Social media has emerged as a flexible and interactive communication medium in the present digital era. Contemporary businesses use social media to achieve different communication objectives. However, using social media as a communication medium for corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication with stakeholders like, consumers is not well-explored in the existing literature. Furthermore, prior studies have also failed to consider the blend of CSR communication and social media to achieve consumer-related outcomes, for example, their loyalty and purchase likelihood. To this end, the objective of this study is to examine the relationship of the CSR communication of a bank through social media with consumer loyalty and purchase intention. The current study also proposes brand admiration as a potential mediator between this relationship. The data were collected from the banking consumers through a self-administered questionnaire in a developing economy. The data were analyzed through the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique using AMOS software. The results of the current survey confirmed that CSR communication of a bank on social media has direct and indirect, via brand admiration, relations with consumer loyalty, and purchase intentions. The outcomes of this survey will be helpful for the policymakers to understand the importance of CSR communication on social media to enhance the loyalty, and purchase intention of banking consumers.

This study investigates the effect of inclusive leadership on innovation performance with a mediating role of employee innovation behavior and the moderating role of psychological empowerment (PE). Supervisors and employees of Saudi manufacturing firms are the participants of this study. This study used a quantitative research technique with a cross-sectional approach and a self-administrative survey questionnaire to collect the data. The data were analyzed by using the Smart PLS 3 software. The results depict that inclusive leadership has a significant positive impact on the firm’s innovation performance. Employees’ innovation behavior has a significant mediating effect on the association of inclusive leadership and innovation performance. Findings revealed that PE has an important moderating role in the association of inclusive leadership and innovation performance. The findings of this study contribute to the body of knowledge by finding that inclusive leadership has a significant effect on the firm’s innovative performance and PE is crucial to enhance innovation performance.

This study investigates how Saudi SMEs’ awareness and preparation for digital transformation impact their business performance (BP). First and foremost, in this study, we examine the impact of awareness and preparation on business performance using the intention to use (ITU) as an initial mediator. In addition, the researchers also examined the impact of awareness and preparation on business performance through intention to use and Government Support (GS), and later, intention to use and skills as serial mediators. Using a structured questionnaire based on a seven-point Likert scale, data were collected from 68 SMEs in the Ha’il region of Saudi Arabia, one of the Kingdom’s leading economic provinces. The data were analyzed through simple and serial mediation techniques through AMOS-24. The study found that SMEs’ awareness and preparation for digital transformation significantly and positively influenced their intentions to use the technology. The researchers found that intention to use, skills, and government support are significant variables that improve business performance. The research also revealed full-serial mediation between awareness and business performance and preparation and business performance, showing that intention to use and skills and intention to use and government support significantly mediate improving SMEs’ business performance. The study implications provide for SMEs’ successful digital transformation, considering the role of skills and government support, which will help SMEs improve their performance and embrace sustainability in human and economic development in Saudi Arabia. Together with policymakers, SMEs, and researchers, it will also look at the entrepreneurial potential for Saudi nationals in the run-up to Vision 2030.

The environmental variations compel global countries for restructuring economic growth policies to ensure reliable energy usage. Ecological sustainability is a leading concern of the world for adequate and smooth survival of human beings. The inefficiency of technology is a focal hindrance to attaining the sustainable environment goal. This research aims to probe the cointegration and causal relationship among information communication technology, CO₂ emission, economic development, trade, and total population for GCC countries, namely, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and Bahrain, from 2000 to 2018. This research approached the unit-root tests, cointegration test, and FMOLS and DOLS test to determine stationarity of data series, cointegration relationship among variables, and the short- and long-run relationship among variables, respectively. The results of the analytical procession by employing FMOLS and DOLS confirmed that CO₂ emission, ICT, and ED are positively significant, while POP was negatively substantial at a 1% level. No relation has been observed between trade and CO₂ emission. The long-run relationship among variables is confirmed by FMOLS and DOLS analyses. A negative relationship between population growth and CO₂ emission is observed. It is ideal for enhancing environmental sustainability by awareness of people’s importance to the environment. The GCC countries should transform or divide their economic growth sectors instead of only the fossil fuel sector. This research also enlightened the way to reduce environmental destruction by the attraction of foreign investments in other sectors compared to entire fossil fuel industries, and the information communication technologies also move toward green technology using environmentally friendly energy resources.

Digitalization is very important for SMEs in the Middle East in order to remain competitive and sustainable in this region. Therefore, the study aims to examine the digitalization in SMEs of the Middle East region using bibliometric analysis by considering publication trends, top authors, journals, articles, countries, and major keywords. The researchers used the Scopus database for data extraction and VOSViewer for the bibliometric analysis of this study. The findings revealed that countries from the Middle East realized the importance of digitalization after 2015, and the research trend rose after 2019 with highest publication count till 2023–24 in this domain. Furthermore, the bibliometric analysis revealed Saudi Arabia being the most influential country due to the highest numbers of publications in this domain. Rana. N.P., as the most influential author from Qatar, revealed Sustainability (Switzerland) is the most influential journal, while “Digitalization and economic growth: A comparative analysis of sub-Saharan Africa and OECD economies” is the highly cited article, and Digital Transformation is the highly co-occurred keyword in relation to digitalization of SMEs in the Middle East. Based on these findings, the study proposed managerial implications for policymakers in SMEs of the target region, and avenues for future researchers in this domain.