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The purpose of this article is to provide information about interactions between pink-pigmented facultative methylotroph (PPFM) organisms and plants, their molecular mechanisms of methylotrophic metabolism, application of PPFMs in agriculture, biotechnology and bioremediation and also to explore lacuna in PPFMs research and direction for future research.

Research findings on PPFM organisms as potent plant growth promoting organisms are discussed in the light of reports published by various workers. Unexplored field of PPFM research are detected and their application as a new group of biofertilizer that also help host plants to overcome draught stress in poorly irrigated crop field is suggested.

PPFMs are used as plant growth promoters for improved crop yield, seed germination capacity, resistance against pathogens and tolerance against drought stress. Anti-oxidant and UV resistant properties of PPFM pigments protect the host plants from strong sunshine. PPFMs have excellent draught ameliorating capacity.

To meet the ever increasing world population, more and more barren, less irrigated land has to be utilized for agriculture and horticulture purpose and use of PPFM group of organisms due to their draught ameliorating properties in addition to their plant growth promoting characters will be extremely useful. PPFMs are also promising candidates for the production of various industrially and medicinally important enzymes and other value-added products. Wider application of this ecofriendly group of bacteria will reduce crop production cost thus improving economy of the farmers and will be a greener alternative of hazardous chemical fertilizers and fungicides.

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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the various factors that inhibit tourism student’s inclination toward tourism-related entrepreneurial activities in Oman.

The study was conducted with 223 students of tourism studies who were selected on simple random sampling basis and were contacted through a well-defined questionnaire.

The study reveals that the factors like non-discrimination of gender, promotion opportunities and physical working conditions play a crucial role in motivating students to take up tourism-related career. The empirical results also reveal that the high risk of accidents, non-tourism spouse preferences and Omani traditional values discourage tourism. Thus, a natural growth toward setting up of such tourism-related entrepreneurial activities is thwarted.

The study was restricted to undergraduate students of tourism studies in and around Muscat, Oman. The study could be extended to know the insight of the personnel involved in the entire tourism sector in Oman.

The study demonstrates that there is a strong association between the motivating factors and the various reasons that encourage studying tourism. The main factors impeding entrepreneurship tourism are the insufficiency of capital, lack of awareness about the ongoing programmes as well as the lack of entrepreneurial skills.

There exists necessity for the government and the related sponsoring institutions to create an ecosystem that facilitates and encourages tourism entrepreneurs. This will in turn help in the process of diversifying Oman’s future economy toward tourism.

Very few studies have examined the entrepreneurship tourism in Oman for sustainable development, and it is a first-hand study of its kind.

The primary objective of this study is to investigate the association between the dimensions of intellectual capital (IC) and sustainability practices (SP) within the context of manufacturing medium and large (ML) firms in Uganda. The study aims to shed light on whether and how different dimensions of IC contribute to the adoption and implementation of SP by these firms.

This study utilized a cross-sectional and quantitative approach, collecting data through a questionnaire survey from a sample of manufacturing ML firms. The collected data underwent analysis to identify patterns and relationships using the SmartPLS structural equation modeling (SEM) technique.

The findings demonstrated that the three categories of IC (human, structural and relational capital) influence the SP of ML manufacturing enterprises in Uganda. This suggests that IC is a critical component of SP.

Manufacturing enterprises should use their IC to create strategies for sustainable solutions, such as creating new, ecologically and socially responsible products and services and improving current ones to lessen their environmental effect.

This research advances knowledge of SP by revealing if all aspects of IC are significant for the SP of manufacturing enterprises in Uganda.

Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries are among the most affected regions globally, which are expected also to be influenced significantly for an extended period. This paper aims to consider an attempt for a real-time evaluation of the colossal impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on health, economic and social sectors in MENA nations.

This paper draws from published academic studies. It is also based on the synthesis of news broadcasted and current media sources, government speeches and reports, as the novel COVID-19 situation is unfolding. The authors’ experiences investigating in this domain have also contributed to the research.

This investigation captures events on the novel COVID-19, as they are unfolding now. The study predicts that the COVID-19 pandemic will probably affect the general patterns of MENA people’s lifestyles. In addition, the COVID-19 epidemic will have a substantial influence on healthcare systems and economic sectors in MENA countries.

