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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the relevant literature to gain deeper insights into understanding what directions of research are needed with reference to entrepreneurial orientation and competitive aggressiveness in the oil and gas sector of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.

This paper is a conceptual evaluation of literature.

The extant body of research on both entrepreneurial orientation and competitive aggressiveness is based on quantitative studies without previous systematic, exhaustive and comprehensive grounded theory-based theorizing processes rooted in qualitative approaches. This accounts for inconsistencies and controversies of findings reported in the field.

The grounded theory-based approach advocated by this paper is likely to generate a more precise estimation of the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, competitive aggressiveness and firm performance. Consequently, an accurate understanding of the interplay between these factors can empower managers to make finely-tuned strategic decisions, achieve sustainable competitive advantage and optimally adapt to dynamic and unforeseen environments.

The paper reports on important limitations of the existing literature indicating that current findings may be an artifact of studying a small number of industries.

This paper aims to investigate the perceptions of Omani citizens toward the use of social media by the government for participatory and interactive relationships. More precisely, the descriptive nature of the study resides in its ability to explain how social media users regard the current status and levels of presence, transparency, engagement, responsiveness and trust about the current use of social media by the Omani Government.

A quantitative approach was used to collect data. This was done via a self-administered questionnaire from a return sample of 1,769 citizens drawn from different places in Oman. These citizens were considered as well-informed and regular active users of social media. The reviewed literature provided a basis for the construct of the questionnaire.

The overall results indicated modest levels of agreement in all of the investigated factors. The neutral findings suggest that there is a level of uncertainty among the respondents regarding how the government is determining the potential of social media for participatory and interactive relationships. Findings in this study advocate the outcomes of the recent Arab Social Media Report, plus the few relevant studies included in the literature, which nearly stated that although there is a growing use of social media among citizens, governments are failing to take full advantage of social media. Governments are also failing to engage citizens to design and deliver more efficient and collaborative services, per this study’s findings.

The findings call for the importance of strategically framing the use of participatory social media by the government. In a broader sense, the findings of this study are beneficial to all contexts that share similar political and socio-economic philosophy, especially the Arab states and most of the developing countries. The findings provide insights for governments in need of developing social media strategies to promote more collaborative and interactive governance.

The study aids in understanding the views of citizens who are the current major players in a highly technology-driven environment. This environment is found to be transforming the relationship between citizens and governments. The study adds knowledge to the currently scarce body of literature dealing with issues pertaining to citizen–government relationships in social media in the Arab states, and similar contexts in developing countries. Its findings may provide valuable insights for policy makers to leverage collaborative relationships between governments and citizens.

This study aims to present the experimental results for neural network (NN) based harmonic elimination technique for single-phase inverters.

Switching angles applied to power switches are determined using the NN technique based on the harmonics to be suppressed. Thus, besides controlling the output voltage, NN controller provides elimination of predetermined harmonics from output signal of single-phase inverter. Simulation and experimental results for the elimination of 15 and 20 low-order harmonics are presented. The switching angle values calculated by a NN , fuzzy logic and Newton–Raphson are compared for elimination of first 10 harmonics.

This paper provides the harmonic spectra showing that first 15 and 20 harmonics are suppressed from output signal. The NN is proved to give closest results to angle values calculated by Newton–Raphson’s numerical solution method.

The value of this paper is to verify the simulation results with the experimental result for the elimination of 15 and 20 low-order harmonics. Both the simulation and the experimental results demonstrate the success of the NN based selected harmonic elimination.

This paper aims to offer a wider examination of the research concerning entrepreneurship characteristics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region via a review of recent studies relevant to this topic. Research publications concerning entrepreneurship within the MENA region evidence growing interest in this field of study, with the potential to boost and drive future economic development and growth. This focus within entrepreneurship research is because of the economic development in the region, which is becoming increasingly important for policymakers and businesses.

The author performed a systematic literature review to produce robust information about entrepreneurship in the MENA region, followed by a thematic analysis to identify key research themes within each category.

Despite the growth in entrepreneurship research in the MENA region, research on certain factors is lacking. An analysis of 271 studies published between 2009 and 2019 identifies 9 main research categories, within which 30 themes have attracted significant academic attention. Female entrepreneurship and gender, youth entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship behaviour and orientation are the three key categories influencing perspectives on entrepreneurship in the MENA region. This study highlights research gaps and provides recommendations to guide future research on the sustainable development of entrepreneurship in the MENA region.

This paper highlights trends in entrepreneurship research amongst scholars within the MENA region and suggests paths for future research efforts.

The problem of design changes in the construction industry is common worldwide, and the Jordanian market is no exception. The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors causing design changes in construction projects in Jordan in both the public and private sectors. Furthermore, this research will examine the effect of these factors on project's performance during the construction phase.

This research commences by identifying the factors causing design changes in construction projects worldwide through an intensive literature review. The identified factors were then filtered to those applicable to the Jordanian construction market based on the results obtained from a questionnaire survey and real case construction projects. In total, 252 professionals from the Jordanian construction industry and 10 completed and/or ongoing construction projects in different parts of Jordan were compared.

The results find that the top major factors affecting design changes are owner's requirements; design errors and omissions and value engineering. The research also studies and documents the impacts of design changes on project cost, schedule and quality.

The results obtained from this research will assist the construction professionals representing owners, consultants and contractors in applying control measures to minimize the occurrence of the identified factors causing design changes and to mitigate their sever impacts on projects in terms of cost, schedule and quality.

It is estimated that more than half of the construction industry’s projects encounter significant cost overruns and major delays, resulting in the industry having a tarnished reputation. Therefore, it is crucial to identify key project cost and schedule performance factors. However, despite the attempts of numerous researchers, their results have been inconsistent. Most of the literature has focused solely on the construction phase budget and time overruns; the engineering/design and procurement phase costs and schedule performances have been rarely studied. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The objective of this study was primarily to identify and prioritize engineering, procurement and construction key performance factors (KPFs) and to strategize ways to prevent performance delays and cost overruns. To achieve these objectives, more than 200 peer-reviewed journal papers, conference proceedings and other scholarly publications were studied and categorized based on industry type, physical location, data collection and analysis methods.

It was concluded that both the time required to complete engineering/construction phases and the cost of completing them can be significantly affected by design changes. The two main causes of delays and cost overruns in the procurement phase are construction material shortages and price fluctuations. Other factors affecting all phases of the project are poor economic condition, equipment and labor shortages, delays in owners’ timely decision making, poor communication between stakeholders, poor site management and supervision, clients’ financial issues and severe weather conditions. A list of phase-based strategies which address the issue of time/cost overruns is presented herein.

The findings of this study address the potential confusion of the industry’s practitioners related to the inconsistent list of potential KPFs and their preventive measurements, and pave the way for the construction research community to conduct future performance-related studies.