scholarly journals Factors Affecting Decision-Making Processes in Virtual Teams in the UAE

Information ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 490
Author(s):  
Vida Davidaviciene ◽  
Khaled Al Majzoub ◽  
Ieva Meidute-Kavaliauskiene

Organizational reliance on virtual teams (VTs) is increasing tremendously due to the significant benefits they offer, such as efficiently reaching objectives and increasing organizational performance. However, VTs face a lot of challenges that, if overlooked, will prevent them from yielding the required benefits. One of the major issues that hinders the effectiveness of VTs is the decision-making process. There is a lack of scientific research that attempts to understand the factors affecting decision making processes in VTs. Studies in this area have only been done in the United States and Europe. However, such research has not been conducted in the Middle East, where specific scientific solutions are still required to improve the performance of VTs. Therefore, this study is conducted in the Middle East, namely in the United Arab Emirates, to gain scientific knowledge on this region’s specificity. An online questionnaire (Google forms) was used to obtain the necessary data. Hypotheses were developed to test the influence of ICT (Information and communications technologies), language, information sharing, and trust on the decision-making processes, and the effect of decision making on team performance. Structural equational model (SEM) methodology was used to test our proposed model. The results showed that factors such as trust, ICT, and information sharing have a direct effect on decision-making processes, while language has no effect on decision making, and decision-making processes have a direct effect on the performance of the VTs.

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-306
Author(s):  
Seyed Hossein Mousavian ◽  
Salman Ameri

Abstract This Policy Insight article argues that a growing security partnership between Russia, Iran, China, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria (rictis) will push the Middle East into an era of bipolarity. The paper demonstrates that rictis has significant convergence on regional security issues, and that these interests are distinct from those held by the American Security Camp, a collection of states that include the United States, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates. The paper also argues that rictis has military and energy advantages that allow it to confront the American Camp’s regional dominance. Our analysis demonstrates how rictis might help deter unilateralism and democratize regional decision-making.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 6917
Author(s):  
Vida Davidavičienė ◽  
Khaled Al Majzoub ◽  
Ieva Meidute-Kavaliauskiene

The development and use of information and communications technology (ICT) are growing at a rapid speed across the world. ICT has been the cause for new types of work arrangements, such as virtual organizations, virtual teams, teleworking, etc. Virtual teams provide organizations with competitive advantage by enabling them to hire talented people across the world and eliminating the need for physical availability in the office. However, one major issue hindering the productivity of the virtual team is knowledge sharing. The lack of proper knowledge sharing between team members may cause organizations to fail with regards to the implementation of successful strategies. The research into understanding knowledge sharing in virtual teams (VT) in the Middle East is lacking. While such studies have been done in the United States and Europe, the Middle East has been overlooked. In this study, the authors assume that there are some specific behavioral aspects of VT in the Middle East that create the need for specific scientific solutions. Accordingly, this study was conducted in the Middle East in order to gain scientific knowledge on the region’s specificity. The objective of this article is to create a model for the evaluation of the effect on knowledge sharing in virtual teams in the Middle East. For analysis, the selection of companies includes United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based companies in the IT industry whose businesses engage in VT. The results show that the following factors have a direct effect on knowledge sharing in VT: Culture, motivation, conflict, ICT, trust, and leadership. Conversely, the results do not demonstrate that language has any impact on knowledge sharing. The methodology used is as follows: Literature review, survey methods, and structural equation modeling.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7007
Author(s):  
Habtamu Nebere ◽  
Degefa Tolossa ◽  
Amare Bantider

In Ethiopia, the practice of land management started three decades ago in order to address the problem of land degradation and to further boost agricultural production. However, the impact of land management practices in curbing land degradation problems and improving the productivity of the agricultural sector is insignificant. Various empirical works have previously identified the determinants of the adoption rate of land management practices. However, the sustainability of land management practices after adoption, and the various factors that control the sustainability of implemented land management practices, are not well addressed. This study analyzed the factors affecting the sustainability of land management practices after implementation in Mecha Woreda, northwestern Ethiopia. The study used 378 sample respondents, selected by a systematic random sampling technique. Binary logistic regression was used to analyze the quantitative data, while the qualitative data were qualitatively and concurrently analyzed with the quantitative data. The sustained supply of fodder from the implemented land management practices, as well as improved cattle breed, increases the sustainability of the implemented land management practices. While lack of agreement in the community, lack of enforcing community bylaws, open cattle grazing, lack of benefits of implemented land management practices, acting as barrier for farming practices, poor participation of household heads during planning and decision-making processes, as well as the lack of short-term benefits, reduce the sustainability of the implemented land management practices. Thus, it is better to allow for the full participation of household heads in planning and decision-making processes to bring practical and visible results in land management practices. In addition, recognizing short-term benefits to compensate the land lost in constructing land management structures must be the strategy in land management practices. Finally, reducing the number of cattle and practicing stall feeding is helpful both for the sustainability of land management practices and the productivity of cattle. In line with this, fast-growing fodder grass species have to be introduced for household heads to grow on land management structures and communal grazing fields for stall feeding.


