PurposeWasta is an Arabic word that means the intervention of a patron in favor of a client in attempt to obtain privileges or resources from a third party. In Arab countries, wasta is often used to obtain employment, thus causing unequal opportunity. The purpose of this paper is to study the attributions that people make regarding the competency and morality of wasta users. The main hypothesis is that those that use wasta in obtaining employment will be perceived as less competent and moral than those that do not.Design/methodology/approachThe study is designed as a factorial quasi‐experiment, with three independent variables; wasta, employee qualification and socioeconomic status. The dependent variables are perceived competency and morality. Data were gathered from 421 Egyptian undergraduate business students attending a public and a private university.FindingsIn support of the hypotheses, subjects discounted the competency and morality of employees that used wasta to obtain the job. Additionally, subjects from lower socioeconomic groups evaluated wasta users more positively than more affluent subjects.Originality/valueThis is the first study that attempts to use attribution theory to examine the effects of wasta on perceptions of competency and morality. The study may be useful in identifying the disadvantages of using wasta, thus reducing its use.

In2O3 thin films were grown by the chemical spray pyrolysis (CSP) method using the pneumatic spray set-up and compressed air as a carrier gas. Aqueous solutions containing InCl3.4H2O were deposited onto preheated glass sheets at substrate temperatures Ts=423-573K. X-ray differection (XRD) analysis confirmed the cubic bixbyite structure of indium oxide. The preferred growth orientation along the (211) plane for thin films. The crystallite size extracted from the XRD data corroborates the changes in full width at half maximum due to the variation in substrate temperature. It was shown that grain size of In2O3 thin film was (30)nm. Optical properties of In2O3 was studies and showed that the optical parameters (n, k α) were affected by substrate temperature.