Examining the Differences in After-Sale Service Quality Perceptions between Managers and Customers in the Automobile Industry and Their Impact on Customer Satisfaction

The purpose of this study was to explore how service managers and their customers perceive the after-sale service quality provided by automobile service centers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with a goal to identify the existence of gaps, if any, between their perceptions and how they can impact customer satisfaction level. A qualitative phenomenological method was implemented to gather a description of the participants’ actual experiences, and data were collected using semi-structured interviews with seven service mangers and 20 customers. The structure of the managers’ interview questions was designed to go beyond identifying the most important factors that customers insist on having and focus on the methods that managers use to gather customer data, the obstacles that prevent meeting customers’ needs, frequent customer complaints, and the effectiveness of aligning managers’ and customers’ perceptions to increase customer satisfaction. The questions used to interview customers were also designed to collect in-depth feedback regarding how they evaluate service managers’ understanding of their needs and how that can have a crucial impact on their future transactions. Existing literature on the same topic did not fully address the issues of having different perceptions between service managers and customers. The findings of this study endorse the need for service managers to discover the hidden and underestimated customer requirements that prevent them from having aligned perceptions between both parties. This study makes an important contribution to the literature by expanding and enriching the existing knowledge of the after-sale service quality in the UAE automobile industry

THE ROLE OF HUMAN RESOURCES IN ORGANIZATIONAL RESTRUCTURING: PERCEPTIONS OF HRDEPARTMENT, LINE MANAGERS, AND EMPLOYEES

The process of organizational restructuring is an integral and common aspect that has been integrated into the growth and development of organizations all around the globe. It is mainly undertaken to ensure that organizations are up to date with ever-changing external and internal business environments to improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency. The government of Abu Dhabi emirate has developed a long-term plan to guide the future growth of the emirate (Abu Dhabi 2030). As a result, all of its departments and entities need to align to this strategic plan, which involves change. In many cases, this has forced organizations/entities to restructure. This study empirically examines and rigorously investigates organizational restructuring covering all of the stages that the organizational restructuring process goes through, starting from the adoption stage, which identifies the main reasons leading organizations to undertake organizational restructuring. Then the study evaluates the role of the HR department in the organizational restructuring implementation and finally, it analyses the perception that line managers, HR department, and organization employees have towards the HR Department’s role played during the organizational restructuring. It takes into consideration government and semi-government entities in Abu Dhabi Emirate, which has undergone restructuring in the last four years. The research methods include desk research and a survey questionnaire given to 307 participants. The study proposes a conceptual framework, which can be used as a guide to improving the management of organizational restructuring including its stages of adoption, implementation, and perception/implications

Identifying Prospective Clients for Long-Term Bank Deposit

The numerous characteristics of customers are often kept in bank databases, which are utilized to understand who they are. But it has been found in recent years that utilizing different Data Mining and Feature Selection (PCA) methods, customer traits and other factors connected to bank services have a big influence on consumers\u27 decisions. Business analytics is an approach to conducting business that uses transactional data from an organization to acquire knowledge of how business operations can be enhanced by employing data mining methods to determine existing patterns that a firm can incorporate to generate significant data-driven choices to choose significant variables. In this project, we apply data mining techniques for the prediction of long- term bank deposits employing a well-known bank data collection. From PCA it is seen that customers’ income level, pout come, p days, and previous (first PC) in general, may seem to have a higher impact on prospective clients, but this is indeed not the real. Also, the Banks’ prior campaign and the social elements (Age, Marital Status, Education, Campaign, Duration) of the clients are primarily essential compared to other variables. Again k-means clustering is employed with reduced data by PCA to determine groups of potential customers which gives 87.76% accuracy scores

WAITING TIME AND PATIENTS’ SATISFACTION

In line with Vision 2021, the UAE’s National Agenda has six pillars: providing world-class healthcare is one of them. It is hence not surprising that the UAE healthcare industry is allocating substantial weight to the element of quality. Patient-centered care is internationally becoming part of the quality domain. Patient-centered quality may be defined as “providing the care that the patient needs in the manner the patient desires at the time the patient desires”. This requires substantially more attention to learning about patients’ preferences. One of the main dimensions of patient-centered quality is timely access to care, which includes shorter waiting times and efficient use of physicians’ time. Long waiting time is a globally challenging phenomenon that most healthcare systems face; it is the main topic of this thesis. The thesis consists of two main studies. The first empirical study was conducted by interviewing a sample of 552 patients to assess their satisfaction with their waiting experience in UAE hospitals. The collected data allowed us to test several hypotheses that were formulated based on an extensive literature study to better understand the relationship between waiting time and certain variables. In the second study, a simulation model for a typical clinic was built from real data obtained from a public hospital in Abu Dhabi emirate, considering two types of patients’ arrival; by appointment and walk-in, to test the effect of delayed arrivals and number of resources on the waiting time. The objective of the simulation study was to determine effective strategies for reducing the patients’ waiting time. The results of both studies are presented and discussed, with some recommendations, managerial implications, and conclusions

