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Within the retail banking sector, the customer-centric business model has become an important and new business trend in recent years. The enhancement of the frontline service employees’ engagement and their customer-oriented behaviors are among the key factors affecting business performance (BP) in this sector of the banking industry. The purpose of this paper is to improve management decisions to enhance BP through examining the relationship between the frontline employees’ engagement and BP while taking into account the mediating effect of customer-oriented behaviors on this relationship.

A quantitative approach was adopted to conduct the present study, and the respondents were sampled from a large commercial bank in Iran using a structured questionnaire. Overall, 50 branch managers and 90 frontline employees were selected using random sampling. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to ascertain the validity and reliability of the observed items and a structural equation model was used for testing the proposed hypotheses and research framework.

The findings showed that customer-oriented behaviors mediated the relationship between the frontline employees’ engagement and bank’s branches’ BP. Higher levels of the frontline employees’ engagement enhance the customer-oriented behaviors. It was revealed that the frontline employees are engaged in their job and organization. Moreover, the engaged frontline employees listen carefully to customers, the customer’s problem is important to them and they complete their tasks precisely for customers. It has been confirmed that customer-oriented behaviors enhance branches’ BP. The bank frontline employees’ engagement and customer-oriented behaviors, in turn, affected the bank’s branches’ financial performance, process performance and employee performance compared with the bank’s key competitors.

This study highlights the value of empirically establishing how employee customer-oriented behaviors are affected by employee engagement as an integrative construct bringing together BP.

This study can help improve BP by increasing the frontline employees’ engagement and their customer-oriented behaviors. This study suggests that organizations using the findings of this study could effectively assess their frontline employees’ engagement and their customer-oriented behaviors and then plan for improving them.

This study offers a customer-oriented initiative as a social responsibility to be considered by retail banks. In light of the social exchange theory, the banks valuing customer-oriented can provide employees with knowledge, skills, values and support to develop motivation and abilities to demonstrate customer-oriented organizational citizenship behaviors.

Previous studies demonstrated that the employees’ engagement affects their customer-oriented behaviors. In addition, studies have referred to the effect of employees’ customer-oriented behaviors on BP. However, to the best of the knowledge, key questions regarding how the employees’ engagement at the branch level fosters customer-oriented behaviors and, in turn, the bank’s branches’ BP, remain unanswered. Hence, this study contributes to the investigation of the mediating role of the frontline employees’ customer-oriented behaviors in the relationship between their engagement and branches’ BP in the retail banking sector.

For over 2000 years, Iran was dominated by different religions, and hence, religious texts constructed identity, status, and rights for women. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Islamists attacked “Iranian identity,” and tried to replace it with the “Islamic identity,” fearing that Iranians could undermine the legitimacy of their Islamic identity. The purpose of this discursive psychological research is to find out the level of faith development and religious identity among a sample of Iranian women. Due to the Iranian distinct politics and its young population, the Iranian women’s movement is one of the most important movements in the Muslim world. Findings of my inquiry indicate that a contradiction has been imposed on Iranian women since the revolution. Religious beliefs and practices based on Islamic laws and identities that are enforced by the government generate a traditional atmosphere in the society. Consequently, some Iranian women believe in inevitable destiny and admit that anything that happens is God’s will. They believe that an ideal woman must act according to the cultural and religious norms and traditions. Such women strongly internalize these values and have become a source of control and restriction over the activities of other women. On the other hand, many women attempts to become Westernized (modern) women, far from religious beliefs. This qualitative research provides us with rich detailed data and information about a sample of participants, so any generalizations made from the findings must be applied cautiously.

The chapter compares the survival of old regime elites in Tunisia and Egypt after the 2011 uprisings and analyses its enabling factors. Although democracy progressed in Tunisia and collapsed in Egypt, the countries show similarities in the old elite’s ability to survive the Arab Spring. In both cases, the popular uprisings resulted in the type of elite circulation that John Higley and György Lengyel refer to as ‘quasi-replacement circulation’, which is sudden and coerced, but narrow and shallow. To account for this converging outcome, the chapter foregrounds the instability, economic decline and information uncertainty in the countries post-uprising and the navigating resources, which the old elites possessed. The roots of the quasi-replacement circulation are traced to the old elites’ privileged access to money, network, the media and, for Egypt, external support. Only parts of the structures of authority in a political regime are formal. The findings show the importance of evaluating regime change in a broader view than the formal institutional set-up. In Tunisia and Egypt, the informal structures of the anciens régimes survived – so did the old regime elites.

