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This research aims to establish the applicability of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) 18404 standard to the service sector, identify any required amendments and identify the critical success factors and barriers to deploying the standard within the service sector.

The study used a qualitative approach by interviewing operational excellence (OPEX) professionals who work in the service sector.

The findings indicate a significant lack of knowledge about the existence of the standard and a general scepticism regarding the applicability of the current ISO 18404 standard to the service sector.

Limited examples of the application of ISO 18404 in organisations exist, as only a few organisations have adopted the standard. Therefore, the research focussed on the challenges and obstacles that experienced OPEX professionals perceived could be an issue.

The study will aid service sector organisations in understanding the standard and, subsequently, determine whether to pursue it as part of an OPEX programme. This research is the first study on the application of ISO 18404 to the service sector.

This qualitative study aims to explore the concept of organisational leadership in the context of Quality Management deployments across a variety of business organisations, particularly focusing on the possible relationships between leadership approaches during the implementation and sustaining phases of Quality Management.

The study is based on one-to-one semi-structured virtual interviews with leaders in the quality field.

Four themes (Customers, Leadership, Quality Culture and Sustainability of Quality) emerged from the post-interview data analysis, illustrating the critical role of Leadership in the successful deployment and sustainment of Quality Management and identifying the leadership traits that are most conducive to successful organisational deployments.

Although some of these leadership traits are described in the wider leadership literature as belonging to one or more different leadership styles, there is no existing style of leadership that comprehends all the characteristics; thus, the need for a new leadership paradigm is this paper's theoretical contribution to the literature.

The hotel industry is one of the primary sectors contributing to every country's economy by promoting and reinforcing tourism. The pandemic situation across the globe is forcing the hospitality industry to adopt a suitable operational excellence (OPEX) methodology and its associated tools to deliver quality service at an affordable cost. However, there is limited evidence of applying one of the prominent OPEX methodologies, such as Six Sigma (SS), to enhance the hospitality industry's productivity and performance. Thus, the purpose of the study is to explore the application of the SS methodology to reduce the cycle time of a pantry workstation in a United Arab Emirates (UAE) hotel sector.

The research adopted a case study approach using DMAIC (define-measure-analyse-improve-control) phases to improve the performance of the minibar updating process attached to the hotel rooms. In addition, the study effectively used several tools, including normality tests, control charts, capability analysis, cause and effect diagram, failure mode effects analysis (FMEA), value stream mapping (VSM) and GEMBA, to validate the root causes and draw robust inferences.

The average cycle time and standard deviation of the pantry process were drastically reduced. Further, the analysis showed that the process capability index was substantially improved. Consequently, a notable improvement in the process performance was witnessed, which has resulted in a profit of $50,000 per annum in the hotel.

The article provides a structured and disciplined approach of SS in a hotel which can be used as a benchmarking document by the academicians, practitioners and policymakers for OPEX within the hospitality industry. Further, it paves the way to develop a road map for applying SS in the hospitality sector.

As per the authors' knowledge, to date, no case study has been reported in top tier refereed journals regarding the application of SS in the hotel sector. Thus, the current case study bridges this gap and reiterates that SS can be effectively used with meticulous planning and deployment in the hospitality industry.

The authors examine the effect of climate risk on accounting conservatism for a sample of listed companies operating in 26 developing countries.

The authors employ the Climate Risk Index (CRI) developed by Germanwatch to capture the severity of losses due to extreme weather events at the country level. The authors use different approaches to measure firm-level accounting conservatism.

The authors find that greater climate risk leads to a lower level of accounting conservatism. The results hold even after using different estimation methods.

Although the authors' analysis is limited to the period 2007–2016, it could be helpful for standard setters such as International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and International Sustainable Standards Board (ISSB) as they may consider the potential effect of climate risk in their international standards.

The negative impacts of climate risk on the quality of financial reporting as proxied by accounting conservatism could trigger regulators and standard setters to require disclosure of information relating to climate risks and to incorporate climate-related risks in their risk management systems. In addition, for policymakers, incorporating accounting conservatism as a financial quality reporting standard could help promote greater transparency, accuracy and reliability in financial reporting in the context of climate risk.

