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Supply chain quality management (SCQM) has gained less attention in the Arab world, and there is a clear dearth in existing research on this topic, particularly in service organizations. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for investigating the impact of SCQM and associated indicators on organizational performance (OP).

Empirical data have been collected through a survey distributed to a sample of major telecom companies in United Arab Emirates (UAE). To test the conceptual framework, structural equation modeling (SEM) has been used to analyze the data collected from 248 respondents of telecom companies.

The empirical data showed that SCQM practices are significantly correlated with innovation and operations performance. Statistical analysis through SEM also revealed that customer satisfaction has highest direct impact on OP.

External factors (government regulations, policies and culture) also affect the SCQM practices. Hence, future work should incorporate these parameters as well.

This is a contribution to the continuing research into SCQM, giving supply chain managers and designers a practical way for measuring and implementing SCQM practices across service supply chains.

The contribution of this research, through successive stages of data collection, measurement analysis and refinement, is a set of reliable and valid framework that can be subsequently used in conceptualization and measuring quality of service supply chains.

This paper aims to identify and prioritize the dimensions that impact employee social sustainability in the airline industry in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The five main criteria (employee well-being, communication, management support, reward and control system and training) and 18 sub-criteria were identified from the literature. The sample comprised four experts covering the HR, finance and training functions from a major UAE airline organization. Applying the analytical-hierarchy-process (AHP) methodology resulted in obtaining priority weights for the factors assigned to employee-social-sustainability implementation.

Management support was found to have the highest priority among the study dimensions impacting employee social sustainability. Surprisingly, reward system was found to be the least important dimension.

The study was carried out on a single airline organization, limiting the generalizability of the findings. Future studies should be extended to cater to different organizational contexts and varying operational conditions.

The findings should be of value to human resource management and policymakers in developing countries, such as the UAE, where employee social sustainability should be sought as a means to develop an efficient and sustainable workforce in different industrial sectors.

This study is among the few pioneering studies that focus on employee social sustainability. The use of AHP to prioritize employee-social-sustainability dimensions is also considered pioneering within the field and is anticipated to support future studies, and a deeper understanding, of employee social sustainability.

This paper aims to investigate recycling behavior (RB) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to identify factors in the lack of citizen participation in recycling and to form strategies to raise awareness of and encourage positive recycling practices.

Based on stakeholder theory, a panel of 15 experts and 15 families was interviewed to develop a model of seven constructs and their 29 indicators. Based on the responses generated, a questionnaire was developed and tested. The survey was distributed to 106 waste management professionals. Their responses regarding the influence of regulatory promotion tactics, awareness raising, situational facilitators, motivators and synergistic habits on citizens' RB were analyzed using the structural equation modeling technique.

Several factors govern the citizens' behavior regarding recycling municipal solid waste in the UAE. The most significant governing determinants of RB observed were laws and regulations, willingness to sort and recycle and benefits of recycling. Seven constructs and their 29 indicators were studied, and the findings indicated that strategies such as creating awareness, introducing operative waste control facilities and implementing fines and regulations could improve RB in the UAE. The structural model showcased a relationship between the primary constructs and RB; hence, these constructs can directly affect waste management.

To support these findings, validation of the results from other countries and contrasting employees' RB is needed. The present study draws empirical insights into RB from a stakeholder perspective, which could be compared to RB across other cultures and countries.

This study aims to identify and categorize the barriers and motivators to value co-creation and to establish its theoretical link with the five axioms of value co-creation.

The study used a qualitative approach based on a bibliographic literature review for identifying barriers and motivators of value co-creation. Subsequently, this study grouped those barriers and motivators into three categories. It further linked those barriers and motivators with five axioms of value co-creation using the grounded theory.

Results based on the categorization of barriers show that the first category “organization and system-related barriers” is associated with Axioms 1, 2 and 5 of the service-dominant logic. The second category “customer-oriented barriers” is associated with Axioms 2, 4 and 5. The third category of barriers “social environmental and economic barriers” is related to only Axiom 3. Results based on the motivators show that the first category “organization and system-related motivators” is associated with Axioms 2 and 4. The second category of “customer-oriented motivators” is associated with Axioms 1, 2, 3 and 5. The third category of motivators “social environmental and economic motivators” is related to Axioms 3 and 5.

