Exploring the Nature of Human Resource Management Practices at Family Businesses in Palestine

This article provides substantial and current information on HRM knowledge and practices in Palestine and particularly explore the nature of HRM practices at family businesses within Palestinian context.The population consisted of all Palestinian family businesses employ 50 employees and above. Data was collected by means of a written questionnaire sent to all Palestinian family firms.Questionnaires were distributed and interviews were conducted with managers including HR managers. Findings show that family firms are far away from applying HRM practices and some family firms apply it partially and sporadically. The study leads to a better understanding of family firms in Palestine.Recommendations to the owners and managers of family businesses to change the attitudes and values of family firm’s management staff through organization development sessions and techniques to devote more effort for human resources by applying human resource management practices.Key words: Human resource management practices; Family businesse

Factors Influencing Online Shopping Behavior Among Jordanian Academicians

Although online shopping had been widely adopted in developed countries, there was still low percentage of online shopping in developing countries like Jordan. The aims of this quantitative research were to empirically determine the significant predictors of online shopping behaviors (actual, intention and trust), examine the mediating effect of trust and intention on the relationship between predictors and actual online shopping behavior, and investigate the applicability of Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) in explaining online shopping behavior in Jordan. A survey was conducted among 317 academic staff in ten universities located in three areas (North, Middle and South) in Jordan. Data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Out of 15 hypotheses of online shopping behaviors, nine had significant direct effects (intention, trust and subjective norm to actual behavior; trust, uncertainty avoidance, subjective norm and perceived behavior control to intention; uncertainty avoidance and subjective norm to trust). The study also found that intention was a fill mediator of the relationship between uncertainty avoidance and perceived behavioral control with actual online shopping behavior. It was found to be a partial mediator of the relationship between trust and subjective norm with actual online shopping behavior. Trust was also found as a fill mediator of the relationship between uncertainty avoidance and attitude with actual online shopping behavior. Finally, trust and intention filly mediated the relationship of uncertainty avoidance and attitude with actual online shopping behavior. The present study also highlighted implications of the study, future research work as well as its study limitations

The Role of Electronic Banking in Shaping the Strategic Direction of Banks in the United Arab Emirates

The advent of digital innovation provides profound benefits and an excellent opportunity for various industries, including banking business.  A plethora of electronic banking services have been witnessed in developing countries worldwide.  The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is one of the most economically competitive in the region and the wider world.  The adoption of electronic banking in UAE has been established a long time and increased tremendously.  Scholars and business experts revealed that although the banking sector in UAE is noted as a financial and service sector leader, the whole system of financial services and intermediation is yet to be properly utilized as a real added value tool.  The main focus of this paper is to investigate how electronic banking is shaping the strategic direction of banks in UAE, based on qualitative interviews with the bank managers and secondary data.  Moreover, what are the provisions made to improve customer-company relationship using this technology?  The results suggest that banks have thorough and defined procedures to acknowledge internet services, and although customers are still hesitant in using newer banking services, the need for sophisticated electronic banking system has acquired a new urgency.  It was suggested that the specific factors such as convenience, security transactions, and computer self-efficacy could have a significant impact to maximize their profitability and improve customer-company relationship.  Also, study revealed that trust is central to an effective functioning electronic banking system.  Although electronic banking transactions have improved over a decades in UAE, more effort is required to alleviate influences associated with lack of trust of online transactions among electronic banking users. Keywords: electronic banking, United Arab Emirate

Stages of change, smoking behavior and acceptability of a textmessaging intervention for tobacco cessation among cigarette, dokha and shishasmokers: A qualitative research study

© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. To explore: (A) the underlying motivators and barriers to smoking cessation among young Arabic speaking smokers and (B) to examine the suitability and preferences for tobacco cessation interventions (specifically text messages) and study the possibility of enrollment methods for a randomised controlled study using text messages as an intervention for tobacco cessation. Design Qualitative research using focus group discussions and content analysis. Setting(s) Two universities, one of them is the first and foremost comprehensive national university in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The third setting is the largest hospital in the UAE and the flagship institution for the public health system in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. Participants Six focus group discussions with a total of 57 participants. Forty-seven men and 10 women. Fifty-three of them were current smokers. Results The analysis of six focus groups was carried out. Main themes arose from the data included: preferences for tobacco cessation interventions and acceptability and feasibility of text messaging as tobacco cessation intervention. Different motives and barriers for quitting smoking including shisha and dokha were explored. Conclusion Interventions using text messaging for smoking cessation have not been used in the Middle East and they could potentially be effective; however, tailoring and closely examining the content and acceptability of text messages to be used is important before the conduction of trials involving their use. Social media is perceived to be more effective and influential, with a higher level of penetration into communities of young smokers

Actual online shopping behavior among Jordanian customers

Internet technology is becoming increasingly important in our daily life in general and in business world particularly.This increased role of the Internet encourages the researchers to investigate the customer behavior in this emerging market. The aim of this study is to examine the factors that give rise to the formation of the actual online shopping behavior of Jordanian customers.The study analyses the predictor variables of planned behavior among 313 university academic staff selected on the basis of probability sampling.Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the causal relationships in accordance with the theory of planned behavior (TPB).The findings depicted that subjective norm and perceived behavioral control to have significant positive effects on intention. Attitude has no direct significant impact on online shopping intention.Online shopping intention also has a positive and significant impact on actual online shopping behavior.The practical implication of the research is discusse

Patterns of tobacco use in the United Arab Emirates healthy future (UAEHFS) pilot study

© 2018 Al-Houqani et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Introduction Self-reported tobacco use in the United Arab Emirates is among the highest in the region. Use of tobacco products other than cigarettes is widespread, but little is known about specific behavior use patterns. There have been no studies that have biochemically verified smoking status. Methods The UAE Healthy Future Study (UAEHFS) seeks to understand the causes of non-communicable diseases through a 20,000-person cohort study. During the study pilot, 517 Emirati nationals were recruited to complete a questionnaire, provide clinical measurements and biological samples. Complete smoking data were available for 428 participants. Validation of smoking status via cotinine testing was conducted based on complete questionnaire data and matching urine samples for 399 participants, using a cut-off of 200ng/ml to indicate active smoking status. Results Self-reported tobacco use was 36% among men and 3% among women in the sample. However, biochemical verification of smoking status revealed that 42% men and 9% of women were positive for cotinine indicating possible recent tobacco use. Dual and poly-use of tobacco products was fairly common with 32% and 6% of the sample reporting respectively. Conclusions This is the first study in the region to biochemically verify tobacco use self-report data. Tobacco use in this study population was found to be higher than previously thought, especially among women. Misclassification of smoking status was more common than expected. Poly-tobacco use was also very common. Additional studies are needed to understand tobacco use behaviors and the extent to which people may be exposed to passive tobacco smoke. Implications This study is the first in the region to biochemically verify self-reported smoking status