The purpose of this paper is to determine whether market crises in the U.S. and the increased volatility that they generate in the U.S. equity market, lead to similar increases in equity market volatilities in ten countries which are major foreign holders of U.S. Debt. The spillover effects of cluster volatility are observed in the context of two significant U.S. market crises: the financial crisis of 2007 and the threat of the U.S. government refusing to raise its "debt ceiling" and subsequently defaulting on its debt in 2011.  Results from the GARCH-in-Mean model analysis suggest signals from the US market to most of these countries are statistically significant signifying growing global equity market integration.

The influence of roles in the use of email has been explored at the mesocultural and it was observed that significant differences existed between the roles in 9 out of 12 markers. This paper seeks to explore the perception that the same patterns may exist at the micro-cultural job level. Using data gathered by Silverstone (2014) the Academic role has been broken down into 4 appropriate job groups and an unspecified academic group. From the original 1010 responses gathered by Silverstone (2014), 481 fell into the Academic role and were used for this study. Analysis was conducted descriptively and analytically with Chisquare, ANOVA and bivariate Correlation being used for statistical analysis of quantitative components and extensive coding and content analysis used for qualitative components. The findings demonstrated that there were no significant differences between email usage at the job level when compared to the differences meso-cultural role level. A total of 12 markers were tested statistically, at the job level only 2 were significant. The findings are significant as they help to validate that the predominant indicator of differences in email use is role as opposed to organisational culture.

This recipe attempts to provide further insight into service recovery by proposing an extended framework that captures the main effects between recovery alternatives and indicators of competitive positioning as well as the moderation effects introduced by technical efficiency. Two sets of questionnaires with almost similar questions were administered amongst teachers of Federal Government Colleges (FGCs) and senior officers of telecommunications firms in the south-eastern Nigeria, where Global Systems for Mobile Communications (GSM) and at least one Code Data Multiple Access (CDMA) have network coverage. Analyzing the data using multiple regressions, Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient, and structural equation modeling; the interactions between the quintiles of the four recovery alternatives and the indicators of competitive positioning were direct (though some were inverse) and statistically significant and moderated by technical efficiency. Thus, the dimensions of service recovery explained varying relationships with competitive positioning. The paper proposes proactive and relational recovery and specifically simple and hassle-free recovery, timely and value-creating redress, and realistic user interface.

Foreign scholarships awarded by Saudi public universities to their trainee academics are intended to provide substantial learning and capacity building opportunities for future faculty members through education and training at well-established higher education institutions throughout the world. At the same time, overseas studies are intended to provide sponsoring universities with highly qualified domestic faculty members who can help meet staffing needs, and strengthen their human and institutional capabilities. However, this investment can be successful for faculty members and universities alike only if faculty members are effectively utilised by their universities after they return from overseas and have the opportunity to apply acquired skills, knowledge and experiences. This research examines competence utilisation among foreign-trained faculty members in Saudi public universities. Using cross-sectional survey data from 566 foreign-trained faculty members from three major public universities, the research examines foreign-trained faculty members’ perceived utilisation and how patterns of competence utilisation influence important job attitudes. The results of this study suggest that many foreign-trained faculty members perceive their knowledge, skills and abilities to be not fully and adequately utilised by their universities. Moreover, poor competence utilisation was significantly negatively related to job satisfaction and organisational commitment and significantly positively related to turnover intention even after controlling for such variables as gender, age, academic rank, administrative position, and previous work experience.  Some of the plausible implications of these results are briefly discussed.

Do middle managers propagate novel employee communication up the hierarchy?  This paper investigates characteristics of the employee, employee input and the work environment that can facilitate or impede managerial propagation of employees’ improvement-oriented voice up the hierarchy. In particular, this study examines the effects of novelty and feasibility of employee improvement-oriented voice, credibility of speaker and time pressure on the likelihood that managers will propagate suggestions and ideas to upper management. Results from a field study with a sample of working middle managers suggest that novelty of voice, speaker credibility and time pressure can affect managerial voice propagation up the hierarchy. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Financial system of Bangladesh is predominantly bank based and overwhelming portion of its financing need is catered by commercial banks. A good number of private commercial banks along with some well-known international banks operate in Bangladesh. In such backdrop efficiency of banking system of Bangladesh is crucial. It has been more than a decade that Bangladeshi banking system has become market oriented (in functional sense) and local banking system is becoming increasingly integrated with international financial network creating an expectation pressure for higher efficiency. Malmquist index (Malmquist, 1953), which computes productivity changes, is widely used in efficiency computing literature. This current paper measures productivity changes among Bangladeshi commercial banks using DEA based Malmquist index between 2008 and 2011. Using both intermediation and production approach we found that within these three years banks have experienced meager productivity growth. Some banks registered notable progress at individual level however, as a whole, the industry suffered a minor productivity loss.

Using the outcomes of two focus group discussions and responses from 280 respondents from the city of Dubai, UAE – an economy that is epicenter to the world of marketing and advertising, this study attempts to map the dimensions of Aaker’s Brand Personality (BP) to the Advertising Industry. Studies using the concept of BP have largely been of brands and products and the markets in continuum are moving towards the application of branding constructs to nontraditional subjects. This is perhaps the first study to employ the construct of the Aaker’s BP to an industry as compared to studies based on individual brands and/or products. The top of the mind words used to describe the industry include Creative, Attractive, Confident, Dynamic, Exciting, and Innovative which concur with the findings of the study regarding the key (latent) personality dimensions of the Advertising industry i.e. Excitement, Sophistication, Competency, Rigid, and Sincerity.  The study uses structural equation modeling to validate the responses and the findings of the study. The final model is based on 21 measured factors distributed across 5 latent dimensions representative of the Advertising Industry.