Author(s):  
Robin Blom

Whereas some news outlets fully identify crime suspects with name, age, address, and other personal details, other news outlets refuse to fully identify any crime suspect—or even people who have been convicted for a crime. News media from a variety of countries have accused and fully identified people of being responsible for crimes, although those persons turned out to be innocent. Yet, when someone types the names of those people in online search engines, for many, stories containing the accusations will turn up at the top of the search results. This chapter examines the positive and negative aspects from those practices by examining journalistic routines in a variety of countries, such as the United States, Nigeria, and The Netherlands. This analysis demonstrates that important ethical imperatives—often represented in ethics codes of professional journalism organizations—can be contradictory in these decision-making processes. Journalists need to weigh whether they would like to “seek truth and report it” or “minimize harm” when describing crime suspects.


2005 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 626-633 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. C. Lambert ◽  
M. A. McColl ◽  
J. Gilbert ◽  
J. Wong ◽  
G. Murray ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 160-161
Author(s):  
Jeff VanDenBerg

In November 2017, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) sponsored the fourth annual Undergraduate Research Workshop in Washington, D.C. Organized by MESA's Committee for Undergraduate Middle East Studies, the workshop provides an opportunity for talented undergraduate students to present their scholarship in a professional context. Participants are selected through a competitive application process, and, since the program's inception have come from universities in Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, France, and across the United States.


2007 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 587-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafik I. Beekun ◽  
Ramda Hamdy ◽  
James W. Westerman ◽  
Hassan R. HassabElnaby

Author(s):  
Jenna Tyler ◽  
Abdul-Akeem Sadiq ◽  
Douglas S. Noonan ◽  
Rebecca M. Entress

AbstractTo reduce flood losses, floodplain managers make decisions on how to effectively manage their community’s flood risks. While there is a growing body of research that examines how individuals and households make decisions to manage their flood risks, far less attention has been directed at understanding the decision-making processes for flood management at the community level. This study aimed to narrow this research gap by examining floodplain managers’ perceptions of the quality of their community’s flood management decision-making processes. Data gathered from interviews with 200 floodplain managers in the United States indicate that most floodplain managers perceive their community’s flood management decision-making processes to be good. The results also indicate that communities participating in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Community Rating System, as well as communities with a higher level of concern for flooding and a lower poverty rate, are significantly more likely to report better flood management decision-making processes.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1402
Author(s):  
Jason A. Hubbart

Best management practices (BMP) are defined in the United States Clean Water Act (CWA) as practices or measures that have been demonstrated to be successful in protecting a given water resource from nonpoint source pollution. Unfortunately, the greatest majority of BMPs remain unvalidated in terms of demonstrations of success. Further, there is not a broadly accepted or standardized process of BMP implementation and monitoring methods. Conceivably, if standardized BMP validations were a possibility, practices would be much more transferrable, comparable, and prescriptive. The purpose of this brief communication is to present a generalized yet integrated and customizable BMP decision-making process to encourage decision makers to more deliberately work towards the establishment of standardized approaches to BMP monitoring and validation in mixed-use and/or municipal watersheds. Decision-making processes and challenges to BMP implementation and monitoring are presented that should be considered to advance the practice(s) of BMP implementation. Acceptance of standard approaches may result in more organized and transferrable BMP implementation policies and increased confidence in the responsible use of taxpayer dollars through broad acceptance of methods that yield predictable and replicable results.


Author(s):  
Jessica D. Blankshain

The study of foreign policy decision-making seeks to understand how states formulate and enact foreign policy. It views foreign policy as a series of decisions made by particular actors using specific decision-making processes. The origins of this focus on decision-making are generally traced to the 1950s and 1960s, with the literature increasing in complexity and diversity of approaches in more recent decades. Foreign policy decision-making is situated within foreign policy analysis (a subfield of international relations subfield), which applies theories and methods from an array of disciplines—political science, public administration, economics, psychology, sociology—to understand how states make foreign policy, and how these policies translate into geopolitical outcomes. The literature on foreign policy decision-making is often subdivided based on assumptions about the process by which actors make foreign policy decisions—primarily falling into rational and nonrational decision-making; about who is assumed to make the decision—states, individuals, groups, or organizations; and about the influences believed to be most important in affecting those decisions—international factors, domestic political factors, interpersonal dynamics, etc. While much of the literature focuses on foreign policy decision-making in the United States, there have been attempts to apply models developed in the US context to other states, as well as to generate generalizable theories about foreign policy decision-making that apply to certain types of states.


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