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Focused on multicultural service encounters, this paper aims to argue that the interplay between customer language preference, employee choice and use of language affects perceived interaction quality, which in turn influences loyalty, customer brand identification and positive word-of-mouth.

Using Mexican Americans (Spanish) as the focal ethnic group (language), a 3 (contexts: Fast food-English; Post office-English; Post office-Spanish) × 4 (scenarios: customer language preference adhered to; adapted to; mixed; ignored) between-subject scenario-based experiment was conducted.

Customers perceive a higher, or at least equal, level of interaction quality when the employee choice of language adheres to their preference than when the employee switches to their preferred language after missing it initially. Both of these scenarios lead to significantly higher interaction quality compared to when the employee ignores customer language preference or combines elements from two languages throughout the interaction. The adverse effects of ignoring customer preferred language or mixing it with another language are accentuated among customers with low ethnic identification and those with low level of bilingualism. Prior findings regard the interplay among interaction quality, and the remainder of outcomes variables were also corroborated.

The findings add to the literature that examines the dynamics of intercultural service encounters and draws attention to employee choice and use of language and its impact on a host of service outcomes, with interaction quality serving as a key mediator.

This study highlights the need for service firms to consider customer language preferences and train and empower employees to meet customer expectations. To the extent that the increasingly viable segments of minority customers remain underserved in most developed markets, this study provides insights into cultivating a profitable customer segment.

This study demonstrates the role of employee choice and use of language and its consequences.

The purpose of this study is to explore how service employee choice and use of language to initiate and maintain conversation with second generation immigrant customers (SGIC) influence customer evaluation of the service encounter, and whether such employee acts may lead customers to employee switching, branch switching (i.e. switching from one to another location within the same brand) and/or brand switching (switching to another brand altogether).

A scenario-based between-subjects experiment of 4 (employee: match, adapt, bilingual, no adapt) × 2 (fast food, post office) × 2 (English, Spanish) was used to examine the SGIC response to service encounters in different contexts arising from employee choice and use of language. These scenarios were complemented with a series of measurement scales. The instruments, which were identical except in scenario sections, were administered on 788 second-generation Mexican American customers, resulting in 271 (fast food) and 265 (post office) effective responses.

In both service contexts, when employees initiated conversation that matched (English or Spanish) the customer expectations, the SGIC perceptions of interaction quality was higher as compared to other scenarios, leading to subsequent satisfaction and lower switching intentions (employee and branch). Similarly, interaction quality was higher for adapt scenarios as compared to bilingual or no adapt scenarios. Bilingual customers perceived higher interaction quality in bilingual/no-adapt scenarios when compared to monolingual customers. In both contexts, service quality and satisfaction were associated with employee switching and branch switching, but not with brand switching.

By utilizing interaction adaptation theory to conceptualize the effects of employee choice and use of language, the study grounds the model and the hypotheses in theoretical bases and provides empirical corroboration of the theory. The study also contributes toward understanding the service encounters from the perspective of an overlooked group of vulnerable customers: second-generation immigrants.

Service research cautions service providers that a key factor in attracting and retaining customers is having detailed communication guidelines and empowering employees to follow those guidelines. The findings go a step further and underscore the critical role of communication from a managerial standpoint. It is in the interest of service organizations to develop guidelines that will govern employee choice and use of language during service encounters. So doing is commercially justified because unguided employee choice and use of language can result in customer switching and attrition.

The juxtaposition between assigned versus asserted identities is an important one not only in social sciences but also within service research. As service encounters grow increasingly multicultural, the need to educate employees on multiculturally appropriate communication etiquette rises in importance. The findings should encourage service firms and local governments to develop formal communication guidelines that begin with multiculturalism as a central tenet permeating all aspects of employee–employee, employee–customer and customer–customer communications. Service providers ought to take precautionary measures to ensure customers will be empowered to assert their identities in their own terms, if they wish so.

The study demonstrates how employee choice and use of language during service encounters may thwart SGIC, who might view such employee behaviors as acts of identity assignment and, consequently, feel stigmatized, marginalized and offended; and links such customer experiences to switching behavior through mediatory mechanisms.

This chapter presents a short overview of core branding values and provides a description of how to capture them in a business-to-business (B2B) context. However, the reader should keep in mind that the value of branding is a broad term consisting of different aspects, which makes it challenging to capture and present them all in one chapter. For this reason, the authors have chosen to introduce diverse facets of brand identity and image, customer values, and sustainability issues, which are part of the core values of branding in a B2B context. These issues are also elaborated in more detail in Chapters 2, 5, and 10. In addition, the authors present brand-building tools for managers, such as personal selling, direct marketing, public relations, trade shows and exhibitions, as well as advertising and sales promotion. Finally, the applicability of these tools is demonstrated through the practical example of Axel Technologies and their Fuugo service.

The energy sector is one of the most important sectors with an impact on the environment, and therefore, sustainable performance in this sector is considered a sensitive issue for sustainability. It is, therefore, necessary to know how to address stakeholders’ interest in sustainability through governance mechanisms. The purpose of this study is to look into the role of corporate governance (CG) on sustainable performance disclosure (SPD) in the energy sector.

