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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the incentives, options, and obstacles to transfer technology to the Arab Gulf region.

A validated and reliable instrument was used to gather data from former expatriates who were employed by American-based multinational corporations.

The results indicate that the Arab Gulf States possess a wide range of resources and incentives offered to investors which contribute to the Gulf's attractiveness. At the same time, however, industrialization efforts, including transfer of technology to the Gulf region, are hampered by lack of industrial management expertise and technical skills among the relatively small national population and by resistance to new forms of technology by local residents.

Technology transfer cannot be seen as the only resort for attaining growth rates. Education, innovation, and basic science are necessary to achieve economic development. In addition, the Arab Gulf States must address serious demographic challenges.

This exploratory, empirical investigation provides insight into the opportunities and challenges of technology transfer to the Gulf region. It identifies areas that need further investigation.

This study aims to examine the impact of board gender diversity on the level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure in the Arab Gulf states. Also, this research further aims to explore whether the impact of board gender diversity varies across the Arab Gulf states.

Ordinary least squares regression is used in this study to test the impact of board gender diversity on the level of CSR disclosure. Manual content analysis is used to evaluate the extent of CSR disclosure in annual reports, stand-alone CSR reports, sustainability reports and website sections to examine the relationship between the extent of CSR reporting and board gender diversity. This study uses the global reporting initiative (GRI) fourth version reporting guidelines to design and define the classifications of CSR reporting checklist.

The findings show that there is a statistically significant relationship between the number of female directors and the level of CSR disclosure. The results show that board gender diversity is positively associated with the level of CSR reporting in two countries, namely, Bahrain and Kuwait. Also, the findings reveal that there is a weak positive relationship between the presence of women on the boards and CSR reporting index in Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

This study attempts to fill the gap in the literature, in that no similar study covers the Arab Gulf countries as one economic unit. The study is unique in that it focuses on oil-rich countries. This study is, to the best of this researcher’s knowledge, the first to explore the impact of women’s boards on the extent of CSR reporting, as well as investigating the possible variation of board gender diversity impact on the extent of CSR reporting in the Arabian Gulf region.

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings from research that explored the influence of contextual factors on the adoption and development of Electronic Theses and Dissertation (ETD) programmes in the Arab Gulf States.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives of five groups of stakeholders with an interest in the implementation of ETD programmes. The groups were postgraduate students, academic staff, library managers, system administrators, and postgraduate officers from five Gulf States universities. In addition, an online survey was conducted with 309 participants in order to test and explore, in a larger sample, the issues identified in the interviews.

Research participants identified three levels of factors; contextual, institutional, and personal. In addition, they highlighted that contextual factors have an influence on institutional factors. These contextual factors include misunderstanding of plagiarism, strong economy, recencey of research programmes, and younger societies. For example, due to the recencey of postgraduate programmes in the Arab Gulf States, some of the theses and dissertations are low in quality and quantity. The Arab Gulf States have strong economies and this helped to provide the necessary technological infrastructure needed for adopting ETD programmes. Since the Gulf societies are quite young they are more likely to adopt new technologies. In addition, people at these states appear to have a weak understanding of plagiarism issues and thus they have more concerns about these issues.

This paper provides insights about the factors influencing the adoption and development of ETD programmes in the Arab Gulf States.

Aims to fill the gap in understanding about services marketing in the East. Uses an eclectic methodology in surveying services marketing in the Arabian Gulf, offering some East‐West comparison, including explanation for and implications of differences. Demonstrates that environmental constraints have great effects on services produced in a society, concluding that services mirror their society and its culture, history and socioeconomic circumstances.

Women are under-represented in senior positions across the world, and this paper aims to explore the impact of wasta on women’s careers in the Arab Gulf States. This paper has two main objectives: to understand the phenomenon of wasta and how it manifests itself within public organisations in the Gulf region; and to examine how wasta is impacting on women’s career advancement.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with 18 female managers working in public organisations in the Arab Gulf region.

The findings indicate that wasta refers to a social network of interpersonal connections, rooted in family and kinship ties, and linked to family affairs as well as work. In addition, the findings demonstrate that, as a result of wasta, social networks in the workplace, in the Arab Gulf Region, include family connections, and this is different to workplace networks in Western societies which are frequently limited to professional contacts and separate from family or friendship networks. In addition, the findings show that wasta may be used to support women’s career progression, providing they have access to appropriate wasta. Furthermore, the findings revealed that women, in the Arab Gulf Region, rely directly on their male family member’s connections, as career facilitators, to gain access to organisational opportunities.

