One reason of failure when recruiting expatriates is ignoring the impact of personal and professional characteristic on performance in cross-cultural environment. The social network is crucial for business success in Arab markets. The purpose of this research study is to investigate the impact of personal and professional characteristics of non-Arab expatriates on their social network performance in Arab markets. The study employs a quantitative, explanatory research approach after collecting data from 175 non-Arab expatriates working in Arab markets. The findings include that, non-Arab expatriates' characteristics have significant influence on their ability to build the social network and relationship with Arab executives, enhance their communication skills with Arab managers, and ability to integrate with Arab business community.
This study aims to identify the motivations for and impact of watching dubbed television serials by university students in the UAE. Mixed qualitative (interview) and quantitative (survey) methods are used to investigate the effect of intensive dubbed-serial consumption on students' attitudes and behaviours toward other cultures, a sample of 507 students was tested. Results showed that single respondents spend more time watching serials compared to married respondents. Respondents who hold two-year diplomas or bachelor's degrees watch more Turkish serials compared with those students holding master's degrees. The study finds a high viewership of violent dubbed series, along with an attached negative impact in dealing with others in society. On the other hand, there are also positive effects of dubbed serial viewing associated with different races and ages beyond young adults. Viewers found sitcoms to be entertaining and a good way to enjoy leisure time.
For many years the essential role that senior school leaders play in school leadership teams, and the development programmes they follow to ensure effective strategic leadership in schools have been the subject of intense debate. Crucial to this debate has been the focus on context-shaped professional learning and leadership approaches where the importance of appropriate, multifaceted, developmental support initiatives for young newly appointed senior school leaders, namely vice-principals and principals, is highlighted and recommended. This paper shows how new young Emirati senior leaders generally lack role experience and thus rely on their expat vice-principals or head of faculties for much of their daily leading strategically and operational management functions in the school. Reflecting on findings developed in a recent doctoral study, the paper highlights what 20 young newly appointed senior school leaders at the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC), United Arab Emirates (as a unique group of young newly appointed leaders) say about their development needs and what specific preparation they require. This paper employed a mixed-method approach to gather data, with the findings relying heavily of a quantitative analysis of questionnaires conducted.
In March 2004, the French Parliament prohibited 'the wearing of clothes or symbols through which students conspicuously manifest a religious allegiance'. While much has been written about this law, this article focuses on a neglected question: what, exactly, does it prohibit? By relying on the hitherto untranslated parliamentary debates of 2004, this article shows that the target of the law was not religious symbols in general but Islam and the Muslim veil in particular. The article also questions the apparent simplicity of the statute's vocabulary and suggests that while there can be no doubt that the overwhelming majority of French MPs wanted to ban the Muslim veil, they were also keen on authorising what they saw as more 'acceptable' religious signs (such as Christian crosses). Their aim was to pass a law that was narrow enough to target Islam and the Muslim veil, yet broad enough to appear generally applicable.
City and its physical environment play a remarkable role in the formation of architects. Thus, how qualities of urban setting are filtered into design projects that are developed in the city, particularly in schools of architecture is of interest. Hence, an excavation through four successive layers: city, architectural school, design studio and student projects are conducted on the basis of their spatial organisation and architectural features. This analysis follows an historical overview of the morphological evolution of the urban tissue and an overall examination of the curriculum with reference to a particular case study selected from a small town university in Turkey, Balikesir University, Department of Architecture. It is of interest to know whether the deficiencies of the city make a negative impact on the students of architecture since city displays an anti-urban character. The methodology, called ‘negative patterns’, is adapted from Alexander’s pattern language, working in reverse manner.
International tourism presents one of the rare possibilities of mass active face-to-face cultural exchange and spatial exploring of the ‘other’. Beyond its cultural dimension, international tourism is a major economic sector in many countries. It provides jobs and foreign currency. One the one hand, tourism is a fragile industry that requires security, stability and tolerance. On the other hand, tourists are soft targets of terrorist attacks, not only in the Arab and Muslim worlds, but indeed worldwide. The article explores the actual and the invented types of segregation in the name of security and terror prevention measures in Arab countries. It demonstrates how the dichotomy of security/segregation prevents intercultural dialogue and better understanding of the ‘other’.
