This study aims to examine the impact of board gender diversity on the level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure in the Arab Gulf states. Also, this research further aims to explore whether the impact of board gender diversity varies across the Arab Gulf states.,Ordinary least squares regression is used in this study to test the impact of board gender diversity on the level of CSR disclosure. Manual content analysis is used to evaluate the extent of CSR disclosure in annual reports, stand-alone CSR reports, sustainability reports and website sections to examine the relationship between the extent of CSR reporting and board gender diversity. This study uses the global reporting initiative (GRI) fourth version reporting guidelines to design and define the classifications of CSR reporting checklist.,The findings show that there is a statistically significant relationship between the number of female directors and the level of CSR disclosure. The results show that board gender diversity is positively associated with the level of CSR reporting in two countries, namely, Bahrain and Kuwait. Also, the findings reveal that there is a weak positive relationship between the presence of women on the boards and CSR reporting index in Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.,This study attempts to fill the gap in the literature, in that no similar study covers the Arab Gulf countries as one economic unit. The study is unique in that it focuses on oil-rich countries. This study is, to the best of this researcher’s knowledge, the first to explore the impact of women’s boards on the extent of CSR reporting, as well as investigating the possible variation of board gender diversity impact on the extent of CSR reporting in the Arabian Gulf region.

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/GM-07-2018-0087/full/pdf?title=the-impact-of-board-gender-diversity-on-corporate-social-responsibility-in-the-arab-gulf-states

The impact of board gender diversity on corporate social responsibility in the Arab Gulf states

In this research, we empirically investigate the impact of the board's female representation on corporate financial and sustainability performance after the introduction of the minimum gender quotas in Italy in 2011 (Golfo‐Mosca Law). We studied the 40 companies of the FTSE‐MIB index for 3 years 2016–2018. Using yearly regression analysis, pooled analysis, and differential analysis, we find that the female involvement on both boards has almost no significant effect on the financial performance; however, a significant association is found with the corporate sustainability performance. The robustness checks using differential analysis confirm the later relationship in which firms that improved female representation had also an ethical score upgrade. Interestingly, we also provide that there is an optimal level of gender quotas that maximizes sustainability performance and beyond that, a negative impact on performance might be detected.

Gender diversity and corporate performance: Emphasis on sustainability performance

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ijmr.12278

Mapping women's involvement in family firms: A review based on bibliographic coupling analysis

Women in the UAE have long been recognized as equal partners in national development and many efforts were taken to pursue empowering women in cultural, social, and economic fields. This systematic review is distinctive; that it synthesizes research on the influence of different factors affecting women leadership/entrepreneurship positions in the UAE. It aims to investigate the key factors affecting the female entrepreneurs and leaders, and to develop a conceptual model on the principal social and cultural factors inducing the success of Emirati women in attaining senior leadership roles or leading entrepreneurs. Moreover, this study proposes a set of new directions for future research venues to address the current dearth of empirical work on women’s leadership in the UAE, despite all the empowering programs and initiatives. It includes articles using quantitative and qualitative methods from different databases like ProQuest and EBSCO. The study reviews databases and selects many high-quality articles to be reviewed using a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria. 23 articles were chosen after removing the duplicated ones. From a practical perspective, this study is important while it summarizes and evaluates all factors affecting women empowering in leadership roles and tries to offer a proper model for a large number of women empowerment drivers within the UAE setting.

Women Empowerment in UAE: A Systematic Review

Background: With the growing expectations from the field of education day by day, increases the importance of effective school leadership. Leadership is the procedure through which the leaders can influence the decision making process and set the goals of the institution. They apply their influence over other behaviors in order to achieve the set goals. The school proves its effectiveness depending on various factors; the principal’s leadership style is the main one. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of the female gender and national culture dimensions on the leadership styles of the Emirati female school principals, as educational leaders, and the relationships that exist among the different variables. Design/ Methodology/ Approach: The researcher employed Explanatory Sequential mixed method approach in two phases for this study. In the first phase, the quantitative data was collected using the MLQ (5X-short) survey and the cultural dimensions survey. In the second phase, the researcher conducted semi-structured interviews and qualitative observations. Results: the findings of the study indicated that the Emirati female leaders tend to be more transformational in their leadership styles while they still practice transactional leadership to a certain degree. The female principals were found to be more “androgynous” carrying the qualities of both male and female leaders. In addition, the leadership styles and their elements proved to have significant relationship to national culture dimensions except for management by exception (active) that has no significant correlation with any of the culture dimensions. Research Limitations & Implications: Future research should include a larger sample size and the perspectives of the followers as well. It is important to conduct the study in different organizational context not only in schools to confirm the finding that women use “androgynous” style in the UAE and beyond. Some recommendations were also provided to principals and policy makers to design and implement policies and professional development for effective leadership, taking into consideration the UAE cultural dimensions. Key terms: Leadership styles, gender leadership, national culture dimensions.