These results provide insights to managers for eradicating barriers from the value co-creation process by emphasizing strategic intrusion into those axioms that contain a high percentage of barriers. Similarly, it also provides insights to managers for expediting motivators of value co-creation by strategic intrusion based on the axioms that contain a high percentage of motivators. Overall, this study will serve for greater value co-creation by eradicating barriers and promoting motivators. This study also provides a theoretical foundation for future studies intended to establish a theoretical connection between the barriers and motivators with value co-creation in other industries.

This study is novel in terms of identifying barriers and motivators of value creation by categorizing those identified barriers and motivators into three sub-categories. This study is the first one for linking barriers and motivators with five axioms of value creation for a micro-level policy formulation.

Literature shows that the antecedents of eWoM have received limited attention and the present scales used for measuring eWoM in the hospitality and tourism industry are outdated. Therefore, this study aims to construct a new scale for the generation of positive eWoM in the hospitality and tourism industry.

This study developed a novel scale on eWoM based on the four dimensions of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology.

The exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis confirms the factorial structure of the new scale. The exploratory factor analysis shows that “performance expectancy” has the highest impact on the constitution of positive eWoM with 8 items, followed by “social influence” and “facilitation condition” with 5 items each. The factor “effort expectancy” is found to have the lowest impact on the constitution of positive eWoM in the hospitality and tourism industry with 3 items. The confirmatory factor analysis in terms of the construct reliability, average variance extracted and maximum shared variance tests confirmed the model validity of the new scale.

This study ensures measuring eWoM with the latest norms that will assist in prudent policy formulation. These results insights into policymakers from the hospitality and tourism industry for the generation of positive eWoM towards their business which will help them achieve better customer loyalty.

This study aims to critically investigate the structural relationships between total quality management (TQM), service innovation and sustainability performance in the public service sector of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The study employed an online survey to collect data from 400 employees working in eight selected UAE public service sector organisations located in Abu Dhabi. The collected data were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM) to empirically examine whether TQM practices improve service innovation and, subsequently, sustainability performance in the UAE's public service sector.

The results show that TQM has a significant impact on service innovation and sustainability performance in the UAE's public service sector. Additionally, service innovation partially mediates the relationship between TQM and sustainability performance.

The public service sector's TQM practices and service innovation in the UAE have a much greater impact on social and environmental sustainability than on economic sustainability performance. Adopting five dimensions of TQM (following the Abu Dhabi Award for Excellence in Government Performance [ADAEP] model) across the UAE's public organisations will enable government departments to deliver innovative services to its beneficiaries.

This study provides a substantial contribution by addressing the gaps in the literature. Very few studies have empirically investigated the possible association between TQM, service innovation and sustainability performance in public sector organisations, particularly in developing countries such as the UAE, where the increasing efforts in TQM practices are still in their emerging stages, mainly targeting innovative service offerings and sustainable performance.

Project scope creep is a nightmare and nearly intolerable task. Most project managers struggle to curtail the expanse and degree of scope creep. This study examines different likely project scope creep factors associated with the construction industry projects.

After many brainstorming sessions with construction stakeholders, several project scope creep factors were identified. Then, a detailed survey was executed in big construction projects of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

The results derived and validated five conspicuous factors leading to project scope creep. Respectively, the highest and the lowest impact on project scope appears to be imposed by tasks/specifications and complexity/uncertainty.

It offers crucial support to the project stakeholders in scrutinizing different factors that stand as hurdles to project success and allows them to seek remedies to resolve them.

It is among the first study in the region that identifies and validates the factors that hinder construction project success.

Health-care knowledge is dispersed among different departments in a health care organization, which makes it difficult at times to provide quality care services to patients. Therefore, this study aims to identify the main challenges in adopting health information technology (HIT).

