Structural Barriers to Emiratisation - Article Example

ARTICLE CRITIQUE OF STRUCTURAL BARRIERS TO EMIRATISATION: ANALYSIS AND POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS Article critique of Structural Barriers to Emiratisation: Analysis and Policy Recommendations Customer Inserts His/Her Name Customer Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name 08, 06, 2011 Authors: Jasim A, Kumar H, and Foley P Title: Structural Barriers to Emiratisation: Analysis and Policy Recommendations Publication date: 2008 Introduction According to French et al. (2011) the study of organizational behavior strives to understand how individuals and groups within the work force behave within the organization. Therefore the purpose of studying organizational behavior in any organization is to look into ways that can foster proper management of the work force through improved competencies and motivation with the aim of achieving organizational effectiveness.   This write-up will dwell on analyzing structural barriers to emiratisation: analysis and policy recommendations a study conducted by Jasim, Kumar and Foley to identify factors that affect the placement and retention of UAE nationals in Dubai workplaces and come up with recommendations that would ensure a practical strategy towards actualizing the creation of more job placements for the UAE nationals within the private and public sector of the Dubai workforce (Jasim et al. 2008). This write up will critically analyze the research work under the following subheadings: Introduction and identification of the problem statement, conceptual framework, Literature review, methodology and research design, data analysis and discussion and applicability and readability of the research work. Introduction and identification of the problem statement The introduction of this study tries to explain the level of involvement of UAE nationals in the Dubai labor force and fails to introduce the structural barriers as depicted by the title of the study. Instead, Jasim et al. goes straight ahead to illustrate the level of UAE national’s employment for both the private and public sector of the Dubai market. In my view, instead of just defining Emiratisation, the authors should have highlighted the nature of the structural barriers that exist in the Dubai labor market and their implications in understanding structural behavior. However the authors have clearly illustrated in the introduction part that they have thoroughly consulted background information concerning the current position of their research topic by covering the employment percentages for UAE nationals in both the public and private sectors (Jasim et al. 2008). The authors have identified the underlying problem by indicating that the major reason for undertaking this study was to highlight issues that undercut the probability of the UAE national’s tendency to be absorbed in the local Dubai job market. Therefore they were able to demonstrate that the problem did exist by indicating that UAE nationals were facing scarcity of job placements while their UAE non nationals’ counterparts continued to enjoy a wide variety of job placements at the expense of the real inhabitants (Jasim et al. 2008). The Authors have justified the problem statement with statistics on the percentages of both national and non national placements in the Dubai job market. The introduction and the problem statement are in line with the understanding of the organizational behavior because Jasim et al. (2008) have demonstrated that they intended to investigate the behavior of the job industry in Dubai which in this case can be taken to represent an organization in the sense that they investigated the factors within the industry. Further another major reason for under taking this study was to come up with recommendations that will strive to improve the level of UAE nationals’ job placements thus the study purpose was to come up with strategies that would improve the effectiveness of absorbing more UAE nationals and thus improving on organizational effectiveness. Conceptual framework The conceptual frame work of the research is in line with organizational concepts such as organizational capital, social capitals and personal capital. All the three concepts mentioned are well covered as Jasim et al were able to highlight the specific attributes that relate to each concept. For example, the authors have covered relevant topics in organizational behavior such as organizational engagement, training and career development, organizational culture, remuneration trust among others (Jasim et al. 2008). To further enrich their work, I think the authors should have also covered other aspects such as motivation, leadership, conflicts and conflicts resolution. However, the authors failed to cover demographic variables as highlighted on the conceptual frame work. To fully cover a conceptual frame work in a research work, it is important to elaborate on all the factors that make up the concept in order to explain how the different aspects affect each other and how they are likely to impact on the end result of the whole research undertaking. By failing to discuss on the demographics, the authors failed to meet the stipulated guidelines to research work and thus I feel as though their work is not a whole representation of what they intended to cover as per the aspects identified on the conceptual frame work. Literature review The author’s have failed to conduct conclusive literature review with regards to their study and therefore the literature review is not comprehensive. Literature review should be able to illustrate the trends of their problem statement in UAE and any other relevant countries that will help them improve the rationality of conducting the research. Instead, the authors have relied heavily on defining concepts that they intended to tackle in the study. By failing to expound on the available information with regards to their topic on low work placement for the UAE national through encompassing secondary data an aspect which is very vital for any research undertaking, proves that they had not done enough research to warrant them to conclusively indicate the status quo of UAE nationals employability as per already published information and thus impacting negatively on the internal validity of their work. Therefore am inclined to believe that the literature review should have identified the structural factors already mentioned