Investigating the Leadership Styles and National Culture of Emirati Female School Principals

This paper aims to form an empirical study, stemming from a Middle-Eastern context, on eliminating gender discrimination and achieving women’s empowerment. It aims to develop a conceptual model on the principal social and cultural factors inducing the success of Emirati women in attaining senior leadership roles and shaping their leadership style to be transformational. Moreover, it examines the comparability and divergence of the accumulated data on the empowerment of Emirati women in an international context from existing international literature.,The design of the study was based on data gathered from face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with four Emirati women occupying the highest leadership positions in various fields, followed by thematic analysis.,Data analysis confirmed the significant influence of the study’s key factors, namely, the role of the national government, Islamic work ethic and family, on the subjects’ empowerment and their adherence to transformational leadership style. However, two new k ey factors impacting empowerment emerged, namely, the influence of rulers’ leadership and the efforts in balancing work/life commitments. The findings led to the development of a study model on Emirati women empowerment and leadership style, reflecting the appropriateness of international literature on the Emirati context. Particularly, it is the social and economic circumstances of the nation supported by policies form the major source of empowerment, in addition to the important role that family capital and business ethics play. Remarkably, the challenges facing Emirati working women ought to be different than the rest of the Middle East.,A dearth of literature pertaining to women’s leadership exists; however, they were mostly carried out within Western contexts that may not be applicable to Arab societies because of cultural and religious differences. The study strives to portray an unambiguous picture to the significant impact of the parenting role and Islam work ethics in relating positively to their daughters and prompt them to develop crucial societal and professional skills, in a country as UAE where expatriates and Westerns dominate the population body. In addition, it shapes the UAE national government as a unique example and role model, to local governments in other Arab states, to learn from regarding supporting women, helping them to achieve excellence. Aiming for feminizing leadership, the Emirati women leadership styles are explored in an attempt to demonstrate the capacities and potentials of Emirati and Arab women in positions of power and influence. It is assumed that this study will help in bringing confidence in Emirati women capabilities, inducing a change in attitudes towards Arab women managers and encouraging employment in non-traditional feminine based jobs.

Feminizing leadership in the Middle East: Emirati women empowerment and leadership style

The rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICT), and the unexpected transition to online teaching due to COVID-19 necessitates that teachers should have the knowledge, competent skills and strategies to integrate digital tools and platforms effectively. Literature suggests however that many teachers do not feel confident enough or lack perceived capability in teaching using advanced technologies in classrooms, and do not have positive self-efficacy beliefs towards their online teaching. Hence, the purpose of this mixed-method study is to investigate teachers' self-efficacy (TSE) in online learning environments amid COVID-19. A total of 150 K-12 teachers from six Arab countries were invited to participate in the study. Quantitative and qualitative data revealed that perceived self-efficacy of online teaching was high. Two main factors, receiving support to design online instruction and receiving professional development in online teaching, significantly predict participants' sense of self-efficacy. Teachers who have previous experience in online teaching scored higher on their self-efficacy than teachers with limited or no experience. Student engagement had the weakest correlation between the four scales with the overall self-efficacy. Parental involvement was discovered through the qualitative analysis to be an emerging factor that could enhance teachers' self-efficacy. Recommendations and limitations are further discussed. 

/pdf/exploring-predictors-of-teachers-self-efficacy-for-online-2vcnryjn.pdf

Exploring predictors of teachers’ self-efficacy for online teaching in the Arab world amid COVID-19

/pdf/organizational-resilience-of-higher-education-institutions-2nmb768y.pdf

Organizational Resilience of Higher Education Institutions: An Empirical Study during Covid-19 Pandemic

This study aims to investigate the World Bank achievements in reinforcing Middle Eastern economies in the light of the Syrian refugees’ crisis. It aims to analyze the influence of the World Bank activities in sustaining and developing a key Lebanese sector under pressure, namely, education.,Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted, followed by thematic analysis of gathered data. The study participants included senior Lebanese World Bank professionals and education experts, who once held major leadership roles in the World Bank.,Data analysis revealed major contributions in human development, substantial governmental support and controlling damaging consequences of the Syrian crisis, which helped in supporting economic stabilization and prevented education sector from collapsing.,The desire of evaluating the World Bank activities in the education sector will help in understanding the World Bank’s role in the development process of the education sector and the associated local government support. In addition, the study seeks to assess governmental performance in adapting the required changes to achieve development and revealing strategies used for refugee crisis. Due to a shortage of relevant studies, this study seeks to fill the associated gap with implications and recommendations guiding educational development in the Middle East, in addition to operational recommendations and indications for further studies in the field.

