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It is possible for civil engineering (CE) students to graduate from a degree programme without gaining experience on a construction site. The implementation of virtual field trips using virtual reality (VR) in CE education is a development that can address this phenomenon and help facilitate the consolidation of abstract theories into tangible competences. This project aims to solve a fundamental CE education problem: once a structure has been completed, it is often impossible to see how it was built; hence, how can you demonstrate the construction process to a student?

This research used the opportunity of a new campus library development to record its construction sequence. This was achieved by visiting the site eight times to take panoramic stereoscopic photos of the construction process. By its nature, using VR as a didactic tool facilitates experiential learning, but this project also incorporates discovery learning and situated cognition to develop students’ understanding of the construction process.

The use of VR in education is becoming increasingly common, but the explicit pedagogy used in these environments is rarely obvious or stated. This project draws upon current VR education discussions and explores the development of a VR environment with a pedagogical context.

The development of the VR resource draws upon the pedagogical frameworks of discovery learning (Bruner, 1961) and situated cognition (Lave and Wenger, 1991). A further unique aspect of this research is the use of stereoscopic cameras to capture the library’s construction over time.

This study aims to examine the impact of finding a job through family and friend contacts on employees' wages and job satisfaction.

This study uses machine learning techniques in economics to estimate the causal effect of being hired through informal contacts on wages and job satisfaction using cross-sectional data from the Higher Education Graduates Survey 2012 (HEGS, 2012) in Egypt and Jordan.

The author's results confirm that negative and positive consequences are likely to occur. In Egypt, a wage penalty of 28% is estimated in the starting wage, but the impact diminishes in the last wage. By contrast, in Jordan, no penalty is captured in the starting wage, but a premium of 10% is estimated in the last wage. Job satisfaction is negatively affected by the penalty in the starting wage.

Job market search methods that allow for professional job referrals, facilitate more efficient information transfer between job-seekers and employers and provide opportunities for job-seekers with weak social capital should be implemented to lower dependence on informal search methods.

The research provides comprehensive evidence about finding a job through informal contact with employees' well-being. The consequences of finding a job using family and friends' contacts, whether positive or negative, cannot be ignored. Future research could benefit from the findings of this study.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-05-2022-0318.

Few studies consider the relationship between organizational justice (OJ) and trust in Non-western contexts. In an attempt to address this gap, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between organizational trust (OT) and OJ in Saudi Arabia. First, the authors examine two foci of trust and explore whether trust in an immediate supervisor/manager is correlated with trust in an organization. Second, the authors test the relationship three widely used constructs of OJ and two aspects of OT. Third, the authors examine the mediating role played by trust in immediate supervisor in the relationship between the various aspects of OJ and trust in an organization.

Using Social Exchange Theory, this study reports the responses of 231 junior and middle managers from eight organizations in Saudi Arabia. Data were collected through a structured survey questionnaire that used standard scales on distributive justice, procedural justice (PJ), and interactional justice (IJ), as well as trust in immediate supervisor and trust in organization.

Consistent with studies conducted in western contexts, the findings revealed a positive, significant, direct relationship between trust in immediate supervisor and trust in organization. However, contrary to what has been reported in the majority of western studies, among the three dimensions of OJ, IJ was the only predictor for trust in immediate supervisor. PJ and IJ were predictors of trust in organization, with PJ the stronger predictor. Finally, trust in immediate supervisor mediates some of the relationship between OJ and trust in organization.

The current study is the first to explore the relationship between OJ and OT, with the latter being measured in more than one focus, in the Arab Middle East. Therefore, this study contributes to bridging the gap in the understanding of the relationship between OJ and OT in non-western, Arab and Muslim Middle Eastern contexts. The interconnectedness between the organizational experiences of Saudi Arabian managers and cultural values highlighted in this study has significant implications for researchers, managers, and HR departments.

Cross-cultural studies suggest that while organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and organizational justice have received considerable attention in Anglo-Saxon contexts, the same cannot be claimed in non-Western, Arab Middle Eastern contexts. The purpose of this paper is to attend to this knowledge gap by exploring OCB in the context of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its relationship with organizational justice.

In cognizance of the extant literature, the study explores the perceptions of Saudi Arabian managers of the five conceptually different dimensions of citizenship behaviour – conscientiousness, sportsmanship, civic virtue, courtesy, and altruism. It also explores their perceptions of distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice. In addition, the current study investigates the relationship between organizational justice and OCB. Using the survey questionnaire method, data was collected from more than 250 Saudi managers at different levels of the managerial hierarchy and working in a wide range of organizations and industries.

