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THE UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
School of Civil Engineering
Dissertation
Submitted in accordance with the requirement for the degree of;
Master of Science (engineering)
In
ENGINEERING PROJECT MANAGEMENT
To study knowledge, skills and
behaviours those are required for
Construction Managers in regards to
worker escape (issue) in Sultanate of
Oman
Written By
Mazin Said Abdullah AL Hasani
September 2013
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Abstract
This research sets out to identify the knowledge, skills and behaviours of the project
managers in regards to worker escape and idleness career in the public sector in Sultanate of
Oman. The number of foreigner worker in the Sultanate has been increased in the last
decades as a result of huge demand to develop the infrastructure of the country and to
increase the economical growth. Therefore, a number of issues raised in many aspects such as
economic, social, culture and security as a result of worker escape which received a great
interest from the government of the Sultanate of Oman. On the other hand, several Ministries
are suffering for idleness career in which the employee came late to the work place or leave
early. The author, through this study, aims to study what are the capabilities of project
manager required to deal with these issues. These the knowledge, skills and behaviours are
discussed in the literature review which also used to develop the research data collection
methodology. The author believes that the project managers’ knowledge, skills and
behaviours could help to reduce or avoid these issues. The cause and effect of both issue
examined by the author and therefore, some recommendations been made.
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Acknowledgement
I would like to offer my sincere gratitude to all individuals who took part of this research,
making this study possible and bringing it to successful conclusion.
First, I would like to acknowledge the immense support of Dr. Nick Johns for his supervision
in which he guided me and always there whenever needed. Second, this research would not
have been successful without my parents’ prayers which provide morale support.
Indeed, my appreciations are extended to my friends who usually encourage and motivate me
during my study.
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Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................................... i
Acknowledgement .................................................................................................................................. ii
Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................... iii
List of Tables .......................................................................................................................................... vi
List of Figures .......................................................................................................................................... v
Chapter 1: Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1
Background ......................................................................................................................................... 1
Aim and Objectives ............................................................................................................................. 3
Literature Review ................................................................................................................................ 3
Research Methodology ....................................................................................................................... 4
Limitations and Exclusions .................................................................................................................. 4
Scope – Research definition ................................................................................................................ 5
Dissertation Outline ............................................................................................................................ 5
Chapter 2: Motivation and Leadership (Literature Review) ................................................................... 7
2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 7
2.1.1 The role of project manager .......................................................................................... 7
2.2 Motivation ..................................................................................................................................... 8
2.2.1 Why people work? And the reasons behind poor performance ........................................... 8
2.2.2 Motivation theory ................................................................................................................ 10
2.2.3 Employee satisfaction .......................................................................................................... 16
2.2.4 Motivation strategy ............................................................................................................. 18
2.3 Leadership ................................................................................................................................... 19
2.3.1 Leaders and manager ........................................................................................................... 20
2.3.2 Management and leaders .................................................................................................... 21
2.3.3 Leadership theory ................................................................................................................ 23
2.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 29
Chapter 3: Negotiation, Communication, Delegation and Decision making (Literature review) ......... 31
3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 31
3.2 Negotiating skills ......................................................................................................................... 31
3.2.1 Types of Negotiation ............................................................................................................ 31
3.2.2 Negotiation techniques ........................................................................................................ 32
3.2.3 Negotiation theories ............................................................................................................ 34
3.3 Communication ........................................................................................................................... 37
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3.3.1 Types of communication ...................................................................................................... 37
3.4 Delegation ................................................................................................................................... 38
3.4.1 Obstacles in delegation ........................................................................................................ 39
3.5 Decision making and Problem solving ........................................................................................ 39
3.6 The relation between a project manager and the employee ..................................................... 40
3.7 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 40
Chapter 4: Research Methodology ....................................................................................................... 42
4.1 Research design: ......................................................................................................................... 42
4.1.1 Case selection: ..................................................................................................................... 42
4.1.2 Variable ................................................................................................................................ 44
4.2 Research method: ....................................................................................................................... 45
4.2.1 Selection of research method: ............................................................................................. 45
4.2.2 Methods of collecting data: ................................................................................................. 46
4.3 Process of collecting data: .......................................................................................................... 48
4.4 Issues to be considered:.............................................................................................................. 48
4.4.1 Pre-testing ............................................................................................................................ 48
4.4.2 Research validity .................................................................................................................. 49
4.4.3 Triangulation ........................................................................................................................ 49
4.4.4 Research ethics .................................................................................................................... 49
Chapter 5: Data collection and Analysis ............................................................................................... 51
5.1 Introduction: ............................................................................................................................... 51
5.2 Data Analysis – why people work? And job satisfaction ............................................................ 51
5.3 Data Analysis – Worker escape and idleness career causes and effects .................................... 53
5.4 Data Analysis – Communication Skills......................................................................................... 59
5.5 Data Analysis – Negotiation and Motivation skills ...................................................................... 60
5.6 Data Analysis – Leadership and delegation skills ........................................................................ 61
5.7 Summary ..................................................................................................................................... 63
Chapter 6: Conclusion and Recommendations ..................................................................................... 65
6.1 Introduction: ............................................................................................................................... 65
6.2 Research Findings: ...................................................................................................................... 65
6.3 Research Summary: .................................................................................................................... 66
6.4 Recommendations: ..................................................................................................................... 67
6.5 Limitations: ................................................................................................................................. 68
6.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 68
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References ............................................................................................................................................ 69
Appendix ............................................................................................................................................... 77
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List of Tables
Table 2.3.1: The difference between managers and leaders .................................................. 21
Table 2.3.2: Differences between management and leadership ............................................ 22
Table 2.3.3.3: Theory X and Theory Y (IAAP, 2009) ................................................................. 26
Table 4.1.1.2: Advantages and disadvantages of the basic design (Kervin, 1992 cited by
Tutesigensi, 2012) .................................................................................................................... 43
Table 5.1: Various Reasons of people to work ........................................................................ 51
Table 5.2: Total Expatriates Workers Registered with Directorate General of Civil Status
(National Centre for Statistics and Information, 2013) ........................................................... 54
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List of Figures
Figure 2.2.2.4: Herzberg’s (1966) hygiene and motivators’ factors (citied by Cooper, 2003) ............. 14
Figure 2.3.3.3: The Managerial Grid (Blake & Mouton, 1964 cited by Bolden et. al, 2003) ............... 25
Figure 5.1: Reasons of people wok ....................................................................................................... 52
Figure 5.2.1: Worker escape distribution according to their nationalities ............................................ 55
Figure 5.2.2: Reasons of worker escape (Employees’ view) ................................................................ 55
Figure 5.2.3: Reasons of worker escape (Managers’ view) .................................................................. 56
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Chapter 1: Introduction
This chapter provides a brief discussion of this research. It begins with indicating the
background of the research with an illustration of the main issue that has to be solved.
However, the aim and objectives of this dissertation will be included in this chapter. Indeed, a
brief discussion of the literature review and the research methodology adopted in this
dissertation will also be included. Research definition, limitation of the research and the
structure of this paper will also be considered in this chapter.
Background In 1970, the development of most sectors gradually increased as his Majesty Sultan Qaboos
Bin Said became the Sultan of Oman. This is because the economic growth rate has been
increased as a result of the rise of the oil income and the desired of government of Sultanate
of Oman to establish new projects which benefit economic and social sectors. Although there
are high demands for these projects, the lack of human resource still been an issue. Therefore,
the option of foreign workers seems a must at that period as the Sultanate considered as one
of the developing nations demanding for foreign worker. Nevertheless, those foreign workers
have a vital role in lay down the infrastructure projects and contribute in the development of
the country however, a number of issues raised in many aspects such as economic, social,
culture and security. This could arguably be said that it was not subject through well plan,
clear visions and timeframe for recruitment. Over the time, this issue becomes more complex
in which it has transferred to become an obsession needing government and public opinion. If
the first objectives in demanding foreign worker is to develop the country and increase the
economical growth, thus, the reaction of increasing the number of foreign determine a threat
in the present and future. This is from one side, whereas on the other hand foreign workers
cases in the light of the development in economics and politics stressed the countries which
demand for those workers from other development countries and organisational right
institutes in terms of politic and economic, therefore a way to intervene on the country
affaires claiming that they abuse the agreement of human right and work internationally
(Centre for Studies and Research eastern chamber, 2009).
Worker escape is considered as one of the major issues arises due to the huge increase
adoption of the foreign workers. Hence, the means of worker escape is that a sudden leave
from workplace without noticing the responsible person. This could have an impact not only
on the government and organisation but on the social community as well. The focuses on this
issue and the explanations of its causes and impacts on the countries, its effect in increasing
the non-employment especially between youth, the increasing of its money transfer oversees
and highlighting its reflection on the social community should be highly considered. This also
could lead to determine as one form of international economic crime.
In the last decade, worker escape received a great interest from the government of the
Sultanate of Oman in which newspaper publish a report, article and statistics. Also, from
what can be seen from different types of media such as TV, radio, internet, conferences and
workshops which organised by Ministry, private organisation and institution of civil society
like human rights cooperation.
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In Sultanate of Oman, many organisations are suffering from workers escape. This can be
classified into two main categories: the first one leaving the job before the end of working
hours, which also called idleness career, and the second one is leaving the work without
informing the responsible person, in other words, escape from the work. The majority of the
foreign labours working in Sultanate of Oman are coming from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan,
Sri Lanka and Philippines and most of these expatriates perform physical and lower level
jobs.
Workers escape is one of the most important cases that have a negative reflection on the
society as it influence the safety, stability and security of the society. It may lead to several
crimes such as theft, swindle and fraud. Additionally, whenever workers escape commits
crimes, it is difficult to find the place that it stays in as well as it will be far away from
justice. As a result of its illegal situation, it will be far from heath care which may lead to
spread different kinds of infectious diseases.
According to Ministry of Manpower statistics, the number of foreign worker until February
2011 reach 1155392 and the number of worker escape reach 84047 until the same decade.
Majority of the labours are working in construction project and others working in trade, cars
maintenance, manufacturing, hotels, restaurants, property activities and community service.
Furthermore, the rate of workers escape daily reach 44 worker which consider as high rate.
This lead government to do further investigation on the reasons behind that and the side
effects in terms of social, psychology and economic aspects on a worker.
On the other hand, idleness career also has been found to increase in last two decades.
Employees tend to come late to the work place or leave early. Before, indicating the impact
of this issue, it should be first highlight the cause that could lead these employees to do so.
According the ALLawati (2013), there are several reason of idleness career such as employee
dissatisfaction, less motivation, employee feeling of unfair, no flexibility in terms of finishing
personal needs, long working hour, type of work and recruiting someone in position far away
from his major. These reasons could lead employee to leave the work earlier or ever coming
late. The impact of this issue may affect the organisational and people who has dealing with
that organisation in terms of delay submission of the work.
The topic of this study is forcing on the knowledge, skills and behaviours those are required
for Construction Managers in regards to worker escape (issue) and idleness career in
Sultanate of Oman. The author, through this study, aims to study what are the capabilities of
project manager required to deal with this issue. Therefore, the gap of knowledge will be
explored by the author by means of this study.
The outcomes of this study will be useful for the constriction manager or project manager to
deal with worker escape and idleness career. Moreover, the study will indicate the several
skills, knowledge and behaviour require for a project manager when he face such issue.
This paper begins with an introduction of the study then highlighting variation skills and
behaviour of the project manager. The skills and behaviour will be discussed in details.
Following that the analysis based on the data been collected through the methodology which
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been adopted. The paper ends with the recommendation which could be obtained through the
analysis.
Aim and Objectives The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the reasons behind workers escape and idleness
career in the public sector in Sultanate of Oman as a case study. In order to achieve this aim
the following objectives will be accomplished:
To indicate the knowledge, skills and behaviours that required of project
managers and compare it with the past one which lead labours escape and
idleness career.
The author will highlight various skills and behaviour of project managers
To discuss the causes of worker escape and idleness career.
Here, a discussion of the reasons behind worker escape and idleness career will be
conducted along with its impacts.
To examine the influence of knowledge, skills and behaviours that required of
project managers on the project type.
By means of this objective, the author will examine the influence of knowledge, skills
and behaviour of the project managers on the project type and the role of employee in
the organisation.
To illustrate the management skills required for today’s project managers with
correlation of workers escape and idleness career
Management skills are different form managers’ skills, therefore, an illustration of the
management skills required to deal with worker escape and idleness career will be
highlighted.
To discuss the benefit of adopting this skills to derive a project successfully.
At this point, the benefit of using such skill will be determined, thus, it could reduce
worker escape and idleness career and therefore, drive the project successfully.
Literature Review The literature information required for this research has been obtained through several
materials including books, journals, internet, technical documents, government documents,
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and articles. Majority of the books used are primarily related to the different skills,
knowledge and behaviour of project managers. The books illustrated several theories and
skills required for project managers in the work environment.
Indeed, the journal articles that been used in this research published by International Journal
of Project Management, Project management institute, Journal of Leadership &
Organisational Studies, Journal of Managerial Psychology, International Journal of
Management, Business, International Journal of Management, Business, and Administration,
Journal of Marketing Research and African Journal of Business Management. The reason
behind using these journal articles is due to their contemporary and relevance to this research.
Besides this, the references which been published in the articles are been searched through
Google scholar, Engineering Village and University of Leeds library catalogue.
Nevertheless, internet web pages also been used in this research in order to retrieve general
information. Published newspaper articles were used to highlight the background study and
previous research on the topic. Case study information gathered through government of
Sultanate of Oman. All the information required for this research has been collected and
arranged in a systematic way in order to provide smooth flow throughout the research.
Research Methodology The method of gathering and analysing data in a systematic way in order to gain knowledge
and understanding the research study called research (Kervin, 1992). In simple words,
research could be defined as a process of collecting and gathering information. Asgari (2010)
has indicated that there are two types of research which are; applied research and basic
research. This research considered as basic research due to the author aims to investigate the
behaviour, knowledge and skills required for project managers in order to deal with worker
escape and idleness career in Sultanate of Oman. The author has adopted two research
methodologies in order to gather information which is interviews and running workshops.
The author has prepared interview questions and workshop proposal to collect the necessity
data required for the research.
Additionally, the secondary data has obtained by the author by means of several resources
such as books, journals and internet. Primary data has been obtained through interviews and
running workshops. In order to address the research issue, the author has used both primary
and secondary data and analysed them accordingly
The research samples have focused on both employees and project managers in the public
sector in Sultanate of Oman. Indeed, the findings which obtained from the research will be
used to develop the research recommendations.
Limitations and Exclusions
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This research is limited to the knowledge, skills and behaviour required for project managers
in public sector in Sultanate of Oman. Because of limited time, the author believes that the
sample data could be increased and a number of issues may be highlighted in details.
Therefore, the research outcomes would be much better. However, the author claimed that the
outcomes obtained still covered most of the issues and achieved the research aim.
Scope – Research definition This project is a research project which aims to investigate the reasons behind workers escape
and idleness career in the public sector in Sultanate of Oman as a case study. The author has
illustrated several types of skills, knowledge and behaviour required for a project manager.
Additionally, the author believes that this research provide a clear understanding about how
project managers could behave with the employee in order to eliminate or reduce worker
escape and idleness career. These skills and behaviour have been examined through several
theories and analysed. The analysis provided outcomes in which how project managers
should react with the employee problems. Therefore, the recommendations were made
according to these outcomes.
The author found from the extended literature review that there are several skills required for
a project manager in order to deal with worker escape and idleness career. These skills
involve motivation, communication, negotiation, leadership, delegation and decision making.
All of these skills and behaviour has been examined and explained in details. The research
also has indicated the relation between project manager and his employees.
Dissertation Outline This dissertation has been divided into six main chapters in which each chapter also divided
into subchapters. Wherever it was necessary the subchapters again were divided in order to
provide more details. This structure has been adopted for all chapters in which all chapters
begun with an introduction to the chapter highlighting what it will cover. The main body of
each chapter explained in details. All chapters end with conclusion which summaries what
have been discussed including the finding. Chapters that included in this dissertation are
highlighted in details as the following:
Chapter 1: Introduction
This chapter provides general idea about this dissertation. It illustrates a brief background
about the research and indicates in details the aim and the objectives of this paper. Moreover,
research methodology which the author has adopted is included with a short description about
literature review. Nevertheless, the dissertation scope and definition will also be considered
in this chapter.
Chapter 2: Literature Review (Motivation and Leadership)
This chapter includes the main body of this dissertation in which it involves the literature
about motivation and leadership. This chapter covers in details several motivation and
leadership theories with an illustration of the role of the project manager, employee
satisfaction and the difference between managers and leaders. Therefore, provide a clear idea
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about some of the project managers’ skills, knowledge and behaviour. Additionally, it shows
the role of the project manager, what leads to employee satisfaction and the role of leaders
and manger as a comparison. The outcome of this chapter will highlight one of the
dissertation objectives.
Chapter 2 – Negotiation, Communication, Delegation and Decision making
This chapter continues highlighting about various knowledge, skills and behaviour of project
managers. Negotiation, communication, delegation and decision making skills will be
discussed in details. Moreover, various theories in negotiation and communication will be
explored with the author suggestion in which project managers could adopt one of them.
Indeed, the outcomes of this chapter will cover some of the dissertation objectives. Also, this
chapter and the previous one determine the management skills required to deal with
employee in order to fulfill the needs. The theories, skills, knowledge and behaviours that
been mentioned in chapter two and three will be used to analysis the data collected and
therefore, provide results and further recommendations.
Chapter 4 – Research Methodology
This chapter indicates the research methodology that will be used in this study in order to
solve the research issue. This chapter illustrates the research gap of knowledge in brief with
the research strategy that will be adopted. Additionally, discussions of the techniques used by
the author for primary data collection also included in this chapter with the indication of the
samples details. Moreover, the issues that needs to be considered while doing the research
will be illustrated. Nevertheless, this chapter in general is about the procedure that used in
this research.
Chapter 5 – Data Analysis
This chapter explores the research in details and provides the solution. It highlights an outline
of the primary and secondary data that been collected. Then, these data will be analysed in
order to address the research issue. Indeed, the reasons of worker escape and idleness career
will be involved in this chapter and based on that knowledge, skills and behaviours required
for project managers will be determined in order to tackled this issue. According to that,
some recommendations will be made.
Chapter 6 – Recommendations and Conclusion
This is the last chapter of the dissertation in which it will cover two main sections which are
conclusion and recommendations. The conclusion section will indicate the aim and objectives
of this research with the outcomes that been found through the data which been analysed.
