Socio-cultural capital in the Arab workplace: wasta as a moderator of ethical idealism and work engagement
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-05-2021-0227 |
| Published date | 19 August 2022 |
| Date | 19 August 2022 |
| Pages | 21-44 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
| Author | Abraham Stefanidis,Moshe Banai,Grace K. Dagher |
Socio-cultural capital in the Arab
workplace: wasta as a moderator of
ethical idealism and
work engagement
Abraham Stefanidis
Department of Management, The Peter J. Tobin College of Business,
St. John’s University, New York, New York, USA
Moshe Banai
Baruch College, The City University of New York, New York, New York, USA, and
Grace K. Dagher
Department of Management Studies, Adnan Kassar School of Business,
Lebanese American University, Beirut, Lebanon
Abstract
Purpose –This study refines theory of social capital by nesting it within a cultural context. More specifically,
it aims at describing, explaining,and predicting the role of wasta, a social capital concept, as a moderator in the
relationship between employees’ethical idealism and work engagement in Lebanon.
Design/methodology/approach–Based on a survey questionnaire translated from English into Arabic, 317
responses were collected from employees in Lebanon. Confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression
analysis were employed to test the hypothesized relationships among the examined variables.
Findings –Ethical idealism was found to be positively related to work engagement, and wasta was found to
moderate the relationship between ethical idealism and work engagement. Work engagement levels of
employees who displayed high levels of ethical idealism were less influenced by the negative effect of wasta
than work engagement levels of employees who displayed low levels of ethical idealism.
Practical implications –Human resource managers, international negotiators, and global executives in
Lebanon may use the findings of this study to update corporate human resources systems, such as employee
recruitment and selection, handbooks, orientation, training programs, and performance appraisal, to better
address employee attitudes toward the practice of wasta.
Originality/value –The study adds ethical idealism as an antecedent of work engagement, demonstrating
the significant impact that wasta, with its positive and negative characteristics, has on the engagement of
employees from the Arab world.
Keywords Arab world, Ethics, Social capital, Social networks, Wasta, Work engagement
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Wasta, a form of networking that may be interpreted as personal connection, contact, hookup,
nepotism, and cronyism, plays a significant role in business relationships in Middle Eastern
and other Arab countries. It could be considered as informal social capital used to gain
preferential access to business transactions, jobs, and economic resources. Wasta has been
found to have both positive and negative implications. It provides preferential access to
government officials, traders, and jobs to those who are “connected”and deprives those who
are not connected. As such, it is worth testing the impact of wasta on individuals’
organizational attitudes, clarifying its context-related conceptualization, thereby improving
social capital theory. The purpose of this study is to explore the moderating role of wasta on
Socio-cultural
capital
21
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0142-5455.htm
Received 30 May 2021
Revised 1 February 2022
6 May 2022
13 July 2022
Accepted 14 July 2022
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 45 No. 1, 2023
pp. 21-44
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-05-2021-0227
the relationship between ethical idealism and work engagement, refining social capital theory
by nesting it within the cultural context of Lebanon.
Social capital is defined as “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are
linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of
mutual acquaintance and recognition–or in other words, to membership in a group–which
provides each of its members with the backing of the collectively-owned capital, a “credential”
which entitles them to credit, in the various senses of the word”(Bourdieu, 1986, p. 21). A
culturally universal mechanism considered to be social capital is “social networking”, which
consists of formal and informal relationships in all aspects of life, including in business,
through which individuals exchange resources (Putnam, 1995).
Social capital has been studied at three levels: national-level, firm-level, and individual-level.
At the national level, social capital influences the economic development and growth of both
organizations and societies (Knack and Keefer, 1997). At the org anizationall evel,social cap ital
facilitates the creation and sharing of new intellectual capital –capital thatgives organizations
advantages in the market (Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998). Consequently, social capital has the
potential to introduce a reduction in transaction costs and to enhance resource exchange and
product innovation within and between organizations (Tsai and Ghoshal, 1998).
At the individual level, social capital is bartered in interpersonal relations where individuals
try to secure economic, political, and social assets (Adler and Kwon, 2002). The common aphorism
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”sums up much of the conventional wisdom
regarding social capital (Woolcock, 2001). The basic idea of individual level social capital is that of
one’s social network that consists of family members, friends, and acquaintances, who constitute
an important asset and can be enjoyed for their own sake, called upon in a crisis and leveraged for
material gain. Social capital is composed of networks of relationships characterized by trust and
reciprocity. It can be conceptualized by social network size as well as strength and types of
relationships (Abbott and Reilly, 2019). The concept has been studied as a mechanism that can
influence mental distress (e.g. Berry and Rickwood, 2000) and career management (e.g. Abbott
and Reilly, 2019;Al-Twal and Aladwan, 2020), among others.
There is criticism of social capital theory. Fine (2002) describes the concept as
“fundamentally flawed”.Gannon and Roberts (2020) argue that there is a mismatch
between theoretical coverage of the concept and empirical work. Haynes (2009) claims that it
is impossible to measure social capital, that the concept suffers from circularity which makes
it a tautology, and that the possibility for positive or negative outcomes makes it context-
dependent. Bourdieu (1986) and McShane et al. (2016) suggest that some of the theory’s
aspects, such as social networks, roles, and rules are objective, but aspects such as norms,
trust, and shared understanding are subjective. Similarly, Bourdieu (1986) notes that the
theory includes both cognitive and pre-cognitive aspects, as the background context for
knowing and acting in social settings is partly pre-reflective. Last, Woolcock (1998) observes
that social capital can be rational, pre-rational, or even non-rational. Despite its limitations,
social capital theory has been used to describe, explain, and predict various social and
economic phenomena.
A culturally universal mechanism considered to be social capital has been “social
networking”. The extant literature includes examples of cultures that name informal social
networking differently, for example, Guanxi in China and Protektzia in Israel, but carry the
same meaning. A major form of networking that plays a role in Middle Eastern and other
Arab countries, with its effect being extensively present in all facets of the Arab workplaces
(Tlaiss and Kauser, 2011), is that of w
asit
_a(In Arabic: ﻭﺍﺱﻁﺓ ).
The term wasta stems from the Arabicroot for “middle”or “medium”.It indicates that there
is a middleman or “connection”between somebody who wants a job,a license, or government
service and somebodywho is in a position to provide it (Ramady,2016, p. 7). It has also been
translated as “going in-between”(Smith et al.,2012,p.335)or“nepotism”(Ramady, 2016). It
ER
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