Effect of Thermal Treatments on the Fatty Acids Composition, Antioxidant and Anti-inflammatory Properties of Camel Milk

The present research was conducted to study heat treatment's effect on camel milk’s physicochemical and biological activities. Milk samples were heated at 63°C for 30 minutes, 90°C for 3 minutes, and 100°C for 3 minutes. After heating, the physicochemical: pH, acidity, Fat, Dry matter, proteins, and fatty acids composition as well as the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities of all samples were determined. The antioxidant activity of camel milk was evaluated by different assays, including free radical-scavenging activity (DPPH and ABTS) and ferric-reducing power assay (FRAP). Results showed that the heat treatment process increased significantly (p<0.05) the viscosity, total solids, ash, and lactose content. Although, the monounsaturated fatty acids and particularly the oleic acid were significantly decreased after heat treatment. Heat treatment didn’t show any significant effect on antioxidant activities. While a significant increase (p<0.05) was shown after boiling the milk in the anti-inflammatory activity. Therefore, pasteurization could be the greatest heating process to ensure the microbiological safety and the stability of the micronutrients in milk

Ruling on Zakat on Digital Currencies Rooted in the Noble Qur'an and the Prophet's Sunnah

Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds, who guided us and brought us out of darkness into light, and prayers and peace be upon the messenger as a mercy to the worlds, who delivered the message and advised the nation, and all his family and companions. Digital currencies are one of the modern calamities that many people wonder about, some are confused about, and many wonder how to deal with them. Is it an illusion or reality? Most of the dealers of digital currencies wonder about its legal ruling and whether the provisions that apply to money issued by official state banks also apply to it. Therefore, the research aims to clarify the ruling on zakat on digital currencies from the perspective of the Noble Qur'an and the purified Sunnah of the Prophet. Keywords: digital currencies, zakat

Removal of RR-23 dye from industrial textile wastewater by adsorption on cistus ladaniferus seeds and their biochar

The use of low-cost, easily obtained and eco-friendly adsorbents has been employed as an ideal alternative for the methods of removing dyes from wastewater. Cistus ladaniferus seeds (CLS) and their biochar (BCCLS) are the biomaterials used as a bio-adsorbent for removing of Reactive red 23 (RR-23). The bio-char of cistus seed is prepared by a thermo-chemical route known as pyrolysis under optimum conditions, temperature equal to 450 °C, heating rate 21 °C.min-1 and particle sizes of 0.3 to 0.6 mm after the BCCLS is grinded with a ceramic grinder until the particle size is between 0.1 and 0.2 mm. The kinetics adsorption of dye by CLS and BCCLS are correctly described by the pseudo-2nd-order model with a correlation factor (R2 = 0.997) and (R2 = 0.998) respectively. As for the modeling of the adsorption isotherm, among the four models tested, Lungmuir type II and type I is most appropriate with a correlation factor equal to 0.999 and 0.98 for the BCCLS and the CLS respectively. On the other hand, the ability to remove the dye by the BCCLS is advantageous and the elimination efficiency reaches a maximum value of 99.237% for the BCCLS and 82% for the CLS. Keywords: Biochar, Isotherm, Adsorption, Cistus Seed, pyrolysis, Technical analysis

Modified Chitosan Immobilized on Modified Sand for Industrial Wastewater Treatment in Multicomponent Sorption: Shrimp Biowaste Processing

In this paper, modified chitosan immobilized on modified sand (MCs/MS) was synthesized and characterized by infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDXA). MCs/MS composite was used to remove Reactive Red 23 (RR23), Reactive Blue 19 (RB19) and Iron III (Fe3+) in three single-component and three binary, RR23+RB19, RR23+Fe3+ and RB19+Fe3+. Batch experiments were carried out for adsorption kinetics, isotherms and thermodynamics. Operational parameters studied were pH, contact time, temperature, adsorbate and adsorbent concentrations. Adsorption kinetics in single and binary systems of components followed pseudo- second-order kinetics model. The isotherm data in single and binary systems followed Freundlich isotherm model. Thermodynamic parameters have disclosed that the adsorption is exothermic and not spontaneous with a physical adsorption for both single and binary systems. The results showed that MCs/MS composite was an effective adsorbent to remove hazardous pollutants with a removal rate between 80% and 99.6%, the optimal contact time was between 120 and 180 min for all components in single and multicomponent system. Keywords : Modified chitosan immobilized on modified sand, Multicomponent system, Reactive Red 23, Reactive Blue 19, Iron III, Hydrothermo-Chemical method