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Data from sophisticated portable heart‐rate monitors and “work diaries” were used to relate in Mintzberg's “nature of managerial work” to physiological stress in a small sample of working principals. Subjects were categorised by years of experience, Type A and Type B personality, and were “shadowed” for three complete work days in their schools doing regular activities to learn what management functions were stressful. Principals were found to be working under extreme stress (a few at catastrophically high levels), for long hours, and that certain managerial activities were more physiologically stressful than others. Implications for training, deployment and the use of bio‐feedback techniques are discussed.

Being born as a woman and trying to establish oneself in a patriarchal male-dominated society has never been easy. Irrespective of boundaries and geographical context the glass ceiling has always been there, only the degree of its resistance may have varied. The cleavage of inequality is visible in all areas of life and the education sector has not remained untouched. Even today, there lies an imbalance between gender in the educational organizations both as enrolled students, faculty members, or staff. In many countries, women have been able to overcome the bias, with ample support from the policy-makers who ensures reservation and equal representation of both. There have been less fortunate ones in countries that are yet to play their part on gender equity and equal representation owing to socio-economic or cultural issues. Afghanistan has witnessed a raging war for the last 40 odd years which has affected the country’s wellbeing and more so of women. Restricted mobility, imposition of laws to stop educating women, security threats, and untimely ending of the life of women who strive to achieve their position has pushed the plight of women behind by hundreds of years. Regressive culture has stopped women from accessing education resulting in deep-rooted inequalities and the disadvantageous position of women in society, exposing their vulnerabilities.

This study uses a combination of qualitative interviews and an autoethnographical data to gain insights into the challenges faced by women in higher education institutions in Afghanistan. It also examines the roles such women are playing in their various professions. Thirteen women shared their experiences and how they were empowered through education to realize their potentials. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis to reveal their interpretation about leadership and education as an agency for social upward mobility among Afghan women. The study was done before the fall of Kabul on August 15, 2021, situation has considerably changed since then with most of the post-redundant and non-existent or not open for women.

Stress intrigues and plagues the practitioner and researcher alike. Internationally over 100,000 books, journals and articles have dedicated their attention to the phenomenon of stress. Only within the past two decades have we seen the exponential proliferation of articles written about the stresses and strains of school administration (over 1300 articles since 1966). While early writings tended to be anecdotal in nature with little substantive connection to empirical evidence, the past ten years have seen refined interest from researchers.

The outbreak of COVID-19 not only had serious negative impacts on the world economy but also on the global mental health because of the psychological disorders associated with the spread of the pandemic, the increased degree of uncertainty and the unprecedented measures taken by different countries to face the pandemic’s spread. This paper analyses the mental health well-being of individuals in selected MENA countries (Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt) during the pandemic.

The study employs a pooled OLS model using the Economic Research Forum (ERF) COVID-19 MENA Monitor Survey panel dataset collected during 2020 and 2021.

The findings show that there is no association between the mental health of individuals in the selected countries and their age, gender, family size, marital status, receipt of social support and participation in care work. Mental health improved at higher levels of education, being employed, being a rural area resident and living in Morocco or Tunisia compared to living in Jordan while it worsened as income declined, food insecurity and anxiety about being infected with Covid-19 increased, being a resident in camps, and during waves 4 and 5. Based on these results, it is recommended that suitable financial, physical and human resources should be directed towards the provision of mental health care services in the region. Also, mental health care services should be accessible to different population groups, with a special focus towards the most vulnerable since they are more prone to mental illnesses, especially during health crises and economic shocks. This should be accompanied by increasing awareness about the provided services and reducing stigma against mental illnesses. Furthermore, introduction of policies targeted towards reducing food insecurity and income instability can play a key role in enhancing mental well-being.

Although few papers have previously investigated the impact of COVID-19 on mental health in MENA countries, most of them have focused on a country-level analysis and adopted a gender perspective. Hence, this paper aims at exploring the association between mental health well-being and socio-economic factors in selected MENA countries during the pandemic.

This investigates the interrelationships between job and career satisfaction and career change intention through the extension of the theory of planned behavior (TPB).

The data for the study is collected from 219 top and middle-level managers and analyzed through partial least squares path structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

Findings indicate that job and career satisfaction have a significant and negative impact on personal attitude toward career change and subjective norms, whereas all three constructs of the TPB influence the intention to change career. In addition, the mediation of personal attitude and subjective norm pathways were found to be significant for both job and career satisfaction and career change intention relationships, while no mediation effect was identified for the perceived behavior control construct of the TPB.

The results suggest important theoretical and practical implications. First, a novel model of mediation between job and career satisfaction and the intention to turn away from an existing career is introduced between job and career satisfaction and career change intention associations for testing the full TPB framework.

The findings imply that the impact of cognitive factors, including having a positive opinion about the potential outcomes of switching to a new career, the level of pressure exerted by significant third parties about making a career change, and the self-belief about making this change happen should be closely investigated when examining the determinants of career change intention.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical research study that tests the impact of the determinants of TPB on career change intention within a sample of professional managers from an emerging economy context.

This paper explores gendered beliefs about the Glass Ceiling (GC) using a new measure, the “Career Pathway Survey” CPS, in an under-researched country, Egypt.

