order Taylor approximation of multilateral resistance terms and estimate by OLS and PPML.

Morocco’s export performance was affected by the GFC. The authors find evidence that the fall in aggregate demand from Morocco’s trading partners, particularly in Europe, led to a fall in its exports. The authors also find that Morocco’s exports are positively correlated with the market size of its partner but negatively associated with distance.

This study contributes to the literature in two distinct ways. First, it examines variables affecting export performance in one of the emerging markets in the Middle East and North Africa region. Second, it assesses empirically whether there is a relationship between the GFC and the decline in Moroccan exports. The study also provides a number of important implications for policy makers and academics.

This paper aims to investigate the contribution of perceived organizational support (POS), work engagement (WE) and intrinsic motivation (IM) on employee creativity (EC).

This study conducted a questionnaire survey obtaining 370 respondents employed in the United Arab Emirates in 6 organizations operating in services industries. The authors test their hypothetical model based on regression analysis.

The main findings are that WE mediates the relationship between POS and EC. Further, the effect of POS on EC is moderated by IM. The results also indicated that the indirect effect of POS on EC through WE was moderated by IM. The path effect is stronger for employees with high IM.

This study sheds light on the effect of POS on EC through WE and IM in the workplace, making a significant contribution to the POS and EC literatures by offering insights on when and how IM and WE enhances EC.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between university–industry collaboration (U-I-C) in research and development (R&D) and quality management and explore how the relationship is mediated by innovation.

Based on panel data consisting of 109 countries spanning over a five year period (2013-2017) this study investigates, through structural equation modelling, how this relationship is mediated by innovation.

The main finding is that there are positive significant direct effects between U-I-C and innovation and between innovation and international organization for standardization (ISO) 9001. Furthermore, the strength and significance of these relations are highly affected by the classification of income in these countries, which ranges from high and upper-middle to lower-middle categories. This paper concludes that countries in the high-income category have higher achievement in U-I-C in R&D, innovation and ISO 9001 when compared to the upper and lower-middle-income categories.

This paper demonstrates in the empirical study the value of collaboration in R&D between government, industry and academia, as it can encourage scientific research and contribute to quality management and innovation. This research is one of the very few studies to assess the country’s income classification effect on U-I-C in R&D, innovation and ISO 9001. It is recommended that more research is conducted on how countries not ranked in the high-income category could benefit from U-I-C in R&D to enhance innovation and quality management.

This study focuses on country branding indices. The main purpose of this study is to build an objective country brand strength index using secondary data. The new index, the Modified Country Brand Strength Index (MCBSI), builds on Fetscherin's (2010) Country Brand Strength Index (CBSI) but uses more rigorous methods and design to create a complementary index to be used together with the survey-based Anholt–GfK Nation Brands Index (NBI). The MCBSI also utilized human development, which is an important dimension of country brands not captured by CBSI.

The MCBSI addresses three significant limitations of the CBSI by using an alternative methodology in constructing the index: specifically, it uses weights for the dimensions, longitudinal data, and relative values by dividing each factor by its cross-country maximum.

Our index ranks 131 countries based on the strength of their country brand. A stronger correlation was found between the MCBSI and NBI than between the CBSI and NBI.

Our contribution has strong implications for both policymakers and academic researchers as it provides a tool for assessing the strength of country brands through accurate but less costly data compared to primary data collected by consultancies for country brand strength indices. The MCBSI informs country brand managers regarding how well their country brand performs across a range of critical dimensions, including export, tourism, foreign direct investments, immigration, government environment and human development.

This study contributes to the emerging academic literature on country brand indices. Currently, there is a lack of objective measurement instruments for assessing country brands. The MCBSI is designed for this purpose to complement the NBI by measuring country brands with objective secondary data. Viewed together, the NBI and our index overcome the obvious shortcomings inherent in each method by providing objective, factual data on country brand equity while providing insight into how people socially construct and evaluate nation brands.

