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Investigates the attitudes towards women held by 5,974 Kuwaiti and 7,382 Qatari professional men and women respectively, 53 men and 67 women Qatari college students, 26 Qatari college men student‐father pairs, and 36 Qatari women student‐mother pairs. Explains the predictive utility of sex, nationality, age, education, marital and parental status, and sex‐role self‐concepts (i.e. androgynous, masculine, feminine and undifferentiated self‐concepts) in attitudes towards women of the professional groups. The subjects completed the short version of the Attitude toward Women Scale (AWS), Bem’s Sex Role Inventory and a demographic questionnaire. Analysis indicated that the AWS scores of the various groups were very low, suggesting very traditional attitudes towards women in both Kuwait and Qatar. Compares the findings with those reported in Western and Asian cultures, and discusses the results and implications in the context of the Arabian Gulf environment.

Discusses the data analysed in the present study which was collected from 284 Qatari men and women college students. Examines the internal reliability estimates, construct and concurrent validity of the Protestant ethic scale. Internal consistency estimates of reliability and the pattern of relationships among the scales yielded similar results to those reported in the Western culture. Shows that, the factor analysis yielded four interpretable factors for the Protestant ethic scale, two factors for the work ethic scale, two factors for the Protestant ethic attitudes and five factors for the total items of the three Protestant work ethic scales and the leisure ethic scale. Posits that, these results are generally consistent with previous research findings, and, similar to previous research findings, the mean scores of the three Protestant ethic scales were relatively higher than those generally reported in developed countries. Suggests that, the results show that the three Protestant work ethic scales are moderately valid and reliable instruments to use for studying Arabian Gulf students.

Explores the direct effects of internal orientation, self‐esteem, instrumentality, expressiveness and the interactive effects of internality, instrumentality and self‐esteem on the variance of career decision‐making self‐efficacy expectation. A set of questionnaires was administered to a group of Kuwaiti college students (Bachelor of Business Administration programme) which consisted of 84 men and 150 women. Results indicated that among men and women instrumental attributes had a considerably stronger positive relationship with career decision making self‐efficacy than the other independent variables and that while the interactive effect of internality and instrumentality on career decision making was significant, the interactions of internality and self‐esteem and instrumentality and self‐esteem were not. Discusses results and implications in the context of Arab sociopolitics.

Conducts a survey of management training and development practices in large Kuwaiti organizations. Covers areas such as needs assessment, programmes and participants′ selection, programme evaluation and future trends. Indicates that systematic needs assessements and programme evaluation are sorely lacking in these organizations. Practices related to programme and participants′ selection and training content areas are, generally, consistent with previous findings in the West. Contrary to the situation in the West, the private and joint sectors are less active in management development areas than the government sector. Executive educational programmes, an approach that is most successful in the West, are rarely used. Discusses results and implications of the study in the context of the Arabian Gulf region social and economic environments.

Women Sales Managers Volume 11 Number 2 of The Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing includes an article by Alan J. Dubinsky, Lucette B. Comer, Marvin A. Jolson and Francis J. Yammarino entitled “How should women sales managers lead their sales personnel?”

The purpose of this paper is to examine how leadership aspiration mediates the effect of career self-efficacy on employees' engagement in career self-management (CSM; i.e. deployment of career advancement strategies concerning access to power, psychological boundaryless and self-promotion), whether self-efficacy directly influences CSM, and whether these relations are conditional upon nationality (which is a proxy for domestic and international careers in Kuwait).

A questionnaire was completed by 615 highly educated young Kuwaitis and self-initiated expatriates (SIEs; Arab and South Asian nationals) working in Kuwait.

The results demonstrate that self-efficacy, directly and indirectly (mediated by leadership aspiration), influences the three types of career advancement strategies. Moderated-mediation analyses suggest that SIEs and Kuwaitis engage in similar CSM behaviors when it is motivated by self-efficacy, which is mediated by leadership aspiration. Also, self-efficacy has greater direct effect on SIEs' CSM than Kuwaitis', but Kuwaitis have higher tendency for CSM behavior.

Interventions aiming to improve employees' engagement in CSM may focus on enhancing their psychological capital and contexts, while minding the differential effects of nationality and self-efficacy on CSM of Kuwaitis and SIEs.

The study provides unique information about CSM utilizing understudied populations namely, Middle-Eastern and self-initiated expatriate employees. It confirms the effects of self-efficacy and leadership aspiration on CSM and reveals different effects of nationality depending on the motivators at play.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between organizational strategy, performance management and training and development in the context of the Jordanian banking sector.

Models of strategic human resource management developed in the west are considered for their relevance in Jordan. A mixed methods approach is adopted employing interviews with senior managers and training and development managers, employee questionnaires and documentary analysis. It examines all banks in Jordan including foreign and Islamic banks.

Findings indicate that training and development is not driven by human resource strategy and that it is reactive rather than proactive. Training and development does improve skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviors but there is little evidence that it increases commitment and satisfaction nor that it contributes to strategic aims in any significant way. The linkages between strategy and training and development are not explicit and strategies are not interpreted through performance management systems. Consequently there is a lack of integration in organizational HR systems and the measurable contribution of training and development to competitive advantage is minimal

The paper offers suggestions as to how greater integration between strategy, performance management and training and development might be achieved in the Jordanian context.

This paper is the first detailed empirical study of training and development in Jordan to include considerations of transferability of western models to an Arab culture.

This study aims to propose a practical, virtue-centric model of leadership based on Islamic principles. The structure of the Islamic leadership construct is validated through confirmatory factor analysis. Its relationship with performance and organizational commitment is examined and the mediating role of organizational commitment is assessed.

Islamic leadership model is tested using confirmatory factor analysis with data collected from employees working in the services sector in Turkey. Relationships between Islamic leadership, organizational commitment and performance are examined through a path analysis.

The factor analysis results presented a good fit for the proposed Islamic leadership model, which consists of wisdom, religiosity, justice and kindness dimensions. Regarding path analysis, findings indicated a positive relationship between Islamic leadership and job performance. Moreover, organizational commitment partially mediated the relationship between Islamic leadership and job performance.

Previous studies on Islamic leadership contain a very little number of empirical models. This study proposes a valuable empirical model of Islamic leadership consisting of moral values, spirituality, ethics and wisdom. In addition, the proposed model is supported with empirical pieces of evidence. Evidence of the partial mediating role of organizational commitment between Islamic leadership and job performance is also revealed by the study.