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Drawing on work from home (WFH), job demand-control and street-level bureaucracy literature streams, this paper specifically focuses on the emerging trend of WFH for public sector employees in a developing country context of Egypt.

The empirical sample comprises focus group discussions with a total of 40 public sector employees in Egypt. Thematic analysis was subsequently used on focus group discussion transcripts to bring out main themes linked to this topic.

Our findings show that employee (marginal discretion power, pharaonism, corruption), citizen (unfamiliarity with digital services) and country (lack of proper info-structure, overstaffing in the public sector)- level challenges hinder and/or slow down the potential for WFH in Egyptian public sector.

A major implication of our paper relates to highlighting the criticality of e-governance and WFH for public sector employees, as well as highlighting multilevel challenges associated with those. At the same time, socio-economic and political consequences of offering such options need to be considered in a country like Egypt where most public organisations are overstaffed, and those employees lack modern day employability skills. Hence, there needs to be an open debate in countries such as Egypt on the consequences of e-governance and WFH and whether it may facilitate delivering citizen services digitally. Also, high power distance culture plays a role in this context, and any change cannot be successful unless that specific aspect is confronted.

This study contributes to the emerging WFH literature by being one of the pioneering studies to offer a multilevel (micro, meso and macro) assessment of this phenomenon in the under-researched fragile developing country’s context.

The healthcare sector faces leadership challenges, emphasizing the importance of a mechanism to support and empower team members. The present study aims to investigate the impact of team empowerment (TE) on team performance (TP), with the mediating role of shared leadership (SL) and the moderating role of relationship conflict between shared leadership and team performance.

This study's conceptual model was proposed using the social exchange theory and conservation of resource theory. Data was collected using a self-administrated questionnaire to 492 respondents, of which 42 were team leaders, and 450 were team members from 42 teams in the Pakistani healthcare sector. The Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique was used to examine the proposed hypotheses of the study.

The results revealed a significant positive relationship between team empowerment and shared leadership. SL is positively associated with team performance. The present study also found that SL positively mediated the relationship between shared leadership and team performance. Moreover, relationship conflict moderated the relationship between SL and TP.

The finding delineates that healthcare organizations can adopt shared leadership and empower team members by involving them in decision-making, enhancing collaboration, resource utilization, and patient care outcomes. Managers should implement structured strategies like cross-functional training and inclusive decision-making processes to cultivate empowered teams and mitigate relationship conflicts for optimal performance.

The study advocates developing shared leadership practices for better team outcomes. This study is an early attempt to examine the mediating role of shared leadership between team empowerment and team performance.

In the present era, the achievement of employee Islamic performance has become a significant challenge for organizations. The purpose of the study is to examine the effect of Islamic leadership on employee Islamic performance directly and indirectly by bridging the connections between employees’ Islamic organizational values, Islamic organizational culture, and Islamic work motivation among the employees of Egyptian banks.

The authors used quantitative methods in this study and based its findings on the data received from 312 respondents in response to a questionnaire.

By using SmartPLS 4, this study’s findings demonstrate that Islamic leadership has a positive and significant effect on Islamic organizational values, culture, employee Islamic performance and work motivation. While Islamic organizational values and Islamic organizational culture do not significantly impact employee Islamic performance, Islamic work motivation is a significant predictor of employee Islamic performance. On the one hand, Islamic organizational values and Islamic organizational culture do not mediate the relationship between Islamic leadership and employee Islamic performance. On the other hand, Islamic work motivation is a mediating variable that significantly develops the relationship between Islamic leadership and employee Islamic performance.

The study’s findings support policymakers and human resource management practitioners to develop plans and strategies which enhance the Islamic performance of organizations’ employees. In addition, this study’s findings provide insights for researchers and academicians in developing Islamic leadership within their organizations so that they operate by Islamic values and codes.

Finally, by offering an integrated model of Islamic leadership, Islamic organizational values, Islamic organizational culture and employee Islamic performance, this study’s findings fill the gaps in the context of bank employees in a developing country, namely, Egypt.

This study investigates the variables that impact initial public offerings (IPO) initial returns witnessed in Pakistan from 1996 to 2019 using pre-listing information variables, namely country-level institutional quality, sponsor ownership and pricing mechanism. IPO oversubscription is included as a moderating variable.