However, recommendation section will determine the suitable recommendations that can be
used either for project manager, employee and organisation or for those who have an interest
for further study in the future.
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Chapter 2: Motivation and Leadership (Literature Review)
2.1 Introduction
In this chapter, literatures about the role of a project manager within an organisation will be
highlighted. The main focus of this chapter will be on two types of features that a project
manager should have namely; motivation and leadership. In the motivation section, the
reason on why people work and poor performance in the work place will be discussed.
Moreover, an illustration of a number of motivational theories, motivational strategy and
employee satisfaction will be highlighted. In the leadership section, it begins with the
definition of leadership followed by a discussion on the different between leader, manager
and management. This section end with different leadership theories which a project manager
can adopt one of them
2.1.1 The role of project manager
In any project, many people are involved in order to deliver the project successfully which
could be referred to as a project team. This team should be managed, thus it requires a project
manager (Lientz and Rea, 2002:105).
Graham and Portny (2011) stated that the job of a project manager in any project is to
manage the venture on the day-to-day basis in order to deliver it successfully. There are three
main management roles of the project manager as suggested by Lientz and Rea (2002):
Planning and controlling: develop the project plan that highlights all the project
aspects, thus, delivered within time, budget and quality.
Resources manager: managing and directing all the project resource to meet the
project objectives.
Coordinating: communicating with high level of management regarding the project
issue, approval and review, then, passing it to all staff.
However, technical work is not one of the project manager roles. S/he may be involved with
that job as a team member. Thus, it is essential to distinguish between the project manager
roles and a member of a team roles. Lientz and Rea (2002); Graham and Portny (2011) stated
the roles of the project manager. Some of these roles are mentioned as the following:
Motivating the project team
Directing the project resources
Managing the team work and change
Preparing project plan (including schedule, budget and people in charge) and
reporting the work progress
Interacting with higher level of management and other managers
Managing risk and develop action plan to deal with it
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Dealing with conflict project team, management and stakeholders
Implementing the organisation policy
Delegating responsibility
Communicating with team work in a case of misunderstanding
Preparing management presentation
Closing the project down when everything done as planned.
Besides, it could be said that the role of the project manager is not only focusing in planning
and directing the project but, but exceed to motivating, delegating, dealing with conflict and
communicating with his team.
2.2 Motivation In Latin, the words “motivation” and “emotion” have the same root. However, the word
“movera” means to move’ (Richard et. al., 1992 and Passer et. al., 2001 cited by Wallace,
n.d). This approves that both motivation and emotion have a similar or closer link. According
to the Macmillan dictionary, a motive is the cause that a person does something. Motivate
could be defined as “to provide with a motive” (Shanks, 2006). Broussard and Garrison
(2004) have defined motivation as “the attribute that moves us to do or not to do something”
(Citied by Lai, 2011). Guay et al. (2010) referred motivation to the causes underlying
behaviour. Therefore, motivation can be defined as the method of motivating a person to do
an action. Motivation comes to fulfill the requirement or the need of people or organisation.
This definition might arise several questions that need to be highlighted such as what are the
rewards, who should motivate employees and is everybody in the organisation should be
motivated?.
Project managers around the world are mainly facing two challenges in terms of motivating
their employees. The first one is motivating employees in order to achieve the organisation
objectives. The second challenge is motivating employees to achieve his/her personal goals.
Therefore, motivation could help to improve the employees’ performance which, as a result,
improves the organisation performance. However, it is difficult for project managers to
achieve all the needs or the goals of both employer and employee.
2.2.1 Why people work? And the reasons behind poor performance
One of the important reasons that make people work is to earn a living which could be
obtained through money. In addition, this is not the only reason why people actually work.
There are other reasons for illustration (Rees, 1996):
Achievement
Fulfillment
Personal Growth
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Sense of Belonging
To make friends
To have job security
Maslow (1943) suggested that people do work in order to satisfy their wants and needs and he
developed a hierarchy for human needs which will be discussed later.
People may not work effectively either due to job or person. Hence, examination should take
place not only on a person but on his job as well. This is because a person might never work
in such job. In some cases, jobs could pose motivational issues. However, circumstances in
person lifestyle could also lead him/her not to work effectively. Similarly, in most jobs, there
are some people who perform effectively. Therefore, a basic question could arise here that the
poor performance of an employee is due to a person, a job or the matching of the two (Rees,
1996). Diab (2011) suggested that poor performance at the workplace could be one of the
following reasons:
Mismatching between individual skills and job requirements:
This usually happens when the employee engages in the family business just for job
privileges.
Lack or limited experience in a given role:
In case of promotion, an employee may not have the experience required for the new
position.
Environmental factors and Organizational issues outside the scope of the person’s
responsibility.
The work stress, pressure and drama that cannot be changed due to its nature especially
for those who work in oil and gas fields. Sometimes the workplace environment is
negative where an employee is not respected and no one appreciate his/her work. Indeed,
manager’s behaviour also affects the performance of employees which could lead to poor
performance.
However, Vaishnav (2011) claimed that there are four main causes of poor performance
which are: ineffective leadership, wrong people at the wrong place, inadequate work-systems
and processes and individual’s incapability’s. In many workplaces, leaders or supervisors
play an important role in supervising the work which could improve the employee
performance. However, ineffective leadership may lead employees to neglect the work and
this leads to poor performance. As Diab (2011) mentioned, promoting an employee may also
lead to poor performance when the organisation place an employee in a position that s/he has
no experience or in different than his/her specialization. Therefore, it is essential to set the
right person at the right place. Rules and regulations in the organisation may also affect the
performance of the employee. They may restrict the worker, thus, feeling inflexible. The
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work atmosphere where employees feel flexible seems more comfortable, and the work
quality could increase. Moreover, some organisations tend to hire an employee who does not
have the capability to handle that job. These organisations do so as they want to decrease
their payment due to an expert may ask for more money.
2.2.2 Motivation theory
A number of authors believe that employee motivation is important in order to increase the
worker performance. Many psychologists have studied human motivation and come up with
several theories that motivate people which are Maslow’s Need Hierarchy, Alderfer’s ERG
theory, McClelland’s learned Needs, Herzberg’s two Factor theory and Expectancy theory.
These theories will be highlighted in details in the following sections.
2.2.2.1 Maslow’s Need Hierarchy
Maslow (1954) supposed hierarchy of needs that could be used to examine individual
motivation. He believes that human behaviour is centred on various needs which can be
arranged in a hierarchy. In other words, human needs could be classified into several levels in
which meeting all levels needs could motivate individual. There are five main levels of needs
that Maslow postulated in a hierarchy namely: physiological, safety, social, esteem and self-
actualization (Maslow, 1943; Maslow, 1954; Rees, 2004).
Level 1: a physiological need means any physical that human need including air,
water, food, sleep and sexual drive for instance: when someone feels hungry, s/he will
require eating in order to fulfill his/her needs
Level 2: safety needs which refer to security, pain, home, freedom, health, money and
protection. In other words, safe environment.
Level 3: social needs which refer to work, love, friendships, family and various type
of support.
Level 4: esteem needs which refer to self-respect, confidence, positive regard,
attention, appreciation status and independent achievement.
Level 5: self-c needs which refer to achievement, personal development and
autonomy.
Maslow (1954) indicated that a person could become a motivator only if s/he is dissatisfied.
In many countries, safety needs almost satisfied only those who are living in the poor area,
such as Africa, where they are not having the basic requirement. Moreover, a person may not
move to another level until s/he is completely satisfied in his/her level (Cooper, 2003). For
example, a person cannot be motivated in the work if s/he doesn’t have the basic needs such
as house and food.
Wahba and Bridwell (1976) argued that Maslow theory is not specific enough to develop and
design the hypothesis studies which could be used for proper examination. Moreover, a little
evidence has been found which support Maslow theory. Sayles (1979) stated that most of the
lower level needs have already been satisfied but still a person cannot be motivated. The
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highest level needs of Maslow hierarchy can only be achieved through work. This is because
even the lowest level needs could be obtained through job where money is essential. Hence, it
does not mean that money is the only thing that motivates people but the job facilities as well
such as: benefits, health care and education. This could lead to classify the motivation into
two main types which are: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivation could be defined as doing an action or activity for personal satisfaction
without any external force or pressure (Ryan and Deci, 2000). Some authors defined intrinsic
motivation as a task that a person is interested to do. It’s when a person moves to act or do
something by him/herself without any external stress or rewards. This phenomenon was
discovered within an experiment study on the animal behaviour. The result of this study
shows that many animals tend to play and curiosity-driven without any rewards or external
reinforcement (White, 1959). When intrinsic motivation applied on human, it points out that
even human are curious, active, playful and readiness to learn and explore everywhere
without the need of someone to motivate them. This phenomenon only exists between
individual and the task that s/he wants to do (Ryan and Deci, 2000).
Extrinsic motivation is defined as doing some activities or actions in order to obtain some
outcomes by means of external motivator (ibid). For instance, a student dose his/her
homework due to the fear of punishment for not doing it, thus, s/he is motivated to do the
homework in order to avoid the outcome. Similarly, a student is motivated to study to choose
his/her career bath in the future which could be obtained by the outcome of study. Therefore,
it could be said that extrinsic motivation is in contrast with intrinsic motivation. Skinner
(1953) stated that all human behaviour is motivated by rewards. Hull (1943) believes that human
behaviours are motivated by physiological drives.
2.2.2.2 Alderfer’s ERG Theory
Alderfer (1969) suggested another theory of motivation which is the expansion of Maslow
hierarchy needs called ERG theory. This theory involved existence, relatedness and growth
needs which will be highlighted below. The proposal of Alderfer theory is basically based on
the outcomes of the experimental studies in order to clarify the relationship between
satisfaction of needs and human desires. Schneider and Alderfer (1973); Robbins and Judge
(2008) asserted Alderfer theory by means of further empirical studies.
Yang et. al. (2011) indicated that existence needs could be referred to three main forms
namely: physiological, safety and material needs. Physiological needs could be described as
the individual's requirement of satisfaction at vivacity level in terms of exercise, leisure and
sleep. Safety needs could be described as the avoidance of danger, fear, threat, tension and
anxiety. Material needs could be described as the individual's requirement of resources such
as food and clothes.
Relatedness needs comprise three forms which are: senses of security, belonging, and respect.
Sense of security refers to mutual trust and humanity. Sense of belonging could describe all
forms of prevention from hardship or suffering including, loneliness, isolation and distance,
thus, people tend to be member of a group. The belonging needs also comprise love which
could be given to others or caring from them. Moreover, sense respect refers to the feeling of
12
respect from others in terms of importance, social status compliment and popularity. Sense of
respect is given value to people.
Beside, growth needs comprise two main needs which are self actualization and self esteem.
Self actualization means self achievement involving achieving personal’s goals and
developing or improving personality. Also, it includes the capability to recognize person’s
potentials and supporting others growth. Self esteem means self productive effects including
the ability to achieve, to seek knowledge, to build confidence, to be independent and to
control (ibid)
There are three main differences between Maslow’s hierarchies of needs and Alderfer’s ERG
theory, as Borkowski (2005) stated, as the following:
The most important difference between both theories is that ERG theory applies the
principle of frustration–regression. This means when individual cannot obtained
higher level needs, s/he may 'regress' to the lower level needs in order to obtain
satisfaction
Alderfer ERG theory provides the ability of individual to satisfy his/her needs from
the higher level of needs before satisfying the lower level. However, Maslow
hierarchy of needs requires individual/s to satisfy the lower level first then moving to
the higher level. The concept of both theories seems same but ERG theory provides
flexibility for a person as compared with Maslow theory which requires ones to strict
on the level order.
ERG theory highlights the difference in needs between cultures, thus, the ranking of
needs would be different from one culture to another. This provides flexibility in
which ERG theory could be applied in different culture, therefore, different
behaviours.
In the light of the above differences, it could be said that managers should realize that an
employee may has multiple needs, thus, satisfying one need only may not effectively
motivate him/her.
2.2.2.3 McClelland’s learned Needs
Lussier and Achua (2007) defined McClelland’s learned needs as the theory that attempts to
clarify and expect human behaviour and performance through individual’s need for
achievement, power, and affiliation. McClelland’s theory suggested that people can be
motivated through several ways which are; need of achievement, the need of power and the
need of affiliation. These types of needs can be learned during a person’s lifetime (Lussier &
Achua, 2007; Daft, 2008)
The need for achievement could be defined as the successful in competing with some criteria
or standards of merit (McClelland et. al., 1958 cited by Moore et.al., 2010). In other words,
an individual goal is to be successful in terms of competition with some criteria of merit. The
concern over competition with a creation of merits still motivates a person to identify his/her
13
goal that s/he needs to achieve even if individual fails to achieve his/her goal. McClelland et
al. (1958) highlighted that the most notable competition with a standard of excellence was
when a person was in a direct competition with someone else. Although individual's has their
own way to do task, how well a person performance is the main concern. Lussier and Achua
(2007) and Daft (2008) indicated that the need of achievement and accomplish goals is
something difficult in which it is the unconscious concern for individual and his/her effort.
The need of power refers to the need of controlling, influencing, maintaining leadership
position and making others to behave in a certain way (Remi et. al., 2011; Chimucheka,
2012). It describes those who enjoy their power in order to enhance personal interest. The
need of power includes also those who have high need of social power, thus, aspiration to
help others. Moore et. al (2010) stated that individuals who show the need of power aim to
make an impact and have a yearning to be influential. However, Chimucheka (2012) believes
that an effective leader should not have the need of personalized power but the need of
socialized power.
McClelland (1961) defined the need of affiliation as the need to establish, maintain or restore
a positive and 1effective relationship with others which could be called friendship. Daft
(2008); Moore et. al (2010); Remi et. al (2011) and Chimucheka (2012) referred the need of
affiliation to a desire to make close relationship with others, to seek approval from them,
need for warm, avoid conflict and to be accepted by others. Moore et. al (2010) and Remi et.
al (2011) argued that a person who shows the need of affiliation tend to interact with other
people and support them. They claimed that those people try to project positive image of
themselves. According to Du Toit et al. (2007) point of view of McClelland’s theory, the
human needs can be learned and increase their achievement by motivation.
2.2.2.4 Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory
Herzberge (1959) suggested motivational theory which is known as the two factor theory.
This theory states that a number of factors could cause job satisfaction and dissatisfaction in
the workplace. He believes that satisfaction factors were totally different from dissatisfaction
factors. In other words, removing dissatisfaction factors does not mean that the employee is
satisfied or increasing satisfaction factor does not mean the level of dissatisfaction reduced
(Cooper, 2003). Herzberge (1966) classified these factors into two main types which are
hygiene factors and motivation factors (Figure 2.2.2.4). The factors which are responsible
about good feeling of the job are related to intrinsic factors. However, factors which are
responsible for bas/sad feeling are referred to extrinsic factors (Herzberge et. al, 1959).
Hygiene factors are similar to Maslow’s lower level of needs in which it comprises job
security, salary, company policy and relationships with other employee. Motivation factors
refer to achievement, responsibility, advancement and recognition. This factors seems similar
to Maslow’s esteem and self-actualizing
14
Hygiene Motivators
MOTIVATION AND JOB SATISFACTION
Figure 2.2.2.4: Herzberg’s (1966) hygiene and motivators’ factors
(citied by Cooper, 2003) In Herzberg’s research, he found that most of the dissatisfied people had small impacts on job
satisfaction for example supervision. Similarly, a few motivation factors mitigate the job
dissatisfaction for instance achievement (Khan, 2005). Herzberge et. al. (1959) stated that
motivation factors help to increase productivity, in contrast, hygiene factors led to poor
performance and dissatisfaction. The research also highlighted that the nature of job could
affect employees' attitudes and, therefore, it may lead to poor performance. As a sequence, an
employee may withdraw from the job. As the employee reach job satisfaction, his/her loyalty
to the organisation will increase (ibid).
Indeed, most of the organisations mainly focus on hygiene factor to improve productivity
(Stello, n.d). However, Herzberge et. al. (1959) stressed that focusing only on hygiene factors
is totally wrong. There should be a balance between two factors in which both organisation
and employees achieve satisfaction. In other words, organisation needs should be correlated
or paralleled with individual goals.
Gaziel (1986) argued that two factor theory have several criticisms in terms of the following:
It confuses between satisfaction and dissatisfaction feeling with the organisation
A negative impact could be arisen from the reliability of data by ego-defensiveness on
the part of the worker
Salary
Job security
Supervision
Conditions
Company policy
Extrinsic
Work itself
Responsibility
Achievement
Advancement
Recognition
Intrinsic
Dissatisfaction Satisfaction
15
The theory did not highlight the individual differences among workers
Factors may be overlapping as sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction
Besides that, this research was done by Herzberge and his colleagues, but it is credited only
to Herzberge. Cooper (2003) stated that this theory introduces useful
dimensions/categorization in which it could be used to understand work motivation.
However, managers or individual may apply this dimension according to their understanding
which is mostly unclear (ibid). Therefore, many organisations tend to control this
categorization by means of presenting to them how to behave toward satisfying both
organisation and individual needs. Evans (1996) stated that if the individual needs of workers
are satisfied, organisation needs would equally satisfy too.
2.2.2.5 Expectancy theory
Vroom (1964) proposed a theory of motivation in which it has a direct application to the
work setting called expectancy theory. This could be referred to the human belief that there
are relationship between the effort they perform in the workplace, the way they perform to
achieve that effort and the rewards that they may obtain from their work. This means that
people or individuals could be motivated if they believe that their effort lead to good
performance which could also lead to desired rewards (Lunenburg, 2011).
In Vroom (1964) theory, four main assumptions are suggested as follows:
The reaction of individuals to the organisation is influenced by their expectation about
their needs, motivation and past experiences, in other words, people behaviours is
influenced by their expectation. This is supported by researchers who asserted that
workers who do not have any expectation about their needs, motivation and
requirement tend to be less devoted to their organisation (Avner et. al., 1982;
Caldwell and O’Reilly, 1983 cited by Cooper, 2003),
Individuals can choose a cause of action or behaviours according to their expectation.
Individual's desire different things from the organisation. This means that people's
choice is mainly based on their preferences outcomes for instance: salary and job
security.
Individual’s process of choosing from alternative is rational.
These assumptions of this theory are basically having three elements which are: expectancy,
instrumentality, and valence. Individuals could be motivated based on the degree that s/he
believes. Work that s/he does may lead to accepted performance which will be rewarded and
therefore, the value of rewards is highly motivated (Lunenburg, 2011).