The results indicate that Saudi Arabian managers reported exhibiting OCB at work. They also suggest the salience of various forms of organizational justice in Saudi Arabian organizations as motivated by Arab cultural values and Islamic teachings. In regards to the relationship between the two constructs, our results indicate that interactional justice is most frequently associated with various dimensions of OCB for various reasons, including the emphasis that Islam and Islamic teachings give to demonstrating respect and courtesy in dealings with others.

The literature on OCB and organizational justice is thin in the Arab world. With that in mind, the current study is the first to explore OCB in Saudi Arabia. It is also the first to investigate the relationship between citizenship behavior and justice in Saudi organizations. The findings of this study highlight the need for academics and human resource experts to account for the role of socio-cultural factors and Islam when examining these constructs in the Arab world. The implications of the findings for academics and practitioners are discussed.

Few studies have explored the work challenges and career barriers faced by women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Drawing on Institutional Theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of employed Saudi women through in-depth interviews.

The paper employs a phenomenological qualitative approach drawing on 12 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Saudi women.

The findings reveal a significant number of prominent societal and organizational structural and attitudinal barriers to the advancement of Saudi women in paid employment. Among others, these barriers include a lack of mobility; the salience of gender stereotypes; gender discrimination in the workplace; limited opportunities for growth, development, and career advancement; excessive workload caused by a lack of family-work balance; and gender-based challenges related to dealing with pregnancy.

Despite the contributions of this study, it also has limitations, particularly the convenience sampling approach and the focus on the KSA. The small sample size means that the findings cannot be generalized to all women employed in Saudi Arabia and should be generalized within Saudi Arabia and other Arab societies only with caution.

The paper contributes to the understanding of work challenges and barriers of Saudi women in the workforce. It provides fresh insights to the issues surrounding women in Saudi Arabia and the need to address them in order to provide support for their career advancement.

The current study examined employment rates and predictors of employment among Syrian refugees currently living in Lebanon and Jordan. This paper argues that men and women refugees have different experiences seeking out employment after resettlement due to patriarchal structures and attitudes toward women that are present in the Arab Middle East. The goals of this paper were a) to examine employment rates among Syrian refugees, b) to examine predictors of employment among male and female refugees, and c) to examine refugee status as a moderator of the relationship between attitudes toward women and employment status.

Nationally representative data from the Arab Barometer on 600 refugees and 1400 native-born individuals living in Lebanon and Jordan from 2016–2017 were used.

Native-born individuals living in Lebanon and Jordan were 2.16 times more likely to be employed than refugees. Men living in Lebanon and Jordan were 7.83 times more likely to be employed than women. Finally, refugee status moderated the relationship between attitudes toward women's rights and roles and employment. Among native-born women, a positive attitude toward women's rights and roles predicted employment status, whereas this positive relationship was not found for women refugees. Among refugee men, a positive attitude toward women's rights and roles was linked to a lower likelihood of holding a job.

These findings suggest that agencies supporting refugees should communicate realistic expectations about employment during resettlement and should address the challenges that women refugees face when seeking employment.

This study is the first study to identify attitudes toward women's rights and roles as a predictor of employment among refugee populations and highlights the unique struggles that refugee women face.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mechanism between transformational leadership (TL) and organizational commitment (OC) using job characteristics as a mediator and participative and directive leadership (DL) as moderator.

The authors used a questionnaire-based survey to collect data from 563 employees working in the banking industry.

The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings confirmed the mediating role of job characteristics and moderating role of both participative and DL styles between TL and OC.

The data for this study were collected at one point of time and it has implications for the policymakers and bankers.

The study is novel as it highlights the importance of job characteristics, participative and DL styles in understanding the relationship between TL and OC.

This study aims to investigate whether, discounting the effect of the relative wealth of countries, it is possible to observe the relevance of policies for e-government development.

The deviations of countries' results from what could be expected, considering their relative wealth is calculated by using the residuals of a linear regression using the Gross Domestic Product per capita as the independent variable and the UN E-Government Development Index as the dependent variable. The countries that achieve better and worse results than expected are then identified and their cases are analyzed by resorting to secondary sources, namely, published research referring to their cases. Those research documents were identified by successively searching the Scopus database, the Google Scholar database and the Web of Science.

The existence of formal e-government strategies and plans and the capacity to implement them can make a difference, allowing countries to achieve better results than expected or, in their absence, to perform worse than expected.

The proposed methodology can be useful to e-government researchers, particularly as a basis for deeper and more detailed studies.

Countries should invest in well-developed and focused strategies and continuity of public policies and their capacity to deliver results. For that purpose, political commitment and high-level coordination are key factors. For low-income countries, long-lasting cooperation with external experienced partners is crucial. For high-income countries, innovative thinking is a key enabler.

This study uses an innovative method to look beyond the effect of the relative wealth of countries and investigate the relevance of public policies for e-government development.