The goal of this research is to investigate and examine the fallout from FIFA's 2015 corruption crisis. With barely six months until the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the controversy has become a big subject in the media. The World Cup in Qatar and FIFA's corruption have been linked for years, and everything was flipped upside down when the previous FIFA president announced that Qatar, a small Gulf state, would be permitted to host the World Cup in 2022. FIFA has demonstrated that it not only has authority over football, but also over countries and national federations. Several different parts of the study will be addressed to show what the FIFA corruption culture has developed on a national and worldwide level.

Yes / Based on Herbert Simon's conceptualization of bounded rationality, this study develops and tests an integrative model of the strategic decision-making process (SDMP) and outcomes in public organizations. The model integrates different SDMP dimensions—procedural rationality, intuition, participation, and constructive politics—and examines their impacts on the successful implementation of strategic decisions. Additionally, it analyzes the influence of implementation on the overall outcomes of strategic decisions. The model was tested with multi-source data on 170 strategic decisions collected from senior executives working in 38 public organizations in Qatar—a context in which studies on decision-making are rare. With the exception of intuition, this study shows a positive impact of all SDMP dimensions on the successful implementation and outcomes of strategic decisions. Successful implementation fully mediates the relationships between procedural rationality, participation, and constructive politics and the outcomes of strategic decision.

The WTO, tourism and small states: finding policy space to develop This study examines whether the General Agreement on Services (GATS) provides the necessary policy space for small states to pursue their development agendas. Small states in this study are defined in power terms. But the study also focuses on small states in a property sense--those with few diversification options, making the services sector potentially an important avenue for economic growth and diversification. The study seeks to examine critically the parameters that GATS places on policy-making of small states--whether governments are limited to providing a competitive business environment, or if they retain sufficient policy space to shape the development of a sector. The study also looks at the interplay between international and domestic factors in development of policy. The tourism industries of Oman and Qatar provide case studies to examine these issues. Tourism has the potential to contribute to the economies of small states generally, but debate exists as to whether GATS leaves small states with sufficient space to influence the direction of this sector. The similarities between Oman and Qatar in both power and property terms allow for a comparative examination of whether small states can find meaningful policy space. In addition, their domestic dynamics provide insight into the interplay between domestic and international pressures on policy choices. The experiences of Oman and Qatar suggest that there remains some policy space for states to develop their tourism industries in a manner compatible with local aspirations. Governments thus have some scope to direct the shape of the tourism sector beyond merely providing a competitive business environment. But policy direction is influenced by capacity, past experiences and existing norms, and these differences can result in varying outcomes. Additionally, small states must decide their priorities in on-going WTO negotiations in order to maintain existing policy space.

In the course of the modernization of Qatar, the need for camels has greatly diminished; herds have reduced in numbers and are now confined to enclosures. Overall, neglect of this valuable resource means that the camel is threatened with extinction. Currently, there is a need to address problems about sustainable development in Qatar by taking actions such as investing in the existing natural heritage to develop the use of indigenous animals like the camel. Through a review of past and present use of the native dromedary, a new type of sustainable agritourism will be developed that will provide a type of farm where visitors can learn about, and interact with, traditional animals. These farms will create a market for a range of camel products, thereby transforming the national symbol of the past into an icon of a sustainable future.

In the past, a user’s interaction with objects was usually limited to a core function. Whereas today, there is a trend toward objects that can offer multi-layered experiences with the potential to not only serve a core function, but to communicate information and emotion. These interactions offer a give-and-take relationship between the user and the object, with the potential for characteristics, individualistic features, and even personalities to appear. Interactions with such objects provide the potential for empathic relationships to form between human and object. Empathy becomes the bond that gives a user the opportunity to view the world from the object’s perspective. It can create a sense of connection beyond the objects functional expectations, and provides the potential for a more meaningful exchange. In my research, I speculate that empathy can be used as a powerful tool of communication. I offer possibilities on how this tool might be used to learn a skill, to recall a memory or to show an accomplishment. Applied empathy in my research is illustrated through a series of experiments and proposals that demonstrate mechanisms to document today’s changing phenomena in Qatar through the creation of objects.

In the Arabian Gulf countries, the majlis is a central part of the house. The most public space within it, the majlis represents the household’s occupants to society and its social and economic status. As the house reflects culture and civilization, so the family is understood as a micro-level society of individuals raised in its institutions. Hence, the house is a manifestation of family structure, religious beliefs, and individual needs and desires, reflecting the family’s economic, cultural, and social backgrounds and aspirations. The majlis offers a unique space in Arab societies, articulating cultural and social factors that directly impact identity Accordingly, the design of the majlis and meanings associated with its constituents are essential to the discussion about Qatari culture and society from past to present (Rapoport 1969). Since the discovery of oil in Qatar, there has been a noteworthy change in the way that houses have been designed, with a major transformation in the use of house and majlis over the last few generations, including social factors such as family social structure, the role of women, kinship and its relationship with privacy and proximity, and economic factors such as the availability of disposable income. This research explores the evolution of house architecture in Qatar with a focus on the design and social impact of the majlis. The physical and social changes in the period between pre-oil discovery until today have created gaps between the built form, climate, and sociocultural activities. This research attempts to bridge this gap, concentrating on the majlis.