Expectancy is the effort that an individual tires to perform at a given level of performance.
The effort of a person to meet the desire result is based on the possibilities and range
according to the effort performance relationship from 0 to 1 (Tosi and Carroll, 1982 cited by
Cooper, 2003). This probability means if the employee believes that his/her effort will not
16
lead to the desire performance, the expectancy value is 0. However, if the employee believes
that his/her effort will lead to the desire performance and complete the task, the expectancy
value is 1.
Instrumentality is related to the person performance in which it will lead to a desired
outcome. Instrumentality is similar to expectancy in which work performance will be ranged
from 0 to 1 for instance, if the work performance of the employee is considered as good and
resulted to increase the salary, the instrumentality value is 1. On the other hand, if the work
performance of the employee is not good and does not lead to an increase in a salary, the
instrumentality value is 0.
Valence is related to the individual’s preference for reward that s/he received according to his/her
outcome for examples; promotion and salary increases. Valence can be positive or negative
depending on the outcome of the employee. An outcome that the organisation wants individuals
to desire will receive positive valence. In contrast, unwanted outcome will receive negative
valence (ibid). Valence also is ranged from -1 to 1. It could be said that valence presents a link to
the need theories of motivation which are mentioned above in which it is related to the employees
needs.
Vroom (1964) suggested that the relation between motivation, expectancy, instrumentality, and
valence could be in terms of the following equation:
Motivation = Expectancy x Instrumentality x Valence
In the light of the above equation, it could be said that higher level of motivation would be
obtained when all expectancy, instrumentality and valence are high. However, if one of the three
elements is zero, motivation will be zero. This is because all of the factors are considered as a
chain in which each factor depends, in such way, on other one (Lunenburg, 2011). Indeed, one
of the main issues of this theory is that if the employee sees that the outcome of his
performance may lead to positive valence but s/he cannot achieve it (expectancy zero), this
theory expects that the employee cannot be motivated. This means that if the manager asks
the employee to do a task and s/he may desire a reward if s/he do it, but the employee
believes that s/he cannot achieve that outcome. Therefore, s/he cannot be motivated (Cooper,
2003).
2.2.3 Employee satisfaction
In any organisation, employee satisfaction is considered as an important issue for
management and employee. Numerous researches have been conducted in order to explore
the key factors influencing job satisfaction with a special focus on gender difference. A large-
scale survey conducted by Clark (1997) which aimed to test the hypothesis that males and
females in the similar job should be equally satisfied. These research results showed that
women have a higher level of job satisfaction even if they have lower income and stature.
Another research done by Sousa-Poza and Souza-Poza (2003) asserted Clark findings.
17
Vlosky and Aguilar (2009) suggested a model to identify the relationship between employee
satisfaction and six explanatory variables which are:
Control/Autonomy/Influence
This could be related to the employee job expectation which leads to employee satisfaction. It
is similar to valence element in the expectancy theory which discussed before. Successful
accomplishment of the task given to the worker leads to certain results or rewards. Positive
rewards could help to improve employee satisfaction. In the lower level of a job, the
employee role seems ambiguous in which s/he does not know his/her actual job. This might
lead to job dissatisfaction (Szilagyi et. al., (1976) cited by Vlosky and Aguilar, 2009). Teas
(1981) emphasized the positive relationship between worker internal control orientation and
job motivation. It could be said that employee satisfaction is positively affected by employee
control/autonomy/influence.
Challenge
Hall and Lawler (1970) indicated that the employee faces challenges which could be internal
or external in nature. Internal pressures refer to the employee needs, values, abilities etc.
External pressures refer to the formal prescribed tasks, positional requirements and demands
from others. A challenging task could generate stress on the employee in order to approve
his/her ability to meet the organisation goals in which it leads to job satisfaction. However,
challenging tasks also could lead to job dissatisfaction when the employee couldn’t meet the
organisation needs (Locke (1968) cited by Vlosky and Aguilar, 2009). Challenging tasks
include avoiding routine job and standardisation. A project manager may ask the employee to
do a job in different way which helps to change the work routine.
Performance Measures
It is essential to communicate individual's performance to them by their supervisors or
managers in which recommendations are given to the employee to improve his/her
performance to achieve organisation needs (Sirota & Mischkind, 2006). The
recommendations that should provide to the worker should be specific, unemotional, direct to
the employee performance not to his/her personality. Performance measures are used in order
to generate standards in which employee performance to accomplish task could be defined.
Feedback
From the organisation view, providing feedback to the employee on his/her work performance
can serve two functions. The first one, feedback can maintain task-directed behaviour on track
and the second one, it can motivate the employee to improve his/her effort (Payne & Hauty,
1955). Moreover, feedback could help to fulfill the employee needs in order to achieve his/her
personal goals. In other words, feedback directs employee to the right bath. Employee may
feel job satisfaction as the organisation keep providing feedback which helps him/her to
improve his/her performance and therefore, achieve personal goals.
Instrumentality
18
As highlighted before, employee satisfaction could be categorised into intrinsic and extrinsic
detentions. When the organisation keeps focusing in both dimensions, employee job
satisfaction could be achieved.
Stability/Security.
Bolt (1983) believes that employee productivity increases when the workers feel secure in
their job. According to Sirota and Mischkind (2006), there are three main sets of goals that
employees seek for their work, which are equity, achievement and camaraderie. Equity
comprises treated fairly in the workplace in terms of benefits, salary and job security.
Achievement involves being proud of the job and achieving successful accomplishment of the
tasks. Camaraderie includes the relationship with other employees (Cited by Vlosky and
Aguilar, 2009).
2.2.4 Motivation strategy
Learning how to motivate employees is considered as one of the important roles of the
managers. A numerous motivation strategy has been suggested by authors that can be adopted
in any organisation. . Barbuto (2009) proposed five different sources that motivate employees
which are Fun, rewards, reputation, purpose and challenge.
There are several social activities employees want to do outside the work environment,
therefore, a manager could arrange for these activities after the working hours. In other
words, a manager arranges enjoyable events. These activities include playing different types
of sports, watching movies or visiting friends. This could help to motivate the employee
when s/he sees that his/her organisation takes care about him/her even outside the work
atmosphere, therefore, employees loyalty increases. Not only the activities outside the
workplace could help to motivate employees, but also the activities inside the workplace, for
instance, arranging small party during the lunch time.
Another way of motivating employees to work is informing them about the rewards that they
will get if they perform efficiently. This is because employees may feel that it is unfair when
s/he sees her/his colleagues perform without any productivity and then earning the same
amount of money. A manager could improve worker performance by rewarding those who
perform well which, as a result, leads others to improve their performance and, thus, get a
reward. Rewards do not mean only money, but something tangible. What employees tend to
do is to compare what they get to what others get in their work rather than money. For
instance, when employee performs well, a manager can reward him/her by means of prizes.
Employee can be motivated by reputation which has a strong need in order to enhance self
esteem of image. Many employees improve their work performance when they know that
their effort will be noticed and recognised by others. Moreover, employees could also be
motivated by appreciating his/her work performance by the manager. In contrast, when the
manager neglects his/her worker performance, motivation disappears. This source of
motivation is considered as the proper way of motivation for those individuals who seek
approval from others. A manager could keep providing feedback about this type of people,
and when s/he would like to give them a prize; it should be in front of others.
19
A number of researches showed that managers tend to use different techniques for motivation
which is called as extraordinary level of self-concept. This means that a manager tends to
motivate his/her employees by means of challenging themselves to new skills and
opportunities to develop. Some managers believe that one of the most important ways of
motivating an employee is by means of challenge (Barbuto, 2009). It could be said this
ideology cannot be adopted. This is because different people have different skills and ability.
This is also supported by University of Nebraska research in which it stated that challenge is
one source of motivation and it cannot motivate the employee alone. A manager could use
challenge as a source of motivation by asking employees to do a task which requires skills
and talents. Furthermore, a manager could also ask an employee to do a task by using his/her
own way.
2.3 Leadership There are several definitions for leadership which are adopted by different authors. Some
leadership researchers believed that leadership is a complex phenomenon and it involves
three main aspects namely; the leader, the follower and the situation. However, others
claimed that leadership focuses on the personality and leader behaviours or the relationship
between the leaders and the followers (Meindl and Ehrlich, 1987). In order to understand the
complexities of leadership, researchers have suggested several definitions as the following:
The activity which uses to influence people to cooperate in order to achieve some
desirable goals (Tead, 1935 cited by Cooper, 2003).
The method of operation which uses to control work performance (Heinrich, 1951).
Directing and controlling the work of team members (Fiedler, 1967)
The process of influencing an organised team in order to accomplish its goals (Roach
and Behling, 1984).
The process of social influence by means of a leader who support others in order to
accomplish a common task (Chemers, 1997).
In the light of the above definitions, it can be said that researchers have defined leadership
from different angles which arguably highlighted many aspects. Firstly, leadership is considered
as a process when it is used as a non-coercive influence in order to coordinate or direct activities of
the member of group to achieve specific goals. Secondly, there should be a group of people who are
influenced by the leader. Thirdly, Jago (1982) asserted that leadership also is considered as a property
as it requires several qualities which qualify those who wants to be a successful leader and influencing
others. Besides that, Tead, Roach and Behling and Chemers definitions mainly focus on
influencing group of people in order to accomplish or achieve common goals. However,
Heinrich and Fiedler definitions focus on behaviours which are used to direct and control
work performance, thus, may de-emphasize the emotional aspects of leadership (Hughes et.
al, 1993).
20
With the consideration of all definitions, the author believed that the definition suggested by
Tead, Roach and Behling and Chemers seems a comprehensive and helpful one. Therefore,
the author adopts their definition for this research.
2.3.1 Leaders and manager
The common question that many people usually arise is that whether there is a difference
between leaders and managers or not? Zaleznik (1977) argues that managers and leaders are
two different types of people. He believes that managers’ goals usually arise due to the
necessities and ensure that organisation’s business gets done day by day. However, leaders
are those who set personal attitudes in order to achieve goals along with organisational goals.
Lunenburg (2011) stated that the assumption that all the people who take management
position could be considered as a leader. However, not all leaders can manage. This means
that leadership is not related to the management position in which a manager could not
become a leader just because of his/her position. Both leaders and managers should make a
valuable contribution on the organisation to survive and succeed (Zaleznik, 1977). The
following table highlights the differences between the managers and the leaders in terms of
several factors.
Basis Manager Leader
Origin A person becomes a manager by
virtue of his position.
A person becomes a leader on basis
of his personal qualities.
Functions A manager performs all five
functions of management.
Leader influences people to work
willingly for group objectives.
Role
continuation
A manager can continue in office
till he performs his duties
satisfactorily in congruence with
organizational goals.
A leader can maintain his position
only through day to day wishes of
followers.
Formal Rights Manager has got formal rights in
an organization because of his
status.
Rights are not available to a leader.
Sanctions Manager has command over
allocation and distribution of
sanctions.
A leader has command over different
sanctions and related task records.
These sanctions are essentially of
informal nature.
Stability It is more stable. Leadership is temporary.
Mutual
Relationship
All managers are leaders. All leaders are not managers.
Necessity A manager is very essential to a A leader is required to create cordial
relation between person working in
21
concern. and for organization.
Concern A manager’s concern is
organizational goals.
A leader’s concern is group goals
and member’s satisfaction.
Followers People follow manager by virtue
of job description and the
subordinates are the followers of
managers
People follow them on voluntary
basis or the group of employees
whom the leaders lead are his
followers
Accountability Manager is accountable for self
and subordinates behaviour and
performance.
Leaders have no well defined
accountability.
Table 2.3.1: The difference between managers and leaders Sources: Management Study Guide (2013)
In the light of the above comparison, it could be said that there are several differences
between managers and leaders. Moreover, it could be argued that a leader can be a manager
as s/he has almost all the skills and knowledge required for that. When a leader becomes a
manager, the organisational goals could be developed with the improvement of personal
skills of employees. This is because the charismatic of leader tends to focus on the personal
attitudes, skills and motivating of the employees or followers which need to be developed,
therefore, an organisation could accomplish its goals. This is supported by Choi's (2006)
study when he stated that the charismatic of leader generate individual and organisational
outcomes.
2.3.2 Management and leaders
A controversy question that always arises is about the difference between management and
leadership. Indeed, not all managers exercise leadership (Lunenburg, 2011). Some
management proponents argue that leadership is a subset of management. They support their
argument in terms of providing an example of the military where they assert that leadership is
a definable skills which can be learned. Bass (2010) highlighted that some authors argue that
leadership and management overlap, however, they are not synonymous. This is also
supported by Shriberg and Shriberg (2011) as they stated that leadership and management are
entirely different. They believe that leadership is about ideas, vision, direction and has more
to do with people in terms of directing and motivating them towards personal and
organisational goals. However, they indicated that management requires different skills to
accomplish organisational goals. Yukl (2010) mentioned that the point of disagreement is the
degree or overlap. Kotter (1990a, 1990b) emphasized that leadership and management are totally
different. He believes that leadership is about dealing with change, whereas management is about
dealing with complexity.
22
In order to distinguish between management and leadership, the following table highlights the
main differences between them.
Activity Management Leadership
Focus
- Managing work
- Locking inwards
- Short term horizon
- Leading people
- Locking outwards
- Long term horizon
Outcomes
- Executes plans with details
steps
- Result
- Create/develop future vision
and strategies
- Achievement
Relation with
others
- Organising and Controlling
- Avoid the conflicts
- Subordinates
- Directs & coordinates
- Providing policies and
procedure to guide people
- Empower and aligning
people
- Use the conflicts
- Colleague or followers
- Trust & develop
- Accept other way to achieve
the task or flexible
Operation and
style
- Does the things right
- Managing change
- Money in exchange for work
- Risk averse
- Involved in the work
- Formal authority & Position
- Transactional, Autocratic,
Consultative and Democratic
- Does the right things
- Creating change
- Excitement/ motivation in
exchange for work
- Risk-taking
- Facilitative the work
- Charisma & Influence
- Transformational, Dictatorial,
Authoritative, Consultative &
Participative
Table 2.3.2: Differences between management and leadership
23
In the light of the above comparison, it could be said that a person may be skilled as a manger
or leader or both-or neither-. However, the skilled manager should understand the principles
of leadership and vice versa. A skilled manager, for example, usually tends to establish a
structure to accomplish the task with the alignment of people who should be in charge with
that task. Thus, a manager creates a method to monitor the result. On the other hand, a leader
tends to develop a network to achieve the goal by aligning people and communicates
direction with them to ensure that everyone understands and accepts the vision. This means a
leader provides flexibility to his team to accomplish the task as s/he already explained the
requirements and the vision to them.
2.3.3 Leadership theory
More than 3000 studies in leadership have been conducted in the last seventy years. These
studies suggested several leadership theories namely: Great Man Theory, Trait Theory,
Behavioural Theories, Participative Leadership, Situational Leadership, Contingency Theory,
Transactional Leadership and Transformational Leadership
2.3.3.1 Great Man Theory
The first thought is that leaders to be born not to be made which is called ‘great person’
theory of leadership which proposed by Thomas Carlyle (1907). He promoted the notion of
great man by reinforcing the leader concept to the skilled individual with a unique quality
that captures the imagination of people. This means that some people are born with certain
inherited features or traits that allow them to become leaders in any situation or period of
time. This theory assumes that the leader is different from the normal person in terms of
personality traits, for instance, ambition and intelligence. It also assumes that leaders should
have sufficient combination of traits (Kouzes and Posner, 2007; Biju, 2010). Druck (1989)
argued that leadership cannot be taught or learned. However, ALFaqee (2008) stressed that
leadership is an acquired habit and continues education which person can be learned and
taught with the consideration that some people could born with traits that can be acquired
through human nature. It could be said that ALFaqee argument seems more acceptable. This
is because Druck beliefs mean a person could be a leader if and only if s/he was born with
traits which arguably seem wrong. A number of people had been a leader as they face several
challenges which develop their personality and skills. Great man theory developed onto what
known as trait theory of leadership
2.3.3.2 Trait Theory
In the first half of the twentieth century, several studies and research have been conducted in
trait theory which is considered as the first modern theory of leadership ((Biju, 2010; Shriberg
and Shriberg, 2011). This theory assumes that if the leader is endowed with different qualities
that differentiate him from others or followers, it should be possible to recognize these
qualities (Biju, 2010). In others words, this theory means that a number of traits are common
to leaders for instance; self-confidence, sociability, intelligence and integrity. Stogdill (1948)
argues that there is no specific traits that determine who would be a leader. He asserted that
several traits within the individual and the relationship between the individual and the social
situation could help to determine leaders where a person finds him or herself in front of
24
situation that requires someone to lead. Stogdill conducted another study in 1974 to compare
his first results with the new one. He found that both traits and situation determine leadership.
In 2008, Jossey-Bass published the research which was done by Posner and Kouzes. In their
study, they asked more than 1500 managers the following question “What values do you look
for your supervisor?” They found over 225 values, the top four, which called credible, were
being honest, forward looking, inspiring and competent (Shriberg and Shriberg, 2011).
According to Ghiselli (1963) research for traits associated with leadership, there is a
significant correlation between leadership and traits of initiative, the ability to supervise,
intelligent and self confident. He suggested that the leadership quality is reduced by higher or
lower intelligence. Ghiselli study is supported by Fiedler (1955) who argued that
effectiveness under special circumstances can be highly correlated with the leader
intelligence and other cognitive attributes. The author adopted Stogdill view. This is because
the leader appears in the difficult situation where several traits are required in order to
overcome any issue. However, the leader does not only appear in that, but also in a situation
that needs someone to motivate, inspire, and encourage employees to achieve the goals and
thus, achieve the vision.
2.3.3.3 Behavioural Theories
Behaviour theories mainly tend to focus on the type of successful leaders actions and the
ways that these actions can be developed or trained. Many schools of thought over the world
start to highlight leadership behavioural theories (Shriberg and Shriberg, 2011). The
assumptions that been developed are that leader can be made, rather than born. Moreover,
successful leadership is mainly based on learnable and definable behaviour (IAAP, 2009).
This means that behavioural theories do not focus on inborn traits but on whatever leaders
can actually do. Additionally, success leader could only be defined in terms of describable
actions. Behavioural theories conclude that leadership capability can be learned. According to
IAAP (2009), there are two general types of behaviour which exhibited by leaders namely,
the one which concern with people and the other which concern with production. Early
research on the two dimensions indicate that employee turnover and absenteeism decreased
as the leader consideration increased. It also showed that employee performance increased as
the leader’s task orientation increased (Ibid).