The authors add to the literature on international differences in accounting conservatism by showing that climate risk significantly affects unconditional and conditional conservatism. The authors' results provide fresh evidence of the dark side of climate change. That is, climate risk is shown to decrease financial reporting quality.

As satisfaction is one of the most important conditions for loyalty, this study aims to investigate the main factors affecting online satisfaction for buying clothes from the internet. In this research, the authors followed two main objectives: (1) to identify factors influencing online satisfaction and (2) to determine the importance of the main determinants that explain online satisfaction in the retailing clothing sector.

The research combines qualitative and quantitative research methods. The authors used the focus group technique and a survey based on a questionnaire. For the first exploratory phase of the research, we conducted four focus groups with 21 women, 18–39 years old, who have at least two years experiences as online buyers and who made at least two acquisitions for clothing products in the past six months, from the same website. The purpose of this qualitative method was to understand the young women's perception about online satisfaction and to collect items to be included in the questionnaire. For the second quantitative phase of this study, the sample consisted of 241 participants. To analyse the data, two different types of inferential analysis were used: factor analysis (for identifying the factors that compose online customer satisfaction) and analysis of regression (to determine the most important factors that determine and predict online buyers' satisfaction).

The main results indicate that the significant factors determining a satisfactory experience in an e-retailing market are: good deal (savings), product expectations, customer service and website reputation.

The study is more relevant in the current pandemic context, when the consumer’s behaviour has changed and online shopping has substantially increased. The research can be used by companies that sell clothing on the internet and are interested in increasing their financial results and also their customers' satisfaction.

The Suez Irrigation Canal is the source of drinking water to a large community. Complaints have been raised regarding the odor and unpleasant taste of drinking water. The problems encountered reveled enrichment of the Canal with nutrients, degraded water quality and nuisance caused by algal growth. This paper aims to investigate these claims by evaluating the interaction between water and sediment with ecological indicators.

Bioassessments were used as a primary tool to evaluate the biological conditions and identify the degree of water quality degradation in the Suez Irrigation Canal. The monitoring program integrates biological, chemical, and physical data assessment. Several field surveys were carried out to these areas during the period between March 2003 and February 2005 (over 23 months) for acquiring all possible information about the current situation and to explore the impact of human activities along the canal banks on the canal ecosystem. Seasonal variations of phytoplankton and zooplankton standing crop, species diversity as well as physico‐chemical characteristics of water, sediment, fish and aquatic weeds at the intakes of drinking plants and from the discharge of agricultural and domestic drains into the Canal were investigated.

Preliminary field investigations showed great amounts of discharged wastes at several locations to the canal water creating unique conditions, which vary with changes of volume and properties of the discharged wastes. Rotifer and green algae for example demonstrated seasonal variable response to the ecological variations. Myriophyllum spicatum, Potamageton nodsus and Polygonum Salicfolium were the most common types of recorded weed. The Myriophyllum spicatum is the dominant submerged plant. The canal was characterized by high concentrations of HCO₃^‐ as well as high pH >8.2 which provides a favorable habitat for the growth of Myriophyllum spicatum. The results illustrated the ability of using the aquatic weed as biomarkers for monitoring heavy metals contaminates in the canal. The evidence suggests that there is a degree of selectivity in metals uptake and partitioning within the plant compartments.

The current paper adopts the idea of utilizing multiple organism groups in the bioassessment to effectively detect ecological change when they occur in one of the most important waterways in Egypt. These different organism groups are suited for detection various stressors, providing warnings and detection of stress impacts at different scales. The study presented provides decision makers with important information that can assist them in making objective decisions related to the design of monitoring programs based on scientific research.

Aster Retail (AR) is the retail pharmacy division of the Aster Dr Moopen's Healthcare (ADMH) Group. The group delivers healthcare services across the Middle East, India and the Far East, with a portfolio of hospitals, clinics, diagnostic centres and retail pharmacies. AR, under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jobilal Vavachan, is well known for its people-centric approach, unique culture and innovative human resource (HR) practices. AR has won multiple awards for HR practices, service quality and business performance. In a recent corporate restructuring (2018), “Aster Primary Care” was carved out by combining the group's Clinics and Retail businesses. This case discusses the evolution of AR's HR journey and the challenges associated with integrating culturally diverse businesses without compromising the values of ADMH and its promise, “We'll Treat You Well.”

