Abdullah Mohammed Aldakhil

The effect of market orientation as a mediating variable in the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and SMEs performance

Purpose - – This study aims to examine the effect of market orientation (MO) as a mediating variable in the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and small and medium enterprises (SMEs)’ performance. Design/methodology/approach - – A total of 500 SMEs in the manufacturing industry of food and beverages were involved in this study with a response rate of 117. Data collection was conducted in all states of Peninsular Malaysia including the northern, central, southern and eastern regions. Findings - – The findings show that EO has a significant relationship with MO, and MO has a significant relationship with SME performance. MO will mediate the relationship between EO and SMEs’ performance. Practical implications - – The higher the EO implemented in a business, the more willing a company will be to implement MO. This analysis shows that highly entrepreneurial firms tend to be highly market orientated and this affects SMEs’ performance. Originality/value - – The results of this study show that the characteristic of entrepreneurial and MO practiced by SMEs in Malaysia has been significantly affected the SMEs’ performance. It indicates that EO offers a holistic and systematic model for supporting SMEs to build a well-maintained environment of MO and SMEs’ performance.

Employee Engagement and Strategic Communication in Saudi Arabian Banks

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions of individual employees on communication and its impacts on employee engagement in banks. Despite the extensive research on employee engagement and communication, very little or no empirical research has examined this scope of investigative study. Therefore, the hypotheses are developed to test and examine this relationship empirically. This study contributes in advancing the employee engagement literature to understand the association between communication and employees engagement within the context of banking industry. The results of this study reveal that communication with shared purpose, leadership attention, and communication based on dialogue are significantly positively associated with employee engagement. In communication, leadership attention is found to be strongly associated with employee job satisfaction and commitment in employee engagement.

Food-beverage-tobacco consumption, smoking prevalence, and high-technology exports influenced healthcare sustainability agenda across the globe

The objective of the study is to analyze the long-run, causal, and inter-temporal relationships between food-beverage-tobacco consumption, smoking prevalence in male and females, and high-technology exports and their resulting impact on global healthcare sustainability agenda in a panel of 19 European, North American, and Asian countries during a period of 1990–2016. The results show that the sample countries are largely affected by high mass consumption of food, beverages, and tobacco, due to which the health spending is very high in their economies that increase healthcare costs and mortality rates accordingly. The relationship between death rate and per capita income is found negative in a panel of selected countries, where high death rates substantially decrease country’s per capita income. The Granger causality estimates confirm the unidirectional causality running from (i) high-technology exports to CO2 emissions, (ii) smoking prevalence of male and female to health expenditures, (iii) industrial value added to mortality, (iv) health expenditures to per capita income, (v) per capita income to death rates, and (vi) food, beverages, and tobacco consumption to mortality indicators, whereas, the inter-temporal causation confirmed that lifetime risk of maternal death will largely influence health expenditures in a panel of selected countries for the next 10-year time period.