Nabil Sultan

Free University (Amsterdam) · Servant Leadership Centre for Research & Education (SERVUS)

Wasta is a way of social networking, of using connections, overcoming personal and/or family dilemmas or conflicts. Wasta may provide solutions to dilemmas in societies that had or still have limited opportunities for progress and economic development. This phenomenon has important implications for business networking, especially for indirect and g...

There has been a great deal of discussion on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) since 2012 (considered by some as the year of the MOOCs). The emergence of MOOCs caused a great deal of interest among academics and technology experts as well as the general public. Some of the authors who wrote on MOOCs predicted it would be the next big thing to dis...

The world is increasingly becoming an uncertain and unpredictable place for both individuals and governments. High oil prices have enriched many nations and impoverished others while the environment suffers in the process. Then, out of nowhere, came the global financial crisis to add more pressure and uncertainty to a world bruised by wars, divisio...

The term “cloud” is often described as a metaphor for the Internet (which is commonly illustrated as cloud drawings in many information and technology [ICT] textbooks). Some people, however, ascribe the name to Google’s CEO (Eric Schmidt) who, in a 2006 conference, was said to have called the new emerging ICT service model “cloud computing”

Internationalisation has greatly altered the international economic positioning of many developing nations in heralding challenges for cross-cultural management in subsidiary operations. One region that presents challenges to international businesses is the Arab World; yet along with this, opportunities have been presented to increase understanding...

The digitalisation of management education has increased rapidly in the last decade. Modern technologies transform the way teachers and learners view and experience their classroom. More often, teachers offer a variety of online gateways, serving their management students in their learning process. With the fast development of Massive Open Online C...

The emergence of cloud computing represents a new paradigm of servitization, where a physical product (software or hardware) is transformed into a service.

Early literature on sertivization was focused on the necessity and rationale for the need to create value by adding services to products. This approach regarded services as additional offerings to core (often physical) products. However, recent writings on the subject of servitization recognize that a service can also replace the main product itsel...

Since its establishment in 1996 Al Jazeera has established a formidable reputation for the reliability and the (largely) uncensored nature of its news, the professionalism of its staff and the quality of the programmes it airs. The channel increasingly became a source of annoyance to many regimes in the Arab world which had relied for many years on...

There has never been a more disruptive innovation in the IT landscape such as cloud computing since the emergence of the Web in the early 1990s. This IT delivery service has the potential to change many aspects of organizations’ operations, thinking, culture, work and their ability to control global warming. With the increasing ubiquity and pervasi...

Disruptive innovations such as cloud computing and the Web are impacting many aspects of organisations’ and people’s lives in many parts of the world. The economic attraction of cloud computing’s cost model (e.g., pay as you go) has made it particularly attractive to many organizations in the current global and gloomy economic environment and many...

Growth patterns in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries suggest that demand for energy in this region is likely to increase in the years to come and this situation ultimately means that more of the region’s natural resources will need to be devoted to meeting this demand. For some of the GCC countries, the option to meet future power demand...

There has never been a more disruptive innovation in the IT landscape such as cloud computing since the emergence of the Web in the early 1990s. This IT delivery service has the potential to change many aspects of organizations’ operations, thinking, culture, work and their ability to control global warming. With the increasing ubiquity and pervasi...

The problem of poor academic writing among British university students is a major cause of concern for universities and their tutors; and it is also of concern to employers struggling to recruit individuals able to communicate clearly and accurately. This article reports on a study designed to highlight some of the reasons for the lack of writing s...

Organizations, of all types, live in an increasingly dynamic world. Much of this dynamism is generated by developments or innovations in technology, especially information and communication technology (ICT). Some organizations take advantage of this dynamism and create new products and business models and thrive. Others ignore it or take a long tim...

During the last decade, the GCC countries embarked (and continue to do so) on massive infrastructural programs aimed at diversifying their economies and creating job opportunities for their citizens. Many of the GCC countries were beginning to realize, however, that the state alone can no longer guarantee or provide jobs for the increasing number o...

In the past few years, the GCC countries have treated this issue of alternative sources of power with some urgency and have created various programs to address this issue. Since 2006, some of the GCC countries began to focus on the potential of nuclear energy as a viable solution (World Nuclear Association 2011a). The peaceful usage of nuclear ener...