Data were collected from 438 employees in Egypt. Participants completed the CPS and other demographic and work measures. The CPS tests four GC beliefs: denial, resilience, acceptance and resignation.

Factor analysis validated the configuration of the four factors of the CPS. Descriptive tests showed the female sample with resignation belief, whereas male sample views their females counterparts as resilient. The chi-squared test showed differences in beliefs with different age groups, education level, marital status, number of children, job contracts, job tenure and managerial levels. Moreover, there are evidences of more intensive GC barriers in male-dominant organizations.

This paper is the first to: re-validate the CPS measure, examine demographic and work factor roles and the CPS, test CPS on a male sample and analyse differences between male and female beliefs according to gender-dominated sectors.

Testing is one of the indispensable activities in software development and is being adopted as an independent course by software engineering (SE) departments at universities worldwide. The purpose of this paper is to carry out an investigation of the performance of learners about testing, given the tendencies in the industry and motivation caused by the unavailability of similar studies in software testing field.

This study is based on the data collected over three years (between 2012 and 2014) from students taking the software testing course. The course is included in the second year of undergraduate curriculum for the bachelor of engineering (SE).

It has been observed that, from the performance perspective, automated testing outperforms structural and functional testing techniques, and that a strong correlation exists among these three approaches. Moreover, a strong programming background does help toward further success in structural and automated testing, but has no effect on functional testing. The results of different teaching styles within the course are also presented together with an analysis exploring the relationship between students’ gender and success in the software testing course, revealing that there is no difference in terms of performance between male and female students in the course. Moreover, it is advisable to introduce teaching concepts one at a time because students find it difficult to grasp the ideas otherwise.

These findings are based on the analysis conducted using three years of data collected while teaching a course in testing. Obviously, there are some limitations to this study. For example, student’s strength in programming is calculated using the score of C programming courses taken in previous year/semester. Such scores may not reflect their current level of programming knowledge. Furthermore, attempt was made to ensure that the exercises given for different testing techniques have similar difficulty level to guarantee that the difference in success between these testing techniques is due to the inherent complexity of the technique itself and not because of different exercises. Still, there is small probability that a certain degree of change in success may be due to the difference in the difficulty levels of the exercises. As such, it is obviously premature to consider the present results as final since there is a lack of similar type of studies, with which the authors can compare the results. Therefore, more work needs to be done in different settings to draw sound conclusions in this respect.

Although there are few studies (see e.g. Chan et al., 2005; Garousi and Zhi, 2013; Ng et al., 2004) exploring the preference of testers over distinct software testing techniques in the industry, there appears to be no paper comparing the preferences and performances of learners in terms of different testing techniques.

In modern industrial processes, the need of reducing lead time is imperious. This goal is pursued by “Holonic” structures, which are systems based on a network of collaboration. The purpose of this paper is to appraise the possible benefits, in terms of production duration, of such organizations compared to non-holonic arrangements. In addition, this analysis represents virtual teams, which are a significant and strategic attribute of holonic manufacturing systems.

The experiment performed in this paper is a simulation of an automobile assembly process under both a holonic and a non-holonic structure to observe lead times and the distinctive characteristics of each organization. Other targets of this research are to monitor the advantages that either strategy may offer in terms of efficiency and to examine a possible model of how virtual teams can be used in holonic networks.

The findings are unexpected. An initial expectation might lead to the belief that, given the better coordination and communication of holonic networks, lead times would be diminished. This experiment, utilizing virtual teams of university students, indicated otherwise.

It should be noticed, however, that future experiments in real manufacturing assembly processes are recommended to complement the findings of this study.

The management of lead times is indeed a complex task that includes a diversity of variables. Holonic structures should balance several factors that might play a role in lead times and ultimately in the success of a project. An original experiment with the participation of many universities in different countries is presented in this study. The exposure of global characteristics of modern manufacturing structures constitutes the main value of this research.

This paper aims to examine how reckless driving scenes in action movies affect young male drivers’ perception of reckless drivers and proposes a targeted social marketing strategy to counteract this effect.

The hypotheses were tested through a 2 (reckless driving scenes vs control) × 2 (road safety advertising vs control) online experiment with 151 young male drivers.

Reckless driving scenes in action movies prime a positive image of reckless drivers which impacts young male drivers’ attitudes and reckless driving intention. However, a road safety message specifically addressing the positive image of reckless drivers efficiently counteracts this effect.

A few studies have experimentally tested the impact of reckless driving promotion on young drivers’ attitudes and intention, but none have analysed this impact in terms of the development of a positive image of reckless drivers. In addition, this study emphasises that a targeted message based on social norms can cancel the effect of reckless driving promotion and have a beneficial impact on the most risk-prone drivers.

Social marketers working in the field of road safety can improve the efficacy of their social marketing programmes by taking into consideration the positive image of reckless drivers promoted by the media.

Practitioners should develop interventions and targeted messages that help young drivers cultivate a less idealised and masculine social image of reckless drivers.

This paper enhances the awareness of the effect that the media’s positive depiction of reckless drivers can have on the youth and proposes a strategy to counteract this effect.