This study uses panel data covering the period 2019–2023 among 12 companies in the energy sector in Jordan. Fixed-effect regression models were estimated for board size, board independence, chief executive officer (CEO) duality, board diligence, board gender diversity, sustainability committee existence and sustainability disclosure. The data analysis tool of choice was a multiple regression approach because it was deemed appropriate. The disclosure index was created using global reporting initiative standards and provides the number and quality of disclosures on key sustainability indicators.

The study found a significant and positive relationship between board size, percentage of independent directors, board audit, board gender diversity, existence of sustainability committee and level of SPD. On the other hand, the study establishes that CEO duality has an inverse relationship with SPD.

The findings of this study have significant implications for managers and corporate decision-makers in the energy sector. The findings affirm that the improved design of CG motivations and realizations conducive to robust measures of SPD necessitates effective CG.

The value of this applied study stems from the importance of SPD for various categories of stakeholders, and conducting such an applied study is crucial to improving the existing realization of the factors that can have a significant impact on the level of SPD in Jordanian energy sector companies. The results of this paper may be of procedural value to regulatory authorities and decision-makers.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are important strategic actions undertaken by firms to access resources and markets. However, firms face substantial challenges in M&As during deal completion. While prior literature reviews synthesize the studies on the post-merger consequences of M&As, the literature on deal completion is largely fragmented. In this paper, the authors synthesize prior literature on deal completion into the antecedents and consequences framework and map various studies across the international business and management, finance and accounting literature at the macro-, meso- and micro-levels.

The authors adopt a content analysis-based methodology to conduct the review. First, the authors identify existing literature on deal completion based on keyword searches. Next, the authors propose a framework that integrates the extant literature from a multi-theoretic perspective across four broad themes: concepts, antecedents, implications and moderators. In this study, the authors consider not only empirical but also conceptual papers to strengthen the theoretical foundations of M&A literature. Finally, after synthesizing various studies, the authors highlight a future research agenda on deal completion.

Based on the review, this study provides important avenues for future research on M&A deal completion.

This study theoretically integrates multi-disciplinary and multi-country research on acquisition completion.

This paper aims to provide a comparative study of the Islamic versus conventional banking sector risk by using market data generated from the sample of publicly listed Islamic and conventional banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.

The authors introduce a market-based measure of bank stress and test this indicator against the Tier 1 Capital Ratio using Granger causality tests.

The authors find that the market-based measure is a leading indicator of banking stress when compared to the accounting-based Tier 1 ratio and thus is relevant to the Basel regulation’s Pillar 3.

This paper only looks at Islamic vs conventional banks in the Gulf region, and the authors would like to extend this analysis to a broader range of financial institutions, especially in the European and North American markets.

Developing a measure that signals bank stress ahead of typically used measures can help regulators, bank management and investors identify oncoming problems and issues before these become too big to manage.

The results from this analysis provides insight into the offsetting impact from two drivers (beta and book-to-market ratio) of the cost of equity capital for the conventional vs Islamic banking sectors.

Najib Mahfuz is the first Arab‐language author to win the Nobel Prize in literature. Born in 1911 the son of a middle‐class Jamaliyah merchant, he became the most popular novelist in Egypt and the Arab countries.

Designers of mobile applications have long understood the importance of users’ preferences in making the user experience easier, convenient and therefore valuable. The cultural aspects of groups of users are among the key features of users’ design preferences, because each group’s preferences depend on various features that are culturally compatible. The process of integrating culture into the design of a system has always been an important ingredient for effective and interactive human computer interface. This study aims to investigate the design of a mobile health (mHealth) application user interface (UI) based on Arabic culture. It was argued that integrating certain cultural values of specific groups of users into the design of UI would increase their acceptance of the technology.

A total of 135 users responded to an online survey about their acceptance of a culturally designed mHealth.

The findings showed that culturally based language, colours, layout and images had a significant relationship with users’ behavioural intention to use the culturally based mHealth UI.

First, the sample and the data collected of this study were restricted to Arab users and Arab culture; therefore, the results cannot be generalized to other cultures and users. Second, the adapted unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model was used in this study instead of the new version, which may expose new perceptions. Third, the cultural aspects of UI design in this study were limited to the images, colours, language and layout.

It encourages UI designers to implement the relevant cultural aspects while developing mobile applications.

Embedding Arab cultural aspects in designing UI for mobile applications to satisfy Arab users and enhance their acceptance toward using mobile applications, which will reflect positively on their lives.

The purpose of this paper is to present a development to the hardware and software of a real-time tracking system that provides the position of the tracked vehicle accurately using fairly low-cost equipment and services. Vehicle tracking industries are expanding as businesses are interested to know their fleet vehicles positions minute by minute every day. Many systems were proposed recently that can provide such information.

The system is implemented using GM862 cellular quad band module. A monitoring server and a graphical user interface on a Web site have also been implemented to view the current location of a vehicle on a specific map.

The experiments were conducted and tested in different areas of the Kingdom Of Bahrain using Google maps, and results are discussed.

The developed system has been compared to the available and imported tracking systems to some of the telematics companies in Bahrain, and the comparison has been discussed.