The authors investigate empirically emigrants' intentions and motivations to work virtually for their country of origin. The study focuses on a country with substantial, persistent emigration and explores theories of diaspora investment motivation and virtual work characteristics.

An exploratory questionnaire survey on migrants' intentions and motivations to work virtually for their country of origin was conducted in late 2016 on 3,022 respondents, all emigrants from Lithuania.

Migrants are more likely to engage in virtual work for their country of origin when they experience negative career satisfaction, perceive the country of origin as their home country, belong to a recent wave of migration and possess occupational skills commonly employed in virtual work.

A major limitation of this study conducted on emigrants from one country is that it does not permit generalisation of the results to other countries and regions. It is limited, thus, to making general comparisons to what is known in the literature about migrants from other nations. However, the authors have identified some of the main factors which have theoretical and empirical import for future research, and the auhtors have argued that the results of our study possess only a few inherent geographic limitations. This research is a starting point for studies connecting diaspora motivation and their linkage to virtual work as a mean of human capital gain for the country of origin. The findings inform the conceptual model of virtual workplaces of Kumpikaite-Valiuniene et al. (2014) in relation to migrants and support Nielsen and Riddle's (2010) migrant diaspora investment motivation theory.

Understanding how and when organisations will work virtually with migrants from the country of origin as well as knowing more about their needs and expectations for migrants' knowledge, skills and work experience are necessary for future research on the attractiveness and potential of virtual work. As a first step in exploring diaspora motivation for virtual work, the authors recommend conducting qualitative research that would investigate more deeply the various motivations migrants can have for virtual work with their country or origin. This study revealed that females are more motivated to work virtually compared to males. However, gender issues have not been explored in this survey and constitute a future study direction.

Moreover, future research should examine what areas of human capital, commercial and cultural knowledge can be productively delivered by migrants working virtually for organisations in the country of origin, which will contribute to greater understanding of knowledge transfer and human capital issues (“brain gain”) in the migration literature. Further, specific forms of virtual work should be studied empirically for the extent that they provide opportunities for self-development and for satisfaction in personal lives and work careers. In addition, the potential business and societal benefits for the country of origin should be studied further through examining diverse dimensions of family, community, work and careers. These studies will expand knowledge of virtual work and related research phenomena and will contribute to this gap in the migration and human resource management (HRM) literature studies.

This research is a starting point for studies connecting diaspora motivation and their linkage to virtual work as a mean of human capital gain for the country of origin. The findings inform the proposed conceptual model of virtual workplaces by Kumpikaite-Valiuniene et al (2014) in relation to migrants and support Nielsen and Riddle (2010) migrant diaspora investment motivation theory. The authors have identified some of the main factors that have theoretical and empirical import for future study. This research topic and new related studies on diaspora have the potential to contribute to the fields of migration, HRM, work and career studies.

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether Islamic banks are transparent regarding profit (and loss) sharing to investment account holders. Another objective is to appraise whether Islamic banks' performance affects management incentives to distribute profit (and loss) to investment account holders.

To investigate the research issue, the authors conducted an empirical study. Data of 25 global operating Islamic banks have been collected and analyzed for the period 2006-2010. The authors also developed a mathematical model based on the generalized least-squares principle.

The research results showed that enhancing transparency will prevent Islamic banks from shadowing their profit allocation practices and place investment account holders in a better position to manage their invested funds. The study also showed that bettering Islamic banks’performance will induce them to manager profit-sharing investment account holders’ funds under bonafides.

The main limitation is data availability. The maximum number of Islamic banks that disclose financial data covering the period of 2006-2010 limited the scope of the study to 25 banks.

The findings are very valuable for designing policies and standards as well as for the enforcement of these standards to improve transparency in Islamic banking.

The study outcome is vital to many parties involved in the Islamic banking field and can be taken as a strong foundation to make appropriate actions that would help grow and sustain Islamic banking development globally.