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This paper aims to explore to what extent can the Saudi–US alliance endure, given the several challenges it has faced over the past decade. Using a conceptual framework from the alliance theory, the paper will trace the historical evolution of the alliance between the two countries, then will identify some of the challenges that have faced the alliance on both the regional and bilateral levels, and finally will assess the impact of these challenges on the resilience of the Saudi–US alliance.

This paper will use the alliance theory literature to analyze the challenges and the resilience of the Saudi–US relations.

The Saudi–US alliance has encountered several challenges in the past decade such as the Arab spring, the Iranian nuclear deal and the Civil War in Syria and Yemen. However, this alliance proved to be resilient, and the strategic partnership between the two countries managed to overcome these challenges.

The importance of this paper stems from the fact that the USA and the Saudi Arabia are two pivotal countries, and their relationship affects regional and international dynamics. The paper contributes to the literature on the Saudi–US bilateral relations as well as their views on recent regional issues such as the Arab Spring, the civil war in Yemen and Syria. Assessing the limits and potentials of the alliance between the two countries could also help us understand the future of regional developments in the Middle East.

The so-called “oil price war” of 2014-2016 took place between several main global oil producers; OPEC (led by Saudi Arabia), Russia and the newcomer; American tight oil or fracking oil. These oil producers were competing against each other over market shares in the global oil market, by maintaining their high oil production rates, even if this led to a decline in oil prices and a reduction in revenues from oil sales. As energy politics need more coverage in International Political Economy (IPE) theory, this paper aims to argue that Saudi Arabia's policies during the oil price war of 2014-2016 reflected a policy of neomercantilism, which is the IPE equivalent of the school of realism in International Relations (IR).

This paper tests for neomercantilism by testing three of its main definitional components. The first definitional component is that the state, as the political authority, intervenes in the economic decisions. The second component is the primacy of the state interests over business corporate profits, or the primacy of political and security considerations over short-term economic and corporate profit considerations. The third is the zero-sum or relative gains nature of dealings between states. Afterwards, this paper tests for neomercantilism in the Saudi policy by examining how each of these definitional components is reflected in the Saudi policy during the oil price war.

As energy politics need more coverage in International Political Economy (IPE) theory, this paper argues that Saudi Arabia's policies during the oil price war of 2014-2016 reflected a policy of neomercantilism, which is the IPE equivalent of the school of realism in International Relations (IR).

As energy politics need more coverage in International Political Economy (IPE) theory, this paper argues that Saudi Arabia's policies during the oil price war of 2014-2016 reflected a policy of neomercantilism, which is the IPE equivalent of the school of realism in International Relations (IR).

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a within-gender analysis and between-gender differences in seeking (personal and interpersonal) and escaping (personal and interpersonal) motivations to attend a non-traditional festival in Saudi Arabia. Specific objectives were: to conduct a within-gender analysis in motivations to attend a non-traditional festival in Saudi Arabia; and to examine between-gender differences in motivations to attend a non-traditional festival in Saudi Arabia.

Based on the data collected from 458 attendees at a non-traditional festival in Saudi Arabia, the authors employed network analysis for within-gender analysis and MANOVA and ANOVA for between-gender comparison. The network analysis served two purposes, in that it examined each item’s predictability for each gender, and analyzed the correlations among motivation items within each gender. In addition, the General Linear Model served to compare the male and female groups’ motivations to attend the non-traditional festival. The authors first performed MANOVA for each dimension and then ANOVA for each dimension’s individual items.

Within-gender analysis reveals that several sets of motivations were associated strongly for both genders. This suggests that Saudi Arabians seem to enjoy entertainment because it projects the festival mood; they want to escape both from home and work and attend the festival to relieve stress by changing their routine pace. However, gender differences were apparent in several other items, especially for the group of women. Between-group comparison analysis shows significant gender differences in several elements of motivation. Overall, personal seeking and escaping were greater for males than females. In contrast, interpersonal seeking was greater for females than males.

Entertainment seems to be a key contributor to the festival mood because entertainment and the festival mood were related closely for both genders. In fact, personal and interpersonal escaping means were greater than personal interpersonal seeking means for both genders. Indeed, opportunities exist to develop non-traditional festivals in the country further. Gender differences were identified in several items of personal seeking and escaping, and interpersonal seeking. With respect to personal seeking, men tend to seek the entertainment, festival mood and the event’s uniqueness more than do women, a finding that their higher means in personal escaping supported. It is clear that men view the festival as a way to enjoy themselves to escape from their jobs and daily stress to a greater degree than do their female counterparts. Women are more likely to seek interpersonal experiences in that they are more likely to enjoy the festival because it offers the opportunity to meet new people and spend quality time with family and friends. This study has several limitations, leading to suggestions for future research. Because seeking and escaping motivations have been used relatively little in the festival setting, future researchers should develop a valid scale of personal and interpersonal seeking and escaping motivations specifically for festivals employing both qualitative and quantitative methods. Second, while the data were collected at a single non-traditional festival, future research can use multiple sites to increase the ability to generalize the findings. Third, although this study was limited to Saudi Arabia, further research can apply seeking and escaping motivations, both at the personal and interpersonal levels, to other cultures to extend the applicability of the framework used in this study.

