This research aims to examine shippers’ current outsourcing decisions, enabling providers to differentiate themselves in the market. Based on 197 responses from practitioners, this research provides an empirical and comprehensive analysis of logistics practices, while examining the competence level of current outsourcing of these practices. The findings for this research can be broken down into five major areas: 1) logistics outsourcing priorities, 2) domestic logistics practices, 3) warehousing logistics practices, 4) technology logistics practices, and 5) international logistics practices, assessing the percentage of logistics functions that are currently handled in-house versus outsourced and the performance level of the internal operations and the logistics service providers. This research provides an analysis of currently employed practices across all logistics functions, while assessing the competence of in-house, outsourcing, and collaboration. The results identify areas for collaboration between shippers and logistics service providers, as well as areas for further research.

Purpose of this study is to analyze the role of HRM practices and strategies on performance sustainability in the banking industry of United Arab Emirates (UAE). It has always debated that better human resource strategies, namely talent acquisition and development can always transform organizations through deploying and developing people using well designed strategies. A sample of 230 professionals employed in human resource management field in 47 banks were selected as sample to empirically validate the relevance of talent acquisition and development with relation to organizational performance. Diversified tools and techniques including the descriptive statistics, correlation and regression were applied for primary data analysis collected using questionnaire. Findings while suggesting the vast and wide practical implications for the business further explains that there exists significant relationship amonst HR strategies, practices and organizaitonal performance in addition to mediating role of HR strategie between HRM practices and organizational performance.The study exhibits a tremendous growth and utilisation of HRM practices and strategies on a concurrent basis. As industrial culture is on a transition, in a global business scenario and in the Arab world. To channalize the best of the industrial benefit, the latest tools in talent acquisiition are utlised in HR practices. Better the practices and strategies, best will be the output in organisatisations. Findings and importance of this research study will help organizaitons to review their working mechanism for better performance. This study focuses on one industry but methodogy and results can widely be generalized to other industries operating in GCC, as working environment and cultural dynamics are almost similar in the region.

The importance of relationship marketing in managing customer relationships is widely researched with evidence abound of its potential to improve customer retention. However, despite employing relationship marketing programs, microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Kenya face challenges in customer retention. While retaining customers requires relationship marketing programs, there is growing body of literature on stakeholder management which suggests that apart from these programs, the social orientation of the business matters. Social performance management (SPM) is a practice which aims to transform institutions into socially responsible and customer-oriented ones. But despite the existence of SPM standards, Kenyan MFIs seem to underrate their importance. Study investigates extent to which social performance management matters by establishing its moderating effect on the relationship marketing-customer retention association. Using descriptive cross-sectional design, data was collected from 48 managers and 492 customers of MFIs in Kenya employing structured questionnaires and analyzed by multiple regression. Findings reveal a statistically significant and strong moderating effect of social performance management on relationship marketing and customer retention. Study concludes that social performance management is a desirable practice for improving customer retention. Study limitations included use of a quantitative approach which constrained respondents’ free expression; variables were investigated in a business-to-customer setting but did not extend to include the business-to-business setting. Future studies could address these limitations. The study contributes to relationship marketing knowledge base by providing a modified theoretical framework showing the non-linear structure of the relationship marketing-customer retention association through introduction of social performance management as a moderating factor.

The ability to introduce successful new products is critical to the survival and long-term success of firms. Successful new products help firms grow and prosper. Studies show, all else equal, that the market value of innovative firms is higher than other firms. Radical innovation has attracted the interest of researchers because of its importance for firm long-term performance. This paper reviews several research studies about strategies employed by successful radical innovators. Lessons are drawn from the research findings for designing effective strategies for radical innovation.

Malaysia has a very open economy and economic growth depends highly on trade. In order to stay relevant in the global supply chain to trade, the Malaysian Government has identified halal industry as a niche sector to drive growth. Although halal exports are growing steadily, the growth is still very far from the targeted growth. Thus, understanding the determinants of halal exports is important to further boost exports growth and help achieve the targeted growth. This is a concept paper to investigate the influence of distance and Muslims population to the demand of halal exports. The robustness of gravity model will be used to measure the influence of selected variables. Studies on halal economy, particularly halal export are rather scarce, thus this study will add on the body of knowledge on the halal industry. Analyzing the trend in the data, inference could be made that the shorter the distance between two trading partners, more trade will occur with an exception for Malaysia’s major trade partners. Whereas, Muslims populations do not seem to exert a strong influence on halal export demand. Further investigations need to be done to measure the influence of both variables on halal exports demand.