The effect of financial inclusion on Banks\u27 credit risk: perspective from MENA region

Financial inclusion is aimed at introducing the undeserved segment of the community to the official financial institutions. It is without doubt that financial inclusion is one of the sustainable development goals to raise the poor\u27s living standards by availing banking services that are not limited to loan acquisition. In this respect, this study aims at testing the relationship between the most used financial inclusion indicators and the ratio of the provision for loan losses to net loan as a proxy for credit risk. Using the Least Square Dummy Variables (LSDV) as estimation equation for non-linear model, it is found that borrowing from financial institutions or through credit card in labour force affects credit risk negatively. Meanwhile debit card ownership affects credit risk positively. Applying these results on the MENA region as the thesis\u27s geographic scope, the countries the most affected by credit risk as a result of financial inclusion programs are Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, UAE, and Yemen. Moreover, post the addition of the longevity effect to the regression equation, these countries need to accumulate enough reserve for loan losses for at least three years. In the light of having two opposing teams in the literature, the thesis is more inclined towards the team supporting financial inclusion as having a positive effect on banks\u27 stability but on the long term

Inclusive/exclusive talent management, responsible leadership and organizational downsizing

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on three Egyptian public business schools in an attempt to explore the effect of inclusive/exclusive talent management on the organizational downsizing of academics and the mediating role of responsible leadership. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 330 academics were contacted and given a set of questionnaires. After three follow-ups, a total of 240 responses were collected with a response rate of 72.73 percent. Multiple regressions were employed to show how much variation in organizational downsizing can be explained by inclusive/exclusive talent management and responsible leadership. Findings: The findings highlighted a very weak statistical association between academics’ inclusive talent management and organizational downsizing, whereas a strong statistical association has been discovered between exclusive talent management and organizational downsizing. Statistical analysis showed that responsible leadership has no role in mediating the relationship between inclusive/exclusive talent management of academics and their downsizing. Research limitations/implications: The authors have focused on only three Egyptian public business schools, the matter that may limit opportunities to generalize the results of this study to private business schools and other faculties in Egypt. Future research could use a double source method. Practical implications: By preparing a set of academic competences, business schools will be able to classify their academic staff into talented and non-talented, and accordingly they can initiate their tailored downsizing strategies. Furthermore, undertaking a responsible strategy of downsizing, which includes and is not limited to justifying the need to decrease academic staff numbers to guarantee post-redundancy care practices for laid-off academics may alleviate many of the negative psychological, societal and economic consequences of downsizing. Originality/value: This paper contributes by filling a gap in HR management and higher education literature, in which empirical studies on the relationship between talent management and academics’ organizational downsizing have been limited until now. This may create better research opportunities for cross-disciplinary papers that should be done by HR, higher education and leadership scholars

Responsible management education in time of crisis: a conceptual framework for public business schools in Egypt and similar Middle-Eastern Context

Recent studies show that the adoption of RME scenarios is still a matter of concern for non-western countries ((Mousa et al., Journal of Management Development 38:681–696, 2019), 2021a, 2021b). In this paper, we theoretically propose the potential direction of RME scenarios that business schools in Egypt and other similar cultural context to implement through articulating the main antecedents of RME before and after Covid-19. we used the method of multilevel research by combining different theoretical approaches. As an outcome of our analysis, we developed five propositions which form the main antecedents of RME in Egypt and similar regional Middle East business schools before and after Covid-19

Responsible management education in Egyptian public business schools: Are academics ready?

