Search results

This paper aims to demonstrate the specialty of the elderly issues and acknowledge the existence of their specific human rights that propose for a special treatment to be given or shown to them as priority as women or children, etc. Indubitably, the very issue is timely in all perspective. Because it is now axiomatic that the fastest growing elderly population becomes a challenge for the whole world for manifold reasons. They include, inter alia, the lack of a social security apparatus or if any, they are insufficient; the weakening of traditional family bonding; almost no explicit references to elderly people in existing international human right laws; and mere stand-by of soft law addressing the rights of the elderly over time. Consequently, these all have probably failed to meet the most urgent needs of this growing demographic.

This paper is an effort made to recognize the “particular vulnerability” of the older persons and with identification of “specific rights”, advocate for special treatment for them and, optimally, the realization of their rights with respect.

In addition, this treatise attempts to focus on the nature and constitutional importance of elderly rights with the aim of providing the elderly with social security and prioritization; and more particularly, scrutiny of the impending and timely imperative for formulation of new legal instrument so as to adequately address the issue globally.

The purpose of this paper is to address issues relating to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (UNMDG) in the Middle East, analysing socio‐cultural issues having direct relevance to the region's progress toward “Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women”.

The authors employ meta‐analyses with data from the United Nations, the Arab Human Development Report, and various sources of measurement of national means for Hofstede's five‐dimensional model of cultural value.

The authors find that the percentage of women in employment, excluding the agricultural sector, in their sample of Middle East countries has declined since 2000, while in the samples of other Muslim‐majority and all other countries the percentage employed has increased.

The limitations of the authors' research are that complete sets of data for women in employment are not available for all years for all countries in their samples.

Implications for practice for governments and businesses in Middle East countries are that women are a valuable economic resource which is being excluded from contribution and for the past decade the change in the Middle East has been in a negative direction.

The economic contributions and rights of women in the Middle East lag behind most of the developed and developing nations, including other Muslim‐majority nations.

This study provides empirical evidence from publicly available data concerning the employment status of women in Middle Eastern nations. The authors found no similar empirical studies in the literature. The study is of value to planners and policy‐makers in business, government, and non‐governmental organisations.

This paper attempts to present varying discourses pertaining to women's work and how it is impacted by interpretations of Islam.

Current discourses from various viewpoints are presented including Muslim scholars on the one hand and active feminists on the other. Personalities are presented as being representative of the debate that has been going on pertaining to women in Arab societies.

Attempts that aim at categorizing Arab thought and activism into two camps, one is religious‐based adverse to women's causes, and the other being secular and supportive of their causes does not present a candid depiction of the different forces.

Personalities chosen represent specific case studies that, although thought to be representative, cannot realistically reflect all the multitudes of views expressed pertaining to the issues discussed. Future studies may cover other relevant personalities in the region.

Developing the status of women in Arab societies requires a major reassessment of Muslim history and traditions. The dialogue and debates going on among religious scholars and feminists should be continuously communicated, discussed and exposed. Readers and mangers would benefit from understanding the complexity of issues and diversity of views presented.

This paper offers a window into the world of women's work and participation in Arab societies and how such participation is impacted by Islam, or its interpretations thereof. In addition to the English sources, this paper offers an opportunity for the reader to get a glimpse of the debate that has been going on in Arabic (especially when it comes to the little known religious discourse).

The intellectual capital of a nation (or a region of nations) requires the articulation of a system of variables that helps to uncover and manage the invisible wealth of a country. Most importantly, an emphasis on human capital allows for a better understanding of the hidden values, individuals, enterprises, institutions, and communities that are both current and potential future sources of intellectual wealth. This paper endeavours to address the five research questions. The main outcomes of this paper are the development of a national intellectual capital measurement methodology and index. The NICI is also used within a structural equation model to test several hypotheses related to national intellectual capital development.

Assesses the main factors affecting employment in the Arab Gulf region. In particular: What are the main determinants of employment in the region? How do these determinants vary between national and foreign workforces? Have these determinants changed over time? The results, particularly for the 1980‐85 period, suggest that labour market mismatches may be increasing in the Arab World. This is essentially the problem of too many PhDs and too few mechanics. The symptom of this would be relatively high levels of disguised unemployment among the highly educated, coupled with a shortage of artisans. The damage arising from these skill mismatches lies in the way the various economic sectors are likely to expand while faced by labour constraints. These findings suggest that reforms of both the educational system and the hiring practices of Government agencies will be critical to restoring increases in productivity and ultimately expanded rates of non‐oil income.

