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This chapter focuses on the definition of the Arab World. This is followed by a treatise on the meaning and purpose of comparative education. Next, the origin and development of comparative education in the Arab World is discussed. Trends and progress of comparative education in the region receive significant attention and discussion. Finally, the research methodologies and research interests of comparative educationists are examined.

Interpersonal and informal ties and networks, known as wasta in the Arab Middle East region, remain a major force in Middle Eastern societies, determining most economic, social and political outcomes. Yet the literature on informal ties and networks is largely characterized by a lack of contributions from the Arab world, despite the adverse effect that lack of understanding of the wasta phenomenon is having on the effectiveness of expatriate managers and subsequently on business performance. This chapter therefore aims to shed light on the meaning, characteristics, structure, and role of wasta in establishing and maintaining successful business relationships. It ends with recommendations for foreign investors and international managers who wish to establish and maintain successful business relationships in the Middle East on how to capitalize on interpersonal networks within this process.

This chapter offers a survey of education development in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA), and how the different crises have changed the global dynamics in education. This chapter first gives an overview of the regional context and the history of education in the region, followed by a discussion of the education developments in the region as shaped by the economic growth of high-income countries and the political upheavals in low-income countries. MENA states have made huge investments in their educational systems through implementing major changes in the education policies and introducing initiatives to improve the quality of education in their countries. However, the educational system in the region has not reaped the benefits of these reforms as it has not met the desired goals. The quality of students’ learning is very low as reflected in the poor rating by international assessments such as PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS. Structural educational reforms to foster citizenship and civic responsibility are urgently needed. Good governance of the education systems of the MENA countries, a critical thinking skills-based curriculum and strong market-oriented skills and vocational training programs are necessary for MENA to become economically competitive and reliably democratic.

Although the phenomenon of the corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) has derived the interest of several scholars, in recent years, the comparative studies between Islamic banks (IBs) regarding CSRD quantity versus quality have not been the subject matter of studies till now. In this perspective, this chapter aims to investigate the importance given by IBs to the quality and quantity disclosure of CSR. Moreover, it seeks to explore the impact of CSRD quality and quantity on the IBs' financial performance (FP). To meet these objectives, we used a sample of 59 IBs from 2011 to 2016 in the Arab world and non-Arab world. Then, by adopting the content analysis approach, the authors constructed two CSRD indexes (quality and quantity). The empirical results indicated that IBs give more importance to the qualitative disclosure than the quantitative. Our findings will be very helpful for the policymakers and the managers of IBs because maintaining a good CSRD policy increases the capacity of IBs to deal with possible reputational events, thus protecting their profits and financial results. As far as the comparison between the Arabian and non-Arabian IBs, based on financial reports and Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) governance standard N°7 is concerned, our study is among the first studies that provides two new CSRD indexes (quantity and quality).

This chapter uses an analytic procedure to uncover how Saddam Hussein made his past decisions, and the decision rule(s) Saddam adopted in choosing his actions. In analyzing Saddam, a leader who was considered one of the most formidable enemies of the Western world, this study utilizes official recordings captured at the Iraq war, which provide a reliable source of information. This chapter adds to the literature on the use of applied decision analysis (ADA) in analyzing leaders’ decisions.

Specifically, an emphasis is placed on the importance of understanding the process that led Saddam Hussein to his key decisions, in order to create his decision profile. Decision profiles describe the decision rules and models that are used by decision-makers en route to choice and can help understand and predict decisions of world leaders. I use the ADA procedure to examine key foreign policy decisions made by Saddam Hussein. Finally, after thoroughly examining each of these decisions, I attempt to uncover what decision rule Saddam used, and elaborate on the implications and recommendations of my analysis.

To examine how social media restrict and recreate messages within current interactionist scripts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), this study applies a framework of digital reflexivity highlighting stages of information flow. It applies the symbolic interaction concept of emotional events to analyze the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi and the role of social media in disseminating Bouazizi’s act as one catalyst of the MENA citizen uprisings. The role of social media in the “Arab Spring” merits investigation because social media provide opportunities to examine shifting identities, interactions, and actions of citizen activists in the MENA uprisings. This study is important and timely because little symbolic interactionist scholarship exists on MENA identities and social movements, or on crowd interaction and activism outside the West. The nuanced nature of MENA political activism and complex processes of the development of activists’ “mutable” selves (Zurcher, 1977) are fluid and resistant to symbolically defined social roles, interactionist scripts and reflexivity, and public communication practices in a MENA under political and social transition.