Many cities around the have world developed a vision, mission and strategies to seek a development that labelled them as knowledge-based cities. Amongst the Middle East economy, Dubai is the centre of the attraction. Dubai’s development in the past few decades has been characterised by its great economic transformations inspired by its visionary leaders. Dubai has made a tremendable success to be labelled as knowledge-based economy. Dubai seeks to transform itself into a knowledge-based society and economy by the year 2010. This paper studies how Dubai is able to transform their economies towards the knowledge-based economy given their inherited but obsolete and newly acquired technological and human assets. This paper also studies how the transformation of Dubai during has affected knowledge-based activities, in particular software, electronics and other information and communication technology sectors.
Sustainable urban dwellings can function satisfactory if the larger environment function properly as a living space and that in turn depends largely on how communities manifest themselves outwardly and interact with the living spaces. This work highlights that housing environments of the informal housing is always in process of becoming, it is never final. It is neither a final statement, nor prescriptive rules. Where the criteria of sustainability do exists in these communities and can be achieved. This attempt is seen more as a guide, which condenses and reflects in an analytical thinking, and practical work that is underway, rather than a complete work. This study explores the urban environment toward the production of space, it involves investigation into types of spaces, which are relevant to informal and formal context in Cairo; it reviews how to lead to sustainable spaces and how much areas should be devoted to such spaces.
This is an exploratory study of the Arab youth perceptions of Radio Sawa, a US public diplomacy radio broadcast channel. Univariate analysis of a convenience sample of the Qatar university students’ exposure to the radio stations programs and their perceptions and attitudes about the US foreign policy seems to imply that the Radio Sawa is widely used as a music channel but it does not seem to succeed in selling US foreign policy to the Arab youth. The study stresses the need for a more representative study of the Radio Sawa’s claims as a successful tool of US public diplomacy.
This study aimed to explore the extent of implementing the lean production concept and its impact on the competitive advantage at the food manufactories specialised in fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The questions raised in this study can be summarised by the following: To what extent the Jordanian food manufactories specialised in FMCGs implement the lean production concept? What is the impact of lean production concept implementation on the organisational competitive advantage in the Jordanian food manufactories specialised in FMCGs? Are there any differences on the impact of the lean production concept in Jordanian food manufactories (specialised in FMCGs) and the competitive advantage due to the differences in the demographic variables, that is; organisation’s age, number of employees, and technological level. The analysis of the study showed that the lean production factors have an effect on the competitive advantage of the food manufactories specialised in FMCGs and that there are no differences on the impact of lean production on the competitive advantage due to the demographic variables.
In this work, we address the financial and operating performance of a sample of seven Tunisian firms which capital was open to the private sector. As many countries, developed or in development, Tunisia initiates privatisation programme from 1987 to 2009. The results indicate that profitability and capital investment spending ratios decline significantly, but efficiency ratios increase. Furthermore, theses enterprises knew an increase in their debt levels. For the dividend payout, the effect is not determiner.
The Egyptian knowledge worker is developing within the framework of a variety of external factors. They must contend with the historical background which has created a hierarchical, risk-averse business environment. The regulatory environment is also lacking and despite recent improvements, there are still many changes to be made in order to cultivate knowledge workers. This paper looks at the key ingredients for the development of knowledge workers in Egypt and the division of responsibilities for those ingredients. The key ingredients include (1) educational reform, (2) regulatory reform (3) changes in the structure of Egyptian businesses (4) increased capital investments and (5) training for professionals. These ingredients are common to knowledge workers throughout the world, but the method for addressing these issues is unique to each culture. Knowledge workers are developing differently in Egypt than they did in the USA, where the term was first coined, due to the divergent socio-political backgrounds of the two countries. Despite many difficult challenges in creating an information society, Egypt has already taken many of the necessary steps to do so.
