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Saudi Arabia recently amended the Labour Law provisions governing the unfair dismissal of employees in the private sector. The previous version of the legislation, which had been in force for many years, had entitled employees to demand reinstatement or make a claim for fair financial compensation equal to the damages sustained. The recent amendments eliminated the right of a dismissed employee to seek reinstatement and also revised the rules relating to monetary compensation. The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse and evaluate the new approach, which has been criticized heavily. In addition, it suggests feasible alternative ways to handle unfair employee dismissal, which can be incorporated into the current Saudi Labour Law.

This paper presents an analysis of the existing approach to dealing with unfair employee termination in the Saudi Labour Law. It is based mainly on information collected from various legal materials, such as books, review of judgments issued by the Commission for the Settlement of Labour Disputes in Saudi Arabia and relevant Islamic rules.

The results of this examination clearly show that there are several flaws in the current approach to dealing with the issue of unfair dismissal of employees. To correct this situation, workable approaches have been suggested for possible consideration and incorporation into the Saudi Labour Law.

To the author’s knowledge, this is the first academic study to analyse the current approach to handling unfair employee dismissal in the Saudi Labour Law.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effectiveness of the Saudi employment programme “Nitaqat” in addressing institutional barriers to women’s employment in the Saudi private sector. The paper has a particular focus on the perspectives of unemployed women as the intended recipients of increased employment opportunities.

This paper adopts a qualitative approach, drawing on findings from face-to-face interviews conducted with two groups of stakeholders, government officials and unemployed Saudi women.

Four key findings are identified. First, the considerable cultural and regulatory barriers of a conservative society are resilient impediments to the success of Saudi employment policy. Second, discrimination against women is endemic in the Saudi society; however, it is largely unrecognised within the Saudi culture and often accepted by women themselves. Third, due to government regulations, cultural constraints and the gendered educational system, the private sector contributes to sustaining labour market segmentation through discriminatory practices. Finally, while a positive change is taking place in Saudi Arabia regarding women’s employment, it is incremental and uneven.

This paper provides new insights into the institutional barriers related to the labour force participation of Saudi women from the perspective of Saudi women themselves.

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, to understand the degree to which the intended outcomes of Saudi’s Nitaqat labour market policy corresponds to the actual responses from private companies. Second, to investigate how these gaps between policy intentions and actual outcomes have informed recent changes to Nitaqat policy.

This paper uses a qualitative approach with a case study design and thematic analysis procedures. Data were obtained from the following three sources: semi-structured interviews completed during the early stage of Nitaqat in 2013–2014 with nine policymakers and 44 key stakeholders from six private Saudi companies; policy documents and gray literature on the aims and effects of the Nitaqat program; and available peer-reviewed literature on the subject.

This paper sets out and analyses the following four main goals of Nitaqat: First, to increase the Saudi national employment rate, second, increase company efficiency, third, improve human resource capabilities, and fourth, increase female labour participation. This paper reveals that although Nitaqat has certainly resulted in a positive change in some of these areas, in other areas, there remain gaps between the intentions and the actual effects of Nitaqat. This paper analyses recent changes to Nitaqat and argues that further changes may be needed to achieve the full goals of Nitaqat.

This paper’s originality lies in its analysis of the aims of labour market policies and organisational responses. It highlights the reasons for disconnections between the policy aims and organisational practices and explores how policymakers react and respond to these implementation gaps.

This study deviates from the predominantly feminist/critical school of thought associated with existing gender studies to apply an interpretivist approach to investigate gender-reporting practices in Saudi Arabia, an Islamic country in the Gulf region and one of the fast-moving emerging economies both in the Middle East and globally. The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent of reporting on gender and the drivers behind this practice using the content analysis method.

This study contributes to the literature by adopting a rarely used three-lens conceptual framework to expand our understanding of reporting on gender in Saudi Arabia. Eleven companies were chosen based on their voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures in Saudi Arabia. The CSR and annual reports of selected companies were analysed using NVIVO Pro 11.

The results indicate that gender disclosures in the Saudi context are driven by legislation, location and international reporting frameworks. Although the number of disclosures increased over time, they were not adopted consistently and systematically because of their voluntary nature.

The first limitation is the disadvantage associated with interpretivism related to the subjective nature of the investigation and room for bias, and hence, the results cannot be generalised. The second limitation is the sample size; future investigations may increase the sample size by including other service and manufacturing sector firms to have more comprehensive insights.