This viewpoint paper offers some emerging outlooks, appearing with the contemporary novel COVID-19 outbreak. This study provides valuable insights to inform investors, policymakers and the public that natural disasters can inflict economic damage on an unprecedented scale.

This is a “real-time” evaluation study. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that map and assess the potential impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on health-care systems, economic sectors and people’s lifestyle in MENA countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of corporate social responsibility, social media marketing, sales promotion, store environment and perceived value on a purchase decision in the retail sector.

A quantitative research methodology was used and the data were collected from 278 customers of retail stores in Malaysia. The collected data were analysed using SPSS 19 and structural equation modelling on AMOS.

The findings showed that corporate social responsibility has significant positive effects on a purchase decision, whereas sales promotion has a negative effect on purchase decision. The outcomes of this study also indicated that store environment has a significant positive effect on consumers’ purchase decisions. Contrary to expectations, the findings revealed that the effect of social media marketing on purchase decision is insignificant. Finally, the results showed that perceived value has a significant positive effect on a purchase decision.

The findings of this study contribute to an understanding of the importance of the selected factors in affecting a consumer’s purchase decision in the retail industry.

This study aims to predict the effect of cultural distance, perceived risk and electronic word of mouth (eWOM) on higher education institutes' students' destination image. In addition, it examines the mediating role of destination image in relation to students' travel intentions.

An online survey was employed to collect data from 200 graduate and postgraduate students. The partial least squares was employed to analyse the hypothesised relationships.

The results of this study found support for the positive effect of cultural distance and eWOM on destination image. Additionally, the mediating effect of destination image was also supported.

This research confirms the vital role of destination image as an antecedent of students' future intention to visit the destination. Moreover, this study contributes to marketing theory by predicting the critical drivers of higher education students' destination image and discussing their applications in the education sector.

This study examines the relationship of positive career shocks and career optimism. The mediating role of career decision-making self-efficacy (CDSE) between positive career shocks and career optimism and the moderating role of consideration of future consequences – immediate (CFC-I) between CDSE and career optimism are checked.

Through cluster sampling, cross-sectional data from 192 professionals of electronic media industry were collected via an electronically administered questionnaire. For preliminary descriptive data analysis, SPSS version 21 was used. SmartPLS version 3.0 was used for testing the proposed hypotheses.

The results showed that positive career shocks have a relationship with career optimism via CDSE. Also, CFC-I moderated the relationship of CDSE and career optimism such that the relationship of CDSE and career optimism was stronger at higher level of CFC-I.

The study provides implications for the career consultants, human resource professionals and senior management of organizations. All these stakeholders can strive to build an inventory of positive career shocks. Also, shifting to a surprised business model of announcing compensations and promotions is another area to work on. The results of this study further suggest disengaging the fresh potential employees in the initial processes of recruitment. Interdepartmental coordination of health and safety department and human resource management department is also a very important implication for this study to highlight the positive aspects of being optimistic.

The study is among the few empirical studies which investigates the relationship between positive career shocks and career optimism via CDSE. Also, in light of the latest call of various empirical works in the domain, this study adds a moderating variable, i.e. CFC-I in predicting career optimism. Furthermore, contrary to the conventional approach of applying students' data on career models, this study tests the proposed career model on data collected from professionals.

Online shopping around the world is growing exponentially, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to examine how an online customer's purchasing experience influences his/her buying intention and willingness to believe in fraud news, as well as the ripple impact of satisfaction and trust, with gender as a moderator in an emerging economy during COVID-19.

Based on the underpinning of the stimulus-organism-behavior-consequence (SOBC) theory, the research model was developed, and collected data from 259 respondents using convenience samples technique. Next, the data were analyzed using partial least squares-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) and Hayes Process Macro.

The study results confirmed that the online shopping experience (OSE) has positive impact on customers' satisfaction (CS), purchase intention (PI) and customer trust (CT); CS has positive effects on trust toward online shopping and their future product PI; future product PI significantly affects customers' propensity to believe and act on fraud news (PBAFN). The finding also states that gender moderates the relationships of CS to PI, OSE to PI and PI to PBAFN, but doesn't moderate the CT to PI relationship.

The study findings will assist policymakers and online vendors to win customers' hearts and minds' through confirming satisfaction, trust and a negative attitude toward fake news, which will lead to customer loyalty and the sustainable development of the industry. Finally, the limitations and future research directions are discussed.