Developing a framework to facilitate employee engagement culture: a case of Saudi Arabia Banks.

Abstract

Employee engagement has attracted widespread interest over the past twenty years from the practitioner network and researchers. It is claimed that organizations that focus on growing an engagement culture will increase their employee productiveness, fulfil their organizational objectives, and enhance their employee retention rate (Kim et al. 2013; Kuntz and Roberts 2014). However, the fundamental issues revolving surrounding the meaning and key antecedents of employee engagement nevertheless demand similar research interest (Saks and Gruman 2014). The Saudi banks are an important component of Saudi Arabia’s financial system. In light of the emerging high volume of business activities, Saudi banks are keen to inspire worker participation and employee engagement. This behaviour will allow banks to achieve sustainable business development. In response to these issues, the present thesis offers the possibility to advance the knowledge of organizational culture’s influence on employee engagement. The present thesis adopts a qualitative approach, and the method used is grounded theory. The data collection process adopts an issue-focused approach. Interviews were conducted with banks managers and their subordinates (male and female). The present study is based on two stages; the first stage is the pilot study, that consists of seven interviews, while the main study involves 28 interviews. The study was conducted in Saudi Arabia, with managers and their subordinates within seven banks. The outcomes of this study aim to produce valuable information on employee engagement factors based on the views of the employees of these banks. The key findings of the present thesis indicate that the factors that made the greatest contribution to employee engagement were: diversity management, organizational behaviour and practices, job characteristics and employee competent matching, motivation, reward and recognition, fairness in the workplace, competency and skills development, and employee psychological ownership. The outcomes of the present thesis contributes to the existing theory on employee engagement by providing empirical evidence regarding the engagement meaning construct and its distinctiveness from similar, alternative, well-established attitudinal constructs. This study provided understanding of characterises personal and organizational behaviour in Saudi Arabia, as distinctive features of the society. Overall, the study undertaken here found that Saudi society’s micro-dynamics are defined through sub-categories of the population marked by diversity and variation these are typically overlooked by academics exploring organizational culture in the country. The present study employed the concept of management research ‘relevance,’ which can only be proved through the effectiveness of the breadth and scope of the research. Traditionally, a research problem is set according to the gaps within the specialized literature. In the present research, a research problem is an issue which concerns the participants and seeks to manage these concerns, and so takes into account the research participants’ views. Furthermore, the present thesis offers a framework consisting of the themes that emerged from the analysis as well as the proposed interventions for maintaining an employee engagement culture. Furthermore, a discussion of the analysis’ limitations and recommendations for future researches will be presented, and a conclusion will be drawn.