This study contributes to the literature by providing evidence suggesting that in Saudi Arabia, state legislation is the driving force behind reporting on gender issues. Although workplace disclosures dominate, companies are opening dialogues with other stakeholders (especially the community) by disclosing performance data, and thus emphasising their commitment to this social change.

This empirical contribution to the CSR literature will provide rich historical and interpretive data on the emergence of gender transformation in society, and how that is reflected in corporate reports, thus, contributing to the understanding of the purpose of voluntary disclosures.

Employee-related disclosures in corporate reports are very common. However, issues such as diversity and equal opportunities tend to be overlooked. This study explores gender equality and female empowerment disclosures and practices in the emerging market of Saudi Arabia while focusing on whether the social, political and legal changes in Saudi Arabian society have affected these disclosures in corporate reports. There is a lack of qualitative analysis of gender disclosers globally and in emerging economies particularly.

Few studies have explored the work challenges and career barriers faced by women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Drawing on Institutional Theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of employed Saudi women through in-depth interviews.

The paper employs a phenomenological qualitative approach drawing on 12 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Saudi women.

The findings reveal a significant number of prominent societal and organizational structural and attitudinal barriers to the advancement of Saudi women in paid employment. Among others, these barriers include a lack of mobility; the salience of gender stereotypes; gender discrimination in the workplace; limited opportunities for growth, development, and career advancement; excessive workload caused by a lack of family-work balance; and gender-based challenges related to dealing with pregnancy.

Despite the contributions of this study, it also has limitations, particularly the convenience sampling approach and the focus on the KSA. The small sample size means that the findings cannot be generalized to all women employed in Saudi Arabia and should be generalized within Saudi Arabia and other Arab societies only with caution.

The paper contributes to the understanding of work challenges and barriers of Saudi women in the workforce. It provides fresh insights to the issues surrounding women in Saudi Arabia and the need to address them in order to provide support for their career advancement.

The purpose of this paper is to report empirical research conducted in Saudi Arabia on the impacts of organizational policies and practices on the diversity management of the Saudi private sector. To this end, the Saudization policy and views of key respondents have been tested and discussed.

Primary data were collected through questionnaire surveys from the largest 11 private sector organizations listed on the Saudi Stock Market in the financial/banking, oil and gas, petrochemical, private higher education and private health service sectors. Statistical tools such as means and standard deviations and one-sample t-tests were used for analysis.

The findings suggest that Saudization, retention, pay with benefits and health insurance policies significantly affect the diversity management in the Saudi private sector. Therefore, there is a need to develop organizational policies that support the existence of foreign employees for private businesses in Saudi Arabia. Considering differences as strengths that can be utilized to enhance performance, a diverse workforce might better be able to serve diverse markets.

Collecting data from a closed environment such as Saudi Arabia is constrained by access difficulties, as well as inadequate literature on relevant diversity issues. However, the convenience sampling method and snowballing approach adopted in this study generated reliable data. As a result, this study has implications for both the multinational corporations operating in Saudi Arabia and Saudi owned companies operating in the West and intending to adopt and implement diversity management initiatives for branches in different countries. As such, further research on the gulf countries’ diversity management issues would be critical.

The current study is a first survey-based research endeavor on the topic of diversity management in the Saudi context. The findings contribute to the limited knowledge base on middle eastern countries, thus presenting new empirical evidence on the organizational policies and practices of Saudization, retention, pay and benefits and health insurance policies. The study of the Saudi case, thus adds value to the existing knowledge on diversity management.

The purpose of this paper is to examine women managers’ perceptions of forces influencing their career progression to leadership positions in Saudi Arabian higher education (HE).

A qualitative, interpretive approach is adopted for analysing in-depth interviews with women managers in Saudi HE.

The findings of this study provide an in-depth understanding of Saudi women’s experience in management in HE. This study shows that women face a number of challenges preventing them from achieving equitable representation in leadership positions; conversely, they do have some opportunities which help them in their careers. Additionally, it provides more explanation of how the macro factors trickle down to the organizational level to shape organizational process and practices, and have an impact on women accessing leadership positions. Furthermore, this study suggests that socio-cultural background does matter when studying women in management in the Saudi context.

The paper, mainly focussing on women managers in Saudi HE, gives a clear picture of women’s careers and influencing factors.

