HRM Evolution and Employee Engagement

Chapter One: Introduction

The evolution of human resource management (HRM) as a practice of managing people is based on different factors such as the focus on micro and macro levels in different international contexts (Cooke, 2017). This is due to the changes in the business environment over the years, which are reflected on market competitiveness and the ability to retain experienced humans as the main resource (Zhu, et al 2013). The best fit HRM system, in the local environment, has gone through trial and error, which guided managers and practitioners to the best HRM practices (Jennings, et al 2009). Although the development in HRM was mainly environmental to utilise the use of labour to the upmost, full understanding of increasing their ability in different contexts is needed. There are many debates regarding the actual role of HRM in improving organisational performance (Huselid 1995) but there is no evidence, showing that good HRM can have an influence on the employees’ engagement levels (Guest, 2011). There are many calls for research in the areas of employees engagement, for example, Truss, et al (2013) call for researches regarding the employees’ engagement using social psychology of individuals at micro-level research (Kahn, 1990) using the variables such as gender, religion and culture in an international context. These calls can clarify the definition of the term “engagement” which is confused in developing countries because most of researches were conducted in the developed countries (Javalgi and Todd, 2011). This secondary research will define the gaps in existing literature and support future research in Saudi Arabia. This research will provide a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) on the factors, which affect the individuals’ level of engagement in KSA. The main aim is to explore the literature review on the impact of nationalism and culture in SMEs on the level of employees’ engagement in Saudi Arabia using Social Identity Theory (SIT). The outcome can be used as a theoretical framework. Data from various researches in KSA will also be used to analyse and discuss after defining the main themes from the SLR.

This literature review looks at individuals’ reported levels of engagement using localisation and culture as factors to consider in KSA. The main aim is to explore the literature review on the impact of nationalism and culture on the level of employees’ engagement in SMEs in Saudi Arabia and suggest a framework to face the legislative challenges. The following chapter is the literature review, then the methodology that is used in collecting and analysing data. The discussion and conclusions chapter will follow the methodology chapter, in which, the research will draw the core theoretical frameworks and future research questions.

Chapter Two: Literature review

This chapter discusses the previous researches, which would provide direction of the research. This chapter is divided into 3 main parts: engagement, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs), Saudi Arabia: the next chapter of challenge and the theoretical lens.

2.1 Engagement

Truss, et al. (2013) mentioned that, engaged employees would express their emotional connections, physical involvement and cognitive awareness, whereas the disengaged employees suppress their personal involvement in all the aspects of work. Earlier, Maslach and Leiter (1997) proposed that, efficacy, involvement and energy are associated with engagement and these are opposite to the burnout. The positivity factors such as energy and identification, were also the focus of Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez-Roma and Bakker (2002), who mentioned that, engagement is “a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterised by vigor, dedication and absorption” (pp 74). The term “satisfaction” was suggested by Harter, Schmidt and Hayes (2002, pp 269), which reflected the enthusiasm in addition to involvement at work. Their work concurs with Guest (2013), who considered the consultancy approach to engagement, associated with the satisfaction–engagement dimension (cited in Truss,et al 2013). Employee engagement was defined by various literature based on either research- or practice-driven studies (Macey and Schneider, 2008). According to Bass (1999), employee engagement is a desirable condition that organisations design in to fit with the main organisational purposes that involve and energise employees to become committed, passionate and enthusiastic persons. This definition means that engagement has two components: attitudinal and behavioural. This will have a direct impact on an organisation’s main aims and effectiveness (Straub, et al., 2018). Engagement can be both organisational and country specific that is directly related to the organisational structure and culture to promote dialogue and participation in the overall direction of the company. This promotes cohesive relations and motivates engagement (Shih and Huang 2010), however, the culture of country can provide contextual understanding.

