Norhayati Zakaria, PhD is an Associate Professor at the University of Wollongong in Dubai (UOWD), where she teaches undergraduate courses in responsible leadership, managing across culture, intercultural applications for socially innovative business, and sustainability developmental goals for a capstone class of integrated business as well as postgraduate courses like managerial concepts and skills research project for HRM. Dr. Zakaria earned her PhD in Information Science and Technology from Syracuse University, USA in 2016. Dr. Zakaria’s research program aims at exploring on how and why cultural values shape people differently in terms of communication styles, leadership, and management practices. In specific, she is interested to further explore on a research agenda with a key question of: what are the cross-cultural kit of intelligence needed for talented human resources to build a cross-culturally-competent individuals and how do people and leaders develop culturally versatile competency and technologically savvy skills to effectively perform in the novelty virtual work structure such as global virtual teams. Her book entitled "Culture Matters: Decision Making of Global Virtual Teams is published in 2017 by CRC Press Imprint, Taylor & Francis Group marked her scholarly work in the area of research that integrates cross-cultural management and information science fields relevantly. In a similar line of passion, her latest book (2019) extends her research pursuits on the effects of culture on expatriation process, with a title "Making Sense of Culture: Cross-Cultural Expeditions and Management Practices of Self-Initiated Expatriates in the Foreign Workplace" published by Routledge that best illustrates a lived-experience of expatriates’ challenges between herself and others. Hence, with more than 20 years of scholarly and academic experiences in both fields have led her to collaborate with many global scholars in the United States, Japan, South Africa, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and UAE. Her globally recognized research was also supported by numerous international research grants like Asian Office of Aerospace Research & Development, Japanese Society for the Promotion of Sciences, Heiwa Nakajima Foundation, Malaysia Fundamental Research Grant Scheme both as Principal Investigators and research members. Over the years, more than 100 impactful publications were produced, a research that was built to understand the effects of culture on human behaviours when people engage in global virtual teams, and when leaders manage expatriates’ acculturation process, and build organizational culture to achieve excellence and sustainability.Flevy Lasrado, PhD. is a high performing professional with 15+ years of experience in teaching business management subjects of innovation, human resources, business excellence and operations management. Dr Lasrado is a recognised industry leader with an extended skill set in the area of quality management and innovation. The value of Dr Lasrado’s dedicated efforts to contextualize quality practices in the region has been recognised in both her professional award from the American Society of Quality(ASQ) and Fellowship status with the Higher Education Academy,UK. Through her cutting edge research in field of business excellence and innovation field, she has authored several books that are published by international publishers, such as Springer Germany, IGI global, Palgrave UK and Routledge UK. As a future-thinking academic with a passion for teaching and learning. Dr Lasrado has won several other accolades in her career and is dedicated to contributed to the society through her continuous engagement with national awards such as Dubai Quality Award, UAE Innovation award and healthcare awards. She carries extensive experience working with international accreditation bodies (e.g. AACSB, ABET and NASAD). She is Certified Lead Auditor for ISO 9001:2008 and Certified EFQM Assessor and Six sigma methodologies. Currently Dr Lasrado is teaches the Master of quality management program at the Australian University of Wollongong in Dubai, UAE. More information visit www.flasrado.com
