Valerie Priscilla Goby

Interpersonal communication and diversity climate: promoting workforce localization in the UAE

Purpose – This paper aims to identify the rudiments of an organizational communication framework which can serve as a facilitator of a positive diversity climate, which, in turn, could enhance the integration of locals into the expatriate-dominated workforce of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). As UAE citizens constitute a small minority of the workforce, the local style of communication is not, ipso facto, the dominant one in organizations. Design/methodology/approach – The study elicited 458 Emirati respondents’ narratives of positive and negative workplace communication experiences. The authors identified emerging themes to highlight the key features of interpersonal interactions likely to foster or hinder a supportive diversity climate. Findings – The critical incidents reported are interpreted in terms of UAE cultural traditions, more specifically, the communication patterns valued by local workers. Research limitations/implications – Outside of the Arabian Gulf, there are perhaps no other national wor...

Accreditation and assessment of learning in the UAE

Purpose – This paper aims to focus on the successful efforts made at a university business school in the Gulf region to develop an assessment tool to evaluate the communication skills of undergraduate students as part of satisfying the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditation requirements. We do not consider the validity of establishing learning outcomes or meeting these according to AACSB criteria. Rather, we address ourselves solely to the design of a testing instrument that can measure the degree of student learning within the parameters of university-established learning outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – The testing of communication skills, as opposed to language, is notoriously complex, and we describe our identification of constituent items that make up the corpus of knowledge that business students need to attain. We discuss our development of a testing instrument which reflects the learning process of knowledge, comprehension and application. Findings – Our...

The impact of culture on the construal of organizational crisis: perceptions of crisis in Dubai

Purpose – Despite the rising significance of the Arabian Gulf on the global corporate landscape, research is lacking in the area of organizational crisis communication. The purpose of this paper is to present a preliminary contribution to this gap in the form of an initial investigation of the conceptualization of crisis among female Emirati nationals in Dubai. Design/methodology/approach – With reference to Pearson and Clair’s (1998) list of organizational crises, the authors designed a survey to elicit perceptions of crises, their severity, and their likelihood of occurring in the United Arab Emirates; the authors administered this survey to 105 female Emirati respondents. Given the heavy delineation of gender roles that exists in the region, the authors limited this initial study to a single gender, women. The authors discuss the crises respondents identified as most severe and most likely to occur in the country in terms of culture, Islamic values, and business in Dubai. Findings – Responses indicate ...

Workforce localization, information sharing, and the imperative of culture: A preliminary exploration of expatriate-Emirati information sharing in Dubai’s private sector

Purpose The aim of this study is to conduct an initial investigation of information sharing between the vast number of expatriate employees and the small minority of local employees in Dubai’s private sector workforce. Research on the impact of the workforce localization policy has highlighted the frequent marginalization of locals within the expatriate-dominated private sector. One form of this is the reluctance of expatriates to share information with local recruits, and the authors conducted this study to assess the reality and extent of this phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach The authors designed a brief interview survey to probe how Emirati employees secure workplace information and whether they experience information withholding on the part of expatriate colleagues. The authors also explored whether any such experience impacts on their attitudes to working in the private sector since this is a key factor in the success of the localization policy. Complete responses were received from 0.9 per cent of the total local private sector workforce. Findings A notable lack of information sharing emerged with 58 per cent of respondents reporting their expatriate colleagues’ and superiors’ reluctance to share information with them, and 63 per cent describing experiences of discriminatory behavior. Research limitations/implications The authors identify key cultural and communication issues relating to localization within Dubai’s multicultural workforce. These include the broader cultural factors that determine how Emiratis conceptualize information sharing. Future research can pursue this issue to help inform the development of supportive information sharing practices. Such practices are an essential part of the creation of a diversity climate, which is necessary to sustain localization. Originality/value This study is a pioneering attempt to empirically investigate the information sharing practices that Emirati private sector employees experience. It suggests that the exclusion of citizens from the workplace through practices such as “ghost Emiratization” reverberates in the workplace through a lack of information sharing.

Mobile or Not? Assessing the Instructional Value of Mobile Learning

Our aim was to explore the influence of mobile learning on students’ acquisition of conceptual knowledge of business communication, as well as on the development of their communication skills. We compared the performance of three groups of students according to the pedagogical approach that we used with them: a mobile learning group, a conventional group, and a control group. Our findings suggest that a mobile learning intervention leads to an improvement in student performance in a formal assessment and that it will also have a positive impact on learning outcomes.

