In recent years, Malaysia has witnessed an influx of foreign students in the local higher education institutions with the aggressive support from the Malaysian government to build Malaysia as the educational hub within the region. This is in line with Malaysia's aspiration to be a global education hub by year 2020.Besides the country level policy, the aim of this study is to understand the major drivers that influence foreign students to choose Malaysia and the private HEI as their study destination. Five dimensions were employed in measuring student's choice of private HEI with a focus on institutional characteristics (cost of education, academic reputation, location, programme and facilities). A sample of 265 respondents was drawn within five private HEIs and the Structural Equation Model (SEM) was utilized in testing the five proposed hypotheses. Based on the findings, all hypotheses were significant except for location. This study gave an idea that institutional characteristics are significantly important in measuring foreign students' choice of Malaysian private HEI.In conclusion, these findings would enable academics and practitioners to focus on the crucial factors that influence foreign students to choose their respective private HEIs.

Purpose Considering the importance of current Libyan business environment, this paper aims to understand the influence of culture on perceived service quality that leads to customer satisfaction in the Libyan banking industry. In addition, it would be interesting to explore which type of banks, e.g. public or private banks, moderate the relationship between perceived service quality and customer satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach The data were collected from the customers who are receiving services from the top three private and top three public banks in the cities of Tripoli and Misurata, Libya. About 329 samples were obtained and Smart PLS was used for the statistical analysis. Findings The results show that perceived service quality is strongly predicted by collectivism, masculinity and uncertainty avoidance. Perceived service quality also leads to customer satisfaction among the Libyan banking customers. Further, public bank is more concerned on customer satisfaction compared to private banks. Practical implication The research has greater implication for the Middle-Eastern bank managers who are pursuing possibilities of newer business strategies. Originality The study provides an interesting viewpoint of the banking service in Libya, especially in the economic uncertainty post-war and political instability. Its focus on culture as a strong influence to the delivery of service quality in such context is admirable especially in relation with the embedded Islamic culture.

Extensive studies have been done on employability and the factors that lead to employability. Previous studies have focused on career development programs, internships, work experience programs, soft-skill development programs, and even university admission criteria which can be considered external factors to university student learning experience. Focus on these external factors and their influence on employability appears to have taken attention away from the core function of university education, "learning". Learning done in universities has been the focus of many studies but it's difficult to find consensus due to different learning models and approaches considered. Learning and employability are clearly supportive constructs but this relationship appears to be under represented and lacks clarity. Present study overcomes this issue by introducing a framework that clearly represents learning and employability in a manner that is both easy to understand while providing necessary theoretical support. The "Learning and employability framework" is at attempt to overcome the limitations of popular employability models which either lacks operational clarity or simplicity. The model has identified new dimensions of employability which were not considered in previous studies and links learning process, learning environment and learning outcomes to employability. Extensive review of literature on employability and learning revealed two new factors, namely; university reputation and learning outcomes and their influence on graduate employability. While learning outcomes appear to mediate the relationship between lower-tier employability skills and employability, university reputation appear to moderate learning outcome and employability. The "learning and employability framework" can be considered as a timely and relevant study since its simple enough to be understood by students, parents, employers and faculty while providing the required operational clarity and theoretical support for research community. The framework provides direction to those looking to design curricula and pedagogic approach to maximize employability.

Improvement of advance communication technologies and changes of business environments have resulted in as increasing demand for Information Technology (IT) products to be used in businesses today. But unfortunately, the Small and Medium Scale Businesses (SMEs) are not using those technologies effectively and not gain the competitive advantage over competitors. Although prior studies proposed many models and frameworks to understand the barrier to use advance communication technologies, the practicability remain a concern. Furthermore, those frameworks mainly discussing common general barriers and take technology as a barrier among other factors. This study provided critical review of those available frameworks and construct a new one focusing on IT factors. A research model along with its theoretical and managerial implications is presented. Besides proposing a methodology for future studies, this study also serves to guide practitioners to decide on the key factors to consider when assessing the IT factors effecting the adoption to e-commerce based e-business technologies.

There is increasing pressure from governments, funding organizations, students and parents on universities around the world since graduate employability has been clearly recognized as one of the main objectives of university education. Accreditation bodies also appear to measure quality of education through the contributions made towards employability. In such a context one would assume that employability of university graduates to be clearly understood and extensively researched area. However, the real situation appears to be one which requires the urgent attention of all stakeholders of university education. A review of literature on graduate employability is a clear need today and current paper achieves this by summarizing the major articles on university graduate employability theoretical frameworks and empirical studies. Despite the large number of studies, graduate employability appears to be suffering from the problems of lack of theoretical control and politicization which appear to have become major obstacles for future developments of the concept.

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