The Managerial Grid:
Between 1958 and 1960, Robert Blake and Jane Mouton developed the managerial grid
which focuses on people (employee), production (task) and the combination between the two
extremes (Blake and Mouton 1964; Molloy, 1998; Bolden et. al, 2003). A grid which concern
for people presented on the vertical axis and the one concern for production presented on the
horizontal axis. Basic leadership styles are represented on the grid shown as five plots (see
figure 2.3.3.3). The first number, which shown on the plots, refer to the task orientation or
leader’s production. However, the second number refers to the employee orientation...
25
Figure 2.3.3.3: The Managerial Grid (Blake & Mouton, 1964 cited
by Bolden et. al, 2003) Bass (1990) illustrates a shorthand description for the each numbers shown on the five plots
as the following:
- “1,1: Laissez faire, abdicator of responsibility
- 1,9: Country Club Leader
- 5,5: Compromiser
- 9,1: Tough-minded no-nonsense production-prodder
- 9,9: Integrator of task accomplishment and trust and commitment from followers”.
Theory X and Theory Y:
In 1960, Douglas McGregor developed two theories namely; theory X and theory Y. His
observation is that managerial practice usually expresses some assumption about human
beings nature. In theory X, He illustrated “the average human begins lazy and self-centred,
lacks ambition, dislikes change, and longs to be told what to do”. However, theory Y
indicates that human beings are active of themselves and of their environment rather than
been passive shapers. Moreover, they tend to assume responsibility and the best way to
manage them is to provide them water and let them bloom. This means that human beings are
able to grow if the materials are provided; therefore, they will be able to achieve their own
goals and objectives. Although there are a quite few employees who could eager their
managers to autocratic murderers, a few managers are ready to investigate with the
unattractive self-image and indeed, no management theorist has been paying attention in
26
promoting it (Stewart, 2010). Unlike theory Y vision, in which freedom, self- motivation and
self-realization lead to massive leaps in productivity. This theory considered as a good things
as it drew the attention of managers on how they should behave with their employees. The
following table distinguish between theory X and theory Y:
Theory X Assumption Theory Y Assumption
Employees inherently dislike work
and, whenever attempt to avoid it
Because employees dislike work, they
must be coerced, controlled, or
threatened with punishment desired
goals
Employees will shirk responsibilities
and seek formal direction whenever
possible
Most workers place security above all
other factors associated with work
and will display little ambition
Employees can view work as being as
natural as possible, will rest or play
Men and women will exercise
self‐direction and self‐control if they
are committed to the to achieve
objectives
The average person can learn to
accept, even seek, responsibility
The ability to make good decisions is
widely dispersed throughout the
population and is not necessarily the
sole province of managers
Table 2.3.3.3: Theory X and Theory Y (IAAP, 2009)
2.3.3.4 Participative Leadership
They are two theoretical models which used to interpret the effect of the participative
leadership behaviour of managers on their employees work performance namely; the
motivational model and the exchange based model. The motivational model means that
greater intrinsic reword from work and higher levels of psychological empowerment could be
obtained by providing more opportunities to participate in decision making (Conger &
Kanungo, 1988; Thomas & Velthouse, 1990; Spreitzer, 1995). This could leads to improve
employee work performance. On the other hand, the exchange based model means when the
manager send a message to his employee that he is respect, concern and confidence in their
work performance could which lead to higher level of trust in the managers as well as
reciprocating the organisation.(Dirks & Ferrin, 2002; Huang et. al, 2010)
27
Lewin’s leadership styles
Lewin, who considered as the father of modern psychology, set the stage or the level of
behaviour theories of leadership by describing of group life (Shriberg and Shriberg, 2011).
According to his study, he then developed the behavioural descriptions of leaders’ types
which highlight the following (Boje, 2000):
The laissez-Faire leader: who provide freedom and material to his employees to ask
and investigate about the decisions that need to be considered in order to complete the
given task. This type of leader behaviour could reduce the power of the leader as the
employee feel free to use his own way without any guidance except asking the
questions to understand the work.
The autocratic leader: who prefers to dictate job methods, centralize the authority, and
reduce the employee participation and independent decisions. This type of leader
behaviour could stress the employee to just follow the roles and instructions given
without any chance to discuss or develop the instruction provided.
The democratic leader: who tends to involve all the employees in working methods,
decision making and delegation authority. This type of leader behaviours leads to
employee satisfaction
Lewin found that the most effective leadership style was democratic. Although laissez-faire
style provides freedom to the employee to use their own method, it could result in less
coherent work patterns. Indeed, autocratic style may lead to revolution.
2.3.3.5 Situational Leadership
The performance management process of many organisation has been reduced to a once year
appraisal session. As a result, managers usually take on judgmental roles which limit their
ability to develop and improve the employee performance. Therefore, performance
management could be considered as a periodic intervention rather than a sustainable process
(Hersey & Chevalier, 2010). Thus, organisations find difficulty in achieving its objectives.
In order to overcome this issue, situational leadership provides guidance to the leaders that
they require coaching their employee throughout the period on the performance management
(Ibid). Sustainable leadership is basically based on the assumption that the best action that the
leader can take is depending on a number of sustainable factors. Besides that, when a
decision is needed a leader has many style that he can use to make a good decision (IAAP,
2009). Tannenbaum and Schmidt (1958) illustrated three main factors which has an influence
on the sustainable leadership namely; the force in the situation, the follower and the leader
(Citied by IAAP, 2009). This means that the sustainability of leadership depends on these
factors in which it only could call sustainable. Moreover, it focuses on behaviour style that
the leader should adopt with his follower (Ibid).
2.3.3.6 Contingency Theory
28
Contingency theory, which developed by Fiedler, assumed that there is no single way for
managers to lead other. It depends on the situation in which leadership style is requirement.
Therefore, the best solution for any managerial situation is contingent on the features that
impose on the situation. Fiedler considered three main situations that could help to identify
the managerial task condition which are (Bolden et. al, 2003):
- Task structure: which refer to the work that fairly unstructured, highly structured or
somewhere between them.
- Leader member relation: which refer to the relation between the manager and the
employees.
- Position power: which refer to the authority that a manager have
The question that may ask is that whether the managers’ behaviour should be rated on the
task oriented or relationship oriented. Task oriented manager means the extent to which a
leader, as a manager, engages in such way that he communicate with his follower and explain
what, how and when to do tasks. However, relation oriented manager means the extent to
which a leader is engage in two communication way by facilitating behaviour and providing
soci-emotional support to the follower (Hersey and Blanchard, 1988).
2.3.3.7 Transactional and Transformational Leadership
Burns (1979) identify two type of leadership namely; transactional and transformational
leadership. The recent researches in studying leadership show that they should be acceptance
in distinguishing between transactional and transformational leadership (Meindl, 1990).
Quinn (1988) compares between transactional and transformational leadership in terms of
task oriented, relation oriented (cited by Fiedler, 1967) and consideration-initiating structure
(Korman, 1966). Bass (1990) believes that both transactional and transformational leadership
is a new concept. However, some authors explain paradigms as inspirational and charismatic
to transformational leadership (Bryman, 1992). These authors used different terminology but
still the similarities between them are more in terms of the concept. (Hartog et.al, 1997).
Gardiner (2006) defined transactional leadership as an exchange something valued which
takes place between leader and follower for a purpose. This exchange presented by the
traditional influence model which found with most human beings group. What Gardiner
(2006) found is that leaders who tends to used transactional style have the ability to fulfill the
requirement and the expectation of his follower. Therefore, employees are less likely to leave
the work place and they are ready to work more than the give time. Transformational
leadership is based on more than following the leader, as a follower, it includes sharing and
shifting the value, believes and the need of the follower. According to Burns (1979), the
result of transformational leadership is that the relationship between the leader and the
follower will be ‘mutual simulation’. Moreover, this form of leadership could also lead to
higher level of performance among employees that transactional leadership (Bass, 1985).
Bass (1985) has applied Burns (1979) believes in organisational management. His argument
is based on how transactional leader could improve and develop the quality and quantity of
29
the work performance, how to implement the decision, how to reduce the conflict between
leader and follower to particular action and how to replace one goal for another.
Transformational leaders focus and tend in raise the follower to a greater awareness about the
problems or obstacles consequence. It requires the leader awareness, self confidence and
inner strength to understand what is good or right to his follower not what others has been
accepted before as a wisdom (Brass, 1985).
Burns (1978) and Bass (1985) has identified and recognised leaders by means of their
impacts and actions on their followers. This could lead for better understanding of type of
action that transactional and transformational leader need to be taken in order to provide a
framework to interact with his follower. Thus, provide better motivational states, improve
their work performance and understand their personal issues (Gardiner, 2006).
Weber (1947) and House (1977) in somehow highlight the same concept of both Burn and
Bass ideas of transformational leadership. House claimed that the charismatic of a leader
should have the ability the effect the followers and by influence is able to cause the follower
to complete their tasks. This charismatic also involved dominance, self-confidence and strong
conviction in the moral righteousness of one’s believes. Thus, it requires the leader to build
an image, demonstrating confidence and setting goals and objectives. These type behaviours
of a leader assert to convince and motivate the follower without any bartering them for goods
and rights, which describe the transactional leadership style, (Gardiner, 2006).
2.4 Conclusion This chapter has highlighted the role of project manager within an organisation and has
discussed about different motivational theories. It has also illustrated motivational strategy
and employee satisfaction. In addition, it has discussed about the difference between leader
manager and management. This chapter has pointed out about several leadership theories
which a project manager could adopt. It has been found that a project manager has several
roles such as planning, organising, directing and controlling the work and the employee in
order to achieve the organisation goals and objectives. There are many factors which affect
employee satisfaction which are salary, security, challenge, performance measure,
appreciation feedback, ability to develop and achieve personal goals. Moreover, there are a
numerous motivation theories which indicate who to motivate employee. The agreement
which has been developed is that whether an employee could be motivated by providing his
basic needs and he can then aim for something high or he could be motivated even he
couldn’t have the basic need. It can be said that different people have different opinion, thus,
motivation will vary from one to another. Something that motivates someone may not
motivate others. Additionally, there are several motivational strategies that project managers
can adopt, for example; rewards, money, reputation and spending time with the employee
outside the work place. Besides these, it has been found that a leader can act as a manager.
However, a manager cannot act as a leader unless he has the ability and characterises of a
leader. Leadership theories provide multiple choices on who a project manager, as a leader,
can lead others. Transformation leadership may be considered as one of the most effective
leadership style in which a leader has an influence and the ability to motivate, improve and
develop the employee and their performance. However, this type of leadership may have an
30
impact on the relationship between the leader and the employee in terms of losing the power
as the relation become close.
31
Chapter 3: Negotiation, Communication, Delegation and Decision
making (Literature review)
3.1 Introduction This chapter continues the illustration of literature review. It indicates about the skills
required while negotiating with other. An illustration about different types of negotiation and
negotiation theories will be highlighted in details. This chapter also discuss about several
types of communication and delegation process. Moreover, it explains decision making and
problem solving method. It concludes with an explanation of the relation between the
employee and the project manager.
3.2 Negotiating skills Negotiation is another way of saying ‘engaging in conflict’ (Ludlow and Panton, 1992). Fells
(2012) defined negotiation as a process which involves two parties or groups with differences
in which the need to reach a certain agreement through discussing some options and sharing
some offers. From this definition, it could be said that negotiation considered as a process in
which in involves a number of activities. It also indicates that there should be two parties. In
some cases, negotiation needs more than two parties however, it becomes more complex.
Moreover, there must be differences between the parties. This is because if there were any
differences, no need to negotiate as negotiation required conflict between the parties.
Additionally, negotiation requires or tries to reach an agreement taken in mind that it might
not able to success. If the agreement shortly and easily reached, it could mean that some of
the value has been left on the negotiating table and thus, it probably not considered as a good
negotiation. Reaching an agreement in negotiation can be obtained through two ways. This
way helps to create new idea and may add value to negotiation. The first one is to identify
and develop the options that could be used to solve the issues. And the second way is to share
and exchange offers between the parties. The negotiation finally ends up with agreement. The
word ‘agreement’ may sound that they is positive outcome but, there is no such grantee on
that. One of the most important aspects in any negotiation is that how it would be
implemented (Fells, 2012).
In the context of work environment, negotiation could occur between managers, employers,
department and sales and buyers representatives. Ludlow and Panton (1992) claimed that
negotiation requires careful preparation, critical thinking, communication skills and the
ability to establish collaborative environment.
3.2.1 Types of Negotiation
Spoelstra and Pienaar (1991) indicated that negotiation could be classified into several types
such as integrative negotiation, distributive negotiation, and destructive negotiation. In simple
words integrative negotiation could be referred to a ‘win more-win more’ model of
negotiation not to the ‘win-win’ model. In this type of negotiation all the parties are trying to
come with more gain than whatever they have as an alternative solution. This probably the
most type of negotiation been used. Disagreement in this form of negotiation considered as
costly as compare with the compromise in which both gain and loss should equally
distributed. This is because the relationship between the parties may not end with the
32
agreement but, it will continue in the future as they could have another business or work. the
best example of this type of negotiation is what happen in any organisation where a manager
could negotiate with employee, suppliers, buyers and contractor in order to reach the a certain
agreement that help the organisation and other parties to achieve their goals and objectives
(Ibid).
In contrast, distributive negotiation in simple word means ‘win-lose’ model. In this type of
negotiation, parties participate in the negotiation with the objective to win. This means that
the other side of negotiation will lose in terms of finance, resources or association. During the
negotiation, one party will act as offensive and other as defensive. Car deal, court case,
property and market sales are examples of distributive negotiation (Ibid)
Destructive negotiation could be refer to a ‘lose-lose’ model in which both the parties are
trying to increase the damage on the other party without bothering on the amount of damage
that they can obtained to themselves. This type of negotiation is used by groups of individuals
or labours unions who try to win by lose (Ibid)
In negotiation, the relationship between the parties could be classified into three main types
which are co-operative relationship, continuous relationship and intermittent relationship. In
co-operative relationship, win or lose negotiation are irrelevant in which it will not affect the
relationship between the parties. This means that the conflict will be turned to a co-operation
and it not considered as a competitive mode. Many authors believe that this form of
relationship exists with either integrative or distributive negotiation. Continuous relationship
in negotiation refers to ongoing relationship which could be maintained by means of
negotiation itself and into the future. Thus, issues, problems and difficulties between the
parties should be overcome through good relation in whom whatever they have on the
negotiation table will remain only there and will not affect in any way their relationship. The
best examples of this type of negotiation are employee and employee/manager relation and
wife and husband relation. Intermittent relationship usually occurs when an issue arise and
may have an impact on the relationship between the parties. This means that the past relation
between the parties been well and for some problem it cause to become bad. Delay payment
could be an example of this type of relation. This type of negotiation could also be once-off
in which it occurs only once and there will not be any sort of contact after that. The
negotiation between the buyer and the supplier can be an example of this relation (Spoelstra
and Pienaar, 1991).
In the light of the above classification, it could be said all types of relationship could be found
in any organisation. Therefore, a project manager should have the ability to understand the
situation and direct the negotiation to the safe side. This is because that conflict at work place
may always happen and it must not affect the relationship between managers and his
employee.
3.2.2 Negotiation techniques
Kilsheimer (2009) Schiffman (2010) has illustrated several techniques and principles that
should be used and applied in negotiation. Besides that, they stressed that a negotiator should
avoid stress, tension, politics and egos while negotiating. They also emphasised that a
33
negotiator should meet those people who have the authority to make decision. The attitude of
the negotiator should be present and maintained professional. Moreover, the negotiator
should understand his position and take time to collect the require information before starting
the negotiation itself. They suggested a list which they called ‘do and don’t’ as the following;
Dos
- Describe the aim and objective of the meeting
- Understand the situation and other part position
- Develop meeting agenda and follow it
- Communication with the other side of negotiation should be clear enough and easy to
understand
- Provide time for other side of negotiation to discuss his situation (listening and paying
attention)
- Ask question to clarify
- Be ethical
- All distractions should be minimize
- Try to provide alternative solution that could acceptable by all parties.
- All agreement should be written and signed
Don’ts
- Ask to decease the quality in order to reduce the cost
- Ask for unreasonable demands.
- Force others the final decision should be taken by you
- Hesitate to ask and clarify
- Provide promise which cannot be delivered
- Jump from one situation to another and start introducing offers
- Lie
- End up with agreement based on personal conflict
- Overestimating and escalating needs
- Be nerves or angry
34
- Ask for personal interest.
In the light of the two lists, it could be understand that a negotiator, as a project manager,
should adopt these list in which it can lead for successful negotiation. Moreover, it also may
eliminate any misunderstanding between the parties and create healthy environment which
lead the certain agreement.
3.2.3 Negotiation theories
Agarwal (2009) claims that there are several negotiation theories namely; game theory,
negotiation analysis, psychological negotiation theory, integrated theory and prospect theory.
These theories will be highlighted in details in the following sections;
Game theory
This theory highlights the human interaction in social and economic environment in which it
provides ultimate solution to predict outcomes. Game theory has three main forms which
provide the basic initial for the area of game theories. These forms are zero-sum game theory,
co-operative game theory and non co-operative game theory (Von Neumam and
Morgenstern, 1944; Nash, 1951; Shapley, 1953; Shapley and Shubik, 1954; Luce and Raiff,
1957; Aumann and Dreze, 1974; Shapley, 1977; cited by Agarwal, 2009). Non co-operative
theory dominates zero-sum theory. Co-operative theory refers to a set of benefits that could
lead to a unique solution. However, non co-operative theory focuses on the outcomes of the
bargaining process overtime. Crawford (1982) believes that improving the bargaining
outcomes efficiency could help to obtain more gain through negotiation. It could be said that
game theory did not provide a clear idea of negotiation except that with the concept of
improving the bargaining efficiency in order to obtain more gain. Therefore, it may be
considered as general theory of negotiation (Agarwal, 2009).
Negotiation analysis
Raiff (1989) has presented new negotiation theory which he called negotiation analysis. This
new theory is based on the concept of game negotiation theory. he believe that this theory
offer more prescriptive approach to negotiation and examine the understanding of the
negotiator preference, behaviour and action with the comparison of the other side of
negotiation as well as suggesting the systematic ways which help the decision maker to divert
from rationality to optimality. Sebenius (2005) has illustrated several basic elements of
negotiation analysis which are the parties, the interest, alternative negotiated agreement and
the final agreement. Parties refer to those who is involve in the negotiation whereas interest
refer to both side of negotiating who has awareness in business, believes or something valued
to them. Nevertheless, alternative negotiated agreement refer to the all alternative solutions
that could be achieve in which final agreement indicate what the two parties have decided
(Ibid). The negotiator in this stage should be careful to obtain the maximum gain according to
his interest.