The impacts of World Bank education programs in alleviating Middle East economies within Syrian refugee crisis

Aim/Purpose: This study, drawing on and extending research on the adoption of information technologies (IT), develops a research model to investigate: (1) the key relative factors that affect the adoption of e-learning versus using IT in traditional classrooms; and (2) students’ relative attitudes and relative intentions to use e-learning systems.

Background: Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education institutions (HEIs) have rapidly adopted e-learning and students are now engaging with e-learning systems. These systems present a new research opportunity for examining the relative efficacy of using e-learning systems versus using IT in traditional classrooms. Although prior research has examined various types of e-learning systems in different contexts and using various methodological approaches, evidence in the literature indicates that the relative efficacy of e-learning remains uncertain as little is known about the factors that affect the adoption and use of e-learning systems during COVID-19, as there is limited academic research.

Methodology: The model is tested based on the perceptions of a group of 569 students of the adoption of e-learning versus using IT in traditional classrooms in the United Arab Emirates. The data were analyzed with IBM SPSS statistics 26 and partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) implemented in SmartPLS 3 software.

Contribution: This research contributes to the literature by: (1) extending the UTAUT model to understand students’ relative attitudes and relative behavioral intentions towards using e-learning systems; (2) an extension to e-learning studies to examine relative factors affecting the adoption of e-learning systems by comparing the perceptions of the same group of students on e-learning and using IT in a traditional classroom environment in the context of COVID-19; and (3) providing valuable practical implications for HEIs to improve pedagogical approaches and e-learning systems.

Findings: The findings suggest that relative computer self-efficacy, relative cognitive absorption, relative system interactivity, and relative system functionality each positively influence both relative performance expectancy and relative effort expectancy, which in turn affect relative attitude; and that relative intention to use is positively affected by relative attitude and relative facilitating conditions.

Recommendations for Practitioners: Firstly, HEIs should feel more confident that e-learning systems indeed provide an appropriate learning approach, demonstrated by a high relative efficacy of e-learning systems perceived by the sample students in this study. Thus, it seems fitting for HEIs to use e-learning systems to enhance the development and delivery of programs and the quality of student experience, especially in the context of COVID-19. Secondly, HEIs wishing to use e-learning systems successfully should at least pay attention to a few key factors to ensure that students will have a positive attitude toward using e-learning systems. Such factors include students’ perceived usefulness of e-learning systems, developing encouraging facilitating conditions such as training, technical and IT support, thereby enabling students to use e-learning systems while enjoying their engagement with e-learning systems.

Recommendation for Researchers: First, this study shows that relative to using IT in a classroom environment, e-learning is favored by the students involved in this research. Second, this research indicates the value of examining relative antecedents and relative UTAUT related constructs, evaluating the relative perceptions of students, thereby understanding the relative efficacy of e-learning systems versus using IT in a traditional classroom environment in HEIs. Third, in addition to examining students’ perceptions of different learning approaches, or comparing the relative efficacy of different learning approaches based on the perceptions of different groups of students, the relative approach based on comparing the perceptions of the same group of students used in this research could offer a new way to advance our understanding of IT adoption. Finally, this study demonstrates that relative attitude, relative performance expectancy, and relative facilitating conditions are the top three vital factors that affect the adoption and use of e-learning systems during the COVID-19 crisis.

Impact on Society: The positive result of the students’ relative perceptions of e-learning systems suggests that private and public organizations, as well as education policy-makers in providing the learning process, could certainly use e-learning systems as a valuable means of training and/or education, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Future Research: First, the result of this study is based on data collected from HEIs in the United Arab Emirates. This work could be extended to other HEIs in other countries. Second, this study uses a non-probability sampling approach to collect data, which may limit the validity of the findings. Thus, probability sampling could be an option for future research. Third, this study focuses on developing an understanding of the key relative antecedents that may affect students’ relative attitudes and relative intentions to use e-learning systems. There might be other antecedents worth including in future research. Other potential future research may include using the relative approach employed in this study to examine IT adoption, or collecting data from a group of learners on different learning approaches for comparative research, which seems germane to comparing the relative efficacy of different learning modes.



Nessrin Shaya

Papers

Feminizing leadership in the Middle East: Emirati women empowerment and leadership style

Exploring predictors of teachers’ self-efficacy for online teaching in the Arab world amid COVID-19

Organizational Resilience of Higher Education Institutions: An Empirical Study during Covid-19 Pandemic

The impacts of World Bank education programs in alleviating Middle East economies within Syrian refugee crisis

Students' Relative Attitudes and Relative Intentions to Use E-Learning Systems