Eurasian Journal of Business and Economics

1-27

Authors: Jayarethanam S. PILLAI , Aureliu SINDILA, Anna NAGORNOVA

The growth of knowledge-intensive societies has brought dramatic changes to the higher education landscape, changing the role of universities as well as academiaindustry relationship models. The changing roles of universities in teaching, innovation and entrepreneurial enthusiasm impact the national innovation systems of many developed and developing countries. This paper attempts to study existing models of university-industry collaboration in Central Asia, using structured interviews to provide analytical and practically applicable strategies to address various issues in higher education

59-81

Authors: Osman SAHIN

This study is based on the non-financial companies within the fragile five countries (Turkey, Brazil, South Africa, India and Indonesia) during the period of 2004-2013. The factors affecting capital structure were assessed along with micro and macro variables for these countries. The micro variables (firm specific) included in the model were the debt taken in the previous year, firm size, growth, industry debt average, and the tangibility and profitability ratio; GDP growth, inflation and exchange rate change were included in the model as macroeconomic variables. Also, the effects of financial crises were analyzed by treating pre- and post-2008 crisis periods separately. Panel data analysis techniques are used to identify the relationships between these determinants and capital structure. The relationship between the real effective exchange rate and the debt ratio was positive in the precrisis five-country model, but it turned negative in the post-crisis model. A statistically significant relationship was discovered between the GDP growth rate and the debt ratio only for Turkey for the full period (2004-2013) and for India for the period between 2006 and 2013. On the other hand, a positive relationship was found between the inflation rate and the debt ratio for the general (2004-2013) and post-crisis models.

105-121

Authors: Ivana BOŽIĆ MILJKOVIĆ

The aim of this paper is to measure the results of the recent economic cooperation achieved between Serbia and the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union on the basis of statistical data, and then, by applying an econometric model, to show the potential for future cooperation in the field of foreign trade and highlight the economic benefits of such cooperation. There are potentials for the development of foreign trade relations and cooperation between Serbia and the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union but they are not fully exploited. Their further development is conditioned by political relations between Serbia and the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union, and the progress of Serbia in the process of eurointegration.

1-22

Authors: David L. FORD, Laurie L. ZIEGLER, Ray FANG , Oscar HOLMES IV

Increasingly, managers of global teams are faced with the challenge of how to foster knowledge sharing within a virtual or hybrid community. In this study, we replicate Chiu, Hsu, and Wang’s (2006) study of the influence of social capital factors on knowledge sharing in virtual communities and extend it to reveal how both the quantity and quality of knowledge sharing may mediate between social capital factors and network involvement and commitment. The context of our investigation is a professional hybrid community in Central Eurasia. Using singleindicator structural equation modeling (SEM) to test our proposed model, we were able to demonstrate both convergent and discriminant validity among the study variables. Our study also provides partial support for the proposed model. Implications for research and practice are discussed

49-68

Authors: Khadra DAHOU, Ishaq HACINI

Being the most important asset, the human resource represents today the source of the organizations’ sustainable competitive advantage. This focus on the employee as the organizations’ core of human capital management drives the current interest in empowerment. This paper explores the concept of employee empowerment and the main influential factors in implementing an empowerment initiative: job design, transformational leadership, decision-making authority, continuous training and development, sharing information, and self-managed teams. Using a hypotheses testing approach, this correlational cross-sectional field study investigates the influence of the six factors on the adoption of employee empowerment. Using a questionnaire method, data was collected from Jordanian commercial banks. The results of a multiple linear regression analysis revealed that sharing information, job design, transformational leadership and decision making authority have a positive effect on employee empowerment. Sharing information and adopting the appropriate job design inside the organization have the strongest influence in that fostering these initiatives would certainly make banks’ employees’ empowerment successful. The research provides insights into the perception of employee empowerment in the Jordanian context, specifically in the banking industry, a high service- oriented sector where empowering employees become a must for a better customer service.

87-100

Authors: Irfan DJEDOVIĆ, Ugur ERGUN

This study investigates the impact of the US monetary policy, represented through the volatility of the US government bonds rate, on the return of Dow Jones UK Islamic index. Monthly observations spans, in the period between December 2006 and June 2017, are obtained from the International Monetary Fund database. The OLS regression and granger causality analysis are used to investigate the impact. The results of the analysis show that there is significant impact of the US monetary policy on the Dow Jones UK Islamic index return.

117-133

Authors: Ilker YILMAZ, Goksel ACAR

In this study we aim to examine the effects of intellectual capital and its components on companies’ market value and financial performance in Turkey. The financial and market data of production companies listed in Borsa Istanbul 100 index (BIST-100) for the periods 2011 through 2014 are used as dataset. We selected three different measures for financial performance; ROA, ROE and Net Profit Margin, and one measure for market value; Market to Book Ratio. As independent variables, we firstly took Modified Value Added Coefficient (M-VAIC), secondly we took three components of M-VAIC. Besides, we added natural logarithm of assets to control for variation in asset size of companies and tested its significance. The results suggest multi factor models are more powerful than single factor model in explaining the market performance and financial performance. The paper also reveals that models explaining financial performance provide more accurate results than the models of market performance. The analysis also exposes that physical capital and human capital has a significant effect on financial performance whereas physical capital and relational capital has an influence on market performance.