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Introduction Creating a proper career program is the best way to enhance employees’ organizational commitment; it motivates and retains them. This research aims to measure career growth’s influence on turnover intention, mediated by employees’ commitment through self-reported employees’ perceptions. This study identifies the key dimensions of organizational commitment (affective, continuance and normative commitment) that mediate the relationship between career growth and employee turnover intention exploring the indirect effects between career growth and turnover intention. The relationship is examined among the public sector employees in the Sultanate of Oman, a sector currently facing high turnover rates and losing key skilled talent pool. Methodology Data collection was executed through an adopted questionnaire distributed among 500 employees of 38 government units within the Sultanate of Oman. A total of 351 questionnaires were returned, and after the initial screening process, 329 were found to be valid for further analysis. CFA analysis was conducted to identify the factors falling under the three primary constructs of the study. Assessment of the models was explained through Goodness-of-fit Indices. Structural equation modeling, which is most recommended to study the effect of latent variables, was performed using AMOS to evaluate the mediating role of organizational commitment between career growth and employee turnover intention. Findings The results indicated that the potential for career growth is an essential motivating element for public sector employees in the Sultanate of Oman to encourage retention and reduce intention to leave. The findings also confirm that effective and continuous commitment significantly mediates the relationship between career growth and employees’ turnover intention. Contribution and originality value The results generated could help both researchers and those involved in public sector policy-making to understand how employee turnover intention is influenced by career growth and organizational commitment in the public sector in the Sultanate of Oman.

During an economic crisis, companies redesign their functional strategies for survival and growth. This paper aims at identifying HR practices adopted during the current economic crisis in Oman, and explains the resultant effect of crisis-driven HR strategies from an HR managers' perspective. Primary data was collected online from 112 HR managers representing various manufacturing and service organizations in Muscat, Oman. It was found that HR managers perceive a greater impact of economic crisis on their businesses rather than other types of crises such as natural and technology crises. They think that managing employees during an economic crisis is relatively easier than managing other resources and other stakeholders. Changing HR practices during economic crises include, abeyance of employee benefits and cutting costs on employee recreation. Knowledge management activities have been increased and non-monetary motivation techniques are being adopted as a part of crisis-driven HR management. Increased employee engagement and enhanced corporate image among employees were identified as the resultant effect. Testing the hypothesis revealed that cost cutting on employee recreation is significantly higher in large organizations, job redesign activity is significantly higher in small organizations, while large organizations find it difficult to deal with employees during periods of crisis more so than small and medium sized organizations do.

Online education has become an imperative not only due to the technological innovations but also due to the emerging social conditions arising out of COVID-19. Technological competencies are essential among the instructors for successful online teaching. Modern College of Business and Science (MCBS), Sultanate of Oman is one of the pioneering institutions in the Middle East region in adopting hundred percent online education with the onset of COVID-19. Main aim of this research is to evaluate the online teaching competencies of instructors at MCBS. Competencies identified through the benchmarking exercise and from literature, were divided into pedagogical and technical competencies, spread across three stages of online teaching: before, during and after an online teaching session. A self-administered questionnaire was circulated among 80 instructors selected through the systematic random sampling technique, out of which 53 valid responses were received and used in the data analysis. Descriptive statistics along with paired and independent sample t tests and ANOVA were conducted for evaluating the online teaching competencies of the instructors at MCBS. Linear regression analysis was conducted to evaluate the relationship between qualification or certification in online instructional methods (independent variable QC) and online teaching competency (dependent variable OTC). Findings indicated lower/less technical competencies than the pedagogical competencies. Stage-wise analysis revealed that the technical competencies are lower in Stage 1. A regression model that explained 43 percent of variation in dependent variable revealed that OTC is dependent on QC. Thus, it is recommended that the instructors need to be supported in acquiring qualification or certification in online instructional methods. While theoretical implications relate to innovation diffusion theory and theory of distance education, practical implications of this research relate to the ongoing hundred percent online instruction method. This study can be extended to evaluating the impact of personal factors on the online teaching competency and to the wider participants in the higher education sector.

Advising systems play an important role not only in the student development process but also in student retention. Academic scholars across the world have been emphasising the presence of an effective student advising system as one of the requirements of a standard educational set up. To ensure student satisfaction with the advising system, institutions conduct satisfaction studies to monitor the effectiveness of their system and to understand key issues such as influencing factors and the association between demographic and influencing variables. The current paper addresses these key issues. A survey was conducted during Fall 2012 with students from across the GCC at three colleges in Muscat, Oman, to identify the factors influencing student satisfaction with advising system. In our study twenty-six variables were formed into five factors. The results show that student satisfaction with the advising systems is highly influenced by ‘feel good’, ‘critical situations’ and ‘IT’ factors. It was also found that satisfaction is independent of gender but not of the education level: lower level students were found to be more satisfied with advising systems than the students at the higher level. Student satisfaction has a significant positive correlation with training/orientation on advising and perceived quickness in solving students’ problems.