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As the work context is dynamically changing, enhancing employee engagement through personal and organizational means is still capturing the attention of organizations as well as human resources researchers and practitioners. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between self-leadership, employee engagement, and perceived organizational support and to test the moderating effect of perceived organizational support.

Data were collected through an online self-reporting questionnaire, with a total of 225 employees from Lebanon and 251 employees from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Moderating analysis was conducted using Process v3.3 on both samples.

Results have shown that self-leadership and perceived organizational support were positively related to employee engagement in both countries. However, perceived organizational support served to enhance self-leadership and employee engagement in the UAE, but not in Lebanon.

The findings of this study can be used to help organizations as well as human resources and regional managers operating in the Middle East in giving insights about investing in self-leadership strategies and positively influence employee perception of organizational support to strengthen employee engagement.

This study is unique in exploring the moderating role of perceived organizational support on the relationship between self-leadership and engagement, and original in theoretically proposing and empirically examining the interaction between perceived organizational support and self-leadership. The context of the study in which the proposed relationships were tested for the first time in Lebanon and the UAE, is also novel as both countries are distinguished from other Middle Eastern countries.

This study refines theory of social capital by nesting it within a cultural context. More specifically, it aims at describing, explaining, and predicting the role of wasta, a social capital concept, as a moderator in the relationship between employees' ethical idealism and work engagement in Lebanon.

Based on a survey questionnaire translated from English into Arabic, 317 responses were collected from employees in Lebanon. Confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression analysis were employed to test the hypothesized relationships among the examined variables.

Ethical idealism was found to be positively related to work engagement, and wasta was found to moderate the relationship between ethical idealism and work engagement. Work engagement levels of employees who displayed high levels of ethical idealism were less influenced by the negative effect of wasta than work engagement levels of employees who displayed low levels of ethical idealism.

Human resource managers, international negotiators, and global executives in Lebanon may use the findings of this study to update corporate human resources systems, such as employee recruitment and selection, handbooks, orientation, training programs, and performance appraisal, to better address employee attitudes toward the practice of wasta.

The study adds ethical idealism as an antecedent of work engagement, demonstrating the significant impact that wasta, with its positive and negative characteristics, has on the engagement of employees from the Arab world.

The purpose of the study is to employ the need theory to investigate whether a need for achievement has an effect on persistence behavior among entrepreneurs, and whether a need for achievement and business goals interact to influence such persistence.

A longitudinal study of nascent entrepreneurs was conducted by a field survey in a metropolitan area of a mid‐western state in the USA. Logistic regression was used to test the hypotheses.

Need for achievement is found to be positively related to entrepreneurial persistence. Business goals are found to moderate the relationship between need for achievement and persistence.

The time span between the two waves of data collection in the longitudinal study might have been too short.

This study highlights the importance of matching need for achievement and business goals. For complex tasks, a strong need for achievement should be accompanied with moderate business goals if persistence is to occur. Venture capitalists and government agencies can improve entrepreneurial success by keeping a close eye on the match.

Few studies have explored the issue of entrepreneurial persistence. The present study contributes to a better understanding of motivation and other variables that influence entrepreneurial persistence.

This paper aims to highlight the historical roots of employee engagement and empirically examine the influence of self-efficacy on the three dimensions of employee engagement (vigor, dedication and absorption).

A sample of 426 male and female respondents in the service industry from Lebanon was surveyed using a multi-scale measure composed of 25 items. Regression analysis was used to test the data for the hypothesized relationships between the variables.

History of management continues to be the backbone of the so-called modern concepts. Although the term employee engagement was not used in scientific management or in the human relations movement, the characteristics were incorporated in these early schools. The three factors of employee engagement explained 78 per cent of the total variance of employee engagement construct and were significantly influenced by self-efficacy.

The first limitation of this study is the self-reported data, and the second limitation is the source from one industry (service), although different organizations were incorporated. Caution is advised against generalizations of the findings.

The results of this study provide insights for both researchers and managers to better understand the relationship between three dimensions of employee engagement and self-efficacy from a non-Western context. The belief in one’s own capabilities helps promote employee engagement.

Lebanon offers an interesting context; it is considered as the only Arab country that provides an interaction between the Western and Middle Eastern countries.

This study aimed to trace the historical roots of employee engagement to the early management schools. Moreover, studies similar to the present investigation exist; however, this is the first time that a non-Western Arab sample was used to examine the influence of self-efficacy on the three dimensions of employee engagement.

The purpose of this paper is to classify and categorize the vulnerability types emerged with time as information technology (IT) systems evolved. This comparative study aims to compare the seriousness of the old well-known vulnerabilities that may still exist with lower possibility of happening with that of new technologies like cloud computing with Mobility access. Cloud computing is a new structure of IT that is becoming the main part of the new model of business environment. However, issues regarding such new hype of technology do not come without obstacles. These issues have to be addressed before full acceptability of cloud services in a globalized business environment. Businesses need to be aware of issues of concerns before joining the cloud services. This paper also highlights these issues and shows the comparison table to help businesses with appropriate decision-making when joining the cloud.