The research has implications for government and other related institutions to formulate effective policies and appropriate strategies to help Saudi women access leadership posts.

The novelty of this paper is in its focus on the under-researched topic of careers of Saudi women managers. The paper is also valuable as it emphasizes the societal context for researchers wishing to study women’s careers in the Arab world.

The purpose of this study is to examine the moderating role of firm size on the relationship between corporate governance (CG) and intellectual capital (IC) efficiency.

The methodology was a pooled data for three years (2012-2014) for 171 listed firms, resulting in 489 observations.

The findings revealed that the inclusion of firm size as a moderating variable has influenced positively only the relationship between CG principles and capital employed efficiency (CEE). Further, the finding showed that the two IC components namely, human capital efficiency and structural capital efficiency, tend to be higher with firms that high level of CG adoption. However, CEE tends to be higher with firms that have lower level of CG adoption. Other finding shows that CG index was significant with the three IC components.

Such information will help the stakeholders, investors, decision-makers, regulators, policymakers and scholars to improve their knowledge about IC. Furthermore, it will be useful for firms to place their priorities regarding the internal system and financial plans for effective and efficient use of CG and IC.

This paper explores the experiences of women in Saudi Arabia who have been managed by other women, and examines how junior women perceive senior women's role in advancing their career.

The paper is based on qualitative data gathered using in-depth semi-structured interviews undertaken with 30 women working in Saudi public organisations.

This study's findings shows that the hierarchical relationships between women and their woman manager are complex due to a multifaceted web of contextual factors including sociocultural values, family values, religious beliefs and organisational cultures and structures. These factors shape the quality of relationships between senior women and their women subordinates. Also, this study reveals that there is solidarity and ‘sisterly’ relationship between women in the workplace that plays a role in facilitating women's career development and advancement. In addition, this study shows that despite senior women's having supported other women's career advancement, this support tended to be conditional and limited. This can have an influence on women-to-women work relationships, where such relationships can be described as being disconnected and fragile. Furthermore, the study depict that there is evidence of the existence of ‘Queen Bee’-like senior women who distance themselves from other women and block their career advancement. The Queen Bee phenomena can actually become a form of hierarchy that mimics the patriarchal structure and excludes women from serving at top management levels.

This paper provides an in-depth understanding of the hierarchical relationships between women in the workplace and how these relationships have an influence on women's career advancement. Therefore, the paper makes a valuable contribution to the scarce knowledge that currently exists within the field of management research in relation to women's career development – and the advancement of such research within the Arab Middle Eastern context. Also, the findings of this study could potentially inform practitioners and HR department personnel within organisations about the connections between women's hierarchical workplace relationships and women's career development and advancement.

In recent years, the trend toward entrepreneurship in the emerging ecosystem has grown such that it has become an important driver of economic growth and prosperity. Against this background, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of several personal, cultural and social antecedents on female students’ intentions to become entrepreneurs.

A structural model is used to assess the entrepreneurial intentions of 740 female students enrolled in private and public universities in Saudi Arabia. Through exploratory factor analysis, a set of observables is identified to represent the relationships in the conceptual model, whereas structural equation modeling is used to test the main hypotheses proposed in the study.

Antecedents of entrepreneurial intention were explored based on the theory of planned behavior. The paper extends this theory by incorporating two additional antecedents, namely, university support and fear of failure. The construct of university support was found to have a significant effect on perceived behavioral control, which, in turn, had a positive impact on the entrepreneurial intentions of female students. Further, the multi-group analysis showed no significant difference between female students’ entrepreneurial intentions in relation to where they were enrolled, i.e. public vs a private university.

Given the relevance of our research to the employment market, this study contributes to efforts to realize Saudi Vision 2030. The results constitute valuable information for policymakers in terms of suggesting steps that can be taken to maximize this population’s contributions to the country’s economy, particularly in regard to the educational opportunities that can support entrepreneurship.

Although the literature includes a wide range of studies addressing university students’ entrepreneurship intentions, only a few address the antecedents involved in decisions to pursue entrepreneurship on the part of students in disciplines other than business. Further, despite Saudi Arabia’s new orientation toward empowering women, considerations of entrepreneurship on the part of Saudi women are almost entirely absent from the literature. To that end, this study provides a much-needed analysis of the extent to which female students in Saudi Arabia at public and private universities intend to become entrepreneurs.