35
Psychological negotiation theory
Psychological negotiation theory has three main streams in which it has an impact of the
behaviour on negotiation which are cognitive, social and behaviour. Bercovitsh and Houston
(2000) believe that there are three contextual dimensions that influence the mediator
behaviour which are;
- Pre-existing factor which means identifying and understanding all the parties involved
in the negotiation
- Concurrent factor which means understanding the mediator and the mediator event.
- Background factor which means the effect of the mediation on the previous mediation
event. This also involves the culture background as people from different culture have
different style in negotiation.
Social theory in psychological negotiation theory refers to the interpersonal behaviour of an
individual’s social group membership (Tajfel and Turner, 1987; Turner, 1987; Hogg and
Abrams, 1988 citied by Agarwal, 2009). In some case, people tend to be self dependent in
negotiation in which they do not prefer to work with a group in negotiation. This could be
considered as an advantage as the more parties involve in the negotiation the harder to reach
agreement. However, others may feel that they been ignore and eliminated. Therefore, it is
suggest that group of individual’s could delegate someone to be their representative in which
he could negotiate on behave of them. One of the most effective ways in negotiation is that a
negotiator can change or effects the final outcomes by means of ask for higher price or offer.
This not means that he will get whatever he offers but, he could at least increase his gain.
This theory may help a project manager in how he could negotiate with his employee or even
with other. Understanding the psychology, social background and behaviour of the other side
of negotiation could easily lead to fair agreement (Agarwal, 2009).
Integrated theory
According to Agarwal (2009), both game theory and psychological theory present the basic
development of an integrated game theoretic psychological of negotiation which then called
as integration negotiation theory. This theory, indeed, is expected to introduce the
prescriptive recommendation in order to improve the outcomes of the negotiation. As this
theory tends to integrate both game theory and psychological theory of negotiation, research
has been fund that there are two important integrated models that been developed by Neale
and Northcroft (1991) and then improved again by Hausken (1997). What Neale and
Northcroft presented is that a conjoint game theory of negotiation and behaviour theory
model with structural influence, integrative position and deadline. In Hausken (1997)
improvement, he criticizes Neale and Northcroft’s framework in which that game theory is
considered as symmetrically perspective not symmetrically descriptive. Therefore, pragmatic
choice behaviour is referring to perspective rather than directly to game theory. Moreover,
game theory has been determined as unfit for descriptive research. This is because of its
extreme assumption. Also Neale and Northcroft considered psychological theory as dynamic
36
and game theory as static in nature. In contrast, Hausken (1997) believes that the assumption
of which game theory is static is wrong. He support his believes that this assumption is
unfounded; therefore, game theory could also considered as dynamic in nature (Agarwal,
2009).
Prospect theory
Kahneman and Tversky (1979) suggested another negotiation theory based on the basis of
analyse utility under condition of risk which been developed by Von Neumam and
Morgenstern’s (1944) which they called as prospect theory. This theory highlights four main
principles which are;
1- Value function which is refers to people ability to gain rather than losses. This means
that people tends to avoid taking risk and they prefer to risk averse.
2- Certainty effect which is refers to people who prefer probable outcomes instead of
certain outcomes. This is because they believe that risk aversion provide sure gain and
reduce losses.. However, risk taking may increase losses.
3- Isolated effect which is refers to people who tend to chose common option rather than
new one. Thus, they knew that this option will lead to these outcomes.
4- Non-linear transformation which refers to the probability scale under weight is
moderate and high probabilities. Whereas over weight is small probabilities.
In 1992, Kahneman and Tversky improved prospect theory to become what they called as
cumulative prospect theory. They indicated that five factors should be included in viewing
rational choice as the following;
1- Risk seeking means those people who prefer to small probability in order to gain more
instead of having high probability of loss or gain. This also could be referred to
‘gaining something better than nothing’
2- Nonlinear preference refers to Von Neumam and Morgenstern’s (1944) expected
utility theory that utility of risk prospect is linear to the outcomes probability.
However, Allias (1953) has indicated that nonlinear preferences could also exist in
choice.
3- Loss aversion: the basic principle in choice under risk is that losses seems more than
gain (Kahneman and Tversky, 1991)
4- Source dependence which is refers to the people tendency to choice under know
proportion is more than to which depend on chance. This supported by Ellsberg
(19610 observation who stated that people prefer to pick a ball among red and green
that have equal proportions instead to which unknown.
5- Framing effects: Kahneman and Tversky (1986) averred that there an evidence
asserted that when the options are formed differently, there will be difference in
37
preference. Therefore, Arrow (1982) claimed that a choice problem should be equally
formulated in order to increase the preference order.
In the light of the above theories, it could be said that these theories highlighting the way that
a negotiation may behave ether in accepting or rejecting the offers. Moreover, both integrated
theory and prospect theory seems more beneficial in negotiation in which it provides a clear
view on types and behaviour of the negotiator. It is suggested that a project manager or
employee should adopt integrated or prospect theory of negotiation taking in account
Hausken improvement in integrated theory. Additionally, a project manager should
understand the social background of his employee, thus, provide better negotiation
environment.
3.3 Communication Communication is considered as one of the most important skills require in the work place or
even in the normal daily life. This is because humans need to communicate with others for
many reasons. Ludlow and Panton (1992) defined communication as an individual process
which involved transferring of information and some behaviour input. In simple words,
communication means interacting with other people in order to help, enjoy, share, assist and
direct. It could be formal or informal, simple or complex depending upon the situation that it
takes place.
In an organisation, effective communication helps to improve the work and therefore, the
organisation achieves its goals and objectives. As the organisation structure and technology
become more complex, it requires effective communication. Therefore, communication may
provide several advantages such as; keeping employee in a picture, improve the relationship
between the manager and his employee, get people involves in the organisation in terms of
motivation and help the employee to understand the need to change. Many authors believe
that good communication lead to successful understanding of others needs and similarly
successful work environment.
3.3.1 Types of communication
Peel (1995) has classified communication into three main types which are oral
communication, written communication and communication technology. He also again
classified each type into subtopic as the following:
- Oral communication could be in terms of face to face, interviews, oral presentation
and meeting. Face to face communication considered as one of the effective
communication types in which it provides feedback and more chance to correct the
misunderstanding between other. As interview is also a face to face communication in
which information is provided from one person by means of one or more. Indeed, oral
presentation is another example of oral communication specifically face to face in
which it one or group of people provide a public speaking in any subject. However,
meeting to some extent is consisting of a number of people in which everyone could
participate and share his idea or information.
38
- Written communication could be in terms of letters, memos, reports, brochures,
advertising and other office communication – as a hard copy-. This sort of
communication must be written then sent. Besides that, the growth in technology
leads the use of written communication decrease
- Communication technology could be in terms of telephone and information
technology. This type of communication is the most rapidly developed and used by
most of the people. However, still it considered as written communication. Phone call,
text message, email and other social networking (tweeter, facebook, whatsApp etc)
are example of communication technology.
In the light of all types of communication presented above, it could be said that all kind of
face to face communication considered as the most effective way to communicate with
others. This is because both side of communication can understand and clearly identify the
requirement of each other. In contrast, written communication may not be clear enough to
highlight the needs and one cannot appreciate other emotion (Crippens, 2011). Therefore, it is
suggested that a project manager should adopt face to face communication with his employee
whenever it possible in order to provide better understanding.
3.4 Delegation Delegation of authority is one of significant organisational process. Many authors have
suggested several delegation definitions. Moore (n/d) has defined delegation as handing over
work to others and providing them authority to do so. According to Allen (n/d), delegation
considered as the dynamic of management in which a manager divides the work assigned to
him to someone else who accept the new duties (Cited by Akrani, 2010). In simple words,
delegation means transferring some of the responsibilities which has been assigned to a
manager, for example, to subordinates and provides the required authority to them.
Delegation is common in any organisation and in all kind of business, college and so on.
Delegation is an attempt in such way so as to have subordinates participation and cooperation
in order to achieve the organisation’s objectives. This means that the role of a project
manager reduce thus, his concentration will be in significant matters. Moreover, delegation
could be considered as a practical training to the employee to understand the meaning of
responsibilities. This means the delegated person will be responsible about overall
performance and employee performance as well. It required both individual’s physical and
mental capacity (Ibid).
Akrani (2010) also illustrates that delegation involves some basic element which are, firstly,
assignment of duties to employees, secondly, providing the authority to the delegated person
in order to perform his duties and thirdly, obligation should be created by the delegate person
to perform all the duties assigned to his in an orderly manner.
In many organisations, delegation process seems easy in such way that if the manager been
absent for any reasons, his assistance will be delegated automatically and so on for other
position. This result that works will not be stopped and it will continue processing. However,
39
delegating one of the employees without a clear framework may take time and, thus decrease
the work performance.
3.4.1 Obstacles in delegation
Basu (2013) highlights common obstacles in delegation process. His climes that the
following issues may occur:
Insufficient Experience
The delegated person may not have the required experience especially in small enterprise.
This is because small business needs to grow; therefore, a manager should spend most of the
time to train his employee in order to be capable to handle difficult tasks. It essential that a
manager should match between the task assigned and employee experience.
Inadequate Task Definition
Successful delegation depends on how the task clearly defined. Poor definition may lead the
employee waste time in order to understand the task. Clear task definition also involves
providing the methodology that should use to accomplish the work. Moreover, a manager
should also indicate who is in charge in the task, therefore provide better communication too
the delegated person
Managerial Interference
Many manager face difficulties to leave their work place for a certain time and delegate one
of their employees. This is because their do not trust their employee and they believes that
they can only handle all the tasks especially during the economic downturns. It is suggested
that am anger could delegate in stages, therefore, examine his employee capability (Ibid)
Indeed, there are also other obstacles in delegation such as conflict between employee which
may lead to poor performance or leaving the task at all and not expressing any appreciation to
the employee
3.5 Decision making and Problem solving Decision making is considered as the centre of management life in which it been usually
highlighted as popular images of management. Many authors believe that one characteristics
of a good manager is the ability to make good decision. However, the meaning of good
decision seems not clear in which people identify good or bad decision according to their
view. Therefore, it’s rescannable to determine what good decision is? In general, people can
judge whether their decision is good or bad after seen the circumstances or the benefits of the
decision. Moreover, looking back to the alternatives option and the cause of action that’s
lead to choice this decision also may help to determine the quality of the decision.
Alternatively, Decision could be judged as good by means of looking how it was made
(Cooke and Slack, 1991).
40
Cooke and Slack (1991); Lunenburg (2010) has suggested several decision making processes
which are; overall observation upon the situation, identifying the problem, understanding the
problem, setting the objectives of the decision, determining the alternatives, evaluating the
options, choosing the best option, implementing the choice and finally monitoring.
Decision making usually start when a manager observe that something happen in the work
place environment either on the work itself or between the stuff. The awareness of the
situation does not require any clear evidence. However, the manager may notice that within
the work. Thus, manager decision engagement in this situation is essential. As the manager
notice that a decision must be make, he should recognise the issue and understand it. This
means a manger should be able to diagnose the problem. Although different people seen the
problem for different view, the situation sometimes become difficult to reach an agreement.
Therefore, providing a clear detail of the issue could be used to understand the problem. In
the next stage, a manger may clearly highlight the evidence. Next, the decision maker should
set objectives in which how the decision look like and what are the goals that need to achieve.
These goals could be described as behaviour of whatever manager believes of the
organisation. The main concern with setting objectives is to close the gap between the
manager observation and the actual situation.
One of the most significant phases in decision making is determining the alternatives. This
stage shows how the issue has been recognised earlier. Thus, a decision maker could use
brainstorming technique to illustrate the options which will be evaluated in the next stage.
Evaluation stage examine each option and determine whether it meet the decision objectives
or not. Also, it indicates the consequences of choosing one option instead on others. After
that, the decision makers could chose from the given options then implement it. During the
implementation phase, a manager may change the selected option depending on the situation.
Finally, the selected option should be monitored to the effectiveness of the option and see
whether the provided solution reduce the problem or not (Ibid).
3.6 The relation between a project manager and the employee Employee relation management can be defined as the process of managing the relation
between different employees in the organisation (Management study Guide, 2013). This
relation could be between employee at the same level or between employee and higher level
of management. The behaviour of both side of relation should be transparent in terms of
communication in which they talk the truth and been honest. Moreover, they should act as a
family through understand employee needs and requirement as well as motivating them to
increase their performance. The organisation can also provide a group workshop to enhance
those employees who need support. Therefore, those employees believe that his organisation
take care upon him not in terms of work only but as a human as well (Ibid).
3.7 Conclusion This chapter has talked about negotiation skills, types of negotiation and negotiation theories.
It also has discussed about different communication ways and delegation process.
Additionally, decision making and problem solving methods has been explained in details
and the relation between the employees and the project manager has been highlighted. It has
41
been found that there are several types of negotiation which are integrative negotiation,
distributive negotiation, and destructive negotiation and each type has its own elements.
There are, also, many negotiation theories that have been illustrated for example game theory,
negotiation analysis, psychological negotiation theory, integrated theory and prospect theory.
The author believes that both integrated theory and prospect theory could be more beneficial
in negotiation and project manager should adopt one of these theories with the consideration
of Hausken improvement in integrated theory. This is because both theories provide clear
view upon the negotiator behaviour required in any negotiation. Social behaviour and
employee background should be considered while negotiating. It has to be noted that face to
face communication is considered as one of the most effective way in communication. In
contrast, written communication is the least effective way to communicate with other. This is
because the receiver will not fully understand the sender situation –emotionless-, thus, written
communication may called as ridge. Most of the organisations have adopted certain
delegation system in order to avoid delay in work process which may be taken in delegating
someone. There are many obstacles in delegation which could arise in the work place such as
insufficient experience and conflict between employees. Project manager should come closer
to his employee and act with them as a family therefore employee feel that the organisation
cares upon him.
42
Chapter 4: Research Methodology This chapter highlights the research methodology adopted by the author in order to gather the
data required for the research. The data collected for this research mainly gathered by means
of survey method through interviews and by means of using the available data. The author, in
fact, also conducted several workshops which involved both projects managers and their
employees.
Note: for the purpose of clarification the author means by the word idleness career those
employee who come late or leave the work place before the end of the working hour.
4.1 Research design: Research design is defined as the plan for collecting data in order to complete the research
(Kervin, 1992). In other words, it is the process or the way of assembling data. Research
design highlights several significant issues which are deliberating questions, information and
related data, collecting data, analysing method and the producing result from the research.
Additionally, a number of factors covered in research deign, as Kervin (1992) stated, which
are: case selections, variable and data sources. Vaus (2001) asserted that these factors could
help to provide the evidence of the research question that needs to be answered.
4.1.1 Case selection:
In order to assemble the data which need to be analysed, case selection should be considered.
This means selecting a person or group or team or elements where they can be examined for
the research. Kervin (1992) stated that case selection should cover four main aspects namely:
unit of analysis, basic design, specific design and sample design.
4.1.1.1 Unit of analysis
Analysis unit could be considered as the main subjects of the research in order to analyse the
study issue in which data need to be collected. According to Yau (2009), there are five units
that need to be considered in analysis unit namely: individuals, groups, objects, events and
social interactions. However, Kervin (1992) mentioned six units. He stated all units
highlighted by Yau and believed that relationship between two or more individuals or groups
could represent the case. The author's point of view is that adopting Kervin thought seems
better as his consideration covered more aspects than Yau. The individual unit of analysis
which is selected by the author is the project managers and employee. This is because the
focal point of this research is to identify the attributes of the project manager which may help
to reduce the work escape and idleness career in the public sector in Sultanate of Oman.
However, the author also selects the group as units of analysis by conducting a number of
workshops which involve project managers and employees.
4.1.1.2 Basic design
The difference between the research plan and the fundamental of experiment designation can
describe the basic design. This design consists of three basic types namely: true, quasi and
non-experimental design (Kervin, 1992 cited by Tutesigensi, 2012). The true experimental
design deals with one or more independent variable in order to examine the result of
dependent variable. In cases to groups, random assignment will apply. Quasi experimental
43
design seems similar to the true experimental design. The only difference between them is
that random assignment of cases to groups will not apply in quasi experimental design.
However, non-experimental design does not deal with either independent variable or random
assignment of cases to groups.
Kervin (1992) highlighted the advantages and disadvantages of the three types of the basic
design as shown in the table 4.1.1.2 (Cited by Tutesigensi, 2012):
True-experimental Quasi-experimental Non-experimental
Strength of causal
inferences
Strong Moderate Weak
Problem of feasibility Can be substantial Slight or moderate Not usually a
problem
Ethical problem with
manipulation
Sometimes Less often No manipulation
Design easily
incorporates
organisational change
Yes
Yes
NO
Generalisability of
results
Moderate Higher Higher
Limit to number of
independent variables
Usually about 10 Usually about 20 Hundreds
Table 4.1.1.2: Advantages and disadvantages of the basic design
(Kervin, 1992 cited by Tutesigensi, 2012) The aim of this research is to investigate the reasons behind workers escape and idleness
career in the public sector in Sultanate of Oman, and highlight the capability of the project
manager and management in order to reduce this issue. The basic design for this research
adopted by the author is the non-experimental design as the individuals and groups will be
chosen randomly. Individuals will be interviewed and the author will run a number of
workshops for groups of project managers and employees as the research involves two types:
worker escape which are: those who leave the work totally without informing their managers
and idleness career which means arriving late or leaving the work before the end of the
working hours.
4.1.1.3 Specific design research
44
This research could be referred to the practical design in which the decision of the specific
research should be considered to tackled the constraints which might the researcher face
(Tutesigensi, 2012). Kervin (1992) stated that specific design can be classified into three
main groups namely: number of groups, nature of the groups and times points at which
measurement or dimension are considered. In order to structure the research outline, the
number of groups should be determined. As this research considered as non-experimental and
comparison is not significant, single group will be divided into sub-groups (Ibid).
The groups’ nature is related to the method of forming the groups. Tutesigensi (2012)
suggested several methods to form the group which are: random assignment, matching cases,
matching groups, interact groups and random selection. In this research a compensation of
matching cases and random selection methods are selected. This is because matching cases
will be used for project managers and random selection will be used for the case of employee.
