Framework to Create Employee Engagement Culture in Saudi Banks

Employee engagement has attracted widespread interest over the past twenty years from the practitioner network and researchers. It is claimed that organizations that focus on growing an engagement culture will result in increasing employee productiveness, the fulfilment of the organizational objectives, and competent employee retention. However, the fundamental issues revolving around the meaning and key antecedents of employee engagement nevertheless require similar research interest [2]. The Saudi Banks are an important component of Saudi Arabia’s financial system. In light of the emerging high volume of business activities, Saudi Banks are keen to inspire worker participation and employee engagement. This behaviour will allow banks to achieve sustainable business development. In response to these issues, the present research offers the possibility to advance the knowledge of organizational culture’s influence on employee engagement. The present research adopts a qualitative approach, and the method used is a grounded theory. The data collection process adopted an issue focused approach. Interviews were conducted with banks managers and their subordinates (male- female). The findings of the present study indicate that the factors that make the greatest contribution to employee engagement were employee satisfaction, achievement recognition, and jobs that were in line with the employees’ competent. Furthermore, the results revealed that the Saudi national culture, which is rooted in Islamic belief, has an influence on employee engagement in Saudi banks. This influence manifested itself as Non-interests bearing transactions, and the female segregation rule. The outcomes of the present research contributes to the existing theory of employee engagement by providing empirical evidence regarding the engagement meaning construct and its distinctiveness from similar, alternative, well-established attitudinal constructs. Furthermore, the present research offers a framework consisting of the themes that emerged from the analysis of the present study, and the proposed interventions to maintain an employee engagement culture. Furthermore, a discussion of the analysis’ limitations and recommendations for future researches will be presented, and a conclusion will be drawn.

The canonical α-SNAP is essential for gametophytic development in Arabidopsis

The development of male and female gametophytes is a pre-requisite for successful reproduction of angiosperms. Factors mediating vesicular trafficking are among the key regulators controlling gametophytic development. Fusion between vesicles and target membranes requires the assembly of a fusogenic soluble N-ethylmaleimide sensitive factor attachment protein receptors (SNAREs) complex, whose disassembly in turn ensures the recycle of individual SNARE components. The disassembly of post-fusion SNARE complexes is controlled by the AAA+ ATPase N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor (Sec18/NSF) and soluble NSF attachment protein (Sec17/α-SNAP) in yeast and metazoans. Although non-canonical α-SNAPs have been functionally characterized in soybeans, the biological function of canonical α-SNAPs has yet to be demonstrated in plants. We report here that the canonical α-SNAP in Arabidopsis is essential for male and female gametophytic development. Functional loss of the canonical α-SNAP in Arabidopsis results in gametophytic lethality by arresting the first mitosis during gametogenesis. We further show that Arabidopsis α-SNAP encodes two isoforms due to alternative splicing. Both isoforms interact with the Arabidopsis homolog of NSF whereas have distinct subcellular localizations. The presence of similar alternative splicing of human α-SNAP indicates that functional distinction of two α-SNAP isoforms is evolutionarily conserved.

God at War

This book explores the dark attraction between religion and warfare and explains why religion needs war and war needs religion. Virtually every religious tradition leaves behind it a bloody trail of stories, legends, and images of war, and most wars call upon the divine for blessings in battle. This book probes the remarkably similar alternative realities that are created in the human imagination by both religious ideas and images of war in response to crises both personal and social. Based on the author’s thirty years of fieldwork interviewing activists involved in religious-related terrorist movements around the world, this book explains why desperate social conflict and personal fears lead to extremes of both religion and war, and why invariably God is thought to be engaged in battle.

