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This article tries to examine concerns and opportunities that American companies may face in the Middle East. American companies and managers should have a better understanding of this part of the world to be more effective and successful in their operations. This article starts first by describing the demographics, geography, and political composition of the Middle East, and then goes on to address the issues and challenges, for example, unions and security issues that American companies conducting business in the region might face. After discussing the challenges, this article explains the opportunities available, such as; privatisation. Finally, the conclusion is that the Middle East could offer American companies an opportunity to expand their operations, however, for any company to succeed in the region it should have a deep understanding of the culture, politics, and people.

This article tries to address some of the issues managers face in franchise systems; the use of high tech systems and marketing. Using these two tools in the best way possible is of great importance to franchisees and franchisors. Both the advantages and shortcomings of these aspects are discussed. The importance of such an examination comes from the fact that these tools could be of very high value if applied appropriately or harmful if misapplied. Some examples of franchise systems that have been involved in these aspects are discussed to show the two‐sided nature of the application of them.

This paper was aimed at investigating the impact of knowledge management (KM) procedures on enriching human resources in Water and Waste Water Company in East Azerbaijan, Iran.

The samples used in this study included the employees of Water and Waste Water Company in Tabriz, East Azerbaijan, Iran. A questionnaire was used for collecting data from the employees of the abovementioned company. Its reliability and validity were first examined and checked. Then, Smart partial least squares 2.0 was used for analyzing the structural model.

The results acknowledged the validity of the introduced model for enriching human resources. The findings indicated that five variables, namely, kind of knowledge, top managers, information technology, culture and organization of knowledge, have significant impact on enriching human resources.

It is undoubtable that research studies might have specific limitations which should be pointed out and addressed in future studies. The followings are the major limitations of the study: because the present study was carried out in Water and Wastewater Company in Tabriz, East Azerbaijan, hence, generalizing the findings of this study to other professional contexts and organizations should be made with caution. In fact, the present study need to be replicated in other context to find whether the same or different results are obtained. In other words, different cultural, contextual and professional conditions might result differently from the ones reported here. Inasmuch as the present study was a cross-sectional study and the data were collected via questionnaire, a longitudinal study with a longer observation and investigation might shed more light on the efficacy of KMS in organizations. The present study focused on a specific dependent variable (human resource empowerment) which was explained by different dimensions of an independent variable, i.e. KM. However, the impact and efficacy of KMS can be investigated on other organizational variables and parameters. In this study, due to certain logistic and real-life limitations such as the limited time of the staff members of the target organization, we had to use only one data-collection instrument. Nevertheless, future studies can use data triangulation so as to better capture professional contexts of the study. Furthermore, another limitation of the study is related to the individual variables of the employees which remained untouched. That is, whether employees’ personal, emotional and cognitive variables can modify the impact of KM on human resource empowerment was not investigated in the present study.

Organizational managers are recommended to provide the background for employees to share their experiences. Organizations should invest on designing and developing patterns and strategic perspectives in human resource empowerment as a key factor toward becoming knowledge-based organizations.

This paper is one of the few applied studies which acknowledged the relationship between knowledge management initiatives and empowering human resources. It addresses the gap between knowledge management and human resource empowerment.

Nutrition labels provide a cost-effective method of conveying nutrition information to consumers. This study aimed to assess the use of nutrition facts panels, knowledge of traffic light labelling (TLL) and perceived healthiness of food items using TLL among consumers.

A web-based cross-sectional study was conducted among adults in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (n = 1,322). TLL knowledge score was derived for each participant. Conjoint analysis was used to calculate the utilities and relative importance of the perceived healthiness scores for four attributes (fat, saturated fat, total sugar, salt) at the aggregate level.

Participants had a positive attitude towards TLL but were less familiar with TLL than the nutrition facts panel (47.4 vs 85.8%). The mean TLL knowledge score was 3.6 out of 7 (51.6%). Younger age, higher education, higher income, and health-related qualifications were associated with higher scores. Conjoint analysis showed that participants tend to choose products with greener labels, especially for sugars (80.1%) and avoid red labels for fats. Sugars had the highest percentage value of relative importance compared to the other attributes (27.1%).

The study outcomes offer valuable insights into the extent of consumer awareness, comprehension and utilization of nutrition facts panels in the UAE. These findings contribute essential knowledge for a deeper understanding of the impact of nutrition labels on consumer behaviour and decision-making in the region.

This paper aims to examine the effect of bank-specific, financial structure and macroeconomic factors on the risk-taking behavior, stability and profitability of banks in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies during 1998–2017.

The authors use a two-step system generalized method of moments dynamic model to analyze the data.

