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The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Buddhist and Hindu people in non‐Western societies perceive rational accountability practices in religious organizations, through their respective religious “spirit” and “beliefs” and in combination with broader structural elements of the society.

The interpretive tradition of research, i.e. ethnography based on two in‐depth cases from Sri Lanka (a Buddhist temple) and Mauritius (a Hindu temple) is adopted for the data collection. The data are analysed using grounded theory methods and procedures.

In non‐Western Buddhist and Hindu societies where people's lives are bound by a high religious “spirit” the accountability system in the religious organisations is largely visible as an informal and social practice rather than a stakeholder‐oriented rational mechanism. It is found that the rational accountability mechanisms are “sacredised” by the Buddhist and Hindu religious “spirit” and subsequently, the accountability systems and religious activities are both influenced by the “structural elements” of trust, aspirations, patronage and loyalty relations, social status, power and rivalries. The accountability practices implemented in these organisations are perceived by the people as being no more than “ceremonial rituals” aimed at strengthening the temple's righteous and prudent image to the religious society.

The paper raises the issue that accountability practices in community, grassroots‐based non‐profit organisations are not mere reporting of “facts” relating to economic activities and a “neutral system” giving reasons for the conduct of its leaders. Instead, they initiate new forms of accountability systems and reproduce structural conditions.

This is one of the first field studies which examine perceptions of accountability within a Hindu and a Buddhist context, as influenced by the religious “spirit” and internal belief systems of the devotees. Previous studies have mostly focused on Judeo‐Christian or Islamic denominations.

The purpose of this paper is to extend previous research on employee commitment to their organisation within the Nigerian banking sector. This paper aims to use income and age as variables in assessing employee commitment to their organisations in Nigeria.

A quantitative approach was employed in data collection, using a 28‐item, seven‐point Likert scaled questionnaire administered to 200 participants with a 42 per cent usable response rate. A factor analysis resulted in three components of commitment.

The results from the analysis indicate that employees with high income represent the same group of employees within the age groups 31‐35 with low commitment to their organisation.

This paper demonstrates that the relationships between age, income and commitment might be explained by reference to cultural factors which might have stronger influence on employee expression of commitment to their organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a theoretical model of the determinants of Islamic banks' social disclosures. In testing the hypotheses, the level of social disclosure in Islamic banks' annual reports is gauged based on a benchmark derived from Islamic principles.

Applying the principles of systems‐oriented theories such as political economy, legitimacy and stakeholder theories, as well as agency theory, hypotheses linking Islamic social disclosure and its determinants are developed. The sample comprised 47 Islamic banks in 14 countries and the data related to the dependent (Islamic banks social disclosures) variable are collected mainly from the annual reports, while data for the independent variables (determinants) are collected from various sources. Regression analysis was conducted to test the hypotheses.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure by Islamic banks varies significantly across the sample. According to the regression results, variation is best explained by the “influence of the relevant publics” and the “Shari'ah (SSB supervisory boards) corporate governance mechanism” variables. Using alternative variable measures, the regression results suggest that “level of social and political freedom” and “the proportion of investment account deposits to total assets” are also significant determinants of Islamic banks' CSR disclosure.

The major limitation of this paper is the small sample size of only 47 Islamic banking institutions. Future studies may expand the sample size used here.

The results indicate the significance of the SSB as a governance mechanism that may increase the CSR disclosure of Islamic banks. Thus, from a policy perspective, bodies that regulate Islamic banking should consider mandating the SSB for all “Islamic banks”.

This research is the first to provide an a priori basis for CSR disclosure of Islamic banks and to test using empirical data. The findings of this research should be of significant value to regulators, shareholders and deposit holders of Islamic banks. In a more general context, this paper is one of a few that has operationalised Gray et al.'s conception of “levels of resolution of perception” and empirically tested the concept using non‐traditional organisations (Islamic banks) in a non‐Western context. This adds further credibility to systems‐oriented theories in explaining CSR disclosures of non‐Western organisations operating in non‐Western cultures.

The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to examine the direct relationship of organizational justice (OJ), psychological empowerment (PE), Leader Member Exchange (LMX), organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), LMX on PE and OCB and PE on OCB; and second, to investigate the mediating role of PE between OJ and OCB and between LMX and OCB in the service industry in a non-Western context.

A quantitative questionnaire was used to test the proposed hypotheses of the study. From employees working in service providing organizations in the UAE, 364 usable responses had been collected and data was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

OJ significantly influences PE and LMX, while its influence on OCB is insignificant. Also, LMX significantly affects PE and OCB, PE significantly impacts OCB, whereas PE and LMX significantly mediate the relationship between OJ and OCB.

Organizations should promote fairness, psychological empowerment and OCB among employees. Additionally, leaders should develop positive and productive relationships with their employees.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of a limited number of studies designed to analyze the hypothesized relationships within a non-Western context, specifically in the UAE.

Examines the interaction between Western leader ship and authority practices and those of a non Western culture (Nigeria) in their managerial and or ganisational context. Data concerning the experience of an organisational change in a non‐Western cultural context fail to confirm some of the ideas advanced in the convergence and divergence theses. An alternative framework for conceptualising the process of interaction and outcome of organisational development in situations of cross‐cultural transfer and application of management practices is proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to explore practitioner and post‐colonial perspectives on the implementation of learning organisation theory and practice in a non‐Western setting.

A qualitative interpretive study, using in‐depth interviews and participant observation, was conducted in two public organisations in Singapore. The study looked at relationships between the concepts of the learning organisation and of Singapore national culture, as the members of the organisations saw them. This study is presented and then discussed in commentaries from two different perspectives, i.e. the “insider” perspective of a Singaporean practitioner, and the “outsider” perspective of a New Zealand academic using a post‐colonial critique.