2.2 Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs)

This research covers the Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs), as these institutions are the backbone of modern economies (Ajayi, Odusanya and Morton, 2017), which plays a critical role in the generation of workforce in emerging and developing countries (Javalgi and Todd, 2011). Unlike large institutions, SMEs face greater resource shortages, which might affect the productivity and innovation of employees. Due to the need for SMEs to sustain their performance in the market, engagement can be one of the key factors to be considered in this research. The Workforce View in Europe (2019) explained that, large institutions have more resources such as tools and technologies that improve the level of engagement. Engaged employees will be able to develop and establish a strong relationship with customers and infuse SMEs with entrepreneurial energy they can sustain in the future development and stabilise its performance in highly competitive market (Bakker and Schaufeli, 2008). Moreover, SMEs are considered to be in a precarious position and leadership of SMEs can be negatively affected, if the employees’ engagement is very minimal (Bakker and Schaufeli, 2008). In SMEs, employee engagement can be different, based on the type of industry and its impact with the society (Davies and Crane, 2010). With reference to the method used in collecting previous publications in this area, table (5) provides a list of academic journals and publications used in the research. As shown in table (5), the articles which are focused on engagement, Small firms, and the context including Middle East, Gulf Corporation Countries – GCC, or developing countries that can be useful in the analysis of the current research. All these articles are published in 4* journals: Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of World Business and Journal of Vocational Behaviour. Choosing 4 star journals in the current research is because they provide very credible source of information. According to ABS, 4 star journals are those, which are well established and considered to have the highest citation impact scores in areas related to the mina scope of the journals during the most recent five-year period.

2.3 Saudi Arabia: the next chapter of challenge

This research will use Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) due to the main change that the country is going through. Despite the massive contribution of oil to the economy of the country, the government is providing incentives to avoid capitalising on oil as source of income through encouraging and motivating the entrepreneurs to start their own businesses. The government is also striving to diversify the income through encouraging and investing the in the infrastructure of the private sector and employ local Saudi nationals (see Appendix One: Vision 2030). Currently, there are about 6 million foreign workers, which are important contributors in the Saudi economy. Foreign investors are encouraged to invest in the Kingdom due to the potential expected growth in privatisation opportunities that were announced by Deputy Prime Minister Muhammad Bin Salman. The culture of Saudi is tribal, which depends on primitive marine industries like pearl farming and fishing and agriculture (Sidani and Al Ariss, 2014), and since the discovery of oil, the country has invested a lot in the infrastructure and imported labourers from neighbouring countries in the Middle East, EU and the US. This created few levels of employment in the Saudi and local/foreigners ratio is now managed by the government as will be explained later in this chapter and shown in Appendix One. Saudi Arabia will continue to the main importer of foreign labours. Saudi Arabia is one of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) contexts and considered to be one of the major oil producing countries (EIU, 2009). This region was (and still) attracting workers from different sides of the world to make this region characterised with extreme heterogeneity of the workforce. Moreover, Saudi is an attractive market to multinational firms that bring more resources and create more job opportunities. The population of Saudi and demographic structure is demonstrated in table (1). The table shows that, percentage of locals reach 47% of labour force whereas in the population is about 70% (Najjar, 2013). The local citizens are employed in various industries but most of locals are employed in the oil companies, which obligate private companies to depend increasingly on foreign labour (Sidani and Al Ariss, 2014). This became evident that, (as shown in the table below) local/foreigner ratio of workers would affect multitude of social and organizational problems (Sidani and Al Ariss, 2014). Moreover, according to Ahmed (2012) and Shediac and Samman (2010), the unemployment in Saudi reached 30% among Saudi women and young people. Sidani and Al Ariss, (2014) argued that, there is discrepancies between the demands of companies, which are majority multinationals and the skills of foreign labourers more preferred when compared to local labour.

