This study aims to examine the impact of leadership styles on customer satisfaction, in particular, transactional and transformational leadership styles. Furthermore, it examines the mediating role of employees' performance between leadership styles and customer satisfaction in the Palestinian context. Using data from a survey of 258 employees of insurance companies who have direct dealing with customers, this study tests a structural equation model that relates to leadership styles (i.e., transactional, and transformational), employees' performance and customer satisfaction. The evidence suggests that neither transactional, nor transformational leadership style impact customer satisfaction directly. On the other hand, the relationship between leadership styles and customer satisfaction is mediated partially by employees' performance.

Universities in Palestine are facing many problems in terms of organizational performance and its ability to agile (1) financing problems and fund raising (2) scientific research challenges (3) managerial practices challenges (4) the level employees' efficiency. Besides, studies on resources and capabilities that enable organization to be agile is still nascent. This study aims to examine effect of employee empowerment and knowledge management on decisionmaking agility. Moreover, It examines the mediating role of extra-role performance between employee empowerment and knowledge management on one hand and decision-making agility on the other hand in the Palestinian context. Using data from a survey of 289 employees of Palestinian universities, this study tests a structural equation model that relates to employee empowerment, knowledge management, extra-role performance and decisionmaking agility. The results of the study revealed that employee empowerment and knowledge management impact decision-making agility indirectly. On the other hand, the relationship between employee empowerment and knowledge management and decision-making agility is mediated by extra-role performance. And this is the main contribution of the present study since extra-role performance has not been deployed in this place according to literature review.

PurposeConsidering the importance of employee performance in the changes in state higher education institutions, this study aims to conceptualize the mediating role of employee engagement and empowerment in predicting employee performance.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses a quantitative survey method to collect data from staff members employed in higher education institutions and applies a partial least squares structural equation modeling to analyze the data. In addition, the study performs a systematic bibliometric analysis of contemporary literature on the factors influencing employee performance.FindingsThe study's results confirm employee engagement and empowerment's critical role in improving employee performance. Unexpectedly, the study also has found no supporting evidence of the relationship between work environment and employee performance. Further, the proposed model explains 51.6% of the variance in employee productivity.Originality/valueAmong the theoretical implications of this study are the importance of introducing new and theoretically sound mediators to explain how the relationship between a higher education institution's employee engagement and empowerment and its employees' performance unfolds.

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