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This article reports the results of a field study that aims to investigate the differences, if any, that exist between Saudi Arabian and U.S. supervisors, as perceived by their subordinates. It is assumed that any differences that exist are culturally bound and have a positive or negative effect on subordinates by making the work environment pleasant or unpleasant. The findings point to the existence of differences between Saudi Arabian and U.S. supervisors with regard to the subordinates' welfare, claiming subordinates' original ideas, performance evaluation, control, knowledge of the job, willingness to explain job duties to subordinates and motivation. Suggestions have been provided to reduce these differences in the work climate.

This study aims to explore and identify the factors that affect Saudi Arabia's decision concerning the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), and particularly the resistive factors that delay full IFRS adoption. It identifies the way in which Saudi Arabia’s social, political, educational and religious context influence the adoption of IFRS and the delay in doing so.

A mixed methodology is used in this research, including both quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews) data analysis. Whereas, using mixed methods led to enhance the results.

The findings show that globalisation, accounting bodies and political circumstances were found to be positively related to IFRS adoption in Saudi Arabia. In contrast, culture and accounting development were found to have a negative impact on the IFRS adoption. Interestingly, the results showed that religion has no effect on IFRS adoption in Saudi Arabia.

This paper can be of use to both researchers and practitioners interested in investigating more resistive factors that could affect future IFRS adoption in developing countries. Moreover, the findings could be useful to senior managers and legislators in Saudi Arabia firms, in relation to decisions about enhancing the quality of adopting IFRS.

This research provides an important contribution to the existing literature by using a comparative method to present an in-depth exploration of the factors that affect countries, drawing on the framework of the neo-institutional perspective in a developing country.

Cross-cultural studies suggest that while organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and organizational justice have received considerable attention in Anglo-Saxon contexts, the same cannot be claimed in non-Western, Arab Middle Eastern contexts. The purpose of this paper is to attend to this knowledge gap by exploring OCB in the context of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its relationship with organizational justice.

In cognizance of the extant literature, the study explores the perceptions of Saudi Arabian managers of the five conceptually different dimensions of citizenship behaviour – conscientiousness, sportsmanship, civic virtue, courtesy, and altruism. It also explores their perceptions of distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice. In addition, the current study investigates the relationship between organizational justice and OCB. Using the survey questionnaire method, data was collected from more than 250 Saudi managers at different levels of the managerial hierarchy and working in a wide range of organizations and industries.

The results indicate that Saudi Arabian managers reported exhibiting OCB at work. They also suggest the salience of various forms of organizational justice in Saudi Arabian organizations as motivated by Arab cultural values and Islamic teachings. In regards to the relationship between the two constructs, our results indicate that interactional justice is most frequently associated with various dimensions of OCB for various reasons, including the emphasis that Islam and Islamic teachings give to demonstrating respect and courtesy in dealings with others.

The literature on OCB and organizational justice is thin in the Arab world. With that in mind, the current study is the first to explore OCB in Saudi Arabia. It is also the first to investigate the relationship between citizenship behavior and justice in Saudi organizations. The findings of this study highlight the need for academics and human resource experts to account for the role of socio-cultural factors and Islam when examining these constructs in the Arab world. The implications of the findings for academics and practitioners are discussed.

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.

Stafford & Waifs (1985) research focused on delineating what constitutes a social problem. ‘Issues managers’ will benefit greatly from an improved understanding of the characteristics which delineate issues as social problems in the eyes of the public, the public being only one of their stakeholders (e.g. public, customers, suppliers, government, shareholders and employees) Greening & Gray (1994). This research is an international or cultural extension of the Stafford & Warr research on a U.S.A. sample to a Saudi Arabian sample. Saudi Arabia is a distinctly different culture in values and language from the U.S.A. and therefore offers some interesting cross‐cultural contrasts and comparisons with regard to perceptions of social issues. As many organizations go global, they must develop an understanding of what constitutes a social problem within each of the cultures they operate in. The results of this study show significant differences between what Saudi's and U.S.A. citizen's perceive to be social problems/issues. These findings strongly support Stafford & Warr's three part scheme for delineating social issues.

Analyses the Saudi Arabian culture in terms of Hofstede′s four dimensions: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and masculinity. Bases the analysis on a survey of Saudi Arabian MBA students and their co‐workers. Saudi Arabia is a “typical” Moslem country, except for the fact that it scores very high on “power distance”. Discusses the Saudi culture′s consequences in terms of effective management behaviour, intuition, and organizational structures and questions the applicability of American management theories in the Saudi context.

This qualitative research set out to understand what teachers’ assessments were of the context of teaching as it relates to the curriculum, and what they consider appropriate for an optimal teaching and learning experience in a university English language teaching (ELT) context.

Qualitative data were deemed required to understand the effects and understanding teachers had of the ELT curriculum as it played out in their teaching context. Focus group interviews and observations were the main method for data generation.

