Muhammad Azam Roomi

• BEng, MBA, MSc (LSE), PhD (London), FHEA, FNCEE, FLEAD
• Head of Faculty at MBS College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Saudi Arabia

Riyadh’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is one of the most important drivers of entrepreneurship and innovation in the MENA region, as Saudi Arabia aims to achieve economic diversification within its industry, and thus reduce its dependence on oil. This paper analyzes how Riyadh’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is achieving these goals and explores the diffe...

levels of entrepreneurial activity across the lobe

The Saudi economy constitutes 30% of the Arab world's GDP (gross domestic product). Traditionally focused on oil and natural gas, the economy is in the process of a structural transformation in which entrepreneurship has a pivotal role to play. Sixty percent of Saudi Arabia's population is under the age of 30. Against this background, this chapter...

Purpose This study aims to explain the relationship of employee voice and turnover intention with the mediating role of top management team (TMT) conflicts. Moreover, this study also aims to find the moderating influence of union instrumentality among employee voice and TMT conflicts. Design/methodology/approach The study was conducted by using a...

After the UN’s adoption of 17 Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, it became clear that the relationship between sustainability and entrepreneurship was an area for re-examination. Traditional measures of entrepreneurial success rested largely on economic indicators; observatories like the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) extended them, incl...

The effectiveness of training is an abstract idea in Pakistan. We argue that in-formalized trainings are conducted in a formalized structural environment of public sector in Pakistan; resultantly, the pedagogical orientation of decision makers has become fragmented in the organizations and shrink to formality of practices. The mainstream research a...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of financial, monitoring and experiential expertise of audit committee chair (ACC) and HR, monitoring and experiential expertise of nomination committee chair (NCC) on the financial performance (FP) of the firm. Design/methodology/approach Quantitative approach was used in this study to...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify barriers to financial product innovation in the Islamic banks (IBs) of Pakistan. This paper also aims to establish the relationship among the barriers and present them in a hierarchical model after classification. Design/methodology/approach This study is exploratory and qualitative in nature. A tot...

The Saudi economy constitutes 30% of the Arab world's GDP (gross domestic product). Traditionally focused on oil and natural gas, the economy is in the process of a structural transformation in which entrepreneurship has a pivotal role to play. Sixty percent of Saudi Arabia's population is under the age of 30. Against this background, this chapter...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explain the relationship between customer-oriented strategy (COS) and financial performance (FP) of firm, to examine the role of supportive human resource management (HRM) in COS implementation and contribution toward FP of firm. It also examines the mediating role of innovation capability (IC) between COS a...

Purpose Little attention has been given specifically to the experience of women social entrepreneurs despite the assumption they are prone to “care”, and even less to their motivations or their self-perception of success. This paper aims to provide an insight into the relationship between motivations and social and economic performance among women...

This chapter reviews different theoretical approaches to understanding entrepreneurial leadership in an Islamic context in order to determine the best means of researching it more rigorously, and of promoting more of it. Neo-institutional, market-based and culturally informed theory are proposed as better able to explain and develop Islamic entrepr...

Purpose The role of women in Pakistani society – largely embedded in its patriarchal socio–cultural environment – has important implications for women’s entrepreneurial activity in the country. This study aims to investigate and analyse the influence of informal institutional factors on women’s entry into entrepreneurship in Pakistan, and determin...

Purpose This study explores the positive and negative factors influencing transformational learning experiences of female leaders in women’s leadership development programmes in sports, and examines the differences in learning/change factors cited by those who successfully addressed them and those who failed. Design/methodology/approach The study...

GEM is the most ambitious research project on entrepreneurship worldwide. It started as an initiative of two researchers (Michael Hay, London Business School, and Bill Bygrave, Babson College) in 1997, by asking a simple question: ”Why are some countries more entrepreneurial than others?” The aim to answer this and other questions uncovering the in...

This study analyzes the interplay between gender differences and the social environment in the formation of entrepreneurial intentions. Data were obtained from two different European regions. The results show that the formation of entrepreneurial intentions is similar for men and women. At the same time, men consistently exhibit more favorable inte...

Purpose – The authors are reviewing Social Intrapreneurism and All That Jazz: How business innovators are helping to build a more sustainable world – the last book of the scholarly team David Grayson, Melody McLaren and Heiko Spitzeck issued in March 2014 that aims to demonstrate how business can become an active participant in building a sustainab...

Working paper. Forthcoming as a chapter in Harrison, R. T. and Leitch, C. M. (eds) (2015), Research Handbook on Entrepreneurship and Leadership, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK

This paper reviews different theoretical approaches to understanding entrepreneurial leadership in an Islamic context in order to determine the best means of researching it more rigorously, and of promoting more of it. Neo-institutional, market-based and culturally informed theory are proposed as better able to explain and develop Islamic entrepren...

