Saudi Ports, is one of the busiest seaports in the world and the biggest ports in the Middle East, which is facing challenges from different ports such as Salalah and Dubai ports especially in the cargo section, which can release their cargoes and goods in a short time without any congestion of stock. The current challenges of Saudi Ports Authority are the overstock of cargo which is the result of low performance of workers at cargo field. This paper investigated the root of this problem based on the role of the human resource practices such as training and development, reward, job analysis, social support, recruitment and selection, employee relationship and empowerment, employee satisfaction into employee performance. In other words, the current study explored to know whether HRM practices offer direct impact on the employee performance or through employees' job satisfaction on employee performance to solve the said problem. The study analysed the 367 Saudi port authority employees' data and found a positive significant relationship between HRM practices and employee performance. Furthermore, the current study revealed a positive relationship between employee job satisfaction and employee performance. Moreover, the present study found the insignificant relationship between HRM practices and employee job satisfaction but reported no significant mediating role of employee job satisfaction between HRM practices and employee performance.

A sample of 101 companies is selected randomly from Bursa Malaysia during the period 2005-2009 where two models are used to analyze the relationships between financial distress and firms’ characteristics and risk. The dependent variables are long-term debt to total equity ratio and short-term debt to total equity ratio. The independent variables are profitability, liquidity, firm size, solvency, growth and risk. Size is found to be significant and has a positive relationship with financial distress. Interest coverage ratio has a positive relationship with financial distress, while growth of operating profits has a negative relationship with financial distress. Corporate managers should use these indicators to detect early signs of financial distress and take innovative actions to prevent such occurrences.

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The primary objective of this paper is to investigate the mediation role of port supply chain integration between Human Resource Management (HRM) practices and port performance (PP) in Kingdome of Saudi Arabia. The present study employed partial lest square structural equation modeling technique to analyze the collected data. The study found some positive significant direct relationship between HRP, port supply chain integration (PSCI) and PP. Besides, this study also found some positive and significant relationship between HRP and PSCI. Additionally, the study confirms the mediating role of PSCI between HRP and PP. The study contributes to the literature and to the practice of ports to understand how the process of HRP and PSCI produces better port performance.

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