From philanthropy to broader social engagement: Muslim consumers’ response to corporate social marketing strategies in Dubai

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the potential effectiveness of using corporate social marketing (CSM) as part of an advertising campaign targeting local Muslim consumers in Dubai. It aims to assess whether Dubai’s local Muslim community’s construal of corporate commitment has evolved beyond philanthropy toward receptiveness to a more embedded corporate societal engagement. Design/methodology/approach The examination is based on the framework of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication that postulates a relationship between internal outcomes, such as the awareness of a cause, and external outcomes, such as the likelihood that a consumer will purchase a product. The authors designed a questionnaire using authentic advertisements for the same product, one with a CSM message and one without, and queried respondents’ opinions of the advertisements, their willingness to purchase the product and their perceptions of the company. Complete responses were collected from 245 Emirati women. Findings Significant differences in response to the CSM versus the non-CSM advertisement emerged. The product advertised via the CSM strategy engendered enhanced perceptions of the company among respondents, coupled with a heightened willingness on their part to purchase the product. This indicates that Emirati consumers have gone beyond the simple expectation of philanthropy, which is frequently associated with Muslim consumer loyalty, and value more evolved corporate social commitment. Originality/value While Muslim groups have been investigated extensively from various marketing perspectives, the present study is the first to investigate the impact of incorporating CSR into an authentic advertising campaign targeted at Muslim consumers.

“Going Mobile” in Business Communication at an Arabian Gulf University

In this article, we describe a project in which undergraduate business seniors at a university in the Arabian Gulf created or evaluated the chapters of an iBook as part of their final course in business communication. Students were surveyed throughout the project, and they also participated in a focus group discussion at the end. The aim was to evaluate their experience with learning from a peer-generated iBook and to identify any motivating factors behind it. The study showed that incorporating mobile learning into the business communication classroom was highly meaningful for the students involved for a range of different reasons.

Exploring Leadership Communication in the United Arab Emirates: Issues of Culture and Gender

This study aims to identify what makes a successful leader in the UAE within the paradigms of leadership styles and leadership communication. In order to do this, we explore, and potentially challenge , a number of the existing leadership stereotypes that are germane to the region, along with the stereotypical discourse strategies that have been associated with the ways in which men and women enact leadership. We wanted to find out if Emirati nationals would prefer the type of discursive leadership that has been associated with women leaders , that is transformational leadership and collaborative communication, or if they would prefer the discursive leadership that has been stereotypically associated with men in equivalent positions, that is laissez-faire, transactional or paternalistic leadership styles , together with the use of a direct and competitive style of communication. Our findings show that a Western understanding of leadership may be too strictly delineated to account for leadership styles in the Gulf, and also that leaders in the region may effectively draw on a combined set of communication strategies that have been stereotypically attributed elsewhere to male and female leaders.

New Lamps for Old: The Gulf Leadership Communication Framework

Our study aims to examine ways to counteract the arbitrary mix of organizational communication practices that has evolved in the Gulf Region as a result of the large numbers of different cultures that make up the workforce there. To this end, we attempt to develop a conceptual model of leadership communication, the Gulf Leadership Communication Framework. We see this as a crucial element in organizational communication practices that is of particular relevance for the process of localization in the Gulf Region. In this analysis, we refer to two sets of empirical data on discursive leadership and interpersonal communication that were collected from around 600 Emirati nationals. Our findings show that a leadership model for social contexts like the Gulf Cooperation Council may look very different from the models that obtain elsewhere; this is the case because in the region organizational communication may be most successful when people use strategies that privilege uniformity, rather than selecting strategies that celebrate diversity.

From Predators To Icons: Exposing the Myth of the Business Hero: Michel Villette and Catherine Vuillermot. Translated from the French by George Holoch. Foreword by John R. Kimberly. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009, 249 pages

There is also a mysterious “man in black,” a supporting character that follows Atlas around giving advice; this adds to the suspense of the narrative (at first this character seems suspect as Atlas wonders if he can trust him). The “man in black” becomes an important character throughout the series, as his tips show Atlas new ways of thinking about his own life and principles of management. Students become captivated as they follow Atlas’s road to becoming a “management guru.” Short, Bauer, Ketchen, and Simon have managed to create a text that is accessible to today’s business student without sacrificing content. The Atlas Black volumes could be used in both undergraduate and graduate courses focusing on topics such as business communication, principles of management, business leadership, entrepreneurship, introduction to business, and even business psychology. The general graphic novel reader might also find something of value in the compelling characters in these volumes. Atlas Black: Managing to Succeed and Atlas Black: Management Guru? are a must for general academic and business libraries. In a blurb on the back of Atlas Black: Managing to Succeed, Texas A&M professor Duane Ireland states, “It very well could be that this year’s best business book is a comic book!” Indeed!