This research is motivated by the premise that the Pakistani IPO market is characterised by a broad range of institutional and regulatory frameworks. Multiple regression studies, i.e. ordinary least square (OLS) and quantile least square (QLS), were performed on 102 IPOs issued on the Pakistan stock market.

The present study findings suggest that the quality of public service, the independence of civil service from political influences and the legitimacy of government increase investors’ confidence in the prospects of companies, hence increasing the demand for IPO and initial returns. In addition, good regulatory quality enhances market transparency and lowers uncertainty, hence signalling high-quality IPOs and leading in substantial initial returns. The negative effect of the lock-up ratio on the initial return of an IPO is consistent with the risk-return trade-off theory, which asserts that the lock-up ratio indicates the quality of the IPO.

The results provide market regulators, policymakers, investors and underwriters with useful data for assuring proper subscriptions of issued shares, as these variables are crucial for company transparency and market efficiency. The findings will also help investors make better IPO subscription decisions.

The present study explains the important influencing factors of IPO initial return in the Pakistani market.

This study examined the students' academic performance through psychological capital, academic engagement and academic persistence. It also investigated the function of psychological capital in mediating the relationship between academic engagement, persistence and performance.

The study utilized a quantitative method and structural equation modeling using PLS-SEM version 3. A total of 900 questionnaires were issued to Chinese university students, and 814 data were analyzed.

Findings suggest that academic engagement and persistence significantly and positively impact psychological capital. Psychological capital is also mediated between academic engagement, persistence and performance. Additionally, the study made several recommendations for upcoming researchers and industry professionals.

Analyzing the pupils' academic achievement after COVID-19 reopening as it indicates their attention and engagement in the study. Although previous studies explored students' academic performance regarding the post-COVID effect, the role of psychological capital and engagement in academia in the study has been studied in a post-COVID context.

Based on the job-demands resources (JD-R) model and the self-determination theory (SDT), this paper aims to explore team empowerment (TEMP) as a mediating mechanism through which team climate (TC) marked by innovativeness, cohesion and trust and knowledge management (KM) in teams.

Using a convenience sampling method, data were gathered from 246 employees of Tunisian knowledge-intensive firms (KIFs) and involved within 69 R&D teams. The partial least square-structural equation modeling approach through SMART PLS 3.2 software was used to evaluate the constructs’ psychometric properties and hypotheses. The mediating effect in the model was evaluated through the non-parametric bootstrapping method.

Results highlight that TC marked by innovativeness, cohesion and trust represents a key team contextual antecedent promoting TEMP and KM in teams. In turn, TEMP, as a critical intrinsic task motivation factor, is revealed as a driver of KM practices. This research demonstrates that TEMP partially mediates the relationship between TC and KM in teams.

This study pioneers the examination of TEMP’s mediating role between a TC marked by innovativeness, trust and cohesion and KM. By applying insights from the JD-R model and SDT to team-level dynamics, it uniquely positions TEMP as an intrinsic motivational factor explaining the mechanism through which the contextual resources provided by a supportive TC promote KM practices. It provides practical insights for KIFs’ managers through highlighting how intrinsically motivated teams of knowledge workers, empowered by a cohesive, innovative and trust-based TC, can effectively navigate the challenges inherent in knowledge-intensive teamwork, leading to enhanced KM practices.

This paper aims to explore sociocultural factors as determinants of entrepreneurial emergence and to examine their relative influence (i.e. the influence of each factor) on entrepreneurial emergence.

A survey design with a questionnaire instrument administered to 250 business owners selected randomly from a cross section of businesses was used. The data were analyzed using the descriptive method, pairwise comparison, Kendall’s W test and Mean Rank Statistics.

This study showed that the level of influence of sociocultural factors on the decision to own a business by an individual in Africa varies by factor. Family background is the factor that has the highest influence, whereas religious values has the least influence. Altogether, nine most significant factors influence the choice of business ownership in Nigeria and in Africa generally. These include family background, unemployment, family values, inadequate income, job displacement, stock of social capital, role models, social networks and lack of social security, in that order.

Although some scholars may have explored sociocultural factors as determinants of entrepreneurial emergence, there is no study on their relative influence on entrepreneurial emergence, at least not in the context of Africa or Nigeria in particular. This study extends previous studies by examining the relative influence of the factors, using Nigeria as a reference for Africa. A focus on their relative influence is a new perspective on the study of sociocultural factors as determinants of entrepreneurial emergence.