Recently, the government supported Saudi nationals to continue their studies in different countries overseas to increase their talents and become more competitive than foreigner labour. According to Budhwar and Mellahi (2007), localisation is now centre stage in the social and political discourse in Saudi and other GCC regions. Saudi Labour Ministry is still focusing to Saudize the managements in different businesses and consider this a central part of future employment development (Saudi Gazette report, 2019). Moreover, the 2030 vision (in Appendix One) shows the changes in the government to focus on the small medium enterprises (SMEs) and employs more Saudis in the marketplace or nationalisation of the market (or Saudisation). Localisation or Saudisation is defined by Ebrasu and Al Ariss (2012); Forstenlechnerand Mellahi (2011) is a legal action to replace foreign workers with local ones. According to the Economic Intelligence Unit, the Saudisation varies across the sector and depends on the job description (EIU, 2009). For example, working in oil industry is not allowed for foreigners; however, in health sector such as nurse and pharmacist, it is acceptable. In line with Saudisation law, the companies use ghost employment to increase the ratio of local/foreigner; so they sustain their employment strategy however, foreigners can see this factor as risk factor to sustain their jobs in the future. Ali, et al (2019) discussed the impact of government workforce localisation policies on employee engagement using Social Identity Theory (SIT). They discussed the reduction in employee engagement with a negative impact on the performance and productivity. Companies, especially multinationals are considering this option to keep the talented employees and at the same time obey the law. According to Sidaniand Al Ariss (2014), “the impact of nationalisation policies on organisational abilities to attract, develop, and retain the right talent, both local and foreign remains understudied” (pp 216). The changes in the current market in Saudi create an environment to support business start-up and small and medium enterprises. According to (Taqnia24.com) there is an increase in the number of start-ups to reach 3 times in 2016, when compared to 2006. The majority of the investments are in the tourism and entertainment industry which is one of the main targets in the vision 2030 (Junaidel, 2019) to make Saudi become among the first four destinations in Asia, the top ten countries in the entertainment industry around the world globally.

2.4 Theoretical lens

After analysing the theoretical part in the articles that are listed in table (5), and when these articles are considered to achieve the aim and objectives of the current research, it can be found that these articles are using the following keywords (1) Talent Management (TM), (2) engagement, (3) Gulf region, GCC and Saudi Arabia, (4) emerging markets, (5) diversity, (6) workforce nationalization or localisation, and (7) Social Identity Theory (SIT). The use of SIT can help to define social categorization into us and them, which fits with the aim of this research to study the impact of Saudisation (or localisation) on organisations. SIT will help to understand the in-group and out-group relationship within organisations in Saudi and how both will discriminate against other. Accordingly, the SIT explains that, the emotional attachment to the groups and the feeling of belonging can lead to favourable behaviour of the employees (Ashforth, Harrison and Corley, 2008) with positive attitudes towards a company (Helm and Tolsdrof, 2013). Tajfel (1978) defined it as “part of an individual self-concept which derives from his/her knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership” (pp 63). Based on this, the employees, who believe they are part of the team, will be engaged through the good fit between the organisational values and employees’ values. The personal embeddedness in organisational beliefs and values lead to goal congruence between themselves and the organisation (van Knippenberg and Sleebos, 2006; Corley et al, 2006). Talented employees are important to any business to start up and sustain the development over a long period of time. With the changes in Saudi business environment, there is an enthusiasm to start-up businesses. The impact of localisation can be critical as well as it decreases the work force engagement (Zafar and Ali, 2016) and negatively affect engagement due to job insecurity. This research will help Saudi Government and the entrepreneurs to consider the factors of Saudisation on engagement with a special focus on the SMEs. The challenge is the ability of Saudi Arabia to continue attracting talented employees and sustain them in the coming phase of country development. The SMEs need more attention to maintain its competitiveness in front of multinational firms. Moreover, currently, there are many investments by SMEs in many industries, mostly entertainment and tourism industry in Saudi. The use of SIT will help in defining the impact of Saudisation on SMEs as summarised in Figure (1).

Chapter Three: Methodology

Due to the type of research is secondary; the published data will be used in the analysis. The researcher used search engines to analyse the previous literature about the subject. Analysis of existing data, which were published from certain private companies and governmental reports are considered in the analysis.

