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This paper aims to theoretically answer the question: why might business schools in Egypt fail to develop responsible leaders?

The author starts by discussing modernization theory (Lipset, 1959) – which highlights the idea that the more educated people there are in a given society/nation, the more calls for democracy, social citizenship and social justice will be launched – to address the strong association between the quality of business learning and the development of responsible leadership norms. Moving forward by focusing on the theory of education (Dewey, 1916) and institutional theory (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983), the author finds the main conditions needed to develop responsible leadership norms among business school students.

The author identified the following three necessary conditions: implementing responsible management education, sustaining management learning and ensuring that a purposive hidden curriculum is well-planned in business schools. The author sees these as the main priorities for developing responsible leadership skills among business school students in Egypt and similar post revolution countries.

This paper contributes by filling a gap in responsible leadership, public administration and higher education literature, in which conceptual studies on the role of business schools in post-revolution periods and conflict zones has been limited until now.

This paper aims to discover the effect of cultural diversity challenges (organizational communication, work- related discrimination and training) on physicians’ cognitive, affective and behavioral cynicism in the context of public hospitals, Menoufia (Egypt).

A total of 360 physicians at public hospitals in Menoufia (Egypt) were contacted and all of them received a set of questionnaires. After five follow ups, a total of 240 responses were collected with a response rate of 66.67 per cent.

The findings suggest that only communication is considered the main and significant predictor for cognitive, affective and behavioral cynicism. Accordingly, when physicians perceive well-coordinated and balanced communication, they feel that their hospital has an adequate level of integrity and consequently will have a positive attitude toward it.

Through well-formulated organizational communication, the hospital administration can decrease the organizational cynicism among physicians and subsequently their unwanted behavior. It is needless to say that when physicians experience an open-door communication climate, they experience a sense of psychological safety and give their very best.

This paper contributes by filling a gap in management and organization literature, in which empirical studies on cultural diversity and organizational cynicism were limited until now.

This study aims to analyse how talent management practices in family-owned hotels contribute to their employees' fulfilment of their psychological contract.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 employees working at three different family business hotels in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Moreover, thematic analysis was undertaken on the collected data resulting in four major themes.

The findings revealed that stimulating employees to fulfil their psychological contract towards their family-owned hotels leads to several benefits. First, it leads to talent management practices that support crisis management, sustainability and resilience. Second, it contributes to empathy towards or at least a deep concern for the future of work in the hospitality sector. Third, to fulfil their psychological contract, employees, particularly non-family members, require inclusive talent management and ongoing training programmes tailored to prepare them to meet current and future challenges in the hospitality sector.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, the present study is the first study to empirically investigate the relationship between talent management practices and the psychological contract of employees in family-owned hotels, especially in developing economy context of Egypt. Also, it is one of the pioneering studies to unpack these dynamics for family as well as non-family employees.

Through addressing female academics in four public universities in Egypt, the author of this paper aims to answer the question: How do female academics cope with the career shock resulting from the spread of COVID-19?

The author used a qualitative research method through semi-structured interviews with 32 female academics from four public universities selected from among 26 public institutions of higher education in Egypt. Thematic analysis was subsequently used to determine the main ideas in the transcripts.

The findings assert that the following three strategies: heroism, cronyism and temporalism are used by female academics in the Egyptian context to cope with the career shocks they feel during the time of COVID-19. The findings assert that female academics try to reassert their professionalism in their academic duties and familial obligations even after the spread of COVID-19. Moreover, they tend to use forms of cronyism behaviour to alleviate the effect of the career shock, mostly via hypocritical phrases. Furthermore, the thought that COVID-19 is a temporary stage helps female academics to actively accept their challenging new work conditions.

This paper contributes by filling a gap in human resources management and higher education in which empirical studies on the career shock of female academics have been limited so far.

This study aims to investigate the extent to which global shocks like Covid-19, climate crisis or war in Ukraine represent a negative career shock for hotel employees and how their individual resilience helps them to mitigate such shock.

A qualitative research method is used, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 full-time employees working at four hotels in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Thematic analysis was used to extract the main ideas from the transcripts.

The findings showed that some of the addressed employees do not perceive the impact of current wicked problems as a negative career shock that would cause them to divert their career paths particularly because of the recent support they receive from their professional and social circles. However, some respondents are worried about their career prospects owing to the dramatic events affecting beach tourism in Egypt this past decade. Findings reveal that managing negative career shocks necessitates institutional support, as well as employee responsibility and the adaptation.

This paper contributes by filling a gap in hospitality, and human resources management, in which empirical studies on the relationship between career shock of hotel employees and their individual resilience have been limited so far.

This study aims to investigate the perceptions of female tour guides’ lower and top levels of management in travel agencies about how misunderstanding Islam and its culture may engender the poor representation of women in the tour guide profession.