Purpose – This paper focuses on three out of the 24 public business schools in Egypt in order to investigate how responsible management education is perceived and exercised by academics there. Design/ methodology/ approach – A total of 168 academics were contacted and interviewed in 42 focus groups. The length of each focus group was about 45 minutes, and interviews were conducted in Arabic as most respondents have no mastery of the English language. The authors used thematic analysis to extract the main ideas in the transcripts. Findings – Based on data analysis of the perceptions of academics concerning business education, research and management process at the target business schools, the authors of this paper found that responsible management education is not considered a priority in the work agendas of the three Egyptian public business schools. Besides a lack of general acceptance and awareness of the need for responsible management education, there are functional, procedural and edu-academic barriers that these schools need to overcome first before proceeding with implementation and expecting positive outcomes. Research limitations/ implications – This research maybe subject to criticism because the authors address only the perspectives of academics in the chosen business schools while neglecting other academic partners, particularly those in managerial positions, such as rectors and heads of departments. Future researchers may use the same research questions to investigate a managerial level perspective to depict a more holistic picture of the situation. Moreover, including Egyptian private business schools may also enrich the findings. In fact, the authors suggest that scholars from different academic disciplines such as sustainability management, business ethics, higher education, sustainability and cultural diversity work together to produce more interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research on the global responsibility themes business schools have to manage. Practical implications – If the administration of the addressed business schools seek to implement responsible management education, they should overcome the following barriers. Firstly, the functional barrier (the limited financial budget and need for official approval to address both sociocultural and environmental aspects). Secondly, procedural barriers (lack of channels for formal and/or informal collaborations with governmental bodies, private enterprises, NGOs and social activist groups). Thirdly, Edu-academic barriers (lack of CSR inclusion in business school strategy, faculty promotion and incentives not tied to their proactive embedding of sustainable development and other socio-cultural issues into their curricula, research and academic practices, and no incentive or support for interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary collaboration with researchers and faculty from other departments and faculties). Originality/ value – This paper contributes by filling a gap in sustainability, HR management, business ethics, and higher education literature in which empirical studies on responsible management education and the responsible practices of academics have been limited so fa

Organizational learning, authentic leadership and individual-level resistance to change: a study of Egyptian academics

Purpose – This paper focuses on academics in three private foreign universities located in Cairo (Egypt) to explore the effect of organizational learning on individual-level resistance to change with and without the mediation of authentic leadership.Design/ methodology/ approach – A total of 960 academics were contacted and all of them received a set of questionnaires. After four follow ups, a total of 576 responses were collected with a response rate of 60.00 percent. The author used the chi-square test to determine the association between organizational learning and authentic leadership. Multiple regressions were employed to show how much variation in individual-level resistance to change can be explained by organizational learning and authentic leadership.Findings – The findings highlight a statistical association between organizational learning and authentic leadership. Moreover, another statistical association is explored between authentic leadership and individual-level resistance to change. Furthermore, the statistical analysis proved that having an authentic leadership in the workplace fosters the effect of organizational learning in alleviating individual’s resistance to change.Research limitations/ implications – Data was collected only from academics and did not include rectors and/or heads of academic departments, the matter that may lead to an inflation of statistical relationships. Future research could use a double source method. Moreover, focusing only on private foreign universities working in Egypt diminishes the author’s potential for generalizing his results.Practical implications – The author recommends establishing a unit for knowledge management inside every university. The function of this unit includes but is not limited to examining prospective socio-political, cultural and economic changes/challenges in the surrounding environment and preparing the possible scenarios for dealing with them. This in turn should comprise involvement and learning opportunities for academics work in these universities. The suggested units should also organize monthly meetings between academics and representatives from different Egyptian sectors such as NGOs personnel, CEOs of private and public companies, environmentalists and politicians to address what change those actors seek universities to undertake to guide academics to fulfil their expectations.Originality/ value – This paper contributes by filling a gap in HR management and organization literature in the higher education sector, in which empirical studies on the relationship between organizational learning, authentic leadership and resistance to change have been limited until now

