In the name of the national interests: Foreign policy of Saudi Arabia after the Arab Spring

The paper examines the evolution of Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy in the context of wider changes in the Middle East and in the Arab world triggered by the Arab Spring. The author argues that during this decade the Kingdom’s foreign policy has witnessed a fundamental transformation: the very essence of the Saudi foreign policy course has changed signifi cantly as the political es-tablishment has substantially revised its approaches to the country’s role in the region and in the world. Before 2011, Saudi Arabia — the land of the ‘Two Holy Mosques’ — positioned itself as a representative of the international Muslim community and in pursuing its foreign policy relied primarily on the religious authority and fi nancial capabilities. However, according to Saudi Arabia’s leaders, the Arab Spring has plunged the region into chaos and has bolstered the infl uence of various extremist groups and movements, which required a signifi cant adjustment of traditional political approaches. Saudi Arabia, more explicit than ever before, has declared itself as a nation state, as a regional leader possessing its own interests beyond the abstract ‘Muslim Ummah’. However, the author stresses that these new political ambitions do not imply a complete break with the previous practice. For example, the containment of Iran not only remains the cornerstone of Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy, but has become even more severe. The paper shows that it is this opposition to Iran, which is now justifi ed on the basis of protecting the national interests, that predetermines the nature and the specifi c content of contemporary Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy including interaction with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), approaches towards the solution of the Israeli-Palestinian confl ict, combating terrorism, and relations with the United States. In that regard, the transformation of Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy has, on the one hand, opened up new opportunities for strengthening the Kingdom’s interaction with Israel, but, at the same time, has increased tensions within the framework of strategic partnership with the United States. The author concludes that currently Saudi Arabia is facing a challenge of diversifying its foreign policy in order to increase its international profi le and political subjectivity.

A Collaborative Cybersecurity Education Program

This chapter presents an implementation of a cybersecurity education program. The program aims to address some issues identified in current cybersecurity teaching in higher education on a European level, like the fragmentation of cybersecurity expertise or resource shortage, resulting in few higher education institutions to offer full degree programs. As a result of the Erasmus+ strategic partnership project SecTech, the program tries to overcome those issues by introducing collaborative development to cybersecurity education. SecTech lays the foundations for a collaborative education program, like the definition of a clear content, module and delivery structure, and the appropriate tool support to facilitate collaboration and content reuse. Additional effort is required to achieve long-term success, including the creation of a community that drives the content creation and maintenance, as well as an independent governance structure to steer the project in the long-term. While the project focuses on European collaboration, a global community is envisioned.

Design, building and validating a measuring scale for the supply chain management practices of industrial organizations by assessing their efficiency on SCM measures

The aim of this study is to design, build and validate a scale for the measurement of Saudi industrial Organizations' SC Management Practices (SCMP), and also to evaluate its efficiency at various SCM measurements. The analysis identified 20 constructs of (SCMPs) based on a comprehensive literature review; namely Strategic Partnership of Suppliers (SPS), Customer Relationship (CR), Information Sharing (IS), Information Quality (IQ), Postponement (PST), Agreed Vision and Goals (AVG), Sharing of Risks and Rewards (SRR), Lean Manufacturing (LM), Total Quality Management (TQM), Organizational Culture (OC), Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Benchmarking and Performance Measurement (BPM), Agile Manufacturing (AM), Outsourcing (OUT), Just In Time Manufacturing (JIT), Green SC Management (GSCM), Reverse Logistics (RL), Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), and SC Integration (SCI), and four SCM performance structures in particular namely; Flexibility Perspective (FLP), Efficiency Perspective (EFP), Customer’s Perspective (CSP), Product Innovation Perspective (PIP). A survey tool based on the existing literature was developed and relevant data were collected from 351 Industrial Saudi organizations on this tool. In the data analysis the validation of the instrument is mainly carried out with confirmatory factor analysis in terms of unidimensionality, durability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, nomological validity, and the associated validity criteria. A parsimonious instrument that makes an important contribution to the SCM literature is generated by the results of this research. The instrument will allow an enterprise to incorporate various SCMPs, to keep track of the implementation status, and then to evaluate SCM performance to the SCM dimensions.

Petrha+

Role play and simulated patients are tools frequently used in undergraduate physiotherapy courses to help students gain familiarity with what they will find in future real-life encounters. However, these approaches have limitations when it comes to delivering diversity and repetition to a large number of students and are mostly bounded to the school's premises. Web-based virtual patient software can help to overcome these shortcomings as they equally require students to go through most of the steps of the physiotherapy process, and simultaneously offer unlimited diversity of cases and repetition opportunities and can be delocalized from physical schools. PETRHA + is an Erasmus+ strategic partnership of European high education institutions aiming at the improvement of a web-based serious game prototype designed to enhance physiotherapy students' clinical reasoning using virtual patients. The objective of this chapter is the presentation of the background context that led to the development of the serious game, its design features, functions, and ongoing and future developments.

The OSCE in the Era of a Threat to the European Security ‒ Challenges and Prospects

The article analyses the fundamental research “Multilateralism in Transition: Challenges and Opportunities for the OSCE”, prepared by a team of Swiss experts under the leadership of the renowned Swiss diplomat Thomas Greminger (the Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the OSCE, the UN and the International Organizations in Vienna). The fact that T. Greminger served as Secretary General of the OSCE from 2017 to 2020 gives added value to the research. This created a unique opportunity to combine in the research his vast experience, personal impressions from the observance of the “internal kitchen” of the Organization and his analyses of the main directions of the work of the OSCE. The research focuses on the central problems of the OSCE’s activities- preservation of the European security, prevention and regulation of conflicts, new challenges to the European security, strategic partnership of the OSCE with major international organizations, introduction of modern technologies to the operational activities of the Organization, reformation and modernization of the OSCE’ s management system and operational functions. Special attention is payed to the revitalization of the OSCE Structured Dialogue ‒ the main platform for discussions of the most important politico-military problems and confidence-building measures, exchange of information on current perceptions of threat, military capacity, de-escalation measures, best practices for the prevention and improved management of military incidents. The book contains a positive assessment of the concept of cooperative actions aimed at a collective response to the new challenges to the European security: climate change and environment destruction, impact of technology on the societies, illegal migration, pandemics, cross- border organised crime, cyber threats, nuclear security. The authors of the book consider that the collective security initiative could stimulate trust, convergence of interests of participating states and finally would improve European security through cooperation. They also bring to attention the problems of the longstanding reform of the OSCE through presentation of the ten-point reform agenda, including management reform of the OSCE Secretariat, reform of the budget cycle, information security and automating work processes. leveraging partnerships with international and regional organizations.

Religious Moderation Strategy in The Virtual Era and Its Implication to Improving the Quality of Education

Technology use in education is important to transfer knowledge and solve problems especially during the pandemic situation. Unfortunately, the development of technology has not brought the positive assurance for religious moderation discourse amongst Muslims in Indonesia. One of the risks facing students during independent online learning is that they are exposed to vulnerable and extreme radical teachings. The present study investigated the school’s strategies to safeguard religious moderation policy during online learning. It applied qualitative method using case study. The findings show the application of religious moderation strategies have brought positive impact on educational quality. The strategies required cooperation among several parties including teachers, students, parents. Their strategic partnership is pivotal element to increase educational quality