Psychological underpinnings of intrafamilial computer-mediated communication: A preliminary exploration of CMC uptake with parents and siblings

This preliminary study investigates the uptake of computer-mediated communication (CMC) with parents and siblings, an area on which no research appears to have been conducted. Given the lack of relevant literature, grounded theory methodology was used and online focus group discussions were conducted in an attempt to generate suitable hypotheses for further empirical studies. Codification of the discussion data revealed various categories of meaning, namely: a perceived inappropriateness of CMC with members of family of origin; issues relating to the family generational gap; the nature of the offline sibling/parent relationship; the non-viability of online affordances such as planned self-disclosure, deception, identity construction; and disinhibition in interactions with family-of-origin members. These themes could be molded into hypotheses to assess the psychosocial limitations of CMC and to determine if it can indeed become a ubiquitous alternative to traditional communication modes as some scholars have claimed. © Copyright 2011, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc

A point of view: can a narrative imagination approach to the business curriculum contribute to global citizenship and sustainability?

The impact of technology and globalisation, sustainability, and global citizenship now feature as dominant motifs within the global business narrative. This represents a broadening of the corporate..

Business communication needs: A multicultural perspective

How should we teach international business communication? What role can multiculturalism play in the business communication classroom? Can we identify a set of business communication requirements that are valid across different cultures? This article enters this discussion by presenting a small empirical study of the business communication needs expressed by postgraduate students in a North Cyprus university and comparing it to similar studies conducted in the United States and Singapore. The findings reveal some interesting correspondences between the needs expressed by students in these different countries. In addition, the multicultural environment of the North Cyprus university studied suggests that multicultural interaction increases students\u27 sensitivity to the need for a nonethnocentric approach to international communication. The findings also indicate that respondents in multicultural settings may be more inclined to engage in groupthink because of their heightened awareness of cultural differences and their wish to avoid conflict. © 2007 Sage Publications

Legitimising Emirati women’s expanding economic agency via narratives of the past

Purpose The aim of this study is to investigate the highly dynamic cultural landscape relating to economically active Emirati women who are supported by government policy but may be exposed to some societal disapprobation. Design/methodology/approach Narrative methodology is used to explore how women respond to the perceived discord between their economic agency and enduring traditional norms associated with women. Findings Results indicate that a prevailing discursive mode within participants’ narratives is that the working woman is not at all a new phenomenon in their society but has always been a feature of Emirati history. Originality/value This study’s contribution to theory building is its demonstration of how traditional Arab Islamic values and modern state policy are being combined in a way that blurs the apparent dichotomy between tradition and modernity

Emirati women’s liminal economic agency: Gendered space within modernity and tradition

This dissertation explores Emirati women's liminal economic agency in the rapidly modernising Arabian Gulf country, the United Arab Emirates. This study represents a complex research area in which elements of modernisation such as women's increasing educational and professional qualifications are materialising against a cultural landscape traditionally characterised by domestic women, their financial dependence on men, and gender segregation. I employ a variety of methodologies to investigate the new spaces that are being moulded by the contradictory forces of modernisation and traditional values associated with women. The theoretical framework of my research is based on three intersecting analytical lenses, namely, space, the Islamic conceptualisation of gender, and localised Islam. The conceptual frame of space is important as the backdrop of state policy and traditional gender norms is creating fluctuating, liminal spaces which influence the development of new agencies for Emirati women. The Islamic conceptualisation of gender is of vital importance as it is influential in determining the nature and degree of agency that women can validly assume. The conceptual lens of localised Islam permits the researcher to trace how Islam is reinterpreted both individually and collectively within phases of substantial socio-economic and national change as is the case in the United Arab Emirates. This compilation thesis comprises a synthesis and four individual studies. The first study maps the area of my research which is the evolving space of women's economic agency, a space interactively contoured by empowering gendered state policy and restrictive gendered cultural traditions. These two potencies mutually influence the potential for positions of change for women. The second study explores how Emirati women are enacting leadership both in terms of self-reported behaviours and employee perceptions. Given the traditional cultural subordination of Emirati women, it was considered valuable to investigate how they assume positions of organisational power. The results of this study reveal highly contextualised enactments of leadership through the merger of state policy encouraging the rise of women to leadership roles and patriarchal subordinations of women. The third study investigates women employees in the public sector and finds that women have considerable sense of agency generated by their state-endorsed belief that they are contributing to national development. Its findings also reveal that young women regard the workplace as an important extra familial social setting in which they can independently forge personal relationships. The fourth study employs the conceptual lens of localised Islam to explore women's discursive legitimation of their economic agency in terms of Islamic dogma and their attribution of objections to this agency as deriving solely from cultural traditions. Research in the geopolitical setting of my study, an affluent nation with an Islamic heritage aiming to establish itself as a global political player, provides a valuable addition to research on the mutual constitution of gender, culture, and nation in the global south. The contribution of this research is that its findings add to the reframing of transnational gender studies as it illustrates that freedoms and agencies may exist in very different forms from Western interpretations of these constructs. My identification of a case in which elements of patriarchal subordination fuel greater agency among women leaders demonstrates a highly contextualised relational operation of subordination and agency thus negating the binary of power versus subordination. My four studies illustrate a fluid interpretation of development of state, culture, and gender, and thus problematise the assumption of a dualism of modernity versus tradition