Academic research in business is essentially driven by the dynamics in the management environment. As business evolve, academia’s understanding of the latest trends evolve as well. This relationship leads to a more focused approach by the academia towards meaningful collaboration while bridging the undesired gap between academia and industry. The end result is a collection of impactful studies providing valuable insights to the organizations for achieving their desired goals.
Started in 2005, Skyline Business Journal (SBJ) plays a critical role in publishing high quality researches with practical implications. Though SBJ has a long history and presence in prestigious databases, we continue improving with better contents and visibility. We are in process of getting indexed in more databases by publishing selected meaningful studies aligned with the theme and scope of the journal. Since its beginning, print copies of SBJ are shared with the UAE Government Departments, Ministries and business organizations for seeking their valuable feedback.

The current issue of SBJ contains seven such practical studies. The first paper of this issue explores the factors influencing intentions to adopt mobile banking services. In the backdrop of Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) decomposed and using factors from the diffusion of innovations theory, the study found that attitude and perceived behavioral control factors play a significant role in influencing intentions to adopt mobile banking while social influence was found insignificant. Issues such as fears of privacy and security risks together with relative advantages of using mobile banking services could be highlighted to educate potential customers.
As researchers around the globe have been arguing on using celebrities for advertisement, the second paper explores the moderating effect of price perception while evaluating the impact of celebrity endorsement on the purchase intention for Emirates Airlines. Using descriptive statistics and multiple regression model, the study found that the respondents perceive celebrity endorsement by the airlines positively while suggesting marketing strategies to improve the purchase intentions.
Sustainability, being a top priority for the nations, is discussed worldwide. The third study in this issue looks into a possibility of motivating the society at large through a contest based Mobile application for promoting and rewarding sustainability initiatives. The study after discussing a variety of such initiatives proposes a framework of an app which captures sustainability initiatives of individual citizens, communities, business and charity organizations, various other types of institutions and government and rewards them suitably by motivating and involving them through contests.   

Adoption of People Analytics by organizations is fairly a recent trend leading to challenges faced by the managers. The fourth paper uses Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) to establish a relationship among various factors impacting the adoption of people analytics in an organization. Based on a data collected from HR heads and analytics experts from reputed organizations in India, the study proposes a framework helping managers to prioritize their strategies for smoother adoption of people analytics.

While HRM functions have been a well-established concept, its implications in a different backdrop is highlighted in the fifth paper presenting a cross sectional study exploring the association of HRM functions with the performance of the employees. It was revealed that five out of the six human resource (HRM) functions exhibited statistically proven correlation with employees’ performance and the only exclusion in this context was the compensation and reward function.
Emotional Intelligence (EI) improves the skills leaders need to understand the behavior of workers and motivation of co-workers with different values and to find the common ground that can build a cohesive, effective team to tackle the tasks at hand. The sixth paper in this issue looks into the EI of Gen X managers and found them to be high in ‘Self Awareness’ and low in ‘Self-Motivation’ of EI dimensions. ‘Self-Awareness’ had the maximum influence on their EI among all the dimensions in the study.

Adding a variety to the collection of studies, the last paper in the current issue explores the post- purchase experience of consumers in life insurance policies. Based on the findings from an empirical study, the insurance companies are suggested to train the insurance agents on ethical aspects for maintaining transparency and thus avoiding possible grievances in future.
I am confident that these studies will enable our readers to strategize for desirable outputs. I take an opportunity to thank esteem Editorial Board members and distinguished reviewers for their timely inputs and suggestions. I assure you that we will continue to keep the good work going in future as well.

Prof. (Dr.) Mohammad In’airat,
Editor- In-Cheif
Skyline Business Journal