PurposeDespite ongoing efforts to promote gender equality, women continue to face barriers in leadership. This study examines the challenges that hinder women's advancement to leadership roles, and explores how subordinates' perceptions of leadership are shaped by gendered expectations, particularly in the Lebanese cultural and organizational context.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a quantitative research approach, utilizing an online survey administered to men and women employees across various sectors in Lebanon, including education, financial services, technology and telecommunications. The survey comprised 41 structured questions covering demographic details, leadership preferences, job satisfaction and factors influencing subordinates' perceptions of their leaders. The collected responses were analyzed to identify how leader gender, leadership traits and the quality of relationships influence subordinates' evaluations of their leaders.FindingsThe findings reveal that neither the gender of the leader nor the use of traditionally masculine traits by women leaders had a significant impact on how leadership was evaluated. Additionally, a high-quality employee-supervisor relationship was significantly associated with greater job satisfaction, regardless of alignment with traditional gender expectations. The proportion of women leaders in organizations did not significantly impact job satisfaction, organizational dedication or burnout among women employees.Originality/valueThis study provides contextually grounded insights for HR practitioners and organizational leaders seeking to foster inclusive leadership environments. By distinguishing between empirical findings and broader cultural expectations, the role of subordinate perceptions and the importance of cultivating supportive supervisor-subordinate relationships, offering practical implications for leadership development and organizational policies in Lebanon.
This study examines how firms operating in emerging-economy contexts build organizational resilience, emphasizing the entrepreneurial mechanisms through which strategic resources are transformed into adaptive capacity. Drawing on perspectives from international entrepreneurship and dynamic capabilities, the study argues that entrepreneurial ambidexterity is a core factor enabling firms to navigate uncertainty and technological turbulence. Using survey data from 588 firms across multiple industries in Middle Eastern countries, the study employs structural equation modeling to test mediation and moderation effects. The findings show that organizational capabilities and resource alignment enhance organizational resilience primarily through entrepreneurial ambidexterity, which facilitates opportunity exploration and exploitation under volatile conditions. Technological turbulence further conditions these relationships, shaping the effectiveness of entrepreneurial responses to environmental change. By theorizing resilience as an entrepreneurial outcome rather than a static organizational attribute, this study advances international entrepreneurship research by explaining how firms in emerging markets enact resilience through ambidextrous entrepreneurial action in turbulent international environments. The findings extend dynamic capabilities theory by demonstrating how international and technological turbulence jointly influence entrepreneurial adaptation beyond developed-economy settings.
Decarbonization of the economy is a central challenge in the fight against climate change. Although most governments show clear commitment to limiting global warming, the drivers of corporate decarbonization remain underexplored. Using a dataset of 1052 firms from OECD, this article analyses how intangible assets and environmental innovation affect corporate environmental performance. By applying bootstrapped quantile regressions, we show how firm- and country-level factors are associated with high- and low-polluting firms. Our results suggest that intangible assets and environmental innovation improve environmental performance across quantiles, with a stronger effect for high-polluting firms. Furthermore, environmental innovation can reduce short-term emission growth. Finally, intangible assets depend on the sectorial CO2 intensity and have limited significance in sectors with low carbon intensity. At the policy level, our results call for emission-related regulation because it improves corporate decarbonization. Furthermore, it is necessary to have a regulatory strategy that incorporates incentives for intangible asset development and innovation, differentiating between high- and low-polluting firms.
This study presents a numerical investigation of the thermohydraulic performance of four internal insert configurations Bottom Inserts, Top Inserts, Alternate Inserts, and Disc Inserts integrated within the absorber tube of a parabolic trough collector. The Monte Carlo ray tracing method is employed to generate a realistic non-uniform circumferential heat flux distribution on the absorber outer surface, which is coupled with the Finite Volume Method to solve the governing equations of fluid flow and heat transfer. Therminol® VP-1 is used as the heat transfer fluid, and simulations are conducted over a Reynolds number range of 2.36 × 104 to 7.09 × 104 under turbulent flow conditions. All four insert configurations significantly enhance convective heat transfer relative to the smooth tube, with the Disc Inserts achieving the highest Nusselt number improvement of 263.44
Abstract This research examines the impact of psychological and cultural factors on the academic use of digital technologies by Chilean pre-service teachers. Considering the global digital transformation and the influence of digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), in education, it is essential to prepare future educators to integrate technology pedagogically. Although the use of technology among pre-service teachers has been studied, the specific factors influencing their academic use require further investigation considering an integral approach. A study was conducted with 1191 pre-service teachers from various Chilean universities. Data were collected through questionnaires assessing academic use of digital technologies, motivation towards Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), technology attitudes, self-directed learning readiness, disposition towards learning and teaching, technological infrastructure availability, and portrait values. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was utilized to analyze the data. The results indicated that self-management, disposition towards pedagogical learning, and motivation were the most significant direct predictors of the academic use of digital technologies. Among the cultural factors, self-transcendence, openness to change, and the use of portable PCs had a significant but minor direct influence. The model explained 32.1% of the variance in academic technology use. These findings underscore the significance of both psychological characteristics and cultural values in influencing how future teachers utilize digital technologies for academic purposes. Understanding these influences is crucial for enhancing teacher education programs and equipping educators to integrate technology into teaching and learning effectively.
