The employability of locals in the United Arab Emirates is a national priority and an integral part of Emiratisation, which is an affirmative action policy of the United Arab Emirates Government that promotes preferential hiring status to Emiratis. The latter safeguards national identity, economic sustainability, and political stability (Modarress, Ansari and Lockwood, 2013). The purpose of this research is to study the work readiness of Emirati graduating students across various specializations. The theoretical framework for this study is the four-factor model by Caballero, Walker and Fuller-Tyszkiewicz (2011). The four factors are personal work characteristics, organizational acumen, work competence and social intelligence. The research conducted so far on work readiness of graduates has been limited to particular disciplines (Walker, Storey, Costa, Leung, 2015; Dermott, 2007; Jollands, Jolly and Molyneaux, 2012; Haigh, Ell and Mackisack, 2013; Dermott and Ortiz, 2017). This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge as it does not focus on a single specialization and takes a broad exploratory look at work readiness across five specializations, namely business, information technology, health sciences, applied communication and engineering. 302 graduating Emirati students chosen randomly from various disciplines in different institutions participated in this quantitative research study by filling in a 60-item work readiness questionnaire. The main findings of this study is that specializations in tertiary education vary not only in terms of curriculum, technical knowledge, skills and abilities taught, but also in the preparation for employment which influences the perceptions of graduating students of their work readiness; graduating students in a health specialization perceiving to be the most work ready and graduating students in a business specialization perceiving to be the least work ready.

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Developments in technology resulted in rapid change over the past decades. The purpose of this exploratory research is to discover the positive emotional response of attachment and apprehension towards robotics of Generation Z. This exploratory study contributes to existing knowledge as it is based in the UAE and also studies gender differences within Generation Z. The theoretical framework is the change theory by Lewin (1951). A quantitative methodology was adopted. In total, 116 participants filled in a questionnaire consisting of the negative attitudes towards robots scale (NARS), robot anxiety scale (Nomura et al., 2006) and an eight-item scale of product emotional attachment by Schifferstein and Zwartkruis-Pelgrim (2008). The main finding is that Generation Z participants are in a process of change as they find themselves in a state of ambiguity and are undecided about their emotions towards robots in the workplace, however lean more towards feeling apprehensive, fearful and detached.

The findings of a number of recent empirical studies on blended learning support this pedagogy claiming many advantages such as the facilitation of independent and collaborative learning experiences. This study compares the attitudes towards blended learning of undergraduate students in the UAE before and after a full course exposure to blended learning, comparing results to the attitudes of students in a traditional course. An experimental research design was chosen for this research study, specifically a two-group pretest-posttest research design. Results show that exposure to blended learning serves as a trigger for changing students’ attitudes towards blended learning in a positive manner and that lack of exposure does not change student’s attitudes.

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