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The main purpose of this paper is to find whether a correlation exists between students’ natural preferences or what is known as psychological type as determined by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI); the extent of their enthusiasm measured by their level of “like” to the subject, and students’ grade point average (GPA).

Data were collected from 89 students who took the MBTI inventory in five selected faculties at Damascus University in Syria. In order to rate the subjects’ like or dislike level, the students were asked to complete a form prepared for this purpose. The students’ GPAs were also included in the analysis.

Using paired sample t-test, the results indicate a statistically significant correlation between type of student and his/her faculty of study, type of student and overall study subject like, and type of student and his/her GPA. There was, however, a statistically significant correlation between various personality dichotomies of the type (Extraversion-Introversion, Sensing-Intuition, Thinking-Feeling, Judging-Perceiving) and faculty, individual subjects like, and GPA. The study also indicates a statistically significant correlation between study like and GPA, and faculty and GPA. The most critical conclusion from the study is that Sensing-Intuition dichotomy of the MBTI inventory has the strongest correlation to distribution of students among faculties, the subject's like or dislike, and the GPA. In addition, the higher the level of like for a subject, the higher the GPA is.

The study results were based on a sample of students from a specific subject area of study. To validate the results of the study, future research is highly needed on a larger sample of students from different subject disciplines.

Empirically, this study provides decision makers of the higher education sector with relevant information regarding the intended future attempts to reform the university admission policy with regards to the career path.

The usefulness of MBTI inventory has not been assessed in the Arab countries before. This study is therefore considered as one of the initial studies in this field.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the two major types of leadership, i.e transactional and transformational, and organizational learning at public and private universities in Syria. It further aims at exploring the role of transactional and transformational leadership in enhancing organizational learning at Syrian universities.

A quantitative research paradigm was employed. Using a questionnaire survey method, the data were collected from employees at two major public and private Syrian universities. In total, 216 questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS.

The findings revealed that there is a significant impact of contingent reward, as a transactional leadership dimension on organizational learning, and a significant impact of inspirational motivation as a transformational leadership dimension on organizational learning. The study also found no significant differences in leadership styles and organizational learning between both universities.

This study will help university leaders in Syria in adopting leadership styles that are suitable to reinforce organizational learning in their institutions.

The study advances western research that is linking leadership styles and organizational learning by focussing on the Arab world context, particularly the Syrian context.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the consumer behaviour when choosing an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) course in the Syrian market. Based on the student choice model, the study aims at exploring motivations, behaviour, decision‐taking factors and evaluation of purchasing process for the EFL service.

The study employs a case study for one of the biggest family business providers in the EFL market in the City of Damascus, in Syria. Semi‐structured styles of interviews were conducted with 30 currently registered students, in the studied centre, covering five main research questions.

Consistent with the previous literature of consumer behaviour, the findings show that EFL students may go through six steps of purchasing the EFL product. Accordingly, several detailed explanations for each step of the consumer behaviour of EFL, concluded from the study, were presented. Within the consumer behaviour model, the study highlights the importance of individual self study as a phase that should be given more consideration by researchers.

This study could provide bases for further research through a replication of the model of consumer behaviour and using the information offered by the survey. Further research could investigate the research questions in a wider student population employing a more quantitative approach.

People responsible for marketing in EFL institutes should pay more attention to understanding their customer behaviour, rather than engaging in reactive competition practices and focusing on marketing elements and promotion.

The importance of this study comes from the lack of research into understanding the private, fee‐paying EFL customer buyer behaviour in general and in the Syrian context in particular.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a comparative analysis of the main objectives of international institutional partnerships in four UK leading universities. Based on the presented case studies, the paper outlines a model for objectives and implementation of international partnership.

Using a multiple case study approach, the paper employs three sources of data: templates of international partnerships, actual agreements of international partnerships and interviews with senior and very senior managers concerned with internationalisation at the four universities. The analysis includes inter‐university comparative analysis and templates‐agreements‐interviews comparative analysis for each of the four universities separately.

It is found that, for the four universities, the objectives of international partnerships are related to both students and staff with relative importance given to the student dimension. While the student dimension refers to any overseas partnerships where the core topic of the partnership is the student whether it is related to student exchange, collaborative programs, student recruitment, etc.; the staff dimension refers to any overseas partnerships that are more related to the staff topic, such as joint research, collaborative teaching, staff exchange, etc.

The comparative analysis of templates‐agreements‐ interviews show some gaps in international strategy design in one of the universities, and some gaps in international strategy implementation in the other three universities.

The comparative analysis is developed into a model for international strategy design and implementation. This model can assess university managers in running their international business.

The paper highlights the importance of adopting a realistic strategy by university managers. The realistic strategy is the strategy that gives equivalent attention to the two dimensions: the design and the implementation.

The goal was to find what talent management procedures were used in the sector in Egypt

The authors wanted to speak to teaching assistants and assistant lecturers for their analysis. Their interviewees were from public business schools at three universities in Upper Egypt, which covers about 25% of the country’s total land. There were 245 respondents.

