Beiting He, Ran An and John Berry
The purpose of this paper is to explore the psychological adjustment process of expatriates from Chinese multinational enterprises, including how their social capital affects this…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the psychological adjustment process of expatriates from Chinese multinational enterprises, including how their social capital affects this process.
Design/methodology/approach
This qualitative investigation was based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 26 Chinese expatriates. The grounded theory method was applied to guide the data collection and analysis.
Findings
The psychological adjustment process of Chinese expatriates includes three periods: crisis, self-adjustment and self-growth period. In addition, bonding capital (including organizational, family and co-cultural colleagues’ support) is more conducive to Chinese expatriates’ psychological well-being than bridging capital (e.g. host-nationals’ support). Finally, a separation acculturation strategy is more conducive to psychological adjustment, rather than an integration strategy.
Research limitations/implications
This study focused on expatriates themselves. Future research should consider other stakeholders (e.g. organizations, family), and examine expatriate adjustment from new perspectives (e.g. strategic human resource management, work-family balance). This study had a small sample and focused on only one organization. Future research could usefully add other Chinese multinational corporations, and other Chinese expatriates to expand the generalizability of the current findings.
Practical implications
This study suggests the possible benefits of management practices for expatriates. Organizations can develop an “expatriate bubble” to help structure basic life overseas. Organizations could develop family-support programs and make them expatriate-supportive. Organizations should also strengthen the connections between expatriates and local colleagues.
Originality/value
Few scholars have elaborated on how different support groups (based on their cultural backgrounds) influence the psychological adjustment of expatriates. Until now, mainland Chinese expatriates have received little attention. In addition, this research takes a significant step forward by illuminating the psychological adjustment of Chinese expatriates from a social capital perspective.
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This study aims to investigate the claim that there is no coherent and homogeneous body of concepts and practices that can be classified as “Islamic accounting”.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the claim that there is no coherent and homogeneous body of concepts and practices that can be classified as “Islamic accounting”.
Design/methodology/approach
The study focuses specifically on Islamic accounting and uses a qualitative historical documentary analysis methodology to study an original manuscript from the 14th century.
Findings
The analysis of the manuscript argues that religious accounting can be seen as a value-based system for achieving social good and that in the context of Islamic accounting, it can be conceptualised as a coherent body of ideas and practices.
Originality/value
Firstly, the study conceptualises Islamic accounting as a homogeneous discipline with its own knowledge, concepts and practices. Secondly, it contributes to current accounting literature by examining an ancient manuscript from the 14th century, which serves as a foundation for understanding the Islamic accounting system within the context of accounting, religion and spirituality. The paper further contributes by arguing that this conceptualisation of religious accounting as a value-based approach enables its practitioners to evaluate their own accountabilities in delivering on socioeconomic objectives related to inter-human/environmental, social and financial transactions within the context of religious accounting practices.
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One of the major exams of leadership skills of a leader is the challenge of managing conflicts within the organization or within society he heads. Perhaps, this is the biggest…
Abstract
Purpose
One of the major exams of leadership skills of a leader is the challenge of managing conflicts within the organization or within society he heads. Perhaps, this is the biggest challenge especially when there is a situation of external threat on that society. In this situation when the leader who is unable to maintain internal cohesion, then the danger is that it will accelerate the breakdown in make it easier for the external enemy to destroy that society. The purpose of this paper is to explore how Jewish tradition, using formative ancient stories, tried to teach us how a leader should behave in a crisis, and how not to behave.
Design/methodology/approach
In this article, the author wants to show how Jewish tradition, using formative ancient stories, tried to teach us how a leader should behave in a crisis, and how not to behave. The rabbis of the Jewish tradition, that had written the Babylonian Talmud, reviewed the defeat of the Jewish people, in 70th as a failure of the leaders. Through the stories that tried to show us the responsibility of leadership, they pointed out the weaknesses of the leaders and saw them as the main person responsible for the loss occurred, when Jerusalem fell. In contrast, other stories show us how other leaders, deserved to overcome a major crisis and come out stronger.
Findings
The author wants to show how stories reveal three models of leadership: a weak and cowardly leadership that enables the growth of terrorist leadership, extreme and dogmatic leaders against tolerant leadership, leadership of nonviolent revolution. The situations in which leadership is being tested are varied. At the time of a great crisis of society at risk, during the siege of Jerusalem, one of the stories takes place precisely in the house, between two people, with the presence of leaders, to show the social disintegration among the common people, and the failure of leaders to build a moral society.