Since the election of June 2009, the Islamic Republic of Iran has witnessed a huge crisis with the outburst of street protests and demonstrations, challenging its validity. Indeed, it has been so intense that it has shaken the whole Islamic Republic for the first time since the 1979 Iranian revolution. What has happened since the disputed election was an upheaval few had anticipated, an opening of Pandora's box, with millions daring to question the, Velayate Fagih, the most important constituent of the Islamic Republic. This postelection period has created a “revolutionary”’ potential that has so far been met with repressive force and violence on the part of the ruling elites leaving no leverage for compromise. Of course, in the 30 years since the revolution, the Islamic Republic's power structures have faced factionalism. These recent developments demonstrate how deeply rooted run the contradictions and differences between the various groups. This upheaval has thrown all sorts of questions into the air: could Iran remain as a Republic? Or would Iran turn into a God's Kingdom, ever more dictatorial in its approach? Or would the splits within the ruling elites continue to crack the fabric of the regime? Will there be a similar schism to that which took place during the Constitutional Revolution in the early 20th century when a leading member of the clergy, Noori, was finally hanged in July 1909 for being openly against reform? Finally, what is the possibility of change beyond the Islamic Republic in Iran?

This study aims to employ conservation of resources (COR) theory to explain how customer support, customer power, customer orientation (CO) and product complexity impact frontline employees (FLEs) work engagement.

Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze data collected from 1,620 South Korean insurance salespeople using an on-line survey.

Results show that customer support, customer power and CO will bring more FLEs work engagement, and product complexity negatively dilutes the work engagement gained from customer support.

The results of this study suggest that firms should encourage FLEs to share their experiences and tactics in dealing with customer power and stimulate supportive customer behaviors. Since complex products, particularly financial products, require more explanation and information exchange for customers to understand them, managers might include simulations, videos and role-playing in training programs to show salespeople how to handle customers when attempting to sell these products.

This study investigates the effects of customer cognitive and emotional support on FLEs work engagement and also empirically demonstrates the positive effects of customer power.

The study aims to explore how selected factors influence customer’s satisfaction in a business-to-consumer context. Furthermore, it also investigates the mediating role of affective and calculative commitment on the satisfaction–loyalty link.

Using quota sampling methods, data was collected from 300 retail banking customers in an emergent market setting through self-administered questionnaires. In addition, the measurement and structural models were assessed.

The study established that satisfaction (through selective precursors) has a positive and significant influence on the future loyalty intentions of retail banking customers in an emerging market. Also, both affective and calculative commitment was found to partially mediate the satisfaction–loyalty relationship in a retail banking setting.

The tested model validates the hypothesized relationships between employee attitude and service performance, employee personality traits, perceived value and satisfaction of retail banking customers in South Africa as an emergent market. It also confirms the positive influence of satisfaction on loyalty and the partial mediation of affective and calculative commitment on the satisfaction–loyalty link.

The findings of the study can guide retail banks in developing enhanced knowledge of how employee attitude and service performance, employee personality traits and perceived value can nurture satisfaction, ultimately strengthening the future loyalty intention of customers. It furthermore informs the management of retail banks of the directional importance of affective commitment and calculative commitment in strengthening the satisfaction–loyalty link.

Limited studies have investigated the relationship between satisfaction, its precursors and outcomes in a developing African market context, such as South Africa. Also, few studies have examined how commitment (affective and calculative) impacts the satisfaction–loyalty link from an emerging market perspective in Africa.

This study investigates the role of feminist solidarity in influencing women’s empowerment within Kyrgyzstan’s community-based tourism sector, exploring how traditional values intersect with feminist activism to create opportunities for socio-economic growth while highlighting the dynamic interactions that shape empowerment in this context.