The results show that non-traditional activities increase the risk and decrease the stability and profitability of banks that are highly capitalized, highly liquid and large. Banks in this group are less engaged in securities investments and their higher degree of loan exposure leads to a decrease in risk and an increase in their stability and profitability. Higher concentration increases the risk and decreases the stability and profitability of banks that are less capitalized, less liquid and small. Banks with a higher share of non-traditional activities are riskier and less stable and less profitable before the financial crisis. The study finds that banks with relatively higher capitalization and high lending growth rates are riskier, profitable and less stable during the crisis. Larger commercial banks are less risky and more stable and profitable than smaller banks before the global financial crisis. Islamic banks performed better in terms of fee income, capitalization, liquidity, asset quality and have higher market concentration than conventional banks.

The study provides the first comprehensive empirical evidence on the drivers of risk-taking behavior, stability and profitability of the GCC banks. It also investigates the differences across these variables based on the characteristics of financial strength such as capitalization, liquidity and size; before, during and after the financial crisis; and differences between Islamic and conventional banks.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of the characteristics of audit committee chairman (ACC) (tenure, age, gender, ethnicity, accounting expertise and directorship) on earnings management (EM) practices.

The Jones model and modified Jones model by Dechow et al. (1995) were used to determine the discretionary accruals (DA) of 288 Malaysian listed firms with lowest positive earnings for the years 2013‒2015.

The results of the ordinary least squares regression indicate that only tenure, gender and ethnicity of the ACC are associated with DA. A further test was conducted by dividing firms into two groups: firms whose boards are chaired by a family member and firms whose boards are chaired by a non-family member. The results reveal that it is possible for firms whose boards are chaired by family members to cause the corporate governance (CG) mechanisms, particularly the audit committee, to lose their effectiveness in overcoming the EM problem. In addition, robustness tests were conducted by using panel data regression, where the results were found to be similar to the original regression results.

This study alerts policymakers, firms and their stakeholders, as well as researchers, regarding the importance of having an independent board chairman, who has no relationship with any directors or major shareholders, as this may hinder the effectiveness of CG mechanisms in curbing EM, especially in emerging countries, such as Malaysia, where it is very difficult to stop members of the family from becoming board directors.

This study aims to investigate the dynamic relationships between profitability, credit risk, liquidity risk and capital in Indonesian banking industry.

The authors use a panel vector autoregression model that incorporates macroeconomic variables: growth, interest rate, foreign exchange. The analysis is based on a monthly panel data set of 88 banks spanning from January 2012 to September 2021, which comprises 10,296 bank-month observations.

Our key findings highlight (i) permanent credit cost and liquidity cost pass through practices, (ii) complementary function of liquidity and capital, (iii) earning management motivated asset write off and (iv) credit risk-liquidity risk neutrality. In addition, the authors observe that the banks demonstrated resilience to macroeconomic shocks.

Our study have shown some interesting dynamic patterns of fundamentals; nevertheless, unified theoretical underpinning of the process is still unavailable. This should be an important future reasearch avenue.

The study brings significant implications for regulatory and supervisory practices aimed at enhancing the financial stability of banks.

We conduct estimation of Indonesian banks system in dynamic perspective and perform impulses responses.

The aim of the study is to examine the influence of remuneration committee (RC) characteristics, namely separation, size, independence, meetings, and female directors, on firm performance (FP) by using return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE) and earnings per shares (EPS). The study covers all firms being listed in Bahrain Bourse for two years which are 2020 and 2021. The results of the study show that having more directors in RC would significantly increase firm performance “ROE and EPS.” Further, having more females in RC would significantly increase firm performance “ROA.” In addition, having separate RC would significantly decrease firm performance “ROA and EPS.” Moreover, the independence of directors in RC and its frequent meetings has no significant impact on the firm’s performance. The results show that there is a need to re-evaluate the role of the RC and strengthen its effectiveness, as some of the variables examined by this study have an insignificant impact on a firm’s performance. Further, there is a need to allocate additional efforts and policies in developing corporate governance and RCs as well.

Mobilization by diaspora activists against illiberalism in their country of origin and by immigrants for equality in their country of settlement has received widespread attention in political science and sociology, respectively. However, because extant studies treat these mobilizations as distinct types, little is known about the relationship between diaspora and immigrant mobilization. This chapter addresses this theoretical gap using 167 interviews with Syrian and Yemeni activists in the United States and Britain. The findings demonstrate how Syrian and Yemeni diaspora mobilization in support of the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions facilitated their visibility and voice as immigrants. Syrians built an organizational field with the capacity to contest host-country discrimination and local extremism; Yemenis instituted protests and brokerage that shaped the context of reception for home-country elites and challenged intragroup inequality. At the same time, economic disparities between national groups shaped their capacities to diversify tactics and sustain efforts over time. My chief claim is that diaspora mobilization facilitates immigrant voice and visibility but is mitigated in important ways by group-wise resources. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of voice and visibility among marginalized groups subjected to intersecting repressions.