The problem of cultural identity continues to plague the Algerian society half a century after liberation from French colonisation in 1962. This paper seeks to analyse the question of Algerian national identity during the French colonial occupation, discuss its causes, manifestations and ramifications, and examine the policies of alienation and assimilation adopted by the French authorities in their treatment of their subjects. This study shows that issues of culture and identity were continually used as strategies of control and domination, and that both of these policies carried out decisive impact on both the past and present development of Algeria.
Islamic websites are growing in number. Numerous users are interacting with them on a daily basis. Little has been done in evaluating these websites in terms of using multimedia elements. This paper aims at analysing and critically assessing to what degree university level Muslim users are satisfied with selected Islamic websites in terms of using multimedia elements. The analysis is carried out based on a questionnaire that was distributed among students from three different IIUM faculties. It is hoped that the outcome of this study will benefit these Islamic websites.
This study argues that the Arab World and the larger Middle East region are politically, strategically, and economically significant in the US foreign policy formulation. However, the 2011 Arab Spring poses serious challenges to Washington’s interests and policy in the region. The Arab Spring entails political elite transformation in the Arab countries of the Middle East region. The Arab Spring could sweep into power the Arab nationalists and the Islamists. In the democratic Middle East, the effectiveness of the State of Israel card as the only democratic state will diminish. The study concludes that unless Washington in search of new allies adopts the approach of constructive engagement and inclusive democracy in the larger Middle East region, Iran will exploit the Arab street protests and thwart USA’s interests and stability in the region.
This paper explores judicial review in the provision of judicial review in the Egyptian legal system, and explores the historical and political background as well as the reasons for the establishment of the judicial review for determining constitutionality of laws. This paper also examines the elements that have helped to develop this. Finally, this paper applies the case study methodology by choosing Egypt as being the first Arab country that authorised its courts, especially the Supreme Constitutional Court, the right to apply judicial control which aided in the establishment of the principles of separation of powers, the rule of law and the independence of judicial authority. The paper concludes that the process of judicial review has contributed the Egyptian legal system in manifest ways, especially in development of healthy laws and making judiciary a more or less independent body as it operates under the authority of the Minister of Justice. The authors have relied on the historical and descriptive as well as analytical research methodologies.
Higher education system has evolved over generations from students migrating to far off places for learning to the present era of creation of education clusters and education hubs by many countries. This paper explores and analyses the transition of higher education system in United Arab Emirates (UAE) towards internationalisation with the growth of new universities, emergence of diverse programmes, and international collaborations through establishment of branch campuses, making UAE the largest educational hub in the Middle Eastern region. This paper also examines the importance of the reforms initiated by the government and the challenges of the education system to align it with the new economy. The study would be particularly of interest to researchers, academicians in the higher education sector, higher education institutions and policy makers.
Target 18 of the millennium development goals (MDG) of the United Nations (UN) declared information and communication technology (ICT) as an important tool for development. Based on this, ICT governance became increasingly important, as it supports providing efficient and effective use of ICT. Recent work has introduced a new simple approach that integrates the basic issues of key ICT governance standards into ‘50 controls’, with knowledge management principles incorporated with them. The resulting controls are structured according to Bakry’s scope of: strategy, technology, organisation, people, and environment (STOPE). This paper is concerned with using the approach for the assessment of ICT governance in three different Saudi institutions. The results obtained illustrate the common and different ICT governance implementation features associated with these institutions; and they also provide guidelines for their future development. This would lead to better ICT utilisation, and consequently to contributing to the achievement of MDG.
This paper examines the role of law by enforcement agents, especially the police, in investigating the crime of terrorism in Jordan, and focuses on the procedural rules for the investigation of terrorism, the nature of the police agencies in the Jordanian criminal justice system, the main traditional and specified, investigatory and accusatory authority of police agents and the basic right of protection of the accused against actions taken by government agencies, at the preliminary investigation stage. In this article, the authors have adopted the qualitative research methodology. The paper concludes that in order to provide more realistic protection to the accused during investigation, the law should be reviewed.
