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The Influence of Societal and Organizational Culture on Employment Equity: The Case of the Public Sector in the Sultanate of Oman

Albadri, Nasser Mohammed

[Thesis]. Manchester, UK: The University of Manchester; 2012.

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Abstract

AbstractThis study aims to examine the degree of influence that societal and organizational cultures, as specified by the GLOBE project, have on employment equity in the Omani public sector. Therefore, a theoretical framework has been built and developed in two main areas, which are culture and employment equity.In addition, the methodology of the study has been designed to use both quantitative and qualitative research approaches for triangulation. Quantitative data was collected from a sample of 290 Omani civil servants representing several public organizations, while qualitative data was collected in a single case study of Oman’s Royal Court Affairs (RCA) organization, 12 general managers from which were interviewed. The independent variables were dimensions of societal and organizational culture, and the dependent variables were employment equity in general, which includes seven critical success factors behind employment equity. The analysis for the quantitative data was carried out using SPSS software, while interviews were analysed manually due to the small number of participants. The results of the study confirm that societal and organizational cultures have significant influence on employment equity (EE). However, not all cultural dimensions have the same direction or degree of influence on employment equity. In fact, some of these dimensions have no significant correlation with EE. Also, the study found that there were no differences between managers’ and employees’ responses with regard to 34 cultural dimensions out of 36. The two dimensions in which the results differed between these groups were Human Orientation and Future Orientation for organizational culture value. Additionally, the results show that participants believe that there is a real need for higher EE in the Omani public sector as there were clear differences between current practices of EE and how it should be. Moreover, there were significant positive correlations between all seven critical success factors behind effective EE. This result indicates that these factors are interacting between each other in a positive way. Also, a suggested framework was developed to show how government and other organizations could positively use and benefit from the influences of cultural dimensions to enhance EE among employees. Researchers also could benefit from such a framework as well as the overall findings of this thesis by using them as a starting point for further research to fill the observed knowledge gap in this area.