3.1 Procedure for Data Collection for SLR

In order to capture a wide range of literature that was published about employees’ engagement in SMEs, several keywords were used in the search engine. Science Direct search database was used (search was performed in July and Aug 2019). Exclusion and inclusion criteria were used to filter materials (such as ticking the box for peer reviewed articles) and the exclusion of books, books chapter, conference papers, editorial materials and dissertations. In the Science Direct, the researcher was able to access and navigate across a broad array of high quality journal articles, book chapters and supplementary data. It also covers more than 800 journals and 37,000 books, in different major disciplines across science, technology and health. It is a very reliable tool to use it as it provides access to more 14 million full-text publications. According to Tarakeswar and Kavitha (2011), the search engine provides a centralised index that can locate files efficiently and quickly. The main disadvantage is the choice of the keywords might not be accurate. The researcher chosen the keywords carefully which match with the main aim of the research. The use of Science Direct provided more options such as limit the results to journal publications in addition to the name of the journals, and sorting the journal publications that are indexed in the Association of Business Schools (ABS) ranking 2018. According to Morriset al (2009), the ABS rankings would be the factor to measure the quality or used an assurance mechanism that it is necessary for filtering and avoid lower academic impact. Keywords that were used on Science Direct were carefully considered so output can be reliable and accurate. As advised by Crossan and Apaydin (2010), broad keywords were used to reduce the possibility of papers on the research topic being missed out. As shown in table (2), the main keywords in single search were used, which contains asterisk (*) and the advanced search where combined with others.

As shown in Appendix Three, the overall number of reviewed articles reached 2,300 articles. The highest number of articles was when the “employee + engagement” was used which is expected. This search engine is used as a key search that can provide a general idea about the size of publications in this area of research. The selected papers were limited to the English language and only reviewed articles were selected. Many of journals that published in this area of research are in 3 and 4 stars journals. Moreover, removing the 2* and 3* journals from the table would leave us with 397 articles. Removing the general search (employee + engagement), as this might include many unrelated topics, the number of 4* articles is (189). See table (3) that explains the final number of articles. The results were exported and duplicated hits were removed, this left the researcher with 65 articles as shown in appendix three. Further removal of duplication was conducted manually and an additional (32) papers went undetected due to the focus of the publications. The final number of papers is (33) papers. Further analysis to scrutinise the abstract and title of the papers to examine their relevance in the literature review as well as theoretical and conceptual similarities and another (19) papers were removed from the final list of articles. These papers were removed after considering the main focus of the researches. For example the Tourism Management journal is more focused on the industry of tourism rather than employee engagement. Moreover, some articles are focused on Talent Management and consequences on engagement and performance, which is also not the main focus of this research. The list of papers that are selected (12), and some of these articles focus on the context and other on engagement. These articles are summarized in table (5).

3.2 Saudi Arabia: data

In addition to the data collected from the Science Direct, it is also necessary to consider reports and researches, which were conducted by the Saudi government and other private companies (such as KPMG) to investigate the secondary data and analyse it based on the SLR in the discussion and conclusion. In order to discuss the engagement in Saudi SME, secondary reports from 2016-2019 will be used to analyse the employee engagement in Saudi Arabia are also summarized in Table (4). The literature will be used to guide the analysis in the finding part.

Chapter Four: Findings and analysis

The findings are presented in table (5), which provides a summary of selected literature after conducting the SLR. This chapter will also analyse the impact of culture and Saudisation on employee engagement in SMEs in Saudi Arabia. This chapter is divided into two main parts: the first part is the analysis of employee engagement in SMEs and second part is analysing the Saudisation and culture impact on employees’ engagement. At end of this chapter, a summery that covers all points will be presented.

4.1 Employee engagement and SMEs

With references to the articles that focus on the SMEs and engagement, it has been found that all articles in table (5) were published in different contexts. Although these researcher were not in Saudi, but it can provide a framework that will help the researcher to support proposition in relation to SMEs and employees’ engagement. Lai, et al. (2016) explained that SMEs can be vulnerable when facing uncontrollable changes in the business environment, such changes in the employment law and economic crisis. This means that SMEs need to make more efforts internally and promote flexibility of the team to adapt those changes in the environment and being able to sustain their position. Zolin, et al., (2011) discussed this in their empirical – cross sectional research to collect data from 214 entrepreneurial ventures, they found strong ties with employees will provide more flexibility sometimes to HR practices. They also explained that, the opposite might happen in some cases, depending on the types of changes and the extent to which their organisation will be influenced. The biggest challenge is maintaining talented employees in those institutions. As mentioned by McDonnell, et al. (2010), most companies have haphazard approach in engaging with global talented employees. This means in the time of turbulence SMEs are more susceptible to lose employees and talents if there are no engagement or having strong ties with employees.