A historical review of emerged vulnerabilities as IT systems evolved was conducted, then these vulnerabilities were categorized into eight different categories, each of which composed of multiple vulnerability types. Simple scoring techniques were used to build a “risk” analysis table where each vulnerability type was given a score based on availability of matured solution and the likeliness of happening, then in case of vulnerability type, another score was used to derive the impact of such vulnerability. The resulted weighted score can be derived from the multiplication of likeliness to happen score with that of its impact in case it did happen. Percentage of seriousness represented by the percentage of the derived weighted score of each of the vulnerabilities can then be concluded. Similar table was developed for issues related to cloud computing environment in specific.

After surveying the historical background of IT systems and emerged vulnerabilities as well as reviewing the common malicious types of system vulnerabilities, this paper identifies 22 different types of vulnerability categorized in eight different categories. This comparative study explores amount of possible vulnerabilities in new technology like cloud computing services. Specific issues for cloud computing were also explored and a similar comparative study was developed on these issues. The result of the comparative study between all types of vulnerabilities since the start of IT system development till today’s technology of cloud computing, shows that the highest percentage vulnerability category was the one related to mobility access as mobile applications/systems are relatively newly emerged and do not have a matured security solution(s).

Learning from history, one can conclude the current risk factor in dealing with new technology like cloud computing. Businesses can realize that decision to join the cloud requires thinking about the issues mentioned in this paper and identifying the most vulnerability types to try to avoid them.

A new comparative study and new classification of vulnerabilities demonstrated with risk analysis using simple scoring technique.

This paper aims to elucidate some of the complexity around food consumption by drawing from neuroscience research of food as a motivated choice (i.e. a neurobehavioral process sensitive to dopaminergic response to food and environmental cues such as marketing). The authors explore the single and compounded effect of the motivational salience of food’s intrinsic reinforcing value tied to its sugar content and that of two marketing food cues, price and in-store display, on actual consumer purchase behavior.

The authors test the above hypotheses in two perceived “healthy” product categories with a wide distribution of sugar content. The authors estimate a within-category model using three years of retail transaction data to test the effect on weekly sales.

The authors confirm the single effect of each of food’s and marketing cues’ motivational salience as well as their compounded effect with high-motivational-salience food being less price elastic and more susceptible to in-store display activities.

This research highlights the need to complement current reliance on unhealthy/healthy perception with finer grained objective evidence linked to the formulation of the food itself and the marketing applied to them.

The present study findings may help marketing managers and policymakers develop better targeted pricing and display strategies for low- and high-motivational-salience food, attempting to strike a better balance between consumer welfare and commercial performance.

This paper is one of the few that links real-world market outcomes to predictions derived from a unique combination of consumer neuroscience and neurobiology of food, advancing data-driven decisions.

Workforce diversity has become an important issue in Australia. This study examined the extent to which human resource management practices were being used by organisations in Australia to manage workforce diversity. The study also assessed the perceived challenges and benefits of diversity in the workforce. The findings of this study indicated that overall, management of workforce diversity is only “mediocre”. In particular, inadequate diversity management practices were found in the areas of recruitment and selection and training and development. As migrant employees do not create any problems and are very compliant, the challenges that workforce diversity presents does not receive adequate attention by organisations in Australia. However, these organisations seek several benefits from their multicultural workforce. The implications of these findings are discussed.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, Inc. is a challenge to conventional antitrust analysis. Conventional civil antitrust cases are decided by a preponderance of the evidence. This means that conduct challenged under the rule of reason is only condemned if the conduct resulted in more competitive harm in the actual world than a world without the alleged violation. Under conventional analysis, the intent of the parties also plays only a supporting role in determining whether the conduct was anticompetitive. A holder of a valid patent has a right to exclude others practicing the patented technology. And, the patent holder is not assumed to have market power because it expended resources in maintaining exclusionary rights. Actavis creates doubts about these propositions in circumstances beyond the “reverse” payment settlement of a patent suit that may have delayed an alleged infringer market entry. This chapter explores whether applying Actavis logic to antitrust litigation can result in condemnation of practices where there is little chance of an anticompetitive effect, where the patent holder likely has a valid and infringed patent, where there is little reason to believe that the patent holder has market power, and where only one party, or no parties, to an agreement have an anticompetitive intent. This chapter also investigates whether Actavis creates new problems with standing analysis, damages calculations, and the balancing of efficiencies against anticompetitive effects. Nevertheless, the lower courts have begun to extend the logic of Actavis. This is apparent in the condemnation of no-Authorized-generic settlements.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating effects of cognitive style dimensions on the relationship between entrepreneurs’ optimism and persistence.

This theoretically derived research model is empirically validated using survey data from 198 small and medium-sized enterprises in Ghana.

The study’s empirical findings are that the relationship between entrepreneurs’ optimism and entrepreneurial persistence is enhanced at higher levels of cognitive planning and creating styles. Somewhat interestingly, cognitive knowing style negatively moderates the relationship between optimism and entrepreneurial persistence.

The cross-sectional design of the study does not permit causal inferences to be made regarding the variables examined. Future studies may use longitudinal design to examine the causal links of the variables.

The results of this paper can assist entrepreneurs and policy-makers in understanding the dynamics and processes involved in entrepreneurial decision making. The understanding of this issue can promote the development and maintenance of entrepreneurial ventures.

The paper has a strong theoretical value as it relies on cognitive explanations of human behaviour, and seeks to advance the theoretical field by demonstrating the value of cognitive style within the domain of entrepreneurship.