E-learning is an umbrella concept for self-paced or instructor-led online learning in and outside schools worldwide. E-learning refers to computer-enabled transfer of skills and knowledge. It concerns a variety of electronically supported learning and teaching activities. The information and communications technology (ICT) and the Internet serve as...

Cloud computing is an emerging new computing paradigm designed to deliver numerous computing services in ways that have not been experienced before. It is increasingly being viewed as a utility-oriented computing service. There are even speculations that it has the potential to be the 5th utility (after water, electricity, gas and telephony).This c...

Virtualization is a technological breakthrough that has brought about innovations and redefined the way we look at hardware and software. It has made it possible to consolidate hardware and software resources and benefit users from the individual to large scale enterprises. In this article we discuss how hardware and software resources can be utili...

As well as being a major producer of energy sources (e.g., oil and gas) the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region is also a major consumer of energy. This is due to a number of factors such as rapid economic and infrastructural projects, very warm climates and increasing demands for desalinated water. Growth patterns in the GCC countries suggest t...

Cloud or utility computing is an emerging new computing paradigm designed to deliver numerous computing services through networked media such as the Web. This approach offers several advantages to potential users such as " metered " use (i.e., pay-as-you-go) which offers scalability, online delivery of software and virtual hardware services (e.g.,...

Our world is swamped with information. Some of it is solicited and some is not. A great deal of that information is useful or potentially useful, both for individuals and organizations. By the same token, a great deal of the information that hits our computer or TV screens that vie for our attention is useless at best. There is every indication to...

Organizations, of all types, live in an increasingly dynamic world. Much of this dynamism is generated by developments or innovations in technology, especially information and communication technology (ICT). Some organizations take advantage of this dynamism and create new products and business models and thrive. Others ignore it or take a long tim...

Since 2007, cloud computing has emerged as a computing paradigm that is likely to change many of the traditional ways of delivering computing services to people and organisations. Many organisations, small and large, have embraced it because of the advantages it promises in terms of flexible cost structure, scalability and efficiency. However, is c...

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have embarked on very ambitious plans to reduce the reliance of their economies on oil and gas. The high price of oil during the last few years provided them with the needed ammunition to achieve that objective. Some of those countries took steps to position themselves as the future world centres for fin...

Cloud computing is an emerging new computing paradigm for delivering computing services. The approach relies on a number of existing technologies e.g., the Internet, virtualization and grid computing. However, the provision of this service in a pay-as-you-go way through the popular medium of the Internet renders this computing service approach uniq...

There is a great deal of excitement in the computing and business communities nowadays about the prospects of cloud computing, the new computing service utility. This paper will highlight the type of services that are provided by cloud computing and describe how this new computing paradigm can offer organizations, especially SMEs, the opportunity t...

No one can doubt that many Arab organisations are run (to a large extent) on management principles based on Western theories. After all, many of those organisations exist in Arab countries which were under colonial rule (of one type or another) for a very long time and consequently inherited the Western culture of running a business which is largel...

Educational establishments continue to seek opportunities to rationalize the way they manage their resources. The economic crisis that befell the world following the near collapse of the global financial system and the subsequent bailouts of local banks with billions of tax payers' money will continue to affect educational establishments that are l...

In a post oil era the empowerment of women in the Gulf states is important for the regions future economic and social development. While women have made significant gains in senior executive roles, both in public and private institutions in western economies, this is not the case for all global regions. This paper provides a critical review of wome...

In this paper we examine the strengths and weaknesses of the argument that the post-oil era in GCC countries can be founded upon the " knowledge economy ". Globalisation is the current master macroeconomic paradigm that conditions the response of multinational organisations to the external environment. Knowledge Management is a framework that incre...

The Arab Gulf countries are embarking on massive real estate and educational programmes designed to meet the challenges of the post-oil era. The ambitions of their leaders was fuelled by massive returns from the sale of oil whose price in the last few years witnessed dramatic increases not seen even during the oil shocks of the 1973/74 and 1979/80....

Sizable migration of workers from North Yemen to other Gulf nations, beginning in the 1960s and continuing through the 1980s, produced a large influx of funds into the nation in the form of workers' remittances. This produced a general rise in living standards and improved balance-of-payment statistics, but also greatly increased corruption as poor...