Job Satisfaction of the Service Sector Marketing Professionals in UAE: A Selective Study.
| Author | Bose, Indranil |
Background
According to a report published by the Middle East Economic Forum in 2010, Ras Al Khaimah has been considered as one of the most promising economic and commercial destinations in the region. The report further unfolds that Ras Al Khaimah is growing rapidly in comparison to other Emirates and hence attracting the foreign expatriate management professionals to work. The total number of non-Emirati professionals in Ras Al Khaimah has increased almost by 30% in a short span of time. Most of these professionals have migrated from other neighboring Arab countries as well as from Indian sub-continent and have settled in the Ras Al Khaimah. These professionals are engaged in major international trade and operations in the UAE in general and in Ras Al Khaimah in specific (Al--Hudaibi, 2016; Al-Hussaini, 2008). It is to be mentioned further that the expatriate marketing professionals in the UAE in general and in Ras Al Khaimah in particular have the distinction of being employed in one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy, i.e., the service sector. The sector in the northern most Emirate of UAE includes banks, finance operations, logistics and transportation etc. Though growing fast, several service sector organizations of Ras Al Khaimah have witnessed severe fluctuations in the recent past, leading to the closure of several of them causing significant job losses for the expatriate marketing professionals employed in the sector. The report published by the Middle East Economic Forum in 2015 has shown that, in a short span of time, almost 15,000 expatriate marketing professionals have lost their jobs, while 7,000 new marketing jobs were created in the same sector in UAE. Hence, the study on the marketing professionals of UAE in general and of Ras Al Khaimah in particular can be justified to identify the major factors which could have led to job satisfaction or the lack of it. For this purpose, marketing professionals employed in the service industries like banking and finance, training and education, logistics and transportation etc. have been covered as these sectors have witnessed significant ups and downs in the recent past.
Aims & Objectives
The research has attempted to investigate the following questions:
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What are the causes of job satisfaction of the expatriate marketing professionals employed in service sector in Ras Al Khaimah?
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What are the differences in causes of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the expatriate marketing professionals employed in service sector in Ras Al Khaimah?
In the light of the above exploration, the objectives have been illustrated below:
i) To study the level and causes of job satisfaction of the expatriate marketing professionals employed in service sector in Ras Al Khaimah
ii) To compare the various causes of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the expatriate marketing professionals employed in service sector in Ras Al Khaimah
Review of Literature
Job satisfaction remains an ever debatable aspect of human resource management practice in industry. According to Arnolds and Boshoff (2001), job satisfaction is considered the core of human resource initiatives in any organization, which leads to different repercussions among different spheres of management practices and organizational performance across the globe. Vanderberg and Lance (1992) have done an extensive research on the causes and the orders of job satisfaction among the employees, who are directly responsible for revenue generation in business organizations. In the process of their study, they emphasized on the marketing professionals, sales and customer relations professionals and others and have attempted to identify major causes of job satisfaction. According to Parvin and Kabir (2011), there are a variety of factors that influence job satisfaction of an individual, engaged in marketing and sales professions in manufacturing and service industries. These factors include level of pay and benefits, the perceived fairness of the promotion system within the organization, the quality of working conditions, leadership and social relationships, the job itself etc. Another significant study on the job satisfaction of the marketing professionals in major European countries can be found in the research by Reilly (1991), Griffin et. al. (2001), Wanous and Lawler (1987) and others.
Meyer el al., (1991) have described three types psychological states that characterize the nature of the relationship. These are known as the emotional commitment where an employee has the effective orientation towards the organization; calculated commitment, where the employee is committed to the employer for the economic needs and normative commitment, where the employee shares a moral obligation to maintain the relationship with the employer. According to Spector (1997), normative and emotional commitments are responsible as intrinsic factors of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction, whilst, calculated commitment plays the role as extrinsic factors of job satisfaction. Christen and Soberman (2006), Aziri (2008) etc. have identified the factors such as morale orientation and benefit expectations as the major factors for job satisfaction among the employees at workplace. The study by Rue and Byars (2003) has shown that the measurement of job satisfactions plays significant role in understanding the repercussions on the employee engagement and performance at the workplace in specific and employee retention in general within an organization. Some of the classical studies by Locke (1980), Greenberg and Baron (1993), Politis (2003) have identified the fundamental reason behind job satisfaction or dissatisfaction in a manner, which will help to determine the basic narratives of the concept. Their observations have later been incorporated in the report by CIPD Middle East (2015). The report has shown that the job satisfaction level is fast decreasing among the marketing professionals in the Middle East in general and in countries like UAE and KSA in specific since 2000. The studies by Wanous and Lawler (1972), Muller (1998) and a few others have developed different parameters to measure the job satisfaction level of the employees. In the present research, the observations from these literatures have been extensively used to identify the factors that lead to job satisfaction. The present study has also attempted to measure the level of job satisfaction based on the available literature regarding the issues and practices of job satisfaction. It is also found from the studies by Rue and Byars (2003), Robert and James (2001), Spectar (1997) that factors like job design, compensation, working conditions, workplace social relationships etc. also act as significant contributors towards job satisfaction and dissatisfaction at the workplace. These parameters have also been incorporated in the research design of the present study. Regarding the job satisfaction of the expatriate professionals, very few studies have been found in the research domain. The studies by Young and Philip (2003), Singh and Vandarkar (2002), Richard (2000) have shown some reflections on the job satisfaction phenomenon of the expatriate employees. Their studies are still considered as some of the pioneering research works to understand and to test the job satisfaction phenomenon among the expatriate employees. Their studies have been predominantly concentrated among the expatriate employees in the software and IT industry in the USA and north America, heavy engineering and telecommunication in the east Europe and low medium skilled expatriate workers employed in agriculture-based farms in central Europe respectively. Although, all these studies have found different factors as well as patterns of job satisfaction, a general common tendency can be easily found from them. It has been found from all these studies that job satisfaction of these employees and workers are very much dependent on social and cultural stresses these employees faced during their expatriate life away from home and their community, in turn cause low job satisfaction at the workplace which are mostly thousands of miles away from their places of origin. Therefore, this observation can be considered as a new development and therefore requires a distinctive approach towards job satisfaction and dissatisfaction. More contemporary researches have attempted to analyze the different patterns of job satisfaction of the expatriate workforce employed in different sectors, in terms of experience profile of the expatriates and on the basis of gender. Thompson and Mohammed (2012), Al Hasibi and Peter (2010) have conducted some studies on exploring the job satisfaction phenomenon of the professionals employed in construction and medical sectors in the Middle East region. While, Thompson and Mohammed (2012) have conducted a detailed study on the job satisfaction of the workers and executive employees in the civil...
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