From another point of view, Tuan, et al. (2019) conducted a longitudinal research in relation to diversity management and it has been found that, diversity-oriented HR practices provide a good collaborative climate and improve the level of engagement among employees in SMEs. Based on the Saudi reports, published article by Benchiba-Savenius, et al. (2016), said the majority of Saudi respondents want to start their own businesses in the near future. With regards to proposition one “the higher the diversity lead to higher the level of engagement” the data collection by Benchiba-Savenius, et al. (2016) indicated that, engagement is related to age group. I.e. the older the Saudis are less likely to engage with foreign employees. The emerged proposition is mentioned in the next chapter.

4.2 Saudisation and culture impact on employees’ engagement

According to Hofstede insight (Hofstede-insight.com) to examine the cultural dimensions (in Appendix Five), it can be noted that the culture in Saudi is considered to be more collective which means people valuing the community (or group) needs over the individuals (or individualism). Saudisation and culture are both uncontrollable (as demonstrated in the Figure (1) in the literature review, and the interaction of both can lead to high influence on non-Saudis. From HR point of view, with reference to table (5), most of empirical articles that are published in the GCC region since 2009 focus can be divided into HR researches for multinational firms in the GCC, such as Sidani and Ariss (2014); Ali et al (2019) and Forstenlechner and Mellahi (2011). Some articles are theoretical (or conceptual) paper like Ryan (2016) and Festing and Schäfer (2014). Others are researches were conducted in different contexts like Leung and Chaturvedi (2011) in Singapore, Goštautaitė and Bučiūnienė (2015) in Lithuania and Tatoglu et al (2016) in Turkey to provide some variables in the analysis of Saudi context in the next section. The empirical research that was conducted by Ali et al. (2019) is very close this research, using Saudisation as a factor in engagement, job insecurity and intention to leave. They mentioned that Saudisation decrease the engagement and increase the possibilities to leave the job. They used SIT in their analysis to justify the results. The output of their research is presented in Appendix Four to be included in the next part. Sidani and Ariss (2014) focused on the MNCs that would like to invest in GCC to consider the balance between global assimilation and local adaptation using culture as a factor to maintain talented employees. This can be reflected to the foreign employees when working in Saudi, especially the local companies, to consider the culture as a factor in their expectations when joining Saudi institutions. This would justify the results of a research consider by Forstenlechner and Mellahi (2011) as locals in UAE are granted in local industries not MNCs as they are driven by a sense of social legitimacy and appropriateness. These results are matching with Tatoglu, et al. (2016), who conducted their research in Turkey who concluded HR practices that are related to organisations are society-bound. While considering (SIT) in the theoretical lens in Figure (1), it can be found that Saudisation can create in-group and out-group based on SIT. The Saudisation is not only uncontrolled, but it has an impact on the employment and HR policies. It gives the feeling of insecurity to foreigners who are working in Saudi Arabia and leave them disengaged. This was supported by Ali, et al. (2019) (P value = 0.01, sample of 135). Using the same SIT, locals might find it more convenient to work in local firms. Benchiba-Savenius, et al. (2016) mentioned that Saudis are more likely to work in local company rather than MNCs due to social factors; this is also supported in the previous researches such as Sidani and Ariss (2014) and Forstenlechner and Mellahi (2011).

Despite that, the secondary research lacks actual data as one of the limitation of the research, most of the data used earlier were collected for different aim and objective in different contexts, these propositions can be used for future researches in areas related to engagement and HR policies. The next part is the conclusion, followed by recommendations and limitation of the research.

