Nowadays, the extensive use of e-learning in higher educational institutions in many countries leads us to apprehend the reality, precisely the key success/failure factors of the implementation, of e-learning systems in these institutions. This motivation becomes more and more important, inevitable, and urgent, especially for institutions that have heavily adopted e-learning systems under exceptional conditions without any prior planning, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. From this perspective, this research aimed to provide an e-learning success model in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic by assessing e-learning effectiveness and by investigating the key antecedents of e-learning effectiveness. The literature review led to the identification of four main factors influencing e-learning effectiveness: The e-learning system, e-learning readiness, interactivity, and resistance to change. These four variables constituted the antecedents of an effective e-learning system, which was tested in a KSA context. A structured survey, including a sample of 1202 students from Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University was used to examine the linkages among our proposed model. The model, with a total of ten direct and six indirect relationships, was tested by using structural equation modeling. The research findings indicate that effective e-learning is supported by the interactions between four factors: the e-learning system, e-learning readiness, interactivity, and resistance to change.
This research investigated the mediating role of attitudes and perceptions between working from home (WFH) and employees’ job performance. It also explored the role of gender, education level, and job position in the relationship between specifications and facilities when working from home, as well as attitudes and perceptions. This study is exploratory and capitalizes on novel findings from a questionnaire. Data were collected from 399 employees employed by the principal Saudi businesses. The current study uses structural equation modeling to test the research hypotheses and examines the direct and indirect relationship between working from home and employees’ job performance. The results confirmed the significant direct linkage between WFH and employees’ job performance through the mediating roles of WFH employees’ attitudes and perceptions. Our findings also confirm the significant relationship between WFH employees’ attributes and their job performance, and the significant association between WFH and job performance. However, our results identified the fact that perceptions have an inverse impact on job performance. This study also provides significant theoretical and practical insights for managers who are adopting WFH. It contributes empirically to the literature by informing managers of the factors driving job performance in WFH, helping organizations to cope with the many issues related to a workforce who are working from home. Our research findings also ascertained that WFH seems likely to become a permanent managerial practice in terms of human resources, rather than a simple circumstantial measure. Moreover, this study can be considered as one of the first studies that assess the effect of WFH on employees’ job performance via a mediation role of employee attributes, in the context of Saudi firms.
Despite the important role of cognitive capital as a facet of social capital, there is little empirical work examining the causal effect of cognitive capital dimensions on sustaining customer satisfaction. Thus, there is a need to investigate the relationship between these constructs via employee self-efficacy. Our proposed hypothetical framework is tested in the tourism industry sector employing a quantitative research method. Drawing from social capital and social cognitive theories, we generated items from a piloted questionnaire which was administered to 600 top and middle managers in hotels and travel agents using drop and collect methods. We test our hypothetical model using SEM techniques with 490 usable cases. The survey results indicate that cognitive capital dimensions have direct and indirect relationships with sustained customer satisfaction. In addition, employee self-efficacy mediates between exogenous constructs and the endogenous construct. Surprisingly, these two exogenous constructs: shared norms and shared values do directly influence shared goals and enhance employee self-efficacy. Additionally, shared goals enhance employee efficacy which subsequently leads to sustained customer satisfaction. These findings shed light on the impact of intra-firm social interactions on customer experience in hotels and travel agents. Managers should use cognitive capital to improve the level of service employee self-efficacy and subsequently sustain customer satisfaction. The paper outlines theoretical and managerial implications and addresses possible directions for further research.