Clustering of mRNA-Seq data for detection of alternative splicing patterns

Current sequencing of mRNA can provide estimates of the levels of individual isoforms within the cell, where isoforms are the different distinct mRNA products or proteins created by a gene. It remains to adapt many standard statistical methods commonly used for analyzing gene expression levels to take advantage of this additional information. One novel question is whether we can find groupings or clusters of samples that are distinguished not by their gene expression but by their isoform usage. Such clusters in tumors, for example, could be the result of shared disruption to the splicing system that creates the different isoforms. We propose a novel approach to clustering mRNA-Seq data that identifies clusters of samples with common isoform usage. We show via simulation that our methods are more sensitive to finding clusters of similar alternative splicing patterns than standard clustering techniques applied directly to the estimates of isoform levels. We further demonstrate that clustering on isoform usage is more accurate than clustering directly on isoform levels by examining real data that contains a technical artifact that resulted in different batches having different isoform usage patterns.

Beyond Conversion and Sanskritisation: Articulating an Alternative Dalit Agenda in East Punjab

Given different socio-economic structures, and acute landlessness among the Dalits of East Punjab, the agendas of conversion to neo-Buddhism and sanskritisation, the two most popular Dalit social mobility models in India, have failed to strike a cord among the Dalits in this border state of northwest India. But that does not imply that Dalits of Punjab have failed in improving their social status. On the contrary, they have been very vocal in their assertions for social justice and dignity, and pressing for a due share in the local structures of power; a clear indication of a significant surge of Dalit social mobility in Punjab. The question that still remains largely unexplored, however, relates to the patterns of Dalit social mobility in Punjab that have emerged independently of the agendas of conversion to neo-Buddhism and sanskritisation. The study aims to map out the contours of an emerging alternative Dalit agenda in Punjab, which is conspicuous by its absence in existing Dalit studies, and examines its catalytic role in enhancing the legitimacy and effectiveness of increasingly visible Dalit social mobility in the state. The paper concludes by visualising the possibility of an articulation and assertion of a similar alternative Dalit agenda through highly contentious democratic politics in other parts of India, where the archetypical agendas of conversion and sanskritisation have either failed to deliver social justice and dignity or could not simply appeal to the local Dalit population.

Study on Approach to Fuzzy Product Configuration Based on Vague Customer Requirements

Mass customization (MC) is an emergent concept in industry intended to provide customized products through flexible processes in high volumes and at reasonably low costs. The method of configuration is one of important ways to realize quickly product customization. But, in business, particularly through the Internet, a customer normally develops in his mind some sort of ambiguity, when given the choice of similar alternative products to choose. This paper proposes an approach to product configuration according to uncertain and fuzzy requirements the customer submits to the product supplier. Finally, the digital camera is taken as an example to further verify the validity and the feasibility of the method.

Preference reversal in decision making: The attraction effect in choice and rejection 1The research was funded by a 60% grant of the University of Padua. The authors wish to thank Sandro Bettella for his invaluable technical assistance.

When people express a preference between two alternatives A and B in terms of a positive choice of one option, this can exceed in strength the same preference expressed as a rejection of the alternative. This effect of response mode has been interpreted by Shafir (1993) in terms of response compatibility theory, according to which decision makers display an influence of the compatibility between the type of response (choose/reject) and the positive/negative attributes of the options. In the present study we investigated the influence on response mode (choice/rejection) of the attraction effect, in which a decoy similar to one of two options, but lower in value, modifies the share of the option to which it is similar when added to the original set ( Huber, Payne & Puto, 1982 ; Simonson & Tversky, 1992 ). A decoy negative in value, but similar to one of the alternatives was added to a two-option set, one with a high variation in attributes (enriched) and one with a low variation (impoverished). We investigated whether both choice and rejections were influenced by the decoy’s presence, as compared to the baseline two-option condition, and whether, consequently, the pattern of dominance between choice and rejection was modified. We found a pattern of rejection dominance in the two-option condition (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, where the attraction effect was investigated, there was an increase in the proportion of choices (and a correspondent decrease in rejections) of the similar alternative, as compared to the original two-option set, only for the option with low variation in the attributes. For the enriched option, rejection, but not choice, was influenced by the presence of the decoy.