Purpose – The authors are reviewing Social Intrapreneurism and All That Jazz: How business innovators are helping to build a more sustainable world – the last book of the scholarly team David Grayson, Melody McLaren and Heiko Spitzeck issued in March 2014 that aims to demonstrate how business can become an active participant in building a sustainab...

This study seeks to explore the variables contributing to the growth of women-owned enterprises in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Based on a previously established multivariate model, it uses two econometric approaches: first classifying variables into predetermined blocks; and second, using the general to specific approach. Statistical analyses...

Purpose – Increased participation of women in the labor force creates challenges for them to balance work and family obligations. The situation becomes more complicated in patriarchal societies such as Pakistan due to women's stereotypical domestic roles, religious prescriptions as well as cultural norms and values. This study aims to explore diffe...

We offer a comprehensive review of the literature relating to entrepreneurial leadership, noting that there are diverse understandings of the concept and little exploration of how best to teach it. We next present empirical data from a survey of teaching practices at 51 HEIs in the UK that indicate little explicit teaching of entrepreneurial leader...

This study intends to investigate the dividend payment practices of the non-financial sectors of the Karachi Stock Exchange. All the dividend paying sectors of the Karachi Stock Exchange were investigated for the period 2004–2010. A well developed mixture of six variables along with the descriptive statistics was used to scrutinize the dividend pay...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically the impact of human capital development in organizations. It is based on some conceptual aspects of human resource accounting and considers how investments in the development of human capital can be measured in order to investigate the financial returns for organizations. Design/methodolo...

This article analyzes the different perceptions of both male and female potential entrepreneurs from three European regions differing in their respective level of economic development and entrepreneurial culture. We use an extended cognitive model of entrepreneurial intentions based on the theory of planned behaviour, the theory of normative social...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the gender‐related challenges of Pakistani women entrepreneurs, to explore these women's particular capacity‐building needs, and to assess the impact of capacity‐building programs on the establishment and performance of the women's enterprises. Design/methodology/approach The paper begins with a r...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to create an understanding of the true nature of contemporary SME marketing activities. While acknowledging operational constraints, the paper aims to hypothesize that, if effective marketing planning was employed, this would improve the long‐term growth of small to medium‐sized enterprises. The paper seeks to...

Drawing upon the Churchill and Lewis stage growth model of enterprises, this study explains the role of social capital possessed by women entrepreneurs in different stages of growth within their firms. Friends and family as well as women-only networks in the start-up stage; customers, staff, and suppliers in the survival stage; mixed networks as we...

Purpose This study attempts to understand the nature and activities of growth‐oriented women‐owned businesses in the East of England by highlighting the problems faced by women entrepreneurs during the growth process. Design/methodology/approach The approach analysed the main growth factors and their influence on the adoption of different growth s...

Internationally, research suggests numerous gender differences among business owners at personal, professional, and institutional levels (Young, 1997; Carter and Anderson, 2001; Brown et al., 2002; Brush and Hisrich, 2002; Orser and Riding, 2003). By implication, these differences become manifold in some Islamic societies where women are further di...

Purpose The purpose of this research is to investigate the needs and preferences for training among growth‐oriented women‐owned SMEs in the East of England. Design/methodology/approach Quantitative data were collected through 108 on‐line questionnaires, and the means analysed using SPSS. Qualitative data collected in response to open‐ended questio...

In Pakistan, women entrepreneurs do not enjoy the same opportunities as men due to a number of deep-rooted discriminatory socio-cultural values and traditions. Furthermore, these restrictions can be observed within the support mechanisms that exist to assist such fledgling businesswomen. The economic potential of female entrepreneurs is not being r...

Entrepreneurs require information, capital, skills, and labour to establish and grow their businesses. While they hold some of these resources themselves, they often complement their resources by accessing their contacts (Aldrich & Zimmer, 1986). These contacts, often part of their social networks, are termed as entrepreneurs' social capital, and m...

Among the myriad of factors contributing to the development of women-owned businesses, the issue of social capital has received attention from scholars and researchers such as Brush et al. (2004); Carter et al. (2001); and Ibarra (1998). The literature strongly argues that women do not have equal access to social capital, in comparison to their mal...

Women’s entrepreneurship is characterized by a number of constraints including family responsibility as well as lack of relevant resources. Literature illustrates that as compared to men, female entrepreneurs often enter self-employment under resourced in terms of financial, human and social capital (Schmidt & Parker, 2003). Neergaard et al. (2005)...