A qualitative research method is used, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 full-time female tour guides working at several travel agencies in Egypt. Thematic analysis helped extract main ideas from the transcripts.

The representation of female tour guides in travel agencies is shaped by the following three determinants: religious (familial obligations and marital status), contextual (nature of tour guide activities, poor representation of women in senior tourism-related jobs, cronyism, sexual harassment and spread of foreign female tour guides) and media influence. Understanding these three factors may enable a more comprehensive representation of female tour guides.

Female tour guides could work closely with tourism policymakers in Egypt to shape the media messages about them. This might include elaborating on the main challenges faced by female tour guides. Social support from families and friends may allow female tour guides more freedom and empowerment.

This study contributes by filling a gap in tourism, human resources management and gender studies in which empirical studies on the representation of females in travel agencies have been limited so far.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how cronyism is employed by some married female faculty to secure workplace rights and privileges.

A qualitative research design is employed and interviews were conducted with 32 female academics working at four different universities.

The narrative demonstrates the gendered use of cronyism at work – pre-COVID-19, during which female academics had to work full-time and be present on school campuses, and after COVID-19 pandemic, when academic working conditions changed due to the lockdown of university campuses and the reliance on remote online protocols to fulfil academic duties. The paper shows an increased use of cronyism as a mechanism to reduce heavy workloads. This type of cronyism is known as the expectation of mutual favour cronyism, which means that benefits are exchanged between a female academic and the chair of her department and/or the school rector, but the interests of the university they work in are not taken into consideration.

Virtually, no research exists on the sociocultural determinants of nepotism that undermine the professional performance of female academics at work. The authors draw on social exchange theory and the norm of negative reciprocity to identify the conditions under which social capital is undermined. The results have important implications for theory, practice and future research.

The study aims to find out the extent to which hospitality sector family-owned businesses in Egypt feel committed to responsible leadership practices and subsequently meet their stakeholders' expectations.

The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 owners of family restaurants in Egypt. Thematic analysis was undertaken on the collected data resulting in four major themes.

The authors find that the four dimensions (aggregation of virtuousness, stakeholder involvement, individual competencies and ethical contributions) are not fully exercised by the owners despite their readiness to behave correctly according to social norms. Furthermore, the respondents elaborated that they do not fully understand how to commence playing a role in contributing to the common good in their societies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is the first to empirically investigate responsible leadership practices in the context of small and medium-sized family businesses (restaurants in this case), particularly in the emerging market and non-Western contexts.

Through a multiple case study design, this article elaborates the chances of initiating and/or implementing responsible management education (RME) in Egyptian public business schools after the identification of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In other words, this paper identifies the effect of COVID-19 on internalizing RME in the previously mentioned context.

Through addressing four business schools in Egypt, this article explores the future of public business schools that did not previously implement responsible management education (RME) principles, after the identification of COVID-19. In other words, this paper identifies the main threats facing public business schools in Egypt post the spread of COVID-19.

Although the previous study done by Mousa et al. (2019a) showed that academics in public business schools in Egypt were not ready to implement responsible management education, and furthermore, that they thought that addressing socio-cultural aspects is the mission of professors in sociology and humanities, the results of this study show that the spread of COVID-19 has positively changed the situation. The interviewed academics assert that socio-cultural challenges shape the minds of business students, academics and trainers, and these accordingly, have to be tackled. Furthermore, the author explores some socio-political, academic and labour market threats facing business schools in Egypt today. Managing those threats may ensure the continuity of the addressed business schools and their counterparts.

This paper contributes by filling a gap in the literature on responsible management education and leadership in the higher education sector, in which empirical studies on the future of business schools, particularly those that did not implement responsible management education earlier, after the identification and spread of COVID-19 have been limited until now.

This paper addresses nurses working in public hospitals in order to find out how gender may affect their perception of both diversity management and organisational inclusion. Moreover, and given the novelty of workplace fun and the lack of research in this field in the context of developing countries, the authors explore the relationship between diversity management and organisational inclusion and explore workplace fun as a predictor of organisational inclusion.

A total of 360 questionnaires were collected from nurses in three public hospitals in Egypt. The authors applied a t-test to identify how gender may affect perceptions of diversity management. Moreover, the authors employed hierarchical regressions to test gender and diversity management as predictors of organisational inclusion and to test whether workplace fun can predict organisational inclusion, too.

The findings indicate that compared to their male colleagues, female nurses respond to diversity management practices more positively. Second, no significant statistical differences in the mean values for female and male nurses were observed regarding their perceptions of organisational inclusiveness. Third, diversity management is positively associated with organisational inclusion for the nurses. Finally, workplace fun mediates the relationship between diversity management perceptions and organisational inclusion.

This paper contributes by filling a gap in human resources (HR) research in the health-care sector, in which empirical studies on the relationship between gender, workplace fun and organisational inclusion have been limited so far.