In order to differentiate specific designs, time points at which dimensions are taken can be
used. This can be done by cross-sectional studies or by longitudinal studies. The author has
decided to choose cross-sectional studies for this research as the change in time is not
important and project manager knowledge, skills and behaviour can be provided.
4.1.1.4 Sample design
Tutesigensi (2012) defined sample design as the method of selecting a part of inhabitants as a
sample in order to symbolize the whole inhabitants in approximating inhabitant’s features.
The aim of this method is to offer practical means of facilitating data collection which need to
be good representative of population. This design involves two types of samples which are
probability and non-probability samples (Ibid). The author decides to conduct non-probability
sample for this research. Non-probability sample consists of five main types namely: quota
sample, judgment sample, snowball sample, self-selection sample and convenience sample.
Judgment sample allows the researcher to choose ‘typical’ cases in which those cases rely on
their personal opinions. The author, therefore, selected this type of sample for this research.
This is because the author will interview a number of project managers and run several
workshops for employees and project managers in order to allow them to provide their
opinions and thoughts regarding workers escape and idleness career in the public sector in
Sultanate of Oman. Thus, the author believes that judgment sample would work effectively
for this research.
4.1.2 Variable
Kervin (1992) defined research variable as the feature of the analysis unit which varies within
the same units or across unit over the period of time. The variable of research can be
classified into six types namely: dependent, independent, control, extraneous independent,
intervening and interacting variables. Independent variable is considered as the reason to
change dependent variable as Bryman and Bell (2007) stated. Tutesigensi (2012) stated that
most of the research variable beings with dependent and independent variables. In this
research, dependent variable is adopted by the author to illustrate the knowledge, skills and
behaviour of the project manager which have an impact on workers escape and idleness
45
career. This also could expand the knowledge in order to highlight the intervening variable as
the capability of project manager affects the worker performance.
4.1.3 Data sources:
In data resources, both the variables at which data need to be gathered and the variables
which indicate the data sources could be determined. Kervin (1992) suggested five types of
data sources namely: individual self-report, inside information, outside observer, researcher
observation and available data. In this research, the author adopts individual self-report,
inside and outside information as the sources of the data. The individual self-report is
selected because the author gathers the data by interviewing project managers and their
employees. Hence, this method covers a wide range of variables. Additionally, the author
selects those individuals who belong to public organisations in order to provide data about the
team (employees at workplace) which is considered as a cheap and faster method. Moreover,
the author chose outside information in order to increase the rage of variables in which data
that to be collected might highlight the research issue from different angles. However, the
quality, time and cost might be high for some of these methods and less for others. Therefore,
the author thought of reducing time and cost and increasing quality of the research by running
workshops with the research samples in which interviews and question discussion will be
carried out.
4.2 Research method: Research method is defined as the process or techniques used to collect the data required for
the research in order to analyse it and provide results. This section highlighted the
methodology adopted by the author for this research.
4.2.1 Selection of research method:
Selecting the research method mainly depends upon the type of research. In engineering
management field, there are several research methods that can be used to collect the data
namely: field experiments, observational studies, survey, laboratory experiment case studies
and available data studies (Tutesigensi, 2012). In this research, the author selects two
methods of research which are survey and available data studies. Survey method mainly
involves two types which are questionnaire and interview survey. One way of collecting data
for this research is determine by interview survey. This type of survey could also be classified
into several ways which are personal, computer assisted and telephone interviews (Ibid).
However, this method may raise some error such as sample, measurement, and non-response
error. Sampling error is the most common error in interviews due to its small size (sample),
higher in cost and requires more time. In order to tackle this issue, the author invited most of
the sample research to attend the workshop which may help to reduce the time and increase
the samples as much as possible. Indeed, the cost of this research could be neglected as it is
very low. The author also believes that interviews methodology provides a clear
understanding of the topic and therefore the responds will be much better.
Before conducting interview surveys, a number of considerations and guidance should be
highlighted which are illustrated by Tutesigensi (2012) as the following:
46
Interview schedule the layout should be prepared in order to organise the interview
and making notes of the responses
Arrangement of where, when and how the interview will take place as this method
does not require any distribution and collection of data.
The interviewer should have communication skills in order to generate successful
interview survey.
Information and assurances should be provided by the interviewer before the
interview starts.
The interviewer can record the interview for his/her transcription only with the
permission of the respondent.
It is not suggested to conduct telephone interviews as they create an issue due to the
respondent's answers to the questions according to what s/he hears
Available data studies refer to the data which is obtained or developed by other organisations
or people for their own purpose. This data is suitable for these researches which discussed the
issues related to government, records, information in documents, company files, statistics and
time series. The author will analyse this data in different ways in order to provide new ideas
or conceptions of the case (ibid).
Available data studies could be categorised into four main types namely: direct, indirect,
internal and external data. This research tends to be direct available data as the information is
produced by an organisation. A number of errors may arise while assessing the available data
in terms of the quality. However, the assessment of this data should consider several criteria,
which the author concerned about in this research, for instance: reliability, measurement
validity, coverage, unmeasured variable, measurement bias, cost benefit ratio and unusable
cases. Indeed, that available data could be acquired by means of generating measures,
accessing to the data, developing forms, sampling the data and procedure. Therefore, the
author already allowed accessing the organisation data required for the study in Sultanate of
Oman.
4.2.2 Methods of collecting data:
Data that need to be collected could be categorised into two main types which are the primary
and secondary data. Kumar and Ranjit (2005) stated that primary data refers to the data which
is collected by means of survey. However, secondary data refers to the data which has been
already collected by means of others authors. The following section highlighted these types
of data in details.
4.2.2.1 Primary data:
47
Primary data is the data which is obtained through survey. However, there are several types
of methods that can be used to collect data which are questionnaires, interviews, models,
experimentation, and observation on practical issues by getting involved in it (Walliman,
2011). In this research, the data has been collected by means of interviews and running
workshops. This method is considered as an important phase for the arrangement of
interviews, workshop, design process and research design. In other words, the way of
defining the research action plan.
Bryman and Bell (2007) stated that interviews can be classified into three main types namely:
structured, semi-structured and unstructured. Structured interview is not providing any
flexibility for the respondent to speak freely which, as a result, could limit the data that can
be collected. However, unstructured interview considered as rigid as each question follows
another one with the same tone. Moreover, there is no list of questions that need to be asked.
Although the respondent may have the opportunity to speak freely, this method could also
lead the respondent to talk about something not related to the main topic (Sauders et. al,
2007). Hence, the data collected by means of this method seems less.
Semi-structured interview could be considered as the best method of interview which the
author adopted. This is because the questions that need to be asked are listed and more issues
could be highlighted. It is a mixture of formal and informal speech which allows the
respondent to talk freely and reflect on each question with the guidance of the interviewer.
The author decided to conduct this type of interview in terms of face to face interview as the
respondent is allowed to clarify any question, thus, he will provide better answers. The
interview questions are developed in such way to meet the research objectives which, as a
result, meet the research aim. In addition, the respondent will be asked to state the reasons
behind works escape and rank them according to the most important to the least one
(Dulewics and Higgs, 2005). Moreover, the respondent also will be asked to determine the
skills, behaviours, and knowledge of the project managers. The list of interview questions is
attached with the research paper (Appendix A).
Besides that, the author will conduct several workshops as an idea to collect data. The author
adopt this method due to it provide a healthy environment in exchanging the ideas with the
ability to discuss with other participants. The author decide to use this method because
workshop provide synergy in which it promote cooperation, motivation and creativity
between the participants as everyone has the opportunity to offer some input and here the
input from others as well. Therefore, it could result with new ideas. Moreover, workshop
increased consensus, iteration, inputs, development and learning in which issues are easy to
highlight and each inputs could build good outcomes.
This workshop attempts to highlight the issue of workers escape and idleness career in the
public sector which lead project to delay. The author will use different tools and techniques
with the participants. Hence the number of participants in both workshop and interview were
276 persons. This number indicates the samples who have been selected randomly in which
they attend the workshop. Workshop proposal is attached with this research (Appendix B)
4.2.2.2 Secondary data:
48
The main research method that can be used in any research is secondary data which could be
obtained by several ways for instance: journals, text books, articles and websites. The
secondary data for this research was collected from the ways mentioned which could be
considered as the background of the research. This data provides theoretical opinions which
have been examined by others authors or writers. By means of this data, the research
discussions can be developed. However, Saunders et. al (2009) mentioned that not all
secondary data could be useful as it is gathered for specific purposes of research. This data
also could save time for the researcher as it will be published to the public and easy to access.
Thus, the author highlighted the secondary data in the literature reviews which has been
examined and studied to ensure that it’s useful for this research.
There are several methods of forming the structure of the project research which are;
Each main heading is divided into subheadings.
The relationship between each section should be shown with the design concept.
Critical evaluation followed the literature review which analyses that data collected
against the secondary data.
The literature review for this research highlighted several skills, behaviours and knowledge
of project manager for instance: negotiation, communication, leadership, delegation,
motivation and the relation between the project manager and his employees.
4.3 Process of collecting data: In the light of the process of collecting data, the primary data for this research has been
collected through two ways which are interviews and workshops. The researcher contacted
the respondents through email and phone in order to provide the introduction, purpose and
methods of the research as well as the acceptance from them. The workshop proposal sent to
the participants that include the objectives, time, data, place and the expected outcomes of the
workshop. Most of the interviews carried out before or after the workshop as the interviewer
believes that the respondents may not have time latter and it is good to use as much time on
the workshop day as possible.
4.4 Issues to be considered: In any research method, a number of issues should be considered which include pre-testing,
research validity, triangulation and research ethics.
4.4.1 Pre-testing
In order to improve the data, pretesting of the data collected is required. This involves
examination of the measures, procedures and instruments which, as a result, improve the
quality of the research. Pretesting of these aspects should involve, as Kervin (1992)
suggested, at least two of the following stages:
Reviewing and evaluating the data collected
The content of the measure should be asked to an expert person.
49
Comment of measures, procedure, and instruments should be gathered through an
experience researchers, friends or relatives who may have knowledge about the
research topic
Collecting data from sample(s) of cases which is similar to the target samples (citied
by Tutesigensi, 2012)
4.4.2 Research validity
This means the extent to which other research conclusions and recommendations, whatever
the research purpose and objectives, could be relied to use in the research investigation.
Research validity involved three main elements namely: research power, internal and
external validity (ibid).
Research power could describe the ability of design methods and data analysis to identify the
relationship between similarities and differences that may actually happen. There are some
threaten factors that may affect the research power such as: the design that does not highlight
the dependent variable which may be affected by influential variables and the research design
which does not provide enough variation in the variables relationships. Moreover, it can also
be threaten by weak statistics and poor measurement (Kervin, 1992 cities by Tutesigensi,
2012)
Indeed, internal validity describes the extent to which group features conclusions are co-
difference in the accurate cases analysed. Several issues may threaten internal validity such as
unmeasured variables, change in dependent variables, poor measurement and data analysis
threats for instance: statistical test (ibid).
However, external validity describes the same internal validity variables except it discusses
the co-variation which can be useful for the situation behind those particularly analysed in the
research. There are several threatens threatening factors of this component such as change in
programme, statistical error related to the test, error of case selection and interactive between
the research constant and cause (Kervin, 1992)
4.4.3 Triangulation
A combination of various methods or techniques to analyse one thing called triangulation.
The significant of triangulation is that the conclusion or outcome of any research can be
obtained from more than one source which increases the accuracy. In other words, if the
researcher uses any types of survey and finds something that use as case study, for example,
and finds the same result, thus, the findings from the second method enhanced the findings
from the first one. Moreover, triangulation could also increase the research validity in terms
of eliminating the disadvantages of one method by using the advantages of another one.
4.4.4 Research ethics
Sauders et. al (2007) and Tutesigensi (2012) illustrated a number of the ethical key issues that
may arise during the project research. These issues are:
50
All the participants in the research have the right to accept or reject to be involved in
the research.
All the participants in the research have the right to withdraw from the research
All the participants have the right to know the purpose of the research
The participants also have the right to know the data required from them and how it
will be collected.
The participants’ reaction on the data collection methods in terms of stress,
embarrassment, harm and pain.
The effect of data which has been collected, analysed and reported on all participants.
The researcher behaviour.
In the light of the statement above, all the participants have the opportunity to accept or reject
to be part of the research. Moreover, the participants have the right to withdraw themselves
during the event of data collection. The researcher has defined the purpose of this research
and introduced its objectives to the participants through email with the consideration of how
data will be collected. The researcher also considered the participants reaction against the
data collection method or the way that questions will be presented and asked. This is because
the participants in this research may feel embarrassed, stress, harm or pain. The data in this
research will be presented in a way that keeps participants' confidentiality.
Additionally, the protocol adopted by School of Civil Engineering at University of Leeds is
that the researcher is required to complete the ethical form with the supervisor approval to
start the data collection. The ethical form of this research is attached in the Appendix D.
51
Chapter 5: Data collection and Analysis
5.1 Introduction:
This chapter examines the primary data that has been collected for this research. Two
methods have been used to collect data which are a workshop and interviews. Both methods
took place between 24th
May 2013 until 10th
June 2013, and the questions used are mentioned
in Appendix A. The author has mentioned that the number of people who have participated in
the workshop and have been interviewed are 276 in total. Therefore, this chapter analyses the
data collected from them in order to solve the dissertation issue. The author would like to
acknowledge that only language and utterances were not analysed. This chapter will
illustrate each question that has been asked in the workshop and interviews separately and
follow it by the analysis. Questions 2, 3, 4 and 5 will highlight the main research issue in
detail. Moreover, the project managers’ point of view will also be mentioned in each
question. Indeed, most of the questions that have been asked focus on the employees in which
their views could be used to determine the knowledge, skills and behaviour required for a
project manager to deal with the research problem. Some of the data will be represented in
terms of graphical statistics in which the author will analyse it accordingly. This chapter
concludes with a summary of what has been done with the outcomes that have been obtained.
In general, the author believes that the primary data satisfies the research process and there
are some limitations that need to be considered for further studies.
5.2 Data Analysis – why people work? And job satisfaction This section of the data analysis highlights questions 1, 2, that were asked to the participants.
The first question provided an idea about the reasons that lead people to work and the causes
of poor performance. However, the second question indicated the factors which affect job
satisfaction.
Reasons No. of participants
Obtain income 72
Social status 12
Spending time 40
Help the country 59
Achievement 63
Experience 30
Table 5.1: Various Reasons of people to work
52
This table can be represented in terms of percentages as shown below;
Figure 5.1: Reasons of people wok It is clear from the above figure that the majority of people who took part in the research have
indicated that the main reason that led them to perform their duties is to obtain income with
about 26% of the sample population suggesting the same. However, nearly 23% of the
sample population believe that they perform work in order to achieve personal goals and
fulfil their requirements. Nevertheless, about 21% of the sample population aim to contribute
towards the development of the country. Only a minority of the people who took part in this
study have claimed that they aim to obtain life experience, spending their time and get social
status. Life experience means that the employee has the opportunity to make friends and
have life knowledge in terms of work and how to deal with different situations. Although
there are very few differences, a project managers’ point of view in doing work seems to be
similar to that of the employee's. Indeed, this finding is supported by Rees (1996) who
stressed that one of the important reasons that lead people to work is to earn a living
expenses. He also illustrated other reasons which are personal achievement, fulfil the
requirement and make friends. Moreover, this is also supported by Maslow (1943) who
averred that people do work in order to fulfil their wants and needs. Besides that, almost all
the participants believe that the cause that leads to poor performance could be one or more of
the following reasons;
Job dissatisfaction in terms of salary, mismatching between the employee skills and
the work requirements and no motivational system.
Job pressure; whenever the pressure increases on the employee, the performance
gradually declines.
Personal issues for instance family and health issues.
Inadequate work-systems. This can be related to work system adopted by the
organisation including working hours and breaks.
Managers and employee behaviours; this involves conflict, and leadership style.
26.10%
4.35%
14.50% 21.38%
22.80%
10.87%
Reasons of people wok
Obtain income
Social status
Spending time
Help the country
Achievement
Experience
53
Rules and regulations of the organisation in which it is solid, not flexible and limited
number of holidays.
Social view on the type of work.
These findings are also supported by Rees (1996); Diab (2011) and Vaishnav (2011). They
have stressed that poor performance can be related to the employees, the managers and the
nature of work. However, these authors did not express their social view on the type of work.
Therefore, the author relates this issue to the culture which is very minor and could be
considered as wrong ideology.
The second question is related to the factors affecting job satisfaction. Before highlighting
this question, the author asked the participants about the effect of gender in job satisfaction.
This means which gender tends to be more satisfied with the job that has lower income and
stature? The results showed that women have a higher level of job satisfaction than men. This
is support by Clark (1997) and Sousa-Poza and Souza-Poza (2003) in their research about
gender satisfaction. The author asserts this result due to two main reasons. Firstly, the men
responsibilities are higher than women in terms of finding suitable house and buying a car.
Therefore, it is difficult for men to accept a job with lower level. Secondly, culture issues
which consider men as the focal point to provide living expenses whereas, women focus
more in educating children by their nature. The participants have illustrated several factors
that affect job satisfaction for examples; salary, nature of work, working hours, challenge,
staff behaviours and opportunity for advancement and improvement. These outcomes could
be used as an evidence to make sure about Vlosky and Aguilar (2009) suggestion about the
factors that influence job satisfaction. Moreover, Hall and Lawler (1970) Teas (1981) have
also highlighted some of these factors such as the relation between staff and challenge in the
work place in which it would be considered as positive or negative. Positive in terms of
increasing the employees’ creativity and negative in terms of stressing the employees, thus,
finding difficulties to cope with the work.
5.3 Data Analysis – Worker escape and idleness career causes and effects In this section, the author will indicate the causes, effects and the impacts of worker escape
and idleness career. The author will firstly illustrate the number of foreigners who work in
Sultanate of Oman with a specification of their distribution and escape. This section will be
divided into subsections in which the first subsection will highlight the causes of worker
escape and idleness career. However, in the second subsection the author will analyse its
effects and impacts.