Chapter Five: Discussion and Conclusions

This dissertation aimed to explore the impact of nationalism (or Saudisation) and Saudi culture on the level of employees’ engagement in SMEs in Saudi Arabia using Social Identity Theory (SIT). This research is looking at the macro level (outside the organisations) in Saudi regarding the impact of changes in the environment and its impact on the individual’s emotional and intellectual energy. In this desk research SLR was conducted using the search engine to scan previous researchers about this subject, it can be found that there is a clear impact of Saudisation and Saudi culture on employees’ engagement. SIT that was proposed by Tajfel (1978) explained that, how people's self-concepts are related to their membership in social groups. According to Fry and Fishman (2015) that, HR policies should goes beyond simple job satisfaction. The success in combining employee commitments to the organisations, self-motivation and a willingness to help colleagues are the heart of employee engagement. According to Pass, et al (2018) “employee engagement is not a concept that HR can solely address; it needs the involvement of all stakeholders in the organisation” (pp 6).

The new challenges to achieve vision 2030 in Saudi Arabia, involve creating new opportunities and attracting talents at a global level. Saudi market, like other GCC markets, is attractive, despite the increase in the attractiveness of Qatar and UAE in the region. Localisation (or Saudisation) is one the changes, which affect the employment and HR policies in existing and new companies, whether MNCs or local. Based on the literature analysis in chapter four, three propositions emerged.

Proposition One: The higher the diversity in SMEs can lead to higher the level of engagement

As mentioned in the chapter about the diversity helps to improve the engagement. This can be justified as people seek to engage and explore the differences between employees. This can be a positive sign and it will have a positive impact on productivity and efficiency.

Proposition Two: Saudisation decreases the level of engagement oflocal and foreign employees

Despite that, the engagement might improve with high diversity (as suggested in proposition one), Saudisation could be a barrier. The increase the proportion of one group in an organisation affects how people interact and communicate within organisation.

Proposition Three: nationals prefer local industries as they understand the socio-cultural factors.

This proposition supports proposition two, as Saudisation creates a barrier between the groups and give the feeling of insecurity to non-Saudis.

This research concludes that, Saudis would prefer to work in local companies, due to cultural factors, which matches with the Saudisation strategy the vision 2030 is based on. The main relationship between propositions one and two is related to the impact of diversity, which is found to increase the level of engagement specially in SME. However, Saudisation can have a negative impact on engagement between local and foreigner employees. The impact of Saudisation promotes the separation in-group and out-group that would create negative emotions and people become less motivate to work and support others in the same institution. Moreover, it will create the feeling of job insecurity for foreign employees to distract those talented employees and consequently becoming distracted, ignore loyalty and fail to achieve the aims of the organisation. Based on the data available, Saudis are also motivated to start their own businesses, however, there is a lack in talented employees which make starting up business to riskier to take. Moreover, Saudisation would also make it difficult to the Saudi entrepreneurs to start their businesses. Despite that this research did not to cover the talented employees; most of the articles found linked it to employees’ engagement, such as; McDonnell, Lamare, Gunnigle and Lavelle (2010); Sidani and Ariss (2014) and Tatoglu, Glaister and Demirbag (2016). It can also be concluded that, talented non-Saudi (or foreign) employees might be sustained due to the changes in the overall environment. This might affect the growth in the number of SMEs. A change in the HR policies might be necessary to adapt the changes in the environment as will be illustrated in the recommendations and practical applications.

Chapter Six: Recommendations and future research

This research is based on the published data, which was collected for different aim and objectives, and although SLR provided in-depth understanding of the subject. Unlike developed countries like the UK, the data from Saudi is not mature due to weaknesses in publishing governmental reports to help researchers. This part will provide recommendation, future research and the implementation plan of the findings of the research. This research helps institutions to think about the reflections of the changes at the macro level and how this should be impacted on the HR polices in the organisations. The recommendations and implementation plan can be divided into 3 levels: governmental level, organisational level and individual/managerial level. The governmental level, the Saudisation law can be customised to fit with the needs of the organisations and maintain existing talented employees and attracting new ones, especially for SMEs. This can be achieved by providing more employment facilities for entrepreneurs to support engagement. At organisation level, fostering employees’ motivation and engagement require more interactive structure with the organisations. In Saudi, organisations need to put system in place to ensure fair treatment of all employees and support the well-being of all employees without paying attention to their nationalities (Saudis or non-Saudis). Moreover, empowering employees is effective to maintain performance of employees through performance management systems for future professional development. Organisations can provide effective channels for employee voice to enhance their communication and reinforce the main objectives of the organisations and employees that would become more focused on the performance. Training about the equality between different employees and interactive workshops can support the organisations to foster engagement. At individual level, Saudi employees need to consider talented people as an asset to the Saudi Arabia and the organisation in which they work in. Learning and development can be only achieved by communications and engagement with others. Foreign employees need social support to accommodate the change in the context and adapt (or recognise) the new cultural factors at the macro environment.

