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Despite several policies in the Arab Gulf States aimed at promoting women’s empowerment through employment, women’s career progress has not met the expected gains. Workplace empowerment is a critical aspect of women’s economic empowerment. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the factors that contribute to workplace empowerment for women in the Qatari public sector.

This research uses a mixed-methods approach to explore workplace empowerment among female civil servants in the State of Qatar. The study combines surveys (N = 310) and interviews (N = 30) and uses an inductive thematic approach that considers women’s narratives as the primary source of knowledge construction.

The authors’ findings strongly suggest that perception-related factors have a more significant impact on workplace empowerment than structural ones. The results indicate that feelings of disempowerment are influenced by perceptions of gender-based discrimination, poor relationships with supervisors and dissatisfaction with work–life balance. Women feel empowered when they have access to decision-making opportunities and perceive that their workplace supports their professional growth and advancement.

Although this paper focuses solely on women’s perceptions, additional research is necessary to compare the experiences of both men and women regarding workplace empowerment. While individual and organizational factors were examined in this paper, future studies should also consider societal factors. The results highlight the importance of equal and supportive organizational practices and cultures to foster empowerment among women in the workplace, providing valuable insights for policymakers.

This paper addresses a critical research gap on the intersection of gender, work and management in the Middle East. It responds to the need for more diverse contextual research on Arab women’s work experiences and provides methodological diversity by using an exploratory, mixed-methods design with a grounded approach. The study highlights the interaction between structural and psychological factors, emphasizing the gap between policies and resources and women’s lived experiences and perceptions of workplace empowerment.

This paper aims to propose a multi-level integrative research framework anchored in an institutional theory that can successfully capture the multitude of factors affecting the expression of female entrepreneurship in context. Although female entrepreneurship is known to contribute to economic growth and vitality, and to enhance the diversity of employment in any economic system, there is very little research pertaining to female entrepreneurship in the Middle East. The authors use this framework to provide insights into multi-level factors enabling and constraining the experience of female entrepreneurship in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and advance knowledge of female entrepreneurship in a particular Middle Eastern context as well as cross-nationally.

Analytical framework and qualitative research methodology consisting of focus group meetings and interviews with 15 female entrepreneurs and five male partners in the UAE.

Our findings aptly highlight the salience of a complex set of entangled factors lying at multiple levels of analysis in shaping female entrepreneurship in the UAE. Our findings also accentuate the importance of the institutional and social contexts in shaping the situational opportunities and constraints that affect female entrepreneurship and its complex expressions in a particular society. Although our findings document a positive tide of change in favor of female entrepreneurship, they also reveal the persistence of various traces of stereotypes and patriarchy that continue to constrain the free expressions of female entrepreneurship in the UAE.

This study contributes empirically by conveying the lived experiences of a sample of women entrepreneurs in the UAE, but the results cannot be generalized given the limited size of the sample investigated. Conceptually, the analytical framework proposed in this paper represents a simplified heuristic tool rather than an explanatory model of the complex dynamics and interplays between different levels of analysis and institutional pressures when examining female entrepreneurship.

The value added of this research is to present original insights into female entrepreneurship from a vibrant Middle Eastern context, namely, the UAE, a country that has attracted and witnessed increasing attention in recent years in the context of globalization. In view of the Western-centric nature of academic publication on the topic, there is a real need for fresh theoretical and empirical insights stemming from an Arab-Middle Eastern context to advance knowledge and scholarship in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of two aspects of firm performance: financial and business performance and organizational effectiveness, on three dimensions of the strategic decision‐making process, rationality, intuition, and political behavior.

The empirical study goes well beyond the common anecdotal observations or reflections on strategic decision‐making by utilizing a mixed‐methods approach. Based on a multi‐method field study, 286 Egyptian managers who participate in making strategic decisions are surveyed; and 36 semi‐structured interviews are conducted.

The results suggest that strategic decision‐making in high‐performing firms is more rational and less intuitive and political. Interestingly, they also show that organizational effectiveness is a stronger predictor of strategic decision‐making process dimensions than of financial and business performance.

In Egypt, a widespread suspicion of academic research adds to the frequent difficulty of obtaining completed questionnaires from more than one senior manager in a company. Moreover, because of the difficulty of collecting objective financial data, subjective measures are used to gauge performance. Further research should test the generalizability of our results in narrowly defined samples, e.g. the banking industry or the automotive industry.

The results highlight the importance of performance in strategic decision making and seem to support the “culture free” argument advancing the position that cultural differences may not have a significant impact on the influence of performance on the strategic decision‐making process.

Although scholars have posited organizational performance as an important contextual variable influencing the process of strategic decision making, this influence is not well understood or articulated, especially in the Egyptian setting. This paper contributes to filling this gap.

This study aims to polymerize of 1-butyl-3-vinylimidazolium bromide (PIL). PIL was embedded into PVA with a different content ratio by casting method. This research also deals with the effect of adding PIL in different proportions to PVA on the electrical and mechanical properties properties in addition to the morphology of the prepared samples.

1-Butyl-3-vinylimidazolium bromide was synthesized through quaternization and free radical polymerization. The resulting polymer was characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis and differential scanning calorimetry. In addition to the morphology of PVA, PVA/PIL was investigated by polarizing microscope. Also, the effect of PIL content on the electrical and mechanical properties was evaluated.

The findings of this study might lead to new applications for PVA and PILs in electrical and dielectrics. The mechanical results revealed that the tensile strength increased slightly with increasing polyionic liquid (PIL) content and decreased above 10% PIL. While the elongation at break increased significantly with increasing PIL content and begin to decrease above 10% PIL. Also, the electrical property of the poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA)/PIL blends was improved because of the strong plasticizing effect of PIL. Also, the electrical conductivity of these polymer electrolytes is greatly increased. This indicates that the imidazolium-based PIL has an effective approach that leads to an increase in the conductivity of the polymer. The PILs/PVA design will not only enrich the chemical structure but also will contribute to green manufacturing techniques and a processing methodology that enables green membrane manufacture.

This study contributes to green manufacturing techniques and a processing methodology that enables “green” membrane manufacture.