Dubai has been largely under-researched as a destination, particularly from a tourism perspective. Most current knowledge about the emirate tends to originate from broadcast media coverage, newspapers and business journals. Much of the recent academic research on the destination often positions Dubai in a broader development or management framework, resulting in what can be a narrow and largely western-oriented perspective that fails to highlight or identify many of the key issues underpinning its apparent success.

This research adopts an ethnographic approach based on the authors’ experiences in the destination and sets out to address this issue not only by presenting new information but also by analysing and explaining Dubai’s tourism development approach.

Some 40 years ago, Dubai was little more than a backwater tribal settlement, dependent on pearl fishing, trade and limited oil reserves. In 2018, it is now viewed as a futuristic city-state, rapidly expanding its global outreach and undertaking a range of high-profile development projects and acquisitions. The award of Expo 2020 has boosted government confidence in the sector with the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing planning to increase visitor numbers to 25 million by 2020 with an anticipated tripling of the associated economic benefit. However, despite its remarkable success, Dubai has been criticised for flying in the face of global sustainability trends and needs to think seriously about how it will manage the growth of its tourism industry.

Dubai has evolved to become one of the world’s leading tourism destinations, and it has done so despite our academic notions of sustainability, tourism planning, tourism resource requirements and demands for authenticity. This provides an opportunity for the authors to use Dubai as a vehicle through which to challenge these concepts and to move the established notions of “traditional” tourism thinking forward to acknowledge the value of alternative approaches to the creation of a tourism strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the elements of effective policies and processes to inform future health professional regulation reforms and practice in the Emirates.

This study is based on qualitative exploratory methodology. Methods of data collection and analysis included document analysis of the relevant literature, newspapers (as featured on their online websites), policy documents and official statistics. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders, including employers in the health and higher education sectors in Ras Al Khaimah, human resources managers, regulators and public health professionals and scholars.

This paper brings to light the issues of maldistribution of the medical workforce, Emiritisation and examines implications for more effective medical workforce governance in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

First, the study provides policy recommendations for medical workforce governance in the context of UAE. Next, empirical studies on health workforce governance in the Middle East’s Gulf Cooperation Council are lacking and primarily focus on the international mobility of expatriates. The study addresses the lack of empirical studies on this topic in the UAE. Third, the UAE is a fertile ground for research on medical workforce governance and, more broadly, the mobility of health professionals due to its economic diversification strategy and thriving medical tourism industry.

The purpose of this paper is to address the following questions: To what extent is residents’ perception of the state of their environment consistent with findings based on samples from the field? Are the locals aware of the drivers and pressures that led to the present state of the environment? Are they aware of the impacts? If so, are they able to recommend responses?

To examine the extent to depend on citizens’ opinion in decision-making, the researcher juxtaposed results from data gathered and analysed from the field assessing the quality of the marine environment, coastal zone and levels of both noise and air pollution. The researcher collected datum from focus group meetings, questionnaire and review of newspapers and magazines. The researcher used Qualitative Data Analysis QDA software to analyse qualitative data.

The results of the survey and the focus group meetings indicated that the citizens’ perceptions are, to some extent, in line with the results that the Arabian Gulf University (AGU) team concluded from the field survey. Citizens do not feel the urgency of conserving water because the government has been meeting growing demand by increasing the supply of water. The participants identified drivers and pressures that led to the present state of the environment. They were not able to differentiate between the state of the environment and the impacts of environmental degradation.

Citizens’ opinion is a valuable tool as an input at the various stages of plan formulation. Citizens’ views can bring an issue to experts’ attention and shed light on the qualitative aspect, such as meaning or value, that the quantitative data fail to reveal. However, the planning process must not depend entirely on citizen’s views. Experts must combine citizens’ opinions with scientific facts that result from in situ monitoring and laboratory analysis.