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The purpose of this study is to focus on Israeli Beduin school teachers and examine the nature of their satisfaction with the job, perception of organizational climate, and their interaction. The 185 elementary school teachers included in the study are predominantly Israeli Arabs, expected to function within a modern organization and become change agents to the Beduin pupils. Job satisfaction has been measured by twenty‐three items, resulting in two major factors: task issues and interaction with other people. Organizational climate includes fifty‐four items, condensed into two factors: principal‐teachers relations, and negative feelings about the school's atmosphere. The effect of climate on satisfaction was examined in two separate regression models, one where the dependent variable is the task aspect of satisfaction, and the other is the human relations aspect. Climate factors have been found to have a strong and meaningful explanatory power only in the former satisfaction model. The latter has an overall weak explanatory value. Throughout the analyses, the role of principal‐teachers relations appears to be dominant.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the Islamic work ethic (IWE) and individualism among Arab college students in Israel, who represent an ethnic and religious minority in a western‐oriented state.

The participants included 837 male and female Arab college students from an academic and a technical college in northern Israel. Most participants (64 percent) were Academic college students. Two measures were used: the IWE and individualism scales developed by Ali. Correlation analysis and two‐way multivariate analysis were used to analyze the data.

There was a strong and highly significant correlation between the IWE and individualism scales. Academic college students scored significantly higher than technical college students on both scales. There were significant interactions between gender and marital status, and college type and year of studies, on the scales.

Within the multi‐cultural context of Arab college students in Israel, the IWE and individualism scales emerged as reliable, practical measures for understanding the work‐related values of Arab college students in Israel.

This study is the first in the published literature to use the IWE and individualism scales among Arab students who were not raised in a homogeneous Islamic cultural context. Although the Arab minority in Israel is exposed to Israeli and Western, as well as Islamic, cultural and organizational influences, IWE scale proved to be highly reliable for this population. The IWE and individualism scales, used together, were uniquely effective for capturing the many nuances of work‐related values in this complex, multi‐cultural context.