This study surveyed 148 stakeholders in 4 key categories [patients, health-care providers, United Arab Emirates (UAE) citizens and foresight experts] to identify the challenges they face in adopting health care technologies. Responses were analyzed using exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

EFA revealed four key latent factors predicting resistance to HIT adoption, namely, organizational strategy (ORGS); technical barriers; readiness for big data and the internet of things (IoT); and orientation (ORI). ORGS accounted for the greatest amount of variance. CFA indicated that readiness for big data and the IoT was only moderately correlated with HIT adoption, but the other three factors were strongly correlated. Specific items relating to cost, the effectiveness and usability of the technology and the organization were strongly correlated with HIT adoption. These results indicate that, in addition to financial considerations, effective HIT adoption requires ensuring that technologies will be easy to implement to ensure their long-term use.

The results indicate that readiness for big data and the IoT-related infrastructure poses a challenge to HIT adoption in the UAE context. Respondents believed that the infrastructure of big data can be helpful in more efficiently storing and sharing health-care information. On the technological side, respondents felt that they may experience a steep learning curve. Regarding ORI, stakeholders expected many more such initiatives from health-care providers to make it more knowledge-specific and proactive.

This study has implications for knowledge management in the health -care sector for information technologies. The HIT can help firms in creating a knowledge eco-system, which is not possible in a dispersed knowledge environment. The utilization of the knowledge base that emerged from the practices and data can help the health care sector to set new standards of information flow and other clinical services such as monitoring the self-health condition. The HIT can further influence the actions of the pharmaceutical and medical device industry.

This paper highlights the challenges in HIT adoption and the most prominent factors. The conceptual model was empirically tested after the collection of primary data from the UAE using stakeholder theory.

The term “Mental health literacy” is defined as knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders which aid their recognition, management or prevention. The importance of health literacy for physical health is widely studied; however, the area of mental health literacy in Pakistan has been comparatively neglected. The purpose of this paper is to address the knowledge about mental health in people living in Pakistan.

Relevant literature relating to mental health literacy was identified through various database searches. The databases searched included: PubMed, Cochrane database of Systemic Reviews, PsycINFO using the terms mental health, mental health literacy, mental health education, Pakistan.

Literature suggests that there is dearth of knowledge about mental illnesses and their treatment among public. This review also highlights the importance of mental health literacy among professionals working in the field of health care. In Pakistan, due to low literacy rate, a high percentage of poverty and dearth of trained professionals warrants an emendation in approaches established for attaining the goal of public health and psychiatric care.

Findings have implications for practitioners in the field of mental health care as well as designing targeted interventions for enhancing mental health literacy and help-seeking behavior in the future.

A limited understanding and lack of improvement in mental health literacy may interfere with society’s acceptance of evidence-based mental health care which may hamper the delivery of adequate mental health services to the needy.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for the identification, categorization and prioritization of social sustainability barriers in health-care supply chains.

An exploratory survey tool is used to identify barriers that are relevant to a health-care supply chain. The identified barriers are grouped into five main categories and experts’ opinions were applied to validate the content. Finally, an analytical hierarchical process (AHP) is used to prioritize the main categories and sub-categories of the barriers.

The exploratory phase identified 34 barriers that are relevant to a health-care supply chain. These barriers were grouped into the following categories: poor infrastructure, organizational culture, poor coordination, stakeholder disparity, and uncertainty. Organizational culture and poor coordination were assigned the highest priority through the AHP. Overall, lack of management support, lack of commitment and lack of coordination were found to be the top relevant barriers to a health-care supply chain.

This study only explored and prioritized the barriers of social sustainability. Future research should explore the impact of the identified barriers on the overall performance of the hospital supply chain.

The findings of this study may be of value to the local health-care industry in achieving their objectives by overcoming social sustainability barriers, which would in turn facilitate the implementation of social sustainability programs that can positively contribute to the overall supply chain performance.

Social sustainability has grown in importance as a pressurizing issue to push supply chain managers to assess their social impacts on the communities. This is especially important in service supply chains such as health care, where human element is a part of every stage.

Despite practitioners’ and academics’ growing emphasis on the social dimension of sustainability, the categorization and prioritization of social sustainability practices across health-care supply chains and general service care supply chains have not been addressed. This study aims to cover this gap by contributing to both the academic literature and the practical health-care environment.