The paper provides some practical suggestions for helping to overcome the potential negative effects of wasta and to ensure that organisations make the best use of their talent. Hence, this research could potentially inform national policy and organisational policymakers and, in particular, influence recruitment and selection practices to ensure that they are based on competence rather than personal connections.

The paper is based on empirical work in an under-researched, non-Western context. There is extensive literature on gender and management and leadership in Western cultures, and this paper contributes to the developing body of research on women in the Arab cultures. It provides a better understanding of the phenomenon of wasta, and it highlights the long-term consequences of wasta on employees, particularly women, working in public organisations. Also, it contributes to theory on the culture of organisations by highlighting the often neglected influences of the broader social and cultural systems, including patriarchal practices, on women’s positions in the organisational hierarchy.

This paper aims to examine GCC companies' use of visual images to interplay modernity and globalism with tradition, Islam and local culture. The analysis aims to bring attention to the way that businesses in the GCC use visual images to engage with or influence debates in their societies concerning the tension between modernity, globalisation and traditional values in the Arab‐Islamic world.

The analysis is critical and discursive and based on a close reading of the visual images reported in the 2005 annual reports of companies listed on GCC stock markets.

The analysis suggests that GCC companies on many occasions used visual images to depict and represent the possibility of a successful profitable, modern and global business that is also sympathetic to tradition and operates within the framework of Islamic principles.

While visual images are increasingly used in companies' annual reports they have been largely ignored in accounting research. Furthermore, when this research manifests, it has been concerned with investigating Anglo‐American and Western contexts. This paper instead emphasises the significance of researching the use of visual images in a variety of contexts and locations. It critically and contextually explores the use of visual images in a largely unexplored, non‐Western and a significantly Islamic context.

This paper aims to examine the regional dynamics that further consolidated Israel’s national security in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, reflecting upon the nuclear challenge between Iran and Israel and Iran's expanding activities in the region.

To prove the central argument, the study uses a conceptual framework that centers on deterrence as the main approach used by states to consolidate their influence in the Middle East region.

Iran's nuclear progress and influence in the region has strengthened Israel’s security and fostered an unprecedented open rapprochement led by USA efforts with the Gulf regimes.

The paper draws particular attention to the Iran–Israel nuclear competency, and the Israeli preferred policy options regarding Iranian activities in the region amid turbulent Middle East. In addition, the paper offers insight to the regional dynamics that further consolidated Israel’s national security in the region while maintaining a status of Arab vulnerability and backwardness.

The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap in the literature on Arab women's conceptions of leadership. By comparing women's leadership authority values in three Arab countries, the paper aims to refine existing gender‐neutral research on leadership in the “Arab world”.

The study involved administering a survey, which had been developed based on Weber's work on authority (1978) and contemporary discussions of implicit leadership theories (ILT). The data (n=320) were drawn from female subjects who were enrolled in upper‐division business major classes in three countries, Oman, Lebanon and the UAE The women thus constituted educated entrants to their respective labor markets. The data were subjected to an analysis of group means on each of the questions, using the Scheffe option available in ANOVA.

The analysis found evidence of common leadership authority values in the Gulf countries (Oman and the UAE). Lebanon, meanwhile, was distinguished by relatively low levels of “traditional” authority, and very high levels of “charismatic” authority. The findings demonstrate important regional similarities and difference in leadership authority values in the “Arab world.”

The study is limited by the number of countries studied. It is thus anticipated that future comparative research will be extended to include other countries (both Arab and non‐Arab), and men.

Leadership training in the Arab region must be sensitized and tailored to address regional and gender‐specific conceptions of leadership.

The paper challenges and refines widespread meta‐notions and analyses of the “Arab world” and “Arab leadership.”

This article discusses contemporary concepts and systems of education and training in the oil rich states of the Arabian peninsula. The argument focuses upon how education and training affect and are affected by economic and social development in these oil‐exporting states. The speed of change in the states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — facilitated by receipt of oil revenues — makes analysis of educational development especially interesting in itself. The timeliness of such a discussion is enhanced by the fact that, following between one and three decades of development, these states are beginning to evaluate, rather than forge on with expansionism. Indeed, falling world crude oil prices might well oblige some thoughtful consolidation.