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The purpose of this paper is to examine organizational leadership in a traditional, non-western country where citizens’ happiness drives the practices of the public administration managers.

This study uses the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) to examine leadership in a traditional, non-western country where organizational change dominates the public sector. Triangulation of quantitative and qualitative research methods is used.

Triangulation of quantitative and qualitative research methods reveals that the way managers respond to organizational change leads to utilizing an adaptive leadership style; a mixture of dynamic and rigid practices. Organizational change creates peculiar circumstances that make it thus imperative for managers to mix transformational and transactional practices in order to not only survive, but also excel. While some of the findings conform to those of previous studies, they indicate that the MLQ does not seem to adequately reflect the impact of organizational change on leadership. The study also provides evidence that adaptive leadership is driven by cultural and organizational necessities.

The limitations of the study can be avoided in future research. In particular, the number of interviews has limited the ability to better reflect all dimensions of the adaptive leadership style. Due to time and resource availability, the inability to focus more on the individual level of the cultural factor and its impact on leadership style may have limited the scope of the analysis. Finally, the present study did not examine the cultural variations within the United Arab Emirates universal culture especially in relationship with region, age group, and gender of the managers.

The paper examines leadership in the Middle East context where rare studies in leadership have been conducted. The study also examines the usability of MLQ in Arab context where organizational change persists.

The study adapted the Career Decision Making Difficulties Questionnaire for the Arab world. The purpose of the study was to test a popular but scientifically unverified belief that people who were employed could experience less CDD.

Career Decision-Making Difficulties Questionnaire was administered to a sample of 500 university students to analyze CDD among full-time and part-time students and examine whether employment status determines to what extent they experience these difficulties. Univariate and bivariate analyses were used.

Employment status had no statistically significant effect on students' perceptions of CDD; 6 demographic variables were significantly correlated with CDD (gender, age, income, university grade-point average, satisfaction with the current major and social status); and students had dysfunctional beliefs about the career decision-making process, lack self-awareness, and had inconsistent information about internal and external difficulties.

Universities should design adequate career interventions before and after graduation and employers should implement human resource policies that reduce CDD and their negative impact on the workplace. Other methods of data collection and analysis could also be useful in the future, such as interviews. While scope of the study was acceptable, comparing countries and public versus private institutions could produce valuable findings.

The study tested and validated ACDDQ which could be used as diagnostic instrument to design career interventions and training programs. Employers need to allocate resources in the recruitment process to help potential recruits to understand the nature of work, processes, and requirements. Educators need to provide better coaching and career education for students, especially those in senior years.

Understanding career decision-making difficulties and factors that influence them will influence long-term human resource management, especially productivity, turn over and job satisfaction.

The study examined the important issue of difficulties in making career decisions among two groups of university students. With more employees go back to college for more education, it was not clear in the literature how career decisions might differ between the two groups. The issue was under-researched, especially within Arab countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the multi-dimensionality of women managers’ turnover in the United Arab Emirates. The study argues that several factors besides public policy influence turnover.

A special survey was developed and administered to a convenience sample of 298 local women managers in both sectors. Descriptive statistics, Cronbach’s alpha, Pearson and multiple regression analyses were used.

The empirical analyses provided support to the multidimensionality of turnover. In addition, turnover was predicted by a model of eight factors (adjusted R² = 0.456), namely, economic needs, quality of work life, leadership type and practices, social needs, marital status, organisational satisfaction, organisational commitment and public policy.

The study was rich, empirical data were gathered and analysed along with qualitative literature. Gender remains salient in organisations as human resource policies alone are incapable of retaining women in leadership. Limited sample size and convenience sampling method may limit the generalizability of the findings.

Workplace conditions complement human resource policies; hence, the success of the latter relies on the success of the former. Economic incentives remain significant to motivating managers and retaining women in leadership jobs.

Human resource management policies, such as Emiratisation, cannot be successful without empowering women.

The originality of this paper is drawn from using first-hand data to examine the multi-dimensionality argument of turnover in addition to the advancement of gender studies in leadership and management. The study also provided evidence that rationality (i.e. economic means) remains important to retain women managers.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is one of the few countries where nationals make up less than 20 percent of the total population and less than 2 percent of the workforce. Hence organizations in the public and private sectors are highly diverse in terms of their employees' nationality, language, religion, race, and gender. The purpose of this paper is to examine how employees perceive human resource diversity and what they consider successful diversity to be.

The main research instrument is a questionnaire which measures diversity in human resources. Exploratory factor analysis, multiple regression, and descriptive statistics were used in order to analyze 795 survey responses.

The findings reveal that perception of human resource diversity in the UAE vary by employees' gender, educational level, nationality, professional experience, job level, previous experience in diverse workplace, and second language competency. Analysis of employees' responses helped to construct a four‐factor model, which can be utilized to improve diversity practices in organizations.

Although the literature on the UAE is limited, the study proposes four factors needed to achieve perceived successful diversity practices: legal, personnel, bureaucratic, and political factors. Researchers are encouraged to use comparative approaches to test the proposed model.

The study offers important insights for researchers and practitioners of human resource management in the UAE.