UNDERSTANDING CONTEXTS OF BUSINESS IN WESTERN ASIA: LAND OF BAZAARS AND HIGH-TECH BOOMS

Not one size fits all. Yet, some books teach business with minimal focus on the context for business. In reality, firms — large and small — are highly affected by the context in which they operate; yet, context is not uniformly conceptualized, theorized, and operationalized by scholars of business and management. While most theories have come from developed countries with bountiful contexts, the diverse contexts of Western Asia are little understood. Religious factors are profoundly dominant in Western Asia, and businesses in this diverse area operate with considerations that are rarely considered in research. This book reveals a variety of schools of thought that have molded several business models and mechanisms, which are, to some extent, different from the context of Western economies.

Readership: Undergraduate and post-graduate students who are interested in studying or doing business in the Middle East/Western Asia. Researchers who are interested to make comparative studies. Entrepreneurs who would like to initiate their entrepreneurial activities in Western Asia.

Léo–Paul Dana is Professor at Dalhousie University and Montpellier Business School. A graduate of McGill University and HEC Montreal, he has served as Marie Curie Fellow at Princeton University and Visiting Professor at INSEAD. He has published extensively in a variety of journals including Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice, International Business Review, International Small Business Journal, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Small Business Management, Journal of World Business, Small Business Economics, and Technological Forecasting & Social Change.

Aidin Salamzadeh is an assistant professor at the University of Tehran. His interests are start-ups, new venture creation, and entrepreneurship. Aidin serves as an associate editor of Revista de Gestão and Innovation & Management Review (Emerald), as well as an editorial advisory in The Bottom Line (Emerald). Besides that, he is the co-founder of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research Lab (UK), and a reviewer in numerous distinguished international journals. Aidin is a member of the European SPES Forum, the Asian Academy of Management, the Institute of Economic Sciences, and Ondokuz Mayis University.

Veland Ramadani is a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Business at South East European University, the Republic of North Macedonia. His research interests include entrepreneurship, small business management, and family businesses. He has authored and co-authored around 140 research articles, 11 textbooks, and 14 edited books. In 2017, he was appointed as a member of the Supervisory Board of Development Bank of North Macedonia, where for 10 months he served as acting Chief Operating Officer (COO). Dr Ramadani received the Award for Excellence 2016 — Outstanding Paper by Emerald Group Publishing. His latest book is Entrepreneurial Family Businesses, published by Springer.

Ramo Palalić is an Assistant Professor at the Management Department, College of Economics and Political Science, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. His research is in the area of entrepreneurship, leadership, and management. Dr Palalić has authored and co-authored many articles in globally recognised journals like Management Decision, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, and alike. Additionally, he has co-authored/co-edited several books and many book chapters in the field of business and entrepreneurship published with internationally prominent publishers (Springer, World Scientific). Moreover, Dr Palalić is serving as the reviewer/editor board member in several well-established international journals. Apart from his research, he was involved in business projects in the areas of entrepreneurial leadership and marketing management, in private and public organisations.