The future research can involve collecting primary data from Saudis and non-Saudis to evaluate the factors that affect their engagement. A qualitative data can be collected from the governmental bodies to interpret the data collected from employees. Future research can also include engagement and market attractiveness for talented persons. Job insecurity can also be another factor to consider. Moreover, due to the changes in the GCC, a comparative research can provide a distinctive research to the whole region, and the outcome of this comparative research can be used to evaluate the attractiveness of the GCC countries to foreign employees.

Chapter Seven: Reflection on Learning and PDP

Conducting this research under the supervision of Prof Rory Donnelly was a great pleasure. The process helped me to analyse different articles and publications in relation to a current issues in the local government in managing labours; local and international, in different contexts. This statement is divided into 3 main parts: my personal experience of the research process, the key development and its impact on me as person and what added to my personal skills. At the starting point, I wanted to conduct an empirical research during which, I will be able to understand the challenges from the respondents’ point of view by asking the questions through questionnaires or interviews. However, the desk research provided me with more engagement in the literature about employees’ engagement and the future impact of localisation or Saudisation on SMEs. The empirical research will only look at the selected case of choice and will not provide me with overall picture, as I have achieved in the desk research. I was very motivated to conduct this research, as it will help me to understand the challenges of Saudi government to maintain talented people, who are required to achieve the Kingdom vision. The use of search engine helped in identifying the variations in authors’ analysis and quality of publications. The differences between different journals and its ranks (1, 2, 3 and 4*) was something new to consider, however, during my discussion with my supervisor, I have learnt that, there are some publications in 1 and 2, which are great to consider, but because author(s) selected to publish in 1 and 2 stars, it does not mean that, 4 stars papers are better than 2 or 3 stars. Although, I used the 4* papers only, one of the limitations of this research is not consider lower ranked papers. Moreover, the use of desk research means using data that were published and it might not really provide in-depth answers to related areas of the research. This might provide an opportunity for future research as Ali, et al (2019) calls for research. In relation to desk research, some of the data used might not provide the full conclusion of the current research, so some Arabic websites and reports published by the government were used in this research, which might not be suitable sources, but being an Arabic speaker MSc student, I was able to read and analyse the data. As for its impact on me, as a military person works in Saudi Navy, this research helped to understand the social factors in leading others in the institution and the extent to which these factors are important for future development. The army lacks the social factors in management due to the fact that, we manage and are managed by orders. This research opened my eyes wide about the impact of these factors in my leadership skills and I should never ignore. Being a leader in military institution gives me the opportunity to lead others, through difficult tasks in the country, and my subordinates are led to achieve these tasks. This research will direct me to consider other issues when leading them through difficult times. Moreover, this research will help to address the challenges in achieving Vision 2030. This means how to find a balance between Saudisation and maintaining talented employees in the current competitive environment. Maintaining the talented people while increasing (and sustaining) the number of SMEs is quite challenging, especially in entertainment and tourism industry that are resource demanding and need talented employees.

Leading diversified team in the future might be the key achievement, learning how employees think and how their emotions are related to their performance is also a critical factor to consider. Engagement is an emotional personal interaction between employees to support and achieve the main objectives, and I feel this engagement while I’m conducting this research. My engagement in the research was a great experience, feeling lost one day and then finding a solution was a great way of learning about the subject that I believe it has the potential for future application in my home country Saudi Arabia. This research will also help, when I provide advices to the entrepreneurs and business start-ups in Saudi to provide support, which is based on the literature and published report. Future researches are also possible in this direction, not only in Saudi but across the GCC countries, such as the impact of Emiratisation and Kuwaitisation on employees’ engagement, as all GCC countries share the same cultural factors and these countries are still attractive to talented employment.

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