The paper seeks to pinpoint new directions of the evolution of knowledge in the Arab region, and to outline the role of knowledge management principles in constructing the knowledge society.

The article addresses initiatives towards narrowing the knowledge gap and building an egalitarian knowledge society in the Arab region. It reviews, interprets and relates the relevant literature and sheds the light on the Arab region's future plans.

The article outlines some of the regionally relevant elements needed for building the knowledge society. It also suggests some means of tapping the diversified workforce's tacit knowledge, reversing the “brain drain,” and building potential leadership models.

This article represents an overview and interpretation of the role of knowledge management as it relates to the effectiveness of concepts such as “knowmadism” and the practicality of “megatribe knowledge.” The article provides rendition and a roadmap for decision makers, knowledge workers, and future researchers in the domain of the “knowledge society” within the Arab region.

Addresses the question of whether military expenditures in the Arab world have been at the expense of human capital development. Mainly finds that countries in the Arab world have experienced increases in human capital development associated with increased rates of military participation (armed forces per capita). This phenomenon is in sharp contrast with that found in non‐Arab countries. Also this phenomenon appears to be relatively recent, increasing in strength during the period after 1980. In part Arab governments have chosen to subsidize the education of increased numbers of civilians during periods of steppedup military expenditures with the understanding that upon completion of training those individuals will serve some time in the military.

This paper aims to report the results of a study which extends the research of Elbanna by testing the relationship between strategic planning practice and participation on the one hand and the effectiveness of strategic planning on the other.

The paper extends the work of Elbanna by conducting the study in a new setting, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with a broader sample: private and public organizations. The study tries to control for the possible impact of the methodology on research results by adopting the same methods and measures as the initial study had adopted.

The conclusions of the combined studies show that, in Arab countries, strategic planning practice enhances strategic planning effectiveness; unexpectedly, and contrary to previous research in developed economies, management participation does not contribute here to the effectiveness of strategic planning.

Although previous research provides valuable knowledge concerning strategic planning, there has been a paucity of research that empirically measures the effectiveness of strategic planning. Moreover, the scarcity of replications and extensions in the strategic management literature encourages this study to try to fill this gap. The research also shows the importance of extensions in building strategic management theory.

The purpose of this paper is to report findings of an ethnographic study of homes in the Arab Gulf country of Qatar. The authors' analysis and contribution focuses on resolving the tension between privacy and hospitality in Qatari homes in the context of identity threats posed by an influx of Western modernity and its implications to marketers.

The study involves observation and in‐depth interviews with 24 middle‐class male and female home‐owning Qataris living in Doha. The analysis followed the logic of hermeneutic research.

It was found that values of privacy and hospitality are notably emphasized in Qatari homes. The authors discuss how these values coexist despite their glaring contradiction and also show that in this context privacy is used to reveal consumption and display status rather than to hide it away from the public arena.

With Qatar's collectivist orientation and strong gendered protectionism, marketing and advertising in the Gulf needs to be sensitive to these cultural practices.

By developing an understanding of the privacy/hospitality dialectic in Qatar, the paper provides insights into how these values are incorporated or resisted in the design and use of family homes in a modern era of increasing globalism and suggests implications for marketers.

The purpose of this paper is to survey financial managers in the Arab Gulf region about a broad set of financial decisions and contrast their answers with both prescriptions of financial theory and practices of their North American and European peers.

The paper uses Graham and Harvey's questionnaire on the cost of capital, capital budgeting and capital structure that is also employed by Brounen et al. in Europe, containing two additional questions on corporate governance. Moreover, the survey included an additional question about Islamic financial instruments.

Despite each firm's unique characteristics and institutions, chief financial officers (CFOs) in the Middle East are acting in a manner similar to their North American and European counterparts.

All CFOs surveyed are located in countries that abide by a combination of Islamic, civil (French, Romano‐Germanic), and common (Anglo‐Saxon) laws. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first time that a nearly identical corporate finance survey has been simultaneously administered in North America, Europe and the Arab Gulf region.