With the escalating levels of water demand, there is a need for expansion in the capacity of water desalination infrastructure and for better management and distribution of water resources. This dissertation introduces a systems approach to the optimization of macroscopic water desalination and distribution networks to tackle three problems: 1. Optimal design of desalination and allocation networks for a given demand, 2. Optimal operation of an existing infrastructure of water desalination, distribution, and storage, 3.Optimal planning for expanding the capacity of desalination plants to meet an increasing water demand over a time horizon. A source-interception-sink representation was developed to embed potential configurations of interest. Mathematical programming was used to model the problem by studying different objective functions while accounting for constraints the supply, demand, mass conservation, technical performance, and economic aspects. Such approach determines the type of technologies to be selected, the location and capacity of the desalination plants, and the distribution of the desalinated water from sources to destinations. For the operation and planning problems, the planning horizon was discretized into periods and a multi-period optimization approach was adopted with decisions made for each period. Short- and long-term water storage options (e.g., in storage tanks, aquifers) were included in the optimization approach. Water recycle/reuse was enhanced via the use of treated water and its utilization was improved by minimizing the losses observed in discharged water resulting from the linkage of power plants and thermal desalination plants and the lack of integration between water production and consumption. Several case studies were solved to demonstrate the applicability of the devised approaches.

Thesis (M.A. in Security Studies (Middle East, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa))--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2010. / Thesis Advisor(s): Looney, Robert. Second Reader: Kadhim, Abbas. "June 2010." Description based on title screen as viewed on July 9, 2010. Author(s) subject terms: Qatar, United Arab Emirates, UAE, Branch Campus, Higher Education, Arabian Gulf. Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-121). Also available in print.

The importance of curriculum in education is uncontested. Nevertheless, this has not translated into a thorough examination of what constitutes a ‘quality’ curriculum. Extant educational quality models mostly investigated ‘quality’ from students’ perspective and were predominantly conducted in the business and engineering fields. Some of these models encompass curriculum quality dimensions, nonetheless, given their focus on student perspectives, emerging curriculum themes were limited to issues of interest to students only, such as the number of courses, and the courses enhancing students’ job perspectives. To date, only a few studies pertaining to quality and service quality have been conducted in the field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Thus, this exploratory sequential mixed-methods case study was conducted in an English for Academic Purposes programme in the State of Qatar to uncover teachers’ perceptions of curriculum quality and its attributes. Additionally, this study seeks to discover whether teachers’ perceptions of ‘quality’ affected their curriculum implementation. Qualitative data indicates that participants understood a quality curriculum as one that meets stakeholders’ needs in addition to meeting twenty-five attributes pertaining to curriculum design, course content, and resources. The findings reveal that curriculum design is the most important aspect of quality followed by course content and resources. Qualitative data also revealed that the exclusion of teachers from curriculum decision-making, students’ admission criteria, and lack of trust were detrimental to the quality of curriculum design. Curriculum relevance to students is of concern to some participants, since students and the wider community do not perceive the English for Academic Purposes courses as relevant. Although the participants’ do not deem quality of resources as an essential attribute of curriculum quality, it affects their curriculum implementation. Overall, the quantitative data supports the qualitative findings with respect to the importance of the curriculum quality attributes. Two curriculum quality attributes emerge from two participants’ comments related to curriculum design section in the questionnaire. Based on the study findings, it is recommended that the needs and situation analyses be modified at the study site to address concerns raised by the participants. It is also suggested that the university explores different options of English for Academic Purpose programmes to enhance students’ perceptions of the relevance of the English for Academic Purposes courses.

This thesis offers an interpretation of the Qatar-based Egyptian Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi's contribution to "tajdid al-fiqh," the "renewal" of the Islamic fiqh tradition. In the wake of the transformations wrought on the fiqh tradition during the colonial period, it is the "modern project" (to borrow Talal Asad's term) for tajdid al-fiqh instigated by Muhammad 'Abduh and Rashid Rida that this thesis uses to enter the discussion. Al-Qaradawi lays claim to their legacy, and this thesis is particularly concerned with the engagement between himself and his interlocutors in the unusual context of Qatar. These "translocal" networks facilitate al-Qaradawi's involvement in debates in other contexts in the region, particularly in Egypt and the wider Arabian Peninsula. Each of this thesis's thematic chapters will make a different case for understanding al-Qaradawi's borrowing, reconstructing, reviving or transforming certain concepts and ideas. In so doing it will show that al-Qaradawi, as representative of the contemporary ʿulamaʾ as a whole, is not part of a scholar-class that have been either marginalized or entirely co-optated by the state. Instead, they are a group of scholars that have utilized new media technologies and other supportive networks to continually promote themselves in the Arab public sphere, as they sought to adapt their tradition to the Middle East region's new context, debates and conditions.