The context has a bearing on the ongoing development of teachers’ intercultural sensitivity (IS) frames and how they address IS over time in their context of teaching as it pertains to curriculum.

This is an original research paper which gives insight to knowledge about the relationship between ELT, curriculum and culture.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of gender, age and education on new technology implementation in Saudi Arabia, a technologically developing country, using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB).

The research was an empirical investigation based on surveys completed by 1,088 Saudi knowledge workers.

The TPB model performs well in Saudi Arabia. This validation accounts for 37 percent of the variance in behavioral intention among Saudi knowledge workers. For the moderator variables, there were no statistically significant interactions, with the exception of the moderation of perceived behavioral control on behavioral intention by level of education.

Saudi Arabia is an exemplar for many developing nations characterized by distinct intellectual and cultural traditions that differ from Western cultures. Demographic variables (e.g. gender and age) that have been reported to be significant moderators of the influences of attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control on behavioral intention in other cultural samples were found to be non‐significant in this Saudi Arabian sample.

System developers using user‐centered design approaches have different design criteria for the successful workforce adoption of information technology (IT) systems in a technologically developing nation, as compared to the workforce of a technologically developed nation.

This paper validates TPB as a multi‐cultural model for investigating the impact of attitudes, beliefs, and subjective norms on technology adoption, and, in contrast to previous studies, indicates the (non)effects of select demographic moderators on the model using a non‐Western sample.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether visitors’ seeking and escaping motivations influence the cognitive evaluation of a non-traditional festival in Saudi Arabia, which in turn leads to the sense of joy and subsequent word-of-mouth publicity. In Saudi Arabia, leisure and tourism opportunities are limited and many Saudis have a strong desire for new leisure experiences. Although the government and event organizers have made efforts to provide visitors with unconventional experiences at non-tradition-based festivals, these festivals have not attracted many Saudi Arabian visitors.

A quantitative methodology was used based on the on-site data collected from 458 visitors attending the Abha summer festival in Saudi Arabia. A structural equation modeling was used to test the relationships among seeking motivations, escaping motivations, cognitive evaluation, sense of joy and word-of-mouth.

The result reveals that two seeking motivations (i.e. food and entertainment) and two escaping motivations (i.e. diversion and escape) influence cognitive evaluation, which in turn influences their sense of joy and ultimately word-of-mouth. However, novelty, a seeking motivation, does not influence cognitive evaluation.

The authors limited the study of seeking and escaping motivations to one non-traditional festival in Saudi Arabia. Further studies can use multiple festivals to increase generalizability to non-traditional festivals in Saudi Arabia. Another extension of this study would be to examine these motivations in both traditional and non-traditional festivals in Saudi Arabia to assess to what extent visitors’ seeking and escaping motivations are fulfilled in each type of festival.

Diversion motivation is the most important factor for non-traditional festival organizers to consider in developing strategies to attract more visitors in Saudi Arabia.

This paper is the first that applies Iso-Ahola’s motivation theory and the cognitive appraisal theory of emotion in the non-traditional festival setting in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi Organization for Certified Public Accountants (SOCPA) requires that International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), as endorsed in Saudi Arabia, be used by all listed and unlisted companies. This study aims to provide insight into IFRS implementation problems, based on a survey sent to Saudi Arabian companies listed on Tadawul, the Saudi stock market (i.e. financial hub in the Middle East).

The survey focused on the impact that IFRS conversion has had on companies, their accounting and their finance strategies. The benefits and challenges of the adoption of IFRS are analyzed, including matters pertaining to the level of understanding and experience with IFRS, perceptions about the quality of IFRS and the impact of adoption of IFRS on consolidated equity and net income.

The survey had a response rate of 72 per cent. The results indicate a majority of respondents support conversion to IFRS as it results in higher quality financial reporting; the most important expected benefits of adopting IFRS include greater reporting transparency and improved comparability with other businesses; other expected benefits include harmonization of internal and external reporting, and increased cross-border investment opportunities; the IFRS process is costly and ties up resources because of its complexity and training needed and companies expect increased volatility in reported financial results that will impact share option plans and/or other incentive plans tied to profits. However, the authors find strong support among preparers of the financial statements for IFRS, as evidenced by higher agreement among respondents to the survey on the benefits of adopting IFRS, rather than on the costs of its adoption. Furthermore, the analysis shows that the likelihood of Saudi Arabian firms that are in favor of adopting IFRS decreases if the audit firm is one of the Big 4. The reason for this negative relationship could be that the cost of transition toward IFRS will be high. Therefore, Saudi Arabian firms will not favor a transition toward IFRS when their audit firm belongs to the Big 4. Most difficult to implement IFRS, as listed by respondents, include those on financial instruments, revenue, leases and employee benefits.

The authors show how economic and environmental factors play a critical role in the IFRS implementation process. This study should be important to all countries worldwide that are in the process of adopting IFRS.