Using 32 in-depth interviews, this research applies a post-colonial feminist perspective to examine the complex dynamics of feminist solidarity among women entrepreneurs in Kyrgyzstan’s unique socio-cultural environment.

Feminist solidarity is identified as a catalyst for socio-economic transformation and community empowerment, promoting economic opportunities, cultural preservation and knowledge-sharing across generations. The study introduces a spiral model of empowerment, illustrating the dynamic progression from individual empowerment to community solidarity, highlighting the evolving and interconnected nature of these processes.

The findings demonstrate that feminist solidarity drives socio-economic change in post-colonial contexts, offering opportunities for sustainable development and community empowerment. However, policymakers must approach leveraging feminist solidarity with caution, ensuring cultural sensitivity and avoiding oversimplified interventions. The community-based tourism sector illustrates that, when integrated thoughtfully, feminist solidarity can promote growth and cultural preservation, but only when aligned with local values and contexts.

This study advances the understanding of feminist solidarity and empowerment by not only providing a contextual analysis within Kyrgyzstan’s community-based tourism sector but also offering insights into the broader processes and dynamics of solidarity and empowerment. It illustrates how these concepts evolve and interact, demonstrating their impact on collective action and socio-economic change in post-colonial settings, thus enriching the theoretical discourse on gender and entrepreneurship.

This study aims to investigate consumer brand loyalty toward halal cosmetics using the theory of planned behavior through repurchase intention, which is primarily relying on the consumer’s attitude toward halal cosmetics. Important predictors such as trust on halal cosmetics, quality of halal cosmetics and religious beliefs of millennial Muslim female consumers shape consumer attitude.

The present study used the quantitative research design and deductive approach to collect the data from 275 halal cosmetics users in Pakistan by using a judgmental sampling approach.

Findings of the study provide useful insights for both theory and practice. The results support product quality, religious belief and trust on halal cosmetics as predictors of consumer’s attitude toward halal cosmetics that further develop consumers’ repurchase intention, which in turn enhances their overall brand loyalty. Besides, the findings also show that consumer repurchase intention has a mediating effect between consumer attitude toward halal cosmetics and consumer brand loyalty.

The current study helps in advancing practitioners’ understanding of female consumers’ brand loyalty in the halal cosmetics context. This study is considered to be greatly helpful for managers to gain knowledge about how repurchase intention and brand loyalty of millennial Muslim female consumers can be developed in the halal cosmetics segment, especially in the case of Pakistan.

Brand loyalty has been investigated by previous studies through different predictors and antecedents. This study contributes to the literature of brand loyalty by empirically examining and validating the different antecedents of consumer attitude that are accountable for creating consumer brand loyalty in the domain of halal cosmetics within the Pakistani cultural context. The current study also enhances the previous scholarly understanding on halal cosmetics by investigating the mediating role of consumer repurchase intention of halal cosmetics that further extends the discussion for both theory and practice.

This study aims to develop, propose and test an integrated framework of brand love and brand experience in the context of halal industry. Particularly, this study investigates the relationship of brand experience and brand love concepts with several outcome variables such as brand trust, brand satisfaction, brand loyalty purchase intention and word of mouth.

A structured questionnaire has been constructed using scales from past studies. Hypotheses have been tested using partial least square structural equation modelling methodology.

This study has found that brand experience is a significant determinant of brand love. Further, brand love has a significant influence on trust, satisfaction and loyalty. Both variables, brand experience and brand love, have either direct or indirect influences on several branding-related outcome variables such as brand trust, brand satisfaction and brand loyalty.

This study has been conducted only using cross-sectional sample of one country, which may limit the generalisations. However, the results of this study offer valuable insights for the brand managers in the halal sector.

Previous studies pertaining to halal food consumption have focussed more on understanding the attitude or the buying intention of the consumers. Only few studies have attempted to investigate the branding aspect of halal food consumption. This study is one of its kinds, which offers a comprehensive framework by incorporating important brand-related antecedents and outcome variables to understand the branding aspect of the halal food consumption behaviour.