The findings indicate that Western LO practitioners need to pay specific attention to the cultural values expressed by non‐Western organisational members, and to their own cultural limitations and biases which may be embedded in the implementation of LO programmes. This process requires an active dialogue between both parties.

The findings indicate that practitioners need to pay specific attention to the cultural values of employees, and to the cultural assumptions of new management programmes, when adopting Western concepts of management to non‐Western organisations.

This is an empirical study that reveals the particular tensions experienced in two specific non‐Western organisations when LO practice was introduced without explicit exploration of its Western cultural underpinnings. The paper argues that the development of an LO discourse of organisational post‐colonialism can provide a valuable critical framework to examine the global mobilisation of LO concepts.

Previous studies on job characteristics have been performed mainly in Western contexts. More empirical evidence is needed to understand the important job characteristics of positive job outcomes in a non‐Western context. Therefore, this research has two objectives: to assess the impact of five job characteristics on work attitudes and behaviors in the UAE, and to test the mediating impact of distributive justice on the job characteristics‐work outcomes relationship.

The study reports responses of 350 employees from five large organizations operating in Dubai. Data were collected on a structured questionnaire containing standards scales of job characteristics, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, distributive justice, and some demographic variables. After testing scales reliability and validity, the proposed linear relationships were tested using a series of separate hierarchical regression analyses. Proposed mediation hypotheses were tested using Baron and Kenny's recommendations.

Consistent with studies conducted in a Western context, the study showed that skill variety and feedback have functional impacts on job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intentions. Contrary to Western studies, the study reported that task identity and task significance have functional effects on work attitudes and behaviors. Autonomy also showed unexpected positive relationship with turnover intentions. Additionally, distributive justice mediates some of the relationships between job characteristics and work outcomes.

The limitations of common method bias and cross‐sectional data are discussed in the light of implications for future research. Nevertheless, the results provide new insights on the influence of job characteristics on work outcomes in a non‐Western context of the UAE. Also, the study reported evidence for the mediating impact of distributive justice on the job characteristics‐work outcomes relationship.

The study has implications for enhancing work behaviors and attitudes. In general, enhancing certain job characteristics can result in higher‐level employee outcomes. Also, managers should improve some of the contextual factor (i.e. distributive justice) in order to enhance the impact of job characteristics on work outcomes.

The study is considered to be one of the first to examine the job characteristics‐work outcomes relationship in a non‐western context of the UAE. Also, it is among the first studies to test the role of distributive justice as a mediator for the job characteristics‐work outcome relationship.

The aim of the current study is to examine the impact of high involvement work practices (HIWPs) upon trust and commitment in a non‐Western cultural context, namely the UAE.

Quantitative, empirical data for the study were collected using self‐administered questionnaires with 600 participants from different service organizations in the UAE. Respondents were asked to provide their perceptions of a range of practices and their impact on trust and commitment.

The analyses support a model in which a collection of HIWPs positively influenced trust and commitment. In addition, work status and citizenship were used as control variables and played a partially significant role in explaining the effect of those practices on the outcomes.

The findings imply that managers should realize that implementing high involvement policies, and benefiting from them, is not as simple as instituting a single practice. What is required is an organizational culture that cultivates HIWPs.

Since little is known about the process by which UAE organizations promote the HIWPs, this article is the first to examine these issues in a non‐Western setting. Consequently, it contributes to the literature by examining whether the empirical results found in Western environments can be extended to non‐Western contexts.

This study aims to examine the concepts of trait emotional intelligence (EI), emotional labour strategies and burnout among internal human resources (HR) service providers. It proposes a model to deepen our understanding of the processes explaining the protective effects of trait EI on employee burnout.

The present study comprises a sample of 143 HR professionals from a large Malaysian financial institution.

Results suggest that trait EI predicted personal- and work-related burnout but not client-related burnout. Trait EI was also found to be partly related to emotional labour (EL), exhibiting a negative relationship with surface acting but not with deep acting. While surface acting exhibited a significant relationship on all three forms of burnout, deep acting was only significantly related to client burnout. Moreover, mediation analyses revealed that surface acting partly mediated the relationship between EI and burnout.

This study examines the relationship between EI, EL and burnout in HR professionals. This study is the first in the literature to examine these relationships in the context of internal service providers and in a non-Western context. Our study enhances our understanding of the processes explaining the protective effects of trait EI on employee burnout in a non-Western context.

The related concepts of organizational culture and person‐organization (P‐O) fit or congruence between the person and organization are important to organizational success. The psychological contract, which is both perceptual and individual, forms the basis of the P‐O fit. However, there has been little attention paid to the interaction of fit and organizational culture with such concepts as job satisfaction and organizational commitment and the application of this concept in non‐western cultures. The results of this study, conducted in Taiwan, indicate that P‐O fit is a key element in both the level of job satisfaction that employees experience and also in their level of organizational commitment whether measured by an instrument or turnover rates. An organization is not a passive or stable institution and it evolves and grows within an organizational culture. While P‐O fit may be linked to organizational culture, the impact of specific types of organizational culture was also assessed. Involvement in an organization that had a bureaucratic organizational culture resulted in the lowest levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. An innovative culture was next highest and a supportive culture had the highest level of employee job satisfaction and organizational commitment. These findings indicate that organizational culture plays an important role in the level of job satisfaction and commitment in an organization. In terms of the impact of the P‐O fit on job satisfaction and organizational commitment in Taiwan, the results indicate that the degree of fit plays an important role in all of the types of organizational culture studied. The better the fit the higher the levels of these two variables. The results indicate that the P‐O fit is an important variable within the organizations in non‐western cultures.