The Faculty of Business and Management(FBM), Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia achieved another academic publication milestone in the first half of 2020 when three manuscripts authored by its teaching staff were published by Emerald Publishing, UK, whose journals are ranked by both Scopus and Web of Science Journal Citation Reports (WoS-JCR).
Dr. Muhammad Iskandar Hamzah, the corresponding author for these papers, is a senior lecturer with the Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship, FBM, UiTM. Some of the co-authors include Assoc. Prof. Dr. Abdul Kadir Othman, Prof. Dr. Faridah Hassan and Mrs. Lailatul Faizah Abu Hassan from the same Faculty.
The first article entitled “Mediating effects of individual market orientation on the link between learning orientation and job performance” was published in the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing (JBIM; Scopus Q1) in January 2020.
The findings highlight the intervention roles of individual market orientation. Specifically, the inclination of Business-to-Business (B2B) salespeople in relaying customers’ knowledge amongst the co-workers, and utilizing this knowledge in crafting value-added solutions, helps to bridge their learning propensity and accomplishments of work-related goals.
The second article entitled “Modeling the contingent role of technological optimism on customer satisfaction with self-service technologies” was published in the Journal of Enterprise Information Management (JEIM; Scopus Q1), in March 2020 . The general theme of the manuscript revolves around the question of ‘Is feeling optimistic really a bad feeling when it comes to using cash recycling ATMs?’.
Their findings conclude that consumers who are less optimistic about a particular Self-Service Technology (SST) are more likely to be pleasantly overwhelmed when its’ reliability is improved, as compared to their highly optimistic counterparts, whose level of satisfaction remains almost static when its reliability increased.
The third article, entitled “Elucidating salespeople’s market orientation, proactive service behavior and organizational culture in the B2B banking sector: a Malaysian perspective”, was published in the International Journal of Bank Marketing (IJBM; Scopus Q2) in April 2020.
Guided by the social cognitive theory, the paper suggests that individual market-oriented behaviors lead to proactive service behaviors among the B2B salespeople. However, the strength and directions of some of the relationships substantially changed when the cultures enacted by their sales teams were taken into account.
According to Dr. Muhammad Iskandar, “academicians should familiarize themselves in submitting comprehensive scientific work to journal editors, rather than conference organizers or other intermediaries.”
In this way, he feels that “despite exposing oneself to grit and hardship of the rigorous peer review process, the author will have an excellent opportunity to learn from mistakes”. “Rejection is normal during the review process“, he pointed out.
In the publication process, “Overnight success does not really teach us how to improve…. And….Failure is our best teacher.”
His publications can be viewed via https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8794-2409