Practical implications
The positive example of overcoming the crisis and conflict, occurs after the destruction of Jerusalem in the Beit Midrash of the survivors in Yavneh. Perhaps the trauma of destruction leads the leaders to resolve the conflict in a nonviolent way.
Originality/value
The author tried to extract from the Jewish tradition the right model for managing crisis and conflict. The sages reflected on the serious crises that had happened to the Jewish people and they claimed that the leadership was the main cause of the failure.
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Khalid Husny Arar and Asmahan Masry-Herzalah
The purpose of this paper is to examine how learning experiences are shaped for Arab Muslim women students by the different educational approaches (teaching style, relations with…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how learning experiences are shaped for Arab Muslim women students by the different educational approaches (teaching style, relations with lecturers and types of knowledge) and extent of cultural pluralism in three different higher education (HE) campuses in Israel.
Design/methodology/approach
To clarify these issues the authors conducted narrative interviews with 12 Arab Muslim women students in the Hebrew University and in two academic colleges. Significant differences were found in the women's experiences between the university and the two academic colleges.
Findings
Arab women had difficulty integrating in the university in contrast to a supportive more familiar environment in the colleges. The different environments also had different implications for the women's identity formation. The findings indicate that since Arab women students have specific needs stemming from their different socio-cultural background, they should be assisted in their integration in academic courses with preparatory instruction and guidance.
Originality/value
Implications for minority students in different HE campuses are discussed.
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Poses the question: what are the consequences of employing a household help on the domestic division of labour? Researches this question by talking to ten couples who employ…
Abstract
Poses the question: what are the consequences of employing a household help on the domestic division of labour? Researches this question by talking to ten couples who employ cleaners. Reports that employing some sort of domestic help has enabled middle‐class women to enter employment in greater numbers than ever before and that it is simply too costly to a family’s economy to have an educated female potential wage‐earner concentrating on unpaid domestic tasks. Refers to a “stalled revolution“, whereby men (theoretically) are carrying out a greater share of domestic tasks but (in actuality) women do not report any great difference. Notes also, that it is increasingly difficult to rely on assistance from relatives. Puts forward reasons for and against the employment of domestic help, as well as four perspectives – the individual perspective, the gender perspective, the general structure of society, and the labour market, and social policy – relating to the consequences of employing a cleaner. Explores “partner‐typology”, determined on a continuum stretching from traditional role‐held beliefs to symmetrical roles for men and women. Concludes that employing domestic help leads to a more equal relationship between the employing couple, that housework is perceived as an increasingly unattractive option, and that new inequalities creep into the gender relationship as it is usually women who perform low‐paid domestic work.
Ali Aumran Al-Thahab and Mohamed Gamal Abdelmonem
Traditional architecture and urban form is a harmonious and interrelated blend of social relations, cultural beliefs and religious principles forming coherent spatial organisation…
Abstract
Purpose
Traditional architecture and urban form is a harmonious and interrelated blend of social relations, cultural beliefs and religious principles forming coherent spatial organisation living in harmony despite diversity of religious beliefs, social class or cultural practices of different communities. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the theoretical background of social cohesion and solidarity in the everyday life of the Mahalla with reference to its religious background in Islam.
Design/methodology/approach
The study of Beit Hadawi and Beit Hammadi el-Hassan as distinct evidences of prominent families within the boundaries of Mahallat El Mahdia in Old Hilla offers an empirical investigation on how values of the past informed and, to some extent, governed the very organic organisation of interlocking residential units in Iraq.
Findings
It investigates the architecture of home and the spatial organisation of Mahalla’s social activities through highlighting the effect of previous factors in creating a responsive environment that sustained its operational mechanism and fluidity over centuries.
Originality/value
This paper examines how previous values, traditions and rituals are behind the organic tissue of traditional quarters and thus providing an effective criterion to be considered when discussing sustainable development or creating a responsive environment in societies with exceptional privacy.
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Kussai Haj-Yehia and Khalid Arar
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the factors that attract (pull) or discourage (push) Palestinian students from Israel (PSI) to study at a Palestinian university, the Arab…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the factors that attract (pull) or discourage (push) Palestinian students from Israel (PSI) to study at a Palestinian university, the Arab American University in Jenin (AAUJ), for the first time since the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative research method using in-depth interviews with 15 PSI who study at AAUJ attempts to define the motivations behind PSI preferring AAUJ, on one hand, and constraints, on the other hand.