According to the Directorate General of Civil Status (2013), the total expatriates’ workers
registered with Directorate General of Civil Status until April 2013 is 1,488,116 workers and
they distributed as shown in the following table:
54
Educational Level Male Female Total
Illiterate 20,186 1,974 22,160
Read & write 367,834 41,929 409,763
Primary 126,358 18,342 144,700
Preparatory 469,347 52,273 521,620
Secondary 198,929 14,339 213,268
diploma 43,891 7,724 51,615
University 69,311 12,861 82,172
Higher diploma 4.043 720 724
Master degree 4,470 978 5,448
Ph. D 1,908 511 2,419
Not stated 22,176 8,012 30,188
Total 1,324,414 159,663 1,484,077
Table 5.2: Total Expatriates Workers Registered with Directorate
General of Civil Status (National Centre for Statistics and
Information, 2013) From the above table, it can be said that the total expatriate workers until the end of April
2013 reached 1,484,077 workers comparing with 1,437,299 workers in 2012 with an
increment of 46,778 workers. This means that the number of foreign workers has risen by
3.15% until the end of April 2013 only. According to the Ministry of Manpower annual
reports (2012), 52% of these workers are working in the construction filed. The number of
workers who escaped from January 2013 to April 2013 reached 106,853 which accounts to
7.2% of the total foreign workers.
While following the specification of the escape workers, it is clear that the majority of these
workers are from two nationalities which are Bangladeshis and Indians as shown in the figure
below;
55
Figure 5.2.1: Worker escape distribution according to their
nationalities Indeed, the workshop participants have illustrated several reasons behind worker escape
which are:
o Limited availability of appropriate housing and accommodation
o Noncompliance in paying salaries
o Insufficient holidays
o Managers behaviours
o Other reasons
These reasons are presented in the graph below:
Figure 5.2.2: Reasons of worker escape (Employees’ view)
India Bangladeshis Other nationalities
34.30%
47.40%
18.30%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
14%
30%
23% 22.10%
10.87%
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However, managers believe that worker escape is due to one of the following reasons:
o Enticing a higher salary
o Lack of knowledge of labour low
o insufficient salaries
o lack of knowledge of the nature of work
o work difficulties
o Other reason including employee inability to pay for labour card
Figure 5.2.3: Reasons of worker escape (Managers’ view)
It is clear from the employees’ and managers’ views that there are different reasons given for
workers escape. The author claims that the employee may focus on the human basic needs in
terms finding accommodation, holidays and managers behaviour whereas, managers tend to
focus more on rules and regulations in terms of understanding the labour low and the nature
of the job. However, all the reasons mentioned above should be considered and highlighted in
details thus, providing valid solutions.
On the other hand, the participants have emphasized that the causes of idleness career are:
Manager’s behaviours
insufficient salaries
Insufficient holidays
To accomplish personal matter
Family issue including child illness, appointments and taking children to the nursery
Work pressure
Lack of leadership
Lack of motivation
Traffic jam and those who live in far cities
Enticing a higher salary
Lack of knowledge of labour low
Lack of knowledge of the nature of work
Work difficulties
Insufficient salaries
Other reasons
57
Nature of work
Management issue (system, favouritism and the influence of those who can pull the
string to let some employee to come late (corruption)
Managers, on the other hand, support the causes given by the employees and they have also
indicated that employees may have lack of sense of responsibility. All the participants have
stressed that they do not have sufficient time to finish their personal matters including banks,
ministries and other organisations. They have explained that these organisations work five
days a week only and they open during the working hours. Therefore, they must go to get
their matters done during the working hours.
Nevertheless, both workers escape and idleness career could effect any organisation in terms
of delay in the work progress which includes internal and external effects. Internal effect
means increasing the amount of work that need to be done, therefore, increasing the pressure
on the employees and thus, poor performance. External effect refers to delay submission of
work especially project, therefore, the client can ask for penalties. Thus, extra money will be
paid.
Indeed, the impacts of worker escape and idleness career could be highlighted in many
aspects. In this section, the author tends to provide the participants' view of the impact
followed by the analysis. Hence, the author will analyse the impacts of workers escape in the
social wide context including five main types which are economical, sociological, political,
health and security.
1. Economical impacts
This means drain the funds of the organisation owners in which they will again
demand for other workers without any benefits because they may also escape and
work with someone else. This could lead to the collapse some of the small and
medium scale enterprises and thus, affect the overall economy of the country and
drain the owners’ fund which could be used to enhance the production, real
contribution in development and increase the economic value. Moreover, worker
escape could lead to inflation in terms of foreign workers in the country. These
workers may also compete with the local people in the labour market in which they
may not necessarily follow the rules and regulations. Therefore, they can work in any
place especially when there is someone who provides easier work for them to work
and gloss it. As a result, spreading of what is known as the hidden business or trade
may occur. Additionally, workers’ escape could increase the remittances outside the
country. The statistics show that more than £2.5 billion have been transferred outside
the country in 2012 compared to £1.4 billion in 2011(Central Bank of Oman, 2012).
Moreover, it could lead to load on goods and services by means of using some of the
goods that are supported by the governments. Thus there is an increase in overheads
and high deficits in the state budget.
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2. Sociological impacts
As men are primarily the workers who escape, it could lead to a qualitative imbalance
between the genders, social and ethical problems. Indeed, those escaped labours lead
the owner of the organisation to demand foreign workers in order to cover their work.
Therefore, it leads to increase the number of the foreign workers and thus imbalance
in the composition of the population which could prejudice the national identity and
transfer of some customs and traditions that may not suit the nature of society.
Workers escape is considered as a source of concern for the people and governments
alike through protest rallies.
3. Political impacts
This could be referred to stirring the labour organizations and the Rights of Migrant
workers through a published propaganda about the non-application of labour laws and
materials and accommodation as well as non-compliance with international standards
on the rights of migrants. Moreover, increasing the workers escape number could
spread what is known as ‘Human trafficking’ which is defined by the anti-Human
Trafficking law in Oman as "people use, transfer or harbouring or receiving through
coercion, threats or deception or by taking advantage of their work or of a position of
vulnerability or the use of an authority or using illegal means direct or indirect".
4. Health impacts
Health care department does not take large interest for foreign workers with the
proportion of 2.3% of their total expenses in goods and services as it is shown in the
Ministry of national economic survey (2011-2012). The author, therefore, claims that
this percentage may increase with those who escape. This is because of the fear from
official transactions (labour card and identity) in which it could cause the competent
authorities to catch them. Thus, it leads them to avoid going to the health centre which
contributes to spread many types of diseases.
5. Security impacts
Accompanied by the phenomenon of workers escape, a number of security problems
that are reflected on individuals and society exist and affect the reputation of the
country. Moreover, it affects the competitiveness in the strengthening of a country to
enhance the economy by attracting tourists and warheads foreign funds which are
always looking for the appropriate work environment to avoid a lot of losses. Thus,
the one of the top requirements of the foreign investors is the political stability and
security of the country. Therefore, workers escape is threatening the country and
spreading several issues which are against the rules such as theft, violation of the
sanctity of housing, forgery, fraud, damage the public and private funds, an insult to
the dignity and abuse secretariat.
On the other hand, idleness career could lead to several impacts. The author asked the
workshop participants to categorise these impacts into three main types which are;
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impacts between employee and administration, between staff and the impacts on the
organisation.
Impacts between the employer and administration:
Usual delays and leaving earlier from the work place could influence the
relationship between the employee and the administration in which the
administration could report this issue to a higher level of management.
Therefore, penalties may be applied. Moreover, this can impact other
employees’ view on the administration that they cannot stop this issue through
proper system and power. The annual assessment report will show poor
performance.
Impact between employees:
This could affect the relation between the employees. When the employer
comes late, others may feel it is unfair and unequal. Therefore, it increases the
spread of hypocrisy in terms of the type of relation that this employer has with
the administration that leads to come late to the work . Indeed, it also increases
the pressure on other employees by means of covering the absence or delay.
Impact on the organisation:
If idleness career has impacts on the administration and employees, it
definitely has impacts on the organisation as a whole. The huge impact will be
in terms of delayed submission of the work thus, increasing the overall cost.
Moreover, the performance will decrease as the pressure increases.
In the light of the above statement, the author believes that workers escape and idleness
career has huge impacts on the employees, administration and organisation. Therefore,
project managers must illustrate some practical solutions in order to reduce or eliminate these
issues. The author suggests that project managers could adopt what is known as ‘the causes of
the reasons’ thus, he will highlight these issues, in the next sections, by means of analysing
several skills and behaviours, and how both project managers and employees obtain the
maximum benefit from it.
5.4 Data Analysis – Communication Skills This section mainly focuses on communication skills and how the project managers
communicate with his employees and vice verse. This section begins with an illustration of
the system which is adopted by many organisations in the public sector in terms of providing
an explanation of the nature of work followed by an indication about how employees
communicate and deal with their managers. Hence, the author will analyse these data
presented by the workshop participants.
Majority of the workshop participants and those who have been interviewed indicated that
their organisations have asked them to attend the workshop in order to explain the nature of
work. However, they emphasised that they have not received any type of written documents
and they usually tend to depend upon others’ experiences to understand the work’s nature. On
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the other hand, the organisations stated that there are written documents that explain the work
nature for those who ask for it. Although running workshops for the employees is considered
as the most effective way to explore the job nature, the author believes that distributing
written documents during the workshop itself also help to provide better understanding about
the work. This is because that the employees could refer to the documents later whereas
workshop only occurs once. Therefore, employees may forget.
Nevertheless, the participants have highlighted that they usually communicate with their
managers by means of written communication (mobile phones) especially messages and
WhatsApp application. They emphasised that they prefer to use written communication
instead of other types of communications because it is very fast and they do not need to
explain their issue in depth. However, if they have any personal issue during the working
hours, they tend to explain it by means of face to face communication. The author claims that
written communication is considered as the poorest types of communication due to the
receiver understanding will only depend on whatever is in front of him. In contrast, face to
face communication has been determined as the most effective way of communication as
both sides of communication will have the ability to ask and clarify things and thus,
understand the other side in a better way. According to the Crippens (2011), written
communication is considered as ridge, and it comes without emotions. Therefore, it is
suggested that using oral presentation (face to face, meeting etc) in communication is much
better.
Besides that, the participants averred that they communicate with their managers whenever
they have a number of requirements in terms of increasing salaries and when they are not
satisfied with their job. The managers, on the other hand, have analysed these requirement
and tried to provide a suitable solution. However, managers emphasised that they are not
communicating with the top level of management in case of salary related issues. This is
because the salary system depends on the Ministry of Civil Services. Therefore, any change
made must be through them. Indeed, the participants also indicated that when they are not
satisfied with their managers, they tend to keep quiet rather than communicating with higher
level of management due to the fear of punishment. The author suggests that managers
should communicate with top level of management regarding any issue related to the
employees. Hence, when the demand of increasing the salary increased, higher level of
management will communicate with the responsible authority in order to come up with
solutions.
5.5 Data Analysis – Negotiation and Motivation skills In this section, the author will analyse how project managers and employees use negotiation
skills and who they actually deal with regarding their conflicts. Moreover, the author will also
analyse how those managers motivate their employees and examine whether it has any effects
on them or it requires certain improvement.
All the workshop participants stated that they use negotiation skills whenever there are any
issues or conflicts with their managers. Some of them use negotiation with the aim of win-
lose approach due to their belief that the organisation does not care about them in terms of the
61
amount of work they have, the salary and work pressure. However, others use negotiation
with the win-win approach as they emphasised that both sides of negotiation should reach an
agreement which convinces everyone. These types of negotiation are mentioned by Spoelstra
and Pienaar (1991) which is known as integrative negotiation and distributive negotiation.
The author's point of view considers the participants' view as integrated negotiation. This is
because the relationship between the employee and the manager is a continuous relationship
and it does not stop with one argument. Moreover, continuous relationships mainly related to
integrated negotiation. Indeed, according to the description of distributive negotiation, it is
usually related to the sales where one side of negotiation may lose.
The managers mentioned that whenever there is any conflict with the employees, they tend to
meet the employer and discuss the issue individually, whereas when there is common issue,
managers prefer to highlight it during the general meetings.
The participants mentioned that they received some motivation for their managers. The
author then asked them whether they prefer motivation by money, by rewards or by
appreciation. Almost all the participants prefer to be motivated by appreciating their work
performance. This is supported by Alderfer (1969) theory of motivation which involved the
existence, relatedness and growth needs. As Yang et. al. (2011) stated existence needs
include the following forms; physiological, safety and material needs. The author supports
the participants’ idea of appreciating their performance in order to motivate them due to the
human nature which is mostly influenced more by words (physiological aspects). Managers
also indicated that all the staff are invited to participate in sport event, trip or visiting some
friends. They believe that employees will feel that the organisation is taking care upon them
not only in terms of their work performance but, by their nature (willing to enjoy) and needs
as a human. With regards to motivation by money, managers stated that this is not on their
hand. However, they leave it to the higher level of management. The author avers that
managers should stress the top management to motivate the employee by money not only
words due to the employees may find another job with higher salary. Thus, he will leave the
organisation. If the organisation fulfils the employee’s needs and requirement, he will
definitely not search for another job, or in this research issue, he will not escape/come late.
5.6 Data Analysis – Leadership and delegation skills In this section, the author will analyse the managers' point of view in how to manage worker
escape and idleness career. Moreover, the author will also illustrate the relation between the
employees and their manager. The author then will discuss about leadership and delegation
skills. This section will highlight the low that organises the relation between the employee
and the project manager/management.
According to the managers who have been interviewed, there is a management system
adopted in their organisation to deal with worker escape and idleness career. They
emphasised that they follow the Ministerial Decree No. (95/2001) which was issued by the
Ministry of Manpower in order to control migrant workers’ escape (See Appendix C).
However, the author stresses that there are some materials that are considered one of the gaps
that may be used by the workers in order to avoid legal prosecution in the case of escape as
62
well as exemption of financial obligations to his escape. In the item in relation to the
implications of the workers escape, this item requires that the labour must be committed to
pay the fine owed of his labour card if it is proved that it was true before the date of escape,
or if the escape occurred a month before the date of arrival to the country factor. “The
labourer shall also be obliged to pay the fees of the card renewal (vocational training
contribution) or the household workers fees as from the date the card has expired, if it occurs
after the absconding was proved correct. In case the labourer is bankrupt, his (her) employer
shall incur all fees and fines” (Ministry of Manpower, 2013). The first section of the decree
makes a sound set of workers and regulates their presence to work in the Sultanate, as well as
the consequences for them when question rules and regulations governing the labor market
and their relationship with the employer. However, the second part of this procedure for
exempting factor of all financial obligations in case of insolvency and to oblige the sponsor to
bear all the consequences is a procedure that can create a chance to escape working at any
time.
Besides that, the text of the resolution to provide a ticket to the escape worker is open to the
party that brought them. This procedure has been replaced by Resolution No. (146/2001) to
provide the delivery of the deposit of an amount equivalent to the value of a ticket for his
country by a working bank account allocated by the ministry for this purpose. Here the
procedure allows the worker to escape from his sponsor and work for nearly four years
without a sponsor, and without liability to labor law, while it allows him to return to his
homeland whenever he wants without bearing the financial costs of his return trip, and
without liability to labor law, which requires the sponsor to secure these costs in the event of
reporting the escape factor.
On the other hand, managers emphasized that when the employee continues coming late or
leaving the workplace early without an acceptable excuse, they tend to follow article (116)
from the Civil Services Law which was issued by the Royal decree No. (120/2004). This
article states that “sanctions may be imposed on employees are:
A. Warning.
B. The deduction of salary for a period not exceeding three months in the year.
C. The denial of period allow premium.
D. The reduction in the range of Bonus.
E. To job cuts and lower-class salary directly with maturity, who arrived in the degree to
which of them and cut bonuses and allowances of the degree to which it cut.
F. To job cuts and lower-class salary directly with maturity, who was receiving before
upgrading to the degree to which of them and cut bonuses and allowances of the
degree to which it cut.
G. Retirement.
H. Dismissal from the service” (Civil Services Law, 2004)
In the light of the above statement, the author asked the managers whether the law applied in
the real field or not. Managers indicated that this article is not that much applied to the
employees. They indicated that the main reason for not applying the rule is that they take the
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humanitarian aspects of the problem in terms of the emotional and cutting the employee
income and thus influence the course of his life and the lives of his family. The author
stressed that whoever does not respect the organisation rules and regulations, sanctions must
be applied. This is because that these sanctions teach all staff the meaning of commitment
and act as a deterrent for both tempted to damage or delaying the interests of individuals or
institutions.
The participants suggested several behaviours and skills as a compulsory for project
managers. These behaviors and skills involved; a project manager should be creative, has an
influence, be a decision maker, has the ability to lead the group, motivated, humanity, has the
ability to communicate and negotiation, knows about the rules and regulations, has vision and
message and proactive. Moreover, they emphasized that a manager should be a leader.
Therefore, the author argues that these skills and behaviors are the charismatic of
transformation leadership. This is supported by Weber (1947); House (1977); Burns (1978);
Bass (1985) and Gardiner (2006) when they identified and recognised the impacts of leaders
by means of their impacts on their followers. The above authors have highlighted some
specification of the managers as leaders. However, the author would like to stress that the
relationship between the manager and an employee should be close and democratic without
losing power and influence. The relationship between managers and employees should be
like a family where everyone in the organisation understands and supports another. This
could lead to increase in the performance and reduce the cause and effect of both idleness
career and workers escape.
All the managers mentioned that there is a delegation system adopted by their organisation
according to which whenever a manager is absent or late, his assistance will be authorised by
the law to take his position until he comes back. However, they indicated that the delegated
person should have work experience and the ability to take the lead. This is highlighted by
Basu (2013). Although he illustrated the obstacles in delegation, it still could be used to
determine the knowledge, skills and behaviours of the delegated person. Additionally, they
stated that the delegated person has not affected the relation between the employee and the
project manager. Also, there is no side effects on the organisation when the project manager
delegates one of the employee.
5.7 Summary In this chapter, the author has analysed the date that has been collected through workshops
and interviews. The number of the project managers and employees who took part in this
research was 276 all together. The author has analysed the data in five different parts.
The first part highlighted the reasons that lead people to work, poor performance and the
factors that affect job satisfaction. The author found that the main reasons that lead people to
perform work are obtaining income, achieving personal goals and helping the country to
develop. Indeed, the author also found that there are several factors affect job satisfaction; for
instance, salary, nature of work, working hours, challenge, staff behaviours and opportunity
for advancement and improvement.
64
In the second part, the author analysed the causes and effects of worker escape and idleness
career. The author observed that foreign worker usually escape due to limited availability of
appropriate housing and accommodation, noncompliance in paying salaries, enticing a higher
salary and lack of knowledge of labour low. However, he noticed that the reasons behind
idleness career could be managers’ behaviours, insufficient salaries, lack of leadership, lack
of motivation and to accomplish personal matters. The author found that the effects of both
issues could lead into delaying in the project or individual interests. The author also observed
that the impacts of worker escape could be categorised into five main types which are
economical, sociological, political, health and security. Moreover, idleness career has an
impact on organisation, administration and employees.