The authors concluded that there were “no responsible approaches to managing talent”. Instead, they observed “disorganized and irresponsible” procedures for staffing, motivating, managing and retaining staff.

Despite the concept’s growing importance, there have been few studies of the topic in an academic context. In particular, there is a dearth of research in both African and Middle Eastern settings. In Egypt, talent management is especially important because the sector was rated among the worst 10 in the world by the World Economic Forum in 2017.

This study examines the mediating effect of an effective knowledge management (KM) in the relationship between talent management (TM) and organizational performance. This study was operationalized among the small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

A cross-sectional survey design was used to collect data from a sample of 260 SMEs business. The data collected was analyzed using correlations and hierarchical regression to test the mediating effect of KM on the relationship between TM and firm performance.

The findings show that KM mediates the relationship between TM and firm performance. They also suggest that TM contribute to enhancing performance through improvements in KM.

The sample used in the research is not representative of all the SMEs operating in Uganda. This limitation presents the challenge of generalising and we therefore suggest caution when interpreting the results. We note the challenge of a skewed sample. For instance, most of the respondents to our study were confined to tailoring and design and metal and fabrication sectors. The skewed sample is a notable limitation of the research. The study was limited to Uganda only hence it did not capture information relating to other geographical settings, which may limit the effectiveness of the findings therein.

Based on the findings of the study, the managers of the SME can use the study results to develop strategies and interventions that can enable their firms to improve on their performance even in the harsh economic environment through adopting positive practices such as KM.

This paper contributes by filling a gap in HR management and SMEs literature, in which empirical studies on the relationship between TM and firm performance have been limited until now. This may create better research opportunities for cross-disciplinary papers that should be done by human resource, small business management and KM scholars.

Little research into organizational learning in the public sector in developing countries' is known. In this paper, the authors investigated the context of organizational learning in the public banks in Egypt.

An ethnographic field research was employed by spending a month inside each of two public banks in Egypt. The ethnographic experience was operationalised by using direct observations of learning processes, procedures and practices, semi-structured interviews with learning specialists and focus group discussions with bankers. The authors used thematic analysis to determine the main themes in the previous data collection methods of ethnographic approach.

The findings confirmed a lack of clear focus for the organizational learning practices employed by the banks, which highlights issues of seriousness in undertaking and/or tackling organizational learning, and increased doubts in relation to the added value of the different forms of formal trainings bankers participate in. To enhance the culture and maintain effective functioning of formal organizational learning, the authors suggest considering the following three categories of barriers: purpose-related barriers, implementation and evaluation barriers.

Despite the generalisability caveats associated with the organizations studied, the authors believe that this paper contributes to the existing theory of organizational learning as it provides insights and understanding on the purpose, frame, conduct and results of organizational learning in the public sector. More specifically, the study is unique and is different from previous relevant studies as it relies on ethnographical approach in exploring how organizational leaning practices are perceived in public banks in developing countries.

This paper aims to focus on academics’ in four public universities located in Egypt to explore the effect of narcissistic leadership on affective, continuance and normative commitment approaches with and without the mediating effect of academics’ silence.

The authors used a convenience sampling in which academics were handed a questionnaire form to fill. In total, the authors distributed 280 forms and collected 214 completed questionnaire forms. A structural equation was used to determine the effect of narcissistic leadership on the organizational commitment (affective, continuance and normative) of academics. The same measure was later used to assess the mediating role of the academics’ silence on the aforementioned relationship.

The authors of this paper found that narcissistic leadership positively associates with academics’ silence. Moreover, their perceptions of the narcissism of their leaders alleviate academics’ emotional attachments (affective commitment) and moral obligations (normative commitment) toward their universities, whereas the same perceptions of the narcissism of their leaders have no effect on their continuance commitment. Finally, the authors discovered a significant role for academics’ silence in mediating the negative relationship between narcissistic leadership and their affective and normative commitments.

This paper contributes by filling a gap in leadership, HR management and organization literature in the higher education sector, in which empirical studies on the relationship between narcissistic leadership, academics’ silence and organizational commitment 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.

This paper aims to answer the question: To what extent should neurodiverse students experience improved access to public universities in Egypt and why?

A systematic qualitative research method was used with data collected through semi-structured interviews with 44 educators in four universities in Egypt. A thematic approach was implemented to analyze the collected data.

The addressed educators believe that greater representation of neurodiverse students in their schools should be a priority for the following four reasons: first, neurodiverse students represent a promising new market segment schools could benefit from; second, recruiting more neurodiverse students represents a chance for schools and faculties to prove the social role they can undertake; third, schools can benefit from the unique skills many neurodiverse students have, particularly in mathematical and computational skills; and fourth, the greater the representation of neurodiverse students, the more research projects and funding opportunities educators can obtain.

This paper contributes by filling a gap in diversity management, higher education and human resources management in which empirical studies on the representation of neurodiverse individuals in public universities have been limited so far.