Findings
The findings of the study show factors that attract PSI to study at the AAUJ and what subjects they choose to study there, the encounter with a similar culture and nationalism in a Palestinian campus in the occupied West Bank; the most significant difficulties and impediments they face there, whether economic or political, are discussed. This paper contributes to an understanding of the new national re-encounter between two Palestinian groups in a university campus, one under Israel’s occupation and the other that has Israeli citizenship.
Originality/value
It is a unique phenomenon in the trends of international students’ mobility in the world.
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What are the consequences of urban life in an ethno-nationally contested city? How do everyday practices confront municipal strategies that attempt to control such urban…
Abstract
What are the consequences of urban life in an ethno-nationally contested city? How do everyday practices confront municipal strategies that attempt to control such urban situations? Focusing on urban life in which daily negotiation of ethno-national differences occurs, this chapter considers the nuances of urban politics and the use and meaning of the urban space, i.e., the micro-politics and the social dynamic of place-making, and their role in the struggle for urban citizenship in an ethno-nationally mixed city. Discourse analysis and ethnographic encounters define the annual Holiday of Holidays festival in the Israeli–Palestinian neighborhood of Wadi Nisnas as integral to Haifa's strategy for promoting itself as a site of coexistence. The neighborhood serves the entire city in that its “Arab” urban space has become the emblem of that coexistence. This manipulation by the municipality is, however, not reinforced by urban regeneration and heritage management of the local Palestinian community. Nonetheless coexistence discourse is also employed by the residents themselves, suggesting a more nuanced understanding of the role of urban space in promoting the city, as well as of concepts of local identity and citizenship.
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Shahar Gindi and Rakefet Erlich Ron
Attitudes toward minority employees are hard to predict, and there is no enough information about the variables that are associated with increased and decreased prejudice toward…
Abstract
Purpose
Attitudes toward minority employees are hard to predict, and there is no enough information about the variables that are associated with increased and decreased prejudice toward them. The Jewish and Arab education systems in Israel are, for the most part, segregated, which may potentially contribute to prejudice and alienation between the two populations. The integration of Israeli–Arab teachers in Jewish schools has been suggested to reduce prejudice. The current study sought to examine Israeli teachers' attitudes toward the inclusion of Arab teachers in Jewish schools (AJ) and its relation to degree of religiosity, minority status and demographic variables.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 1,644 teachers completed an online 22-item questionnaire that surveyed background variables such as gender, mother tongue, seniority and degree of religiosity, the two independent variables, religiosity and minority status, and the dependent variable, attitude toward the inclusion of AJ.
Findings
Overall, teachers exhibited positive attitudes toward the integration of AJ. Multiple linear regression indicated that among Jewish teachers, the degree of religiosity was the strongest predictor of the teachers' attitudes toward inclusion but was a poor predictor among Arabs. Conversely, minority status was the strongest predictor among Arab teachers but was a poor predictor among Israeli Jews. Not only did religiosity differ in its prediction of attitudes among Arabs and Jews but also the patterns of religiosity were quite different among these two groups.
Research limitations/implications
While the overall sample was wide, the specific minority groups that were examined were small and did not allow deep exploration of minority nuances. The study's generalizability is hampered by the given exceptionality of the Israeli context, where “Church” and State are not separated. Religiosity was examined in a unidimensional way and failed to explore other related factors that may be relevant, such as political inclination.
Practical implications
The study further refutes the notion of commonality among minorities. It proposes to place more emphasis on religion's role in attitudes toward minority employees. Further research into the role of religiosity in Israeli Jews' attitudes toward Arabs is needed.
Social implications
The findings suggest that the degree of religiosity might be a central factor in Israeli Jews' attitudes toward the Arab minority in general.
Originality/value
The research calls attention to the association of Judaism and nationalism as well as segregation, contributing to negative attitudes and prejudice toward the Arab minority. Unlike previous research using contact theory, the authors call attention to the importance of examining willingness to make contact prior to examining the impact of contact itself.
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Yaniv Poria, Richard Butler and David Airey
The relationship between the tourists and the heritage presented has already been identified as important for the understanding of tourist behaviour at the level of a specific…
Abstract
The relationship between the tourists and the heritage presented has already been identified as important for the understanding of tourist behaviour at the level of a specific heritage site. This study seeks to clarify whether tourists' perception of various spaces in relation to their own heritage could give an insight into tourists' decision which heritage site to visit. The findings of the study are based on a survey that examined tourists' visitation patterns to different heritage sites in Israel located within a relatively short distance of each other. The findings support the idea that the perception of the site in relation to the tourists' own heritage lies at the heart of an understanding of tourists' visitation patterns. The contribution to the management and theoretical understanding of heritage tourism is discussed.