The third part highlighted the communication skills. The author noticed that the majority of
the employees communicate with their managers by means of written communication.
However, they tend to use face to face communication when they are at the work place in
order to explain their issue. The author also found that the system adopted by many
organisations seems not effective as they run workshops only to explore the nature of the
work.
In the fourth part, the author analysed the employees’ and managers’ use of negotiation skills
and the motivation style adopted by the managers. The author observed that most of the
employees and project managers use win-win approach in negotiation or what is known as
integrative negotiation. In addition, the author has found that employees prefer to be
motivated by means of appreciating the work performance.
In the final part, the author has analysed leadership and delegation skills. He observed that
transformation leadership is the most effective leadership style as the project manager will be
close to his employee and he understands their needs and requirement. Moreover, almost all
the organisations have a delegation system in which they can use in the absence of the project
managers. The author found that there is no conflict among employees when the delegated
person has the authority.
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Chapter 6: Conclusion and Recommendations
6.1 Introduction:
This research aimed to investigate the reasons behind workers escape and idleness career in
Sultanate of Oman as a case study in order to indicate the skills, behaviours and knowledge
required for project managers to deal with these issue. The author has highlighted the main
skills, behaviours and knowledge in chapter 2 and 3 where the author had determined
literature reviews. Indeed, the author has analysed the data that been collected through
interviews and running a number of workshops. Through the analysis, the author had found
some significant findings therefore, develop the conclusion. Based on the findings and
conclusion, the author will provide some recommendations
6.2 Research Findings: The author has achieved the aim of this research by means of literature review and interviews
and running workshops. Therefore, he found the following results of the analysis:
The main reasons for worker escape are enticing higher salary and limited
availability of appropriate housing and accommodation
The main reasons for idleness career are Manager’s behaviours, insufficient
salaries and family issues including child illness, appointment and taking child to
the nursery
Worker escape has huge impacts on Sultanate of Oman in terms of economical,
sociological, political, health and security.
The impact of idleness career could be in terms of the work, employee relation
with others and employee relation with managers (administration).
There are several knowledge, behaviours and skills required for project managers
to deal with these issues such as motivation, leadership, communication,
negotiation, delegation and decision making.
Most of the employee use written communication which considered as the poorest
type of communication
Managers and employee usually tend to adopt win-win approach in negotiation
Majority of the employee prefer to be motivated by appreciating their work
performance more than providing money or any types of rewards.
Transformation leadership is the best way to lead employee
The entire organisations have delegation system in which they used it for
delegating one of the employees in the case of managers’ absence.
There are some gaps in the law which may be used by the workers in order to
avoid legal prosecution
In the light of the above findings, the author come with the conclusion that project manager
could deal with worker escape and idleness career by means of his knowledge, skills and
behaviours with his employee in terms of communicating, negotiating, leading, delegating,
motivating and decision making process. Moreover, organisation should improve its system
in order to deal with these issues. Based on the data analysis and findings, the author will
66
made some recommendations that could help to reduce or avoid this issues which will be
highlighted in the next section.
6.3 Research Summary: The author started this research by an illustration on the aim and objectives and highlighting
the background of this study. Based on that, literature review has been made in order to
determine knowledge, skills and behaviours required for project managers in order to deal
with worker escape and idleness career in public sector in Sultanate of Oman.
The literature review begun with an indication of the reasons that lead people to work and the
causes lead to poor performance. Additionally, the author has explained in details two main
skills and behaviours of the project managers which are motivation and leadership. Here, the
author illustrated several motivation and leadership theories and discussed them in details.
Moreover, the author also explained the factors that affect job satisfaction and the relation
between managers and employee. The first chapter of literature review provided an overview
about motivation and leadership style which were used in data analysis.
In the second chapter of literature review, the author highlighted four skills and behaviour of
the project manager which are negotiation, communication, delegation and decision making.
Some theories in negotiation have been discussed with the analysis of the suitable theory that
can be adopted. Nevertheless, the author had discussed several communication types with the
indication of the advantages and disadvantages of each type. Moreover, the author
emphasised about the delegation techniques and the process of delegation. The author
concluded this chapter by explaining about decision making process.
The author adopted two research methods in order to collect the required data which are
interviews and running a number of workshops. The participants who took part of this
research were primarily employee and project managers who is working in the public sector.
Through the analysis which performed on the interviews and workshops data been collected,
the author observed that the there are two main reasons of worker escape. The first reason is
enticing higher salary and the second reason is limited availability of appropriate housing and
accommodation. Moreover, the author also found that the causes of idleness career were
managers’ behaviours, insufficient salaries and family issues including child illness,
appointment and taking child to the nursery. The analysis showed that there are huge impact
of worker escape in terms of economical, sociological, political, health and security. Also, it
showed that the impact of idleness career could be in terms of the work, employee relation
with others and employee relation with managers (administration). Majority of the employee
prefer to be motivated by appreciating their work performance more than providing money or
any types of rewards. Indeed, the author found that both project managers’ and employees
tend to used win-win approach in negotiation. The employees prefer their managers to adopt
Transformation leadership in leading them. Almost all the employee indicated that they use
written communication which considered as the poorest type of communication. All the
organisation have delegation process. More and more, the author found that there are some
gaps in the law which may be used by the workers in order to avoid legal prosecution. Based
on the data analysis and findings, the author made some recommendations.
67
6.4 Recommendations: During the interviews and workshop, the author has asked the participants to suggest some
recommendations which may be used to deal with both worker escape and idleness career.
Additionally, the author also provides some suggestion. The participants and the author
recommendations are:
Recommendations for project managers and project management :
Project managers and should use different skills and behaviours with their employees
which are:
A. Motivation: this means project managers should motivate his employees by
appreciating their work performance, rewards and money
B. Communication: project managers should adopt face to face communication with
their employees in case of misunderstanding and when the employer has some
requirements.
C. Project manager and the management system at the organisation should adopt
win-win approach in negotiation
D. Project managers should use transformation leadership while leading others.
Therefore, the relationship between the employees and their project
managers will be close.
E. Higher level of management must fulfil the basic requirements of the
employee including accommodation and health care
Worker escape recommendations:
In the case of worker escape, bail will be cancelled and the passport will be held to the
competent authorities when arrested worker escape is coordination with the Embassy of
his country to initiate deportation proceedings
Legislation law to protect expatriate labour and regulates their rights
Support campaigns to dismantle the security gathering expats
Increase the citizens awareness in how to deal with expats and motivate them physically
for reporting any case of escape
Raise the salaries of expatriate workers and to achieve the basic living requirements
Working to prevent movement in the work from one place to another without a letter
from the sponsor
Enactment of a number of laws and regulations are as follows:
A. Working punishable fugitive from sponsor a fine of RO 200 and imprisoned for
not less than two months and deported immediately afterwards if it is proved that
it is causing the escape
B. Whoever is running the escape worker must pay a fine in the amount of RO 2000
and imprisoned for not less than two months
C. The sponsor does not assume the financial and legal consequences for the worker
to escape after a lapse of three months from the date of escape if it is proved that
the sponsor is not the cause of the escape income
D. When you make communication factor should escape the dissemination of data
and image Group on police and border crossings and Chambers of Commerce and
Industry and newspapers, as well as circular to banks and money transfer offices
and others who had resorted to the escape worker
E.
68
Idleness career recommendations:
Activation of e-government which allow the employee to accomplish most of his personal
work (including Ministries and Banks) by means of internet website or phone application
Creation of a system or the law for personal matters and organise its provisions
Create a nursery within the organisation coupled with health care (which also help to
create job opportunity) therefore, employee will not waste time to take and bring their
children.
Increase the holidays for women due to pregnancy and frequent hospital appointments
Review of salaries and incentives and find ways for development and improvement
The study of idleness career could be improved by including an assessment of job
satisfaction. Thus, providing accurate results.
Moreover, this research could be also improves by increasing the sample data and provide more time
as the time is limited. The author also recommends those who has an interest on worker escape
research to include the age, governor population density and psychological aspects of the worker.
6.5 Limitations: This research is limited to the knowledge, skills and behaviours required for project managers
in order to deal with worker escape and idleness career in public sector in Sultanate of Oman,
Because of limited time, the author believes that the sample data could be increased and a
number of issues may be highlighted in details. Therefore, the research outcomes would be
much better. However, the author claimed that the outcomes obtained still covered most of
the issues and achieved the research aim and objectives.
6.6 Conclusion The author believed that he has achieved the aim and objectives of this research. Based on the
literature review and interviews and workshop that been used to collect the data, the author
had performed an analysis in which he observed some findings. Therefore, he provided some
recommendations that could be adopt by any organisation or could be used for further study.
69
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Appendix A
Interview questions
The following questions were asked in interview:
Why do people work?
What are the factors that affect job satisfaction?
What are the reasons behind workers escape and idleness career?
What are the main issues that may arise due to worker escape and idleness in the
wider social context?
What are the impacts of worker escape and idleness career on the project?
Is there are any explanation for the nature of work before an employee starts the job
and how is it presented to the employee?
In case an employee has a personal problem, is there any communication with the
project manager?
If so, what type of communication? (Email, meeting, phone etc)
When the employee has a number of requirements (increase salary, not satisfy with
the job etc) does s/he communicate with his/her manager?
In spite of the employee communicating with his/her manager but still s/he is not
satisfied, did he communicate with higher level of management and how?
If there is any conflict between employee and his/her manager, how do the managers
deal with it?
Did the employee know and use negotiation skills?
How did s/he use them?
Did the project manager motivate his/her employee?
What type of motivation did the project manager provide to his/her employee?
How worker escape and idleness career is managed in any organisation? Is there any
specific management system?
What type of behaviour is necessary for that project manager?
How the relation between the employee and the project manager should be?
79
Is the delegation (delegated person) affecting the relation between the employee and
the project manager?
What kind of leader a project manager should be?
How the project managers highlight his/her employee issues?
Which aspects should the project manager consider in authorising the employee to
leave the workplace early?
Is there is any law that organises the relation between the employee and the project
manager/management?
80
Appendix B
Workshop proposal
In sultanate of Oman, many organisations are suffering from workers escape and idleness
career. Worker escape means a sudden leave from workplace without notifying the
responsible person. Idleness career means leaving the job before the end of working hours. In
other words, escape from the work. Workers escape is one of the most important cases that
have a negative reflection on the society as it influences the safety, stability and security of
the society. It may lead to several crimes such as theft, swindle and fraud. Additionally,
whenever workers escape commit crimes, it is difficult to find the place that it stays in as well
as it will be far away from justice. As a result of its illegal situation, it will be far from health
care which may lead to spread different kinds of infectious diseases. Idleness career may lead
to reduce the work efficiency and increase the time required to finish a specific job especially
in project where time is essential.
Workshop title:
Idleness career
Workshop objectives:
1 - To examine the reasons for idleness career in various state institutions
2 - To discuss the reasons for this phenomenon from the point of view of managers and
management.
3 - To finding practical solutions to reduce this phenomenon
4 - To discuss the qualities required in managers and management to deal with this
phenomenon
Participants:
* 20 - 30 employees and project managers per workshop
* Specialist / specialists from other organization
Workshop duration, date and place:
Duration: Three and a half hours
Date: 26th
May 2013 to 6th
June 2013
Place: Multipurpose hall at each organisation
Expected results from the workshop:
* Identify the reasons behind idleness Career
* Find practical solutions to curb or eliminate this phenomenon
* Find out the required specifications in managers and management in how to deal with the
employee and thus reduce this phenomenon
81
Appendix C
Absconding Notification
Requirements of expatriate labourers absconding notifications, according to ministerial
decision No. 95/2001 include the following:
Firstly: Shape of absconding notification
Publishing a notice accompanied by the absconded photograph in a local daily paper.
The notice shall be published 7 days after the labourer has left the work premises
without notifying the sponsor.
The notification shall come on the sample prepared by the ministry which should be
informed of the absconding . There should also be statements about the publishing
dates and the paper's volume. A a copy of the paper in which the notice has been
published should be attached. The ticket fare to the labourer’s country should be
deposited at the ministry’s account at Bank Muscat.
The notifications shall be submitted to the authority concerned with labour affairs
within 7 days from the publishing date.
The authorities concerned with labour affairs shall collect the absconding notifications
submitted to it and forward them to the concerned authority at the ROP every week.
Secondly: Steps taken by those concerned with labour affairs
After receiving the complete absconding notification, it will be marked and its data
will be entered into the computer and a copy of same will be kept.
Thirdly: Consequences of the absconding notification
In case the notification is proved correct, the labourer will lose his gratuity for the
period which proceeded the absconding date, in implementation of the provisions of
article (42) of the Omani labour law.
The absconded labourer shall be obliged to pay the fine of the labour card, in case it
was valid prior to the absconding date, or if the absconding occurred before the
labourer has completed one month in the Sultanate. The labourer shall also be obliged
to pay the fees of the card renewal ( vocational training contribution) or the household
82
workers fees as from the date the card has expired, if it occurs after the absconding
was proved correct. In case the labourer is bankrupt, his (her) employer shall incur all
fees and fines.
Fourthly: Objections to the absconding notification
The expatriate labourer whose absconding was published in the local papers may appeal
against this notice within two weeks from the publishing date, provided that the appeal comes
in writing and accompanied by the documents which prove that he (she) has not absconded.
Such appeal shall be submitted to the authority concerned with labour affairs. The authority
shall after reviewing the documents and listening to the concerned parties, decide in the
matter within one week from the date on which the appeal has been lodged. In case the
absconding was proved correct, the labourer shall be referred to the joint inspection teams to
take necessary action, in implementation of the provisions of article ( 103 ) of the Omani
labour law.
Fifthly: cancellation of the absconding notification
In case the employer has applied in writing to the officials concerned with labour affairs
within 30 days from the date on which the notice was approved to provide justifiable reasons
to cancel the notice, the concerned authority shall look into and decide on this request within
one week, according to each separate case. Any decision taken shall be approved by the
concerned director general.
83
Appendix D Ethics Approval Form
This form should be completed by the student and passed to the supervisor prior to a review
of the possible ethical implications of the proposed dissertation or project.
No primary data collection can be undertaken before the supervisor has approved the
plan.
If, following review of this form, amendments to the proposals are agreed to be necessary, the
student should provide the supervisor with an amended version for endorsement.
1. What are the objectives of the dissertation / research project?
To study the knowledge, skills and behaviours required for project managers with
regards to worker escape in Sultanate of Oman
2. Does the research involve NHS patients, resources or staff? YES / NO (please
circle).
If YES, it is likely that full ethical review must be obtained from the NHS process
before the research can start.
3. Do you intend to collect primary data from human subjects or data that are
identifiable with individuals? (This includes, for example, questionnaires and
interviews.) YES / NO (please circle)
If you do not intend to collect such primary data then please go to question 14.
If you do intend to collect such primary data then please respond to ALL the questions
4 through 13. If you feel a question does not apply then please respond with n/a (for not
applicable).
4. What is the purpose of the primary data in the dissertation / research project?
To analyse the reasons of worker escape and thus, suggest the required knowledge,
skills and behaviour of the project managers
5. What is/are the survey population(s)?
Project Managers and employees working in the public sector in Oman
6. How big is the sample for each of the survey populations and how was this sample
arrived at?
276
The final signed and dated version of this form must be handed in with the dissertation. Failure to
provide a signed and dated form on hand-in will be treated as if the dissertation itself was not
submitted.
84
7. How will respondents be selected and recruited?
Randomly and firstly the author communicate with them via internet.
8. What steps are proposed to ensure that the requirements of informed consent will be
met for those taking part in the research? If an Information Sheet for participants is to
be used, please attach it to this form. If not, please explain how you will be able to
demonstrate that informed consent has been gained from participants.
All necessary information provided in in the workshop proposal and the list of
interviews questions.
9. How will data be collected from each of the sample groups?
By means of running a number of workshops and interviews
10. How will data be stored and what will happen to the data at the end of the research?
Data will be stored on the author’s laptop and will be destroyed at the end of the
research
11. How will confidentiality be assured for respondents?
The author will be the one who will run the workshops and interviews
12. What steps are proposed to safeguard the anonymity of the respondents?
Refer to the workshop proposal
13. Are there any risks (physical or other, including reputational) to respondents that
may result from taking part in this research? YES / NO (please circle).
If YES, please specify and state what measures are proposed to deal with these risks.
14. Are there any risks (physical or other, including reputational) to the researcher or to
the University that may result from conducting this research? YES / NO (please
circle).
If YES, please specify and state what measures are proposed to manage these risks.
15. Will any data be obtained from a company or other organisation. YES / NO
(please circle) For example, information provided by an employer or its employees.
If NO, then please go to question 18.
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16. What steps are proposed to ensure that the requirements of informed consent will be
met for that organisation? How will confidentiality be assured for the organisation?
The author contact the organisation and asked them about the data after the conformation that
it met the requirement
17. Does the organisation have its own ethics procedure relating to the research you intend
to carry out? YES / NO (please circle).
If YES, the University will require written evidence from the organisation that they
have approved the research.
18. Will the proposed research involve any of the following (please put a √ next to ‘yes’ or
‘no’; consult your supervisor if you are unsure):
• Vulnerable groups (e.g. children) ? YES NO √
• Particularly sensitive topics ? YES NO √
• Access to respondents via ‘gatekeepers’ ? YES NO √
• Use of deception ? YES NO √
• Access to confidential personal data ? YES NO √
• Psychological stress, anxiety etc ? YES NO √
• Intrusive interventions ? YES NO √
19. Are there any other ethical issues that may arise from the proposed research?
No
Please print the name of: I/We grant Ethical Approval
student supervisor
Signed:
(student) Mazin Said Abdullah Al Hasani (supervisor) N K Johns
Date Date
AMENDMENTS
If you need to make changes please ensure you have permission before the primary data
collection. If there are major changes, fill in a new form if that will make it easier for
everyone. If there are minor changes then fill in the amendments (next page) and get them
signed before the primary data collection begins.
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CHANGES TO ETHICS PERMISSION
VERSION: ____
Please describe the nature of the change and impact on ethics:
Please print the name of: I/We grant Ethical Approval
student supervisor
Signed:
(student) (supervisor)
Date Date
(please cut and paste the next section, together with the heading at the top of this page, as
many times as required)
VERSION: ____
Please describe the nature of the change and impact on ethics:
Please print the name of: I/We grant Ethical Approval
student supervisor
Signed:
(student) (supervisor)
Date Date
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