The sharp increase in oil revenues since 2002 has left the Arab Gulf States with billions of petro-dollars. But how will these countries fare in the post-oil era? The rulers of these states are taking serious measures to ensure the survival of their economies, and indeed their regimes, in a world with scarce mineral resources.

This book explores the extent to which these countries have been and will be able to prepare for the future by transforming themselves into serious international destinations for tourism, finance, healthcare, and education. It also considers the implications of failure for the future survival of their regimes.

Topics covered include sovereign funds, Islamic finance, new technologies, higher education, and the role of women.

A timely study into this vibrant and important region, this book will provide food for thought for academics, policy makers, and general readers.

Nabil Sultan is a senior lecturer at the Liverpool Hope University.

David Weir is a professor at Liverpool Hope University.

Zeinab Karake-Shalhoub is director of research at the Dubai International Financial Centre in the United Arab Emirates.

Karake-Shalhoub uses agency theory to ground her empirical analysis of more than 100 e-commerce firms in this highly readable examination of trust in e-commerce relational exchanges. She identifies several trust-building measures, including privacy statements, the existence of a chief privacy officer, and a trusted third-party seal of approval; companies are then evaluated based on an index of those trust builders. She demonstrates that there is a positive relationship between management ownership and trust, and that managers who fail to protect the interests of their stockholders-as well as their own-will never gain customer loyalty. Any business considering a move into e-commerce, or re-evaluating an earlier investment in online marketing and retailing, will benefit greatly from Karake-Shalhoub's insights.

The timeliness of this study--the first of its kind--and its unique agency-theory perspective allow for an analysis of the appropriateness of e-business and e-commerce for certain businesses. What are e-commerce businesses that are developing loyalty and building trust doing differently than their less successful competitors? How are successful companies moving from traditional applications to the new breed of integrated e-commerce architectures? Karake-Shalhoub answers these and other pressing questions for senior and mid-level managers and strategic planners, corporate executives charged with incorporating an e-commerce strategy into their long-range plans, chief privacy officers, regulatory policymakers, and students of e-commerce, customer relationship management, and online marketing.

Organizational restructuring and corporate downsizing can have a significant impact on the perceived social responsibility and responsiveness of any firm. This book analyzes the phenomenon by identifying the nature and types of structural or functional relationships that exist between downsizing and organizational performance variables, on the one hand, and organizational social responsiveness on the other. It looks at changes in the use of various restructuring techniques to improve efficiency and effectiveness and the effects of these changes on the organizational citizenship standing in the community. It goes on to add to the understanding of the general phenomenon of downsizing by examining its relationship to the level and pervasiveness of corporate social responsibility.

Karake-Shalhoub addresses three questions. First, is corporate downsizing related to improvement in organizational financial performance? Second, is there any relationship between downsizing and corporate social responsibility? Third, what is the nature of this relationship? The book will be attractive to management theory scholars, social responsibility and ethics researchers and practitioners, organizational development researchers and practitioners, and human resource scholars.

Drawing on research in the areas of business organization, information technology, and information economics this book develops an empirical basis for integrating the three fields. It investigates information technology management based on the theoretical foundations of information economics, examines the chief information officer phenomenon and identifies the factors that lead organizations to create such a position, and analyzes organizational and managerial motivations leading to investment in information technology. Karake concludes that the way information technology is managed and the magnitude of investment in such technology depends on the organization ownership structure, that the ownership structure is a determinant of the degree of control information managers exercise, and that there is a significant relationship between the size and composition of boards of directors and the management of and investment in information technology.

This study will be of interest to students, researchers, and practitioners of information technology management and information technology performance.

This is the first empirical study to compare and contrast the effects of technology transfer to developing countries from the West and from Eastern European countries. The author's primary purpose is to compare the effects of the different technologies offered by the two groups--the capital-intensive technologies of the West and the labor-intensive technologies of the Eastern bloc--on the economic growth of developing countries, as measured by growth in output. Using an analytical method based on the production-input structure, the author is able to quantify the impact on economic growth of technology transfer from different sources and with different characteristics. Karake also evaluates the experience of developing countries in importing technologies and identifies the direction, pattern, and content of those technologies. Scholars in international and economic development will find Karake's work an important contribution to the documented information concerning the trade in technology and its relation to economic growth and technological interdependence.

Following an introductory chapter, Karake offers a general discussion of the relationships among development, growth, and technology. She then introduces the econometric time-series models and describes the basic study structure. The next section examines policies, mechanisms, and trends in technology transfer in both the West and the East, focusing on such issues as the factors and policies which affect technology transfer to the Middle East and patterns of technological exports. A chapter devoted to model formulation, empirical analysis, estimation, and results specifies the empirical models used in the study and presents statistical analysis of the appropriate data. Finally, Karake summarizes the major research findings, suggests avenues for further research, and assesses the future of technology transfer activity. Four appendices containing important supplemental information and a bibliography complete the study.