in other research work and the policies that have been put in place to deal with the problem of low UAE job placements. Methodology and research design The research design used for this research undertaking was in line with any empirical survey therefore the authors were in line to employ the use of questionnaires in order to get first hand information from the employers and employees as to the issues that they think may be affecting UAE job placements in the Dubai job market. The use of a five point Likert scale to value the responses is a major achievement for this research undertaking as the scale comes in handy when evaluating data and thus making it easy to rank the respondents views in a controlled orderly manner. The sample size of 1500 was appropriate for the researchers because they were able to gather a 62% response rate translating to 930 usable responses which is quite commendable and thus they were able to avoid the chances of reduced responses associated with questionnaires. With such a large number of usable responds, the researchers were at a better position to make general conclusive findings with reference to their research topic. Further the criteria used to select the organizations to be included in the study was rigorous and included companies that have received quality awards and with proven good working conditions and therefore researchers were able to deal with the pace setters in the Dubai labor market and thus improving on the validity and applicability of their research findings (Jasim et al. 2008). However, the fact that the researchers used such a large number of respondents within only seven organizations is likely to limit generalization of the research findings. Another positive aspect of this research methodology is the fact that the researchers were able to utilize the already identified literature on the percentages of UAE job placements in both the private and the public sectors by factoring in the percentages and thus they were able to distribute their questionnaires in seven organizations in a rational way by using five public organizations and two private organizations (Jasim et al. 2008). This depicts organized and rationalized distribution of questionnaires and thus improving on the validity of the research. The questionnaire was well structured and comprehensive covering all the three aspects that were understudy that is personal, organizational and social factors affecting the rate of UAE national job placements in the Dubai job market (Jasim et al. 2008). Further the questionnaire was able to tackle items within the three mentioned factors thus making the research work comprehensive and the same time informative to any individual interested with the research findings or any scholars interested with conducting a similar research or building on the research findings. Data analysis and discussion For data analysis, Jasim et al. (2008) used Pearson correlation, independent sample t-test and Hierarchical regression analysis to analyze the data sampled from respondents, the Independent sample T test which is used to compare the mean scores of variables was relevant because it highlighted that there was a significant mean difference between both the private and public sectors. The person correlation was also relevant in indentifying whether there was a relation between any two of the three identified aspects. To determine the impact of age, education, job title and gender variables on organizational engagement, the researchers were in line to use the hierarchical regression analysis. Based on the amount of data collected and the number of variables identified, I think that the amount of information discussed to elaborate on the findings was minimal. A more comprehensive discussion explaining all the tables in the write up and the appendix would have done this research work justice rather than what is depicted by the discussion. The discussion looks like more of a conclusion rather than an explanation of the results with both conflicting and agreeing support material form already existing research findings. Applicability and readability of the research work The findings of this research work are well known because the authors quote other research findings to support their conclusions. For example they argue that the level of education is a major contributor to the distribution of jobs to UAE nationals an aspect that they support with Abdelkarim findings of 2001(Jasim et al. 2008). Therefore this research work is relevant and vital because it builds on already available information with regards to the trend of UAE nationals’ employability. This information also proposes feasible recommendations that will help the Dubai labor market capitalists and UAE job seekers to work toward actualizing greater employment and therefore the authors present very crucial information to the policy makers who can utilize or build on their recommendations. Generally the research work format is well structured thus improving on the readability. However the introduction part needs to be more organized by identifying specific ideas for every paragraph rather than clogging a lot of information in one paragraph. The whole write up, was an easy read with proper punctuation and sentence structure Conclusion In conclusion, the general format of the research work was in line with acceptable empirical studies format. Positive aspects of this research work include adequate background information on percentages of employment rates, identification of a problem statement, comprehensive coverage of the concepts under study and a well thought and planned research methodology. Negative aspects include lack of elaborative literature review, statement of objectives, well elaborated conceptual frame work, discussion of results and the limited number of organizations incorporated in the study jeopardized the generalization of the results. Therefore these findings can be used by other researchers to form the basis of undertaking a similar or related research but cannot be taken to represent the general status of the issues that affect the level of UAE national’s employability in the Dubai job market. Reference List  French, R, Rayner, C, Rees, G & Rumbles, S 2011, Organizational Behavior, 2nd edn, John Wiley& Sons, New York. Jasim, A, Kumar, H & Foley, P 2008, Structural Barriers to Emiratisation: Analysis and Policy Recommendations, Available at: (accessed 7 June 2011). Read More