Management of the diverse workforce : job satisfaction among culturally diverse workforce in the United Arab Emirates

Al-Junaibi, Talal (2001) Management of the diverse workforce : job satisfaction among culturally diverse workforce in the United Arab Emirates. Doctoral thesis, University of Northumbria at Newcastle.

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Abstract

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a capital rich country, which has achieved spectacular economic growth in the last three decades. To make up for its limited indigenous human resource, the country has traditionally recruited its required manpower from other countries of the world to maintain its development. The presence of a large culturally diverse workforce has recently become a matter of great concern to the planners and policy makers in the country. Despite efforts to nationalise the workforce, the UAE has kept relying substantially on expatriate workers, and workplaces are likely to remain full of workers from different national backgrounds, offering a cross-cultural human resource environment.
The present study has been undertaken to fill an existing gap in academic research in the UAE context with threefold objectives. First, to develop a better understanding of
the demographic composition and workforce nature in the UAE. Second, to understand the social, political and economic issues and implications resulting from the existence of workers from different national backgrounds in the UAE labour market. Finally, to establish a better understanding of job satisfaction among workers from UAE, Arab, Asian and other national backgrounds within the UAE unique work environment. Within this country case study, a multi-method approach was undertaken to facilitate the descriptive analysis of the UAE labour market and its special economic characteristics.
No difference was found in job satisfaction among workers from different ethnic and national groups in the UAE. This was true for all of the four examined aspects of job satisfaction. Also, the level of job satisfaction was moderate across all of the examined workers, regardless of their national origin. The study finds that among the examined workers from UAE, Arab and Asian backgrounds, the reward factors that influenced job satisfaction were the most significant among all of the examined variables. This
conclusion reinforces the perspective that the UAE represent an economy and labour market with special characteristics in the global economy. This supports the view that globalisation must be understood as a diverse set of processes, in which competitive advantage may accrue to a "region state" with unique characteristics.

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