Non-traditional festival managers need to focus on an atmosphere that provides festivities, as many people in the Saudi Arabian culture appear to be escaping from their everyday lives to enjoy themselves and with family and friends. To appeal to male workers, festival organizers and managers need to advertise and market the events’ mood and liveliness overall with photos of workers leaving the office free of stress and looking forward to attending an event. To appeal to women who desire unique experiences that a variety of forms of entertainment provide, event managers must ensure that the entertainment is innovative and creative, and differs from what other festivals provide to attract more female attendees. Also, festival planners must focus on events that incorporate the family unit and promote the opportunity to meet new people to appeal to women in Saudi Arabia.

This is the first study to examine gender differences in festival motivations in Saudi Arabia. The relaxation of the historically strict and conservative cultural values, coupled with the country’s desire to develop its tourism and event sector, provides an ideal opportunity for future research. The authors hope that this research will stimulate further interest in the country with the goal to develop and market its tourism sector and products on the world’s stage.

The geographic information systems (GIS) sector is witnessing significant growth in recent times at the global level and in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at the same pace. In this research, the authors aim to measure the GIS market employability in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the required skills of those seeking GIS employees, existing knowledge and abilities of graduates of relevant academic programs and gaps, if any, between the graduates and the labor market requirements in terms of GIS. Research on GIS education and GIS employability from an information system perspective is scarce; thus, this study is needed.

In this study, a questionnaire was distributed manually and electronically to a specific group of GIS students, teachers and employees. The questionnaire was prepared in Arabic and English language. It was distributed manually to the attendees of the 12th GIS Symposium, organized by Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University at Dammam city, Saudi Arabia in April of 2018. The event is a yearly one that gathers local GIS community and outside speakers and guests. An electronic version of the questionnaire was also available and distributed via personal contacts. Responses were received until the end of 2019.

The results of 107 respondents indicates good GIS foundation (for example in topology, geospatial data processing and cartography); however, programming and business skills (namely cost benefit analysis, organizational perspective and business understanding) are lacking from Saudi GIS graduates. About 67% of respondents acknowledge directly that it is difficult to find locally qualified GIS graduates. Moreover, 55% of respondents classify GIS job candidates as underqualified. This research identifies under qualification in business competencies and computer programming skills for GIS students and workers in Saudi Arabia. This research did not find a statistically significant different response between GIS teachers and GIS employees/employers; however, students’ response was significantly different from these two groups.

Research on GIS education and GIS employability from an Information System perspective is scarce; thus, this study is needed. Moreover, research about this topic in Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Gulf is almost nonexistent.

The paper aims to provide empirical evidence of the impact of IFRS adoption on the value relevance of accounting information in the emerging market of Saudi Arabia.

The sample consists of 98 non-financial listed firms operating in Saudi Arabia from 2014 to 2019, representing the years before and after IFRS adoption. The authors apply basic and extended price models to examine the value relevance of select accounting figures.

The authors findings provide evidence that accounting information is, generally, value relevant to the Saudi Arabian capital market. However, mixed results exist for particular accounting variables. Both earnings and cash flows are value-relevant in the period before and after IFRS adoption; equity is only relevant in the post-adoption period. Furthermore, IFRS adoption also increases the explanatory power of earnings. An increase in the value relevance of earnings and equity hurts the value relevance of cash flows. The effects are moderated by leverage and dividend policy.

The authors contribute to the ongoing discussion of the economic effects of IFRS adoption in emerging markets. The empirical findings show that initial concerns about IFRS adoption, as reflected by the negative coefficient within the regression analysis, are mitigated once the usefulness of the individual accounting variables published in financial statements is investigated.

This study aims to extend the literature by extensively investigating the impact of foreign exchange and interest rate changes on the returns and volatility of bank stocks in Saudi Arabia, which is the largest dual banking industry.

This study employs the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model on stock returns of four fully Islamic Saudi banks and eight conventional Saudi banks.

The results showed that the foreign exchange rate return has a positive impact on Saudi conventional bank returns, while it has an adverse impact on Saudi Islamic bank returns. Moreover, a higher interest rate return has a positive impact on Saudi bank stock returns implying that the assets side is more sensitive to changes in interest rates than the liability side. Finally, higher foreign exchange and interest rates volatility increases the volatility of Saudi bank returns, where the former has the largest significant impact. Therefore, Saudi regulators should pay more attention to the risk management of their banks because this could threaten the stability of their financial system.

To the best knowledge of the author, this is the first study that tries to extensively analyze the joint impact of foreign exchange and interest rates on bank stock returns and volatility in Saudi Arabia by applying the GARCH model. The study uses a long data set from 2010 to 2019 that includes all Saudi banks and employs four measures of interest rates to increase the robustness of the results.