Talent management practices: perceptions of Egyptian academics

Purpose –This paper focuses on three out of 24 business schools in Egypt in order to investigate talent management practices of academics there. Design/ methodology/ approach – A total of 350 academics were contacted and 245 of them were interviewed in 49 face-to-face focus groups. The interview length for each focus group is about 45 minutes and is conducted in Arabic, the mother tongue of all respondents. . Upon conducting the interviews, the authors used thematic analysis to determine the main ideas in the transcripts. Findings – The authors did not detect any systematic approach for the management of academic talent in the chosen public business schools. Instead, there were irresponsible unorderly procedures undertaken by these business schools in staffing, empowering, motivating, evaluating and retaining those talents. Furthermore, the authors realized an absence of many cultural and technical dimensions like adaptability, consistency and knowledge sharing which may hurdle academic staff desires to do their best effort in teaching and conducting research. Moreover, these addressed academic members narrow perception of the concept “talent” that includes only musical and sports figures - the matter that reflects their lack of understanding for one of the hottest concepts in HR academic and practical arenas nowadays. Research limitations/ implications – The focus is only on a single perspective (academics) and a single area (Upper Egypt) - a matter that neglects a variety of views (e.g. minister of Egyptian higher education and schools’ deans). Additionally, the results/ findings of this study cannot be generalized to academic settings in other countries because the data is collected only from public business schools in Upper Egypt. Practical implications – The authors recommend officials in Egyptian public business schools foster constituting academic talents pool which will determine the main academic features, practical characteristics and research focus that academics should address. Moreover, the authors suggest business schools establish continuous academic rapport and feedback reports which would assist in monitoring talented academicians’ level of satisfaction towards their departments’ procedural justice, distributive justice, work-related communication and most importantly, the level of inclusion they feel. Originality/ value – This paper contributes by filling a gap in HR management, in which empirical studies on the practices of managing talents have been limited so far

Multi academy trusts in England: a scenario of cooperation with universities

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the authors’ views of university–multi academy trusts’ (MATs) opportunities for future interconnectivity that could support successful partnerships. Design/methodology/approach: The authors developed a matrix of university–MATs partnerships that could help identifying potential scenarios of collaboration between universities and MATs. Findings: Four potential scenarios of collaborations are proposed (board membership, academic supervision, recruitment support and academic support). Research limitations/implications: Scholars in the field can further investigate the four proposed scenarios in the matrix in future studies. Practical implications: The matrix will be useful for universities and MATs management for potential cooperation in the future. Originality/value: The study proposes four scenarios of cooperation between MATs and universities

Gender, diversity management perceptions, workplace happiness and organizational citizenship behaviour

Purpose/ Aim: The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether females have different perceptions of diversity management and workplace happiness compared to their male colleagues. Furthermore, the paper explores whether diversity management perceptions mediates the relationship between workplace happiness and organisational citizenship behaviour. Design/Methodology/Approach: A total of 260 questionnaire from a number of public hospitals in Egypt were analysed using both t-test and Structural Equation Modelling. Findings/ Results: We found that female physicians perceive diversity management policies/protocols more positively than their male colleagues. Moreover, gender has no or little effect on physicians’ perceptions of workplace happiness. We also found that workplace happiness positively affects physicians’ organisational citizenship behaviour, and finally, diversity management practices can mediate the relationship between workplace happiness and physicians’ organisational citizenship behaviour. Social and practical implications: We believe that managers can raise the feeling of workplace happiness among their staff if they maintain some personal relationships with physicians, care about the physicians’ work/life balance, promote after work gatherings, initiate coffee time talks, encourage open communication practices and more. Originality: The paper is based on the argument that although employees might be happy in the workplace through (engagement, job satisfaction, affective commitment), however their happiness will be unlikely reflected into a positive organizational citizenship behaviour towards their organisation, except (social exchange theory) they feel or perceive (equity theory) the overall practices of diversity management in that organization positively. Thus, studying the mediating effect of perceptions towards diversity management is mainly our contribution

Channel modelling and performance analysis of V2I communication systems in blind bend scattering environments

In this paper, we derive a new geometrical blind bend scattering model for vehicle-to- infrastructure (V2I) communications. The proposed model takes into account single-bounce and double- bounce scattering stemming from fixed scatterers located on both sides of a curved street. Starting from the geometrical blind bend model, the exact expression of the angle of departure (AOD) is derived. Based on this expression, the probability density function (PDF) of the AOD and the Doppler power spectrum are determined. Analytical expressions for the channel gain and the temporal autocorrelation function (ACF) are provided under non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions. Additionally, we investigate the impact of the position of transmitting vehicle relatively to the receiving road-side unit on the channel statistics. Moreover, we study the performance of different digital modulations over a sum of singly and doubly scattered (SSDS) channel. Note that the proposed V2I channel model falls under the umbrella of SSDS channels since the transmitted signal undergoes a combination of single-bounce and double-bounce scattering. We study some characteristic quantities of SSDS channels and derive expressions for the average symbol error probability of several modulation schemes over SSDS channels with and without diversity combining. The validity of these analytical expressions is confirmed by computer-based simulations.Scopu