The Journal of Middle East and North Africa Sciences

3-20

Authors: Hussin J. Hejase; Fadi Hashem; Ali Al Dirani; Ziad Haddad; Khalid Atwi

Background: The current fierce market environment obliges corporations to strive for success with every business strategy or tool to secure sustainability in the market. One approach that companies use is to operate and at the same time contribute to the well-being of the surrounding community, to safeguard the natural environment under which they operate, and to enhance the work force opportunities for growth. Such an approach has developed with time and is known as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR strategy is one of the roadmaps that corporations may use, including the possible activities corporations’ implementation, which may impact consumers’ choice and decisions to deal with the said corporations. Nowadays, in Lebanon, the use of CSR strategy is moderately on the rise. Objective: The current research aims to assess the extent that CSR strategy really affects consumers’ decision making, and to determine which one of the CSR activities or tools involving social, economic, or environmental dimensions carries the highest impact on changing consumers’ decision. Furthermore, this research will shed light on the Lebanese consumers’ perception and attitude towards CSR, and to assess which applied activities/tools carries the highest impact on their decision-making process to buy a product or a service. Materials and Methods: This research is exploratory, comparative and quantitative in nature, and uses a survey questionnaire distributed to 200 Lebanese consumers selected conveniently to study their perception of CSR strategy, and to identify which CSR tool they perceive as to be more effective in affecting their decision to buy a specific product/service. Results: Results show that 74.3% of the respondents are aware of CSR activities and agree on the fact that CSR is beneficial to society, corporations, and individuals. Also, 83.5% of the respondents agreed that CSR impacts their decision to buy products, and 60.3% showed that it may even initiate a purchase not planned previously. Furthermore, results show that 46.2% of the respondents will buy more as of quantity and 76% may go into the substitution of products because of CSR. 75.2% of the respondents mentioned that CSR also may impact their feelings towards products and will increase their loyalty to CSR-applying corporations. Conclusions: The outcomes of the research are used to support recommendations for Lebanese corporations to implement CSR strategy and the adequate activities needed to attract the Lebanese consumer.

25-34

Authors: Tarek Y. Bayoumi; Eman T. Abdou; Samar A. M. Elshakhess; Soad A. Mahmoud

In this study, we sought to determine whether the increases in peroxidase (POX), catalase activities (CAT), normalized differential vegetation index (NDVI), chlorophyll pigments as (SPAD reading), proline and relative water content (RWC) as selection criteria for drought tolerance in sesame and how to improve water use efficiency (WUE) under drought stress. Four sesame populations were derived from crossing among six parents i.e., population 1 (Sandaweel 3* 375* Sandaweel 3), population 2 (Lines 237*217* 241), population 3 (Sandaweel 3* lines 241* 237) and population 4 (Lines 241* 217* 220) for two growing seasons. Measurements were taken under various of water deficit levels (100 % ETo, 80 % ETo, 60 % ETo). The highest seed yield was belonging to population No.4 while, population No.1 and 3 were the lowest among populations. The NDVI index was sensitive to changes in plant biomass, vigor, and leaf size, which varies from water deficit level to another and from population to another. The activities of peroxidase and catalase antioxidant enzymes were altered when plants were subjected to stress. POX and CAT activity increased significantly in all populations for both drought stress Levels. CAT activity increased in Pop. No.4 more than 20 folds due to water stress. Results suggest that water deficit induces oxidative stress in growing sesame plants and that peroxidase and catalase could serve as important components of antioxidative defense mechanism against drought. Proline, RWC, chlorophyll content and NDVI are powerful tools for the study of spatial and temporal heterogeneity of leaf transpiration and photosynthetic performance. The highest values of WUE of seed or oil yields (kg/m3) were obtained by irrigating population 4 under sever water stress. The correlations between NDVI and grain yield within individual trials varied depending on crop stage, moisture availability, and genotypes composition. The genotypes were accumulated more proline due to stress had the same genotypes which gave the highest RWC, POX and CAT enzymes.