The purpose of this research is to identify the constraints and restrictions and their impact on the construction projects in Saudi Arabia from three key participants' perspectives for the planning stage.

Using a descriptive-analytical approach, this research described and analyzed the frequency and severity of failure factors in construction projects in the planning stage using a five-Likert scale questionnaire in Saudi Arabia construction between 2019 and 2020. A total of 100 experts from contractors, consultants and owners were included in the study.

The findings have shown that time dispute was the major factor affecting the projects to be failed. Similarly, cost overrun and total abandonment have an impact on project failures. The findings have indicated that government officials were involved in delaying the projects while contractors also failed in the project deliveries.

Further research is needed to investigate the relationship between failure characteristics and project success measures in the same stage, in addition to, factors of failure for construction projects' life-cycle stages.

The findings have indicated that government officials were involved in delaying the projects while contractors also failed in the project deliveries.

This paper investigates professional translation practice in Saudi Arabia with a particular focus on translation ethics. Following an examination of varying opinions and contentious concepts relating to translation, this paper suggests that Saudi Arabia should establish a code of ethics for translation services. It investigates the ethical challenges that translators encounter during their professional work and considers their responses to these challenges.

A quantitative methodology was adopted to collect data from forty participants. This self-completed survey uncovered 11 ethical dimensions that translators encounter during the translation process and the researchers used descriptive analysis to calculate the mean and standard deviation of their frequency and importance. Participants' responses to the multiple-choice questions were categorised as personal, professional ethics or sociopolitical activism, and their overall percentages calculated.

For all 11 dimensions, the mean scores fell in the mid-frequency range between 2.74 and 3.88, inferring that the respondents faced these ethical challenges neither particularly frequently nor infrequently. Regarding the importance rankings, the mean scores varied between 1.58 and 2.04, consistently lower than the experience frequency rankings, which indicates that these challenges were considered important regardless of their frequency. The majority (40.27%) related to professional notions of ethics, followed by personal ethics (35.22%) and sociopolitical and activist conceptions of ethics (24.14%), while less than 1% (0.37%) reflected mixed motivations.

The study's concept and methodology are both novel. The researchers believe that this is the first study to examine professional translation ethics in the Saudi context. Unlike most studies in this field, this study adopted a quantitative approach, thus calling for the development of an effective professional code of ethics for translators.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the behavior of self-disclosure among Saudi women and men in an attempt to understand gender differences in language. The study also gives insights about the cultural norms and how they affect language production.

The author utilized Levi-Belz and Kreiner's (2019) three-dimensional tool of self-disclosure; namely, the HOW MUCH dimension, the WHAT dimension and the HOW dimension. The HOW MUCH dimension is measured through word count of self-disclosure and the duration of self-disclosure in spoken discourse. The WHAT dimension is measured through analyzing the topics, emotions and social actors that are discussed during self-disclosure episodes. The HOW dimension is measured through examining the acoustic features of self-disclosure such as intonation, loudness and fluency.

Saudi women tend to engage in more self-disclosure than Saudi men, and their self-disclosure tends to be longer and more detailed. Women also tend to use more intonation variability and softer loudness, reflecting the cultural norms of politeness and reservation. Both genders tend to use similar frequencies of positive and negative emotion words in their self-disclosure, with positive emotion words correlating more with personal self-disclosure and negative emotion words with self-disclosures about loss, failure, conflict, rejection and uncertainty. The data also show that the use of reflective verbs leads to more authentic and empathetic communication and that pronoun use correlates with the type of emotional experience being discussed.

This study has limitations due to a small sample size. Future research should use larger and diverse samples to explore self-disclosure in Saudi televised interviews comprehensively. The study focused solely on televised interviews; future research can examine self-disclosure across various media platforms. Findings have practical implications for Saudi media and policymakers. Understanding self-disclosure in interviews can guide content creation, fostering open communication. Presenters consciously act as role models, influencing Saudi youth, emphasizing the role of positive self-presentation.

This study utilized Levi-Belz and Kreiner's (2019) three-dimensional tool of self-disclosure in a way that could be used for other languages and cultures. The study examines the Saudi cultural norms in self-disclosure, which has never been tackled before.

The purpose of this paper is to answer the following two questions: Will Saudi Arabia get older? Will its pension system be sustainable?

The methodology/approach is to forecast KSA’s population with wavelet analysis combined with the Burg model which fits a pth order autoregressive model to the input signal by minimizing (least squares) the forward and backward prediction errors while constraining the autoregressive parameters to satisfy the Levinson-Durbin recursion, then relies on an infinite impulse response prediction error filter.

Spectral analysis projections of Saudi age groups are more optimistic than the Bayesian probabilistic model sponsored by the United Nations Population Division: Saudi Arabia will not get older as fast as projected by the United Nations model. The KSA’s pension system will stay sustainable based on spectral analysis, whereas it will not based on the U.N. model.

Spectral analysis will provide better insight and understanding of population dynamics for Saudi government policymakers, as well as economic, health and pension planners.