The Role of Brand Orientation in Developing a Learning Culture and Achieving Performance Goals in the Third Sector Organizations

ABSTRACT

This study is first in nature to find the empirical evidence of relationship between brand orientation (BRO), learning orientation (LO), and its impact on Performance (PERF) of third sector organizations (TSOs) in Pakistan. A structured questionnaire was filled through non-probability snowball sampling method from more than 300 senior managers working in different cities of Pakistan. The structural equation model was used for the mediation by running smart partial least squares software. The results prove that organizations with strong BRO philosophy not only help to develop strong LO culture but also help in achieving organizational performance goals. The study also discussed practical implications, limitations, and areas of future directions.     

Beliefs About Wife Beating Among Arab Men from Israel: The Influence of Their Patriarchal Ideology

Despite the recent increase in public and professional interest in the problem of wife beating in Arab society, in Israel, and in the rest of the Arab world, there is a serious lack of empirical research on different dimensions of the problem in those societies. This paper presents the results of a survey conducted among a systematic random sample of 362 Arab husbands from Israel, in an attempt to examine the contribution of patriarchal ideology toward explaining their beliefs about wife beating. Although about 58% of the participants indicated that there is no excuse for a man to beat his wife, 15–62% still justified wife beating on certain occasions (e.g., adultery, failure to obey husbands, disrespect for parents and relatives). In addition, although the participants tended to perceive abusive and violent husbands as responsible for their behavior, 52% still expressed understanding of that behavior and, on some occasions, 23–43% even blamed the wife for violence against her. Regression and multiple regression analyses revealed that over and above the participants' age and level of education, their masculine sex-role stereotypes, negative and traditional attitudes toward women, nonegalitarian marital role expectations, and familial patriarchal beliefs were the most significant predictors of beliefs about wife beating. Implications of the results and limitations of the study are also discussed.     

The Shi'a of Saudi Arabia: a minority in search of cultural authenticity

This article focuses on the transformation of Saudi Shi'a resistance from one which centred on military confrontation in the 1980s to one which invokes searching for cultural authenticity (al‐asala al‐shi'iyya) in the 1990s. Today the struggle of the Shi'a for equal status among the Sunni majority draws attention to the attempts of Shi'a intellectuals to write their own regional history. Shi'a intellectuals and opposition leaders deconstruct official representations of themselves and provide alternative historical narratives which anchor their community in Saudi history and society, thus dismissing suggestions that they are a non‐indigenous community. This article examines Shi'a historical narratives in an attempt to understand the transformation in their struggle against discrimination in Saudi Arabia.     

Getting Ratees to Accept Performance Feedback: A Relational Approach

This paper seeks to understand the association between ratees’ relational justice perceptions and their feedback acceptance, both directly and through leader–member exchange (LMX). The paper also examines the moderated mediation effect of supervisory trust. The paper presents the findings of two studies. Study 1 utilized two data sets collected through an online survey from 280 part-time students working full-time (Sample 1) and 292 working professionals (Sample 2) in Pakistan. Study 2 utilized data collected from N?=?167 students recruited for a scenario-based experiment that manipulated whether a manager was fair or unfair. Results revealed that relational justice positively predicted feedback acceptance in Studies 1 and 2. LMX positively mediated the above-mentioned relationship in both studies. As expected, supervisory trust negatively moderated the relational justice–feedback acceptance relationship in Study 2. The present study contributes to performance management theory and practice by illuminating that raters can stimulate performance partnership by employing a relational justice approach that increases the likelihood that employees accept performance feedback.

     

Tawfi¯q al-Haki¯m and the West: A New Assessment of the Relationship

There is a considerable body of imaginative literature in Arabic, particularly fiction, which is devoted wholly or in part to the treatment of the theme of the cultural encounter/clash between East and West. Tawfi¯q al-Haki¯m is credited with the authorship in 1938 of the first novel in Arabic (Bird of the East) dedicated to this subject, and to the popularization of the notion, already current at the time, of the spirituality of the East and materialism of the West. Earlier in 1933 Haki¯m had propagated the same notion, albeit as a subsidiary theme, in his famous The Return of the Spirit. Haki¯m has also spoken on the subject in many of his collected essays and interviews. The present article reassesses comprehensively his approach to the issue, revealing inherent selfcontradictions, and comes to the conclusion that his central claim was nationalist posturing rather than genuine belief.     

Beliefs about Wife Beating among Medical Students from Turkey

The paper presents a study conducted among 173 Turkish medical students, which examined their beliefs about wife beating through a self-administered questionnaire. An integrative conceptual framework was tested as the basis for explaining the students’ beliefs. The results revealed that between 4.5 and 38.7% of the participants justified wife beating, between 3.5 and 5.3% of them tended to believe that battered women benefit from beating, and between 4.7 and 28.5% of them tended to believe that battered women are responsible for their beating. In addition, between 68.4 and 90.6% of the students expressed willingness to help battered women, and although nearly half of them perceived the violent husbands as responsible for their behavior, only about one-quarter of them supported punishing violent husbands. The results also indicate that significant amounts of the variance in students’ beliefs about wife beating can be attributed to their patriarchal ideology toward family life and to their exposure to family violence during childhood and adolescence. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the results for future research, theory development, and training of medical students. Both authors contributed equally to this paper. The order of the names does not indicate seniority of either author.     

Young Chinese consumers' brand perception; the role of mianzi as moderator

The basic purpose of this study was to investigate the role of exposure and past experience on consumers' brand perception, as mediated by three variables (perceived quality, brand recall, and satisfaction) and moderated by mianzi. Using data collected from a survey of 331 customers, brand perception models for two diverse kinds of products (high and low involvement) were tested. SmartPLS structural equation modeling was applied to produce models for both types of products. Exposure and experience significantly influences brand perception in different product categories, which suggests that customers perceive both high and low involvement. Our study also established that mianzi has a significant moderating role in high‐involvement product category. Ultimately, the findings suggest significant differences in the brand perception of product types with respect to mianzi and the mediational role of perceived quality and satisfaction, providing a structure for future research on brand perception.     

Rohingya Boat Refugees at Bay of Bengal and Obligations of the South East Asian States Under Soft Law

Liverpool Law Review - The 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol are the only binding international instruments under which the parties of the instruments agree to protect refugees....