A subject of great significant in the oil sector of UAE in recent years is the involvement of UAE populace in the administration and running of oil and gas projects. Indisputably, these firms are the major source of riches for UAE. Hence, it is important that United Arab Emirates nationals build up the required credentials to swap expatriates at the oil and gas firms. As observed by the minister of Petroleum & Mineral Resources, it is important to build new cooperation between UAE and Multinational Corporation, on the premises of training qualified local cadres to operate the oil industry (Al-Otaiba 1982). Out of this national dedication, the primary concern confronting oil and gas enterprises currently is not merely the training but also the acceptable performance of the United Arabs Emirates nationals.
As stated by Koury (1980), the diminutive size of the local populace and unavailability of technological know-how and expert labor have been major impediments to the extractive potential of the UAE. The requirement for industrialized training for UAE nationals has been stressed and powerfully accentuated by the RAC (Recruitment Advisory Committee) a body established for the purpose of nationalizing employments in the oil quarter (Arab Information & Public Relation Establishment 1986). Career development Center (CDC) was founded to respond to this need. Its responsibility was to recruit, develop and distribute UAE nationals among the ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company) firms.
1.1 Statement of the Problem
Research has shown that worker training directly improves company performance by increasing the general level of expertise. As worker become more vastly inspired and expertise, thus their duty performance enhances and managerial efficacy also enhances (Armstrong 2000). Little has been done to evaluate the effect of work-related expertise training on job performance for employees in the UAE particularly the performance of graduate from CDC in the ADNOC group of firms. Inquiry is necessary to document the performance of workers from CDC and other employees of ADNOC and to separate the connection between CDC training and work performance.
1.2 Purpose of the Study
The general aim of this research is to examine the correlation of Career development Center training and work performance at the Abu Dhabi National Oil group of Companies in the UAE. Indication that graduate from the center execute better than non-graduate and that the performance difference counterbalance the cost of training could help in the justification of continued affiliation with the center by ADNOC subsidiary firms. The findings would also serve to persuade other oil firms in UAE to consider CDC as a dependable resource for recruiting and developing human resources.
1.3 Research Objectives
The key objective of this research will be to investigate the impact of training and development on employee performance in ADNOC group of companies. To successfully achieve this key objective, the study will adopt a primary research question which will be used to direct the study analysis.
1.4 Research Questions
The focus of this research will be on impact of training and development on employees' performance and thus the primary question to be adopted in this study will be;
How does training and development influence ADNOC employees' performance?
To assist in enlarging the scope of the key question, further specific questions will be adopted for analysis in this research. The specific questions to be analyzed will be;
Do CDC indigenous workers achieve much higher than indigenous workers without CDC training?
Do CDC indigenous workers achieve much higher than expatriate without CDC training?
The two study questions will be used to assess the degree of influence that CDC training has on worker expertise and know-how, worker's communication expertise, worker's work safety, and worker's work attitudes.
2.0 Literature Review
2.1 The Economy of United Arab Emirates
The economy of UAE is reliant on oil, and in 1980 its contribution to the full amount of government revenues was approximately 93% (Ministry of Planning 1982). With basic infrastructure and services being in place, the UAE economic policies is focused on spreading the economy base so as to finally reduce reliance on the direct export of oil. The crude oil price increase of 1973 raised the financial capital which was channeled to the provision of essential services and the institution of indispensable infrastructure programs. A big volume of investment was assigned to a range of economic undertakings which led to an instantaneous requirement for all forms of professions and areas of expertise. This led to hiring of expatriate workers which was not only as a result of inadequate numbers in the native population, but also as a result of the non-compliance of the native expertise with the demand of the new growth (Ministry of Planning 1982).
National human resource is deemed as a restraining factor in present and future economic development. This consequently leads to remarkable reliance of the economy on foreign employees. This fact makes human capital development of local population to take an exceptional significance among the consideration affecting economic development in the UAE. Thus, education is not taken as just a simple public service to be given to nationals, but as a prolific venture that will produce outcome in the future. Education and training have been extensively imperative to the United Arab Emirates officials. Article 17 of the constitution of United Arab Emirates point out that, education is an elementary feature in the advancement of the community. As a result, the constitution has made basic education compulsory and free all through its entire phases. The ministry of education was empowered in 1980 to make arrangement for technical education, to normalize their procedure, and to devise its objectives and curriculum (Ministry of Education 1986).
World Bank Report (1985) observed that in spite of the immense increases in the growth of domestic human resource through education and training, there has been no key advancement in raising the share of UAE citizens in the workforce. This is supported by Al-Attas (1985) who point out that majority of the UAE graduates have expertise in business administration and political science and few in the technical fields. This made ADNOC group of companies to battle for the same alumnae. Distributions depended on compromise.
The embracing of excellent administration practices has long been linked with an enhancement of provision of worker training. The initiator of this excellent management gave emphasis on the magnitude of worker growth, education and training for the development of excellent performance and companies in quest of implementing excellent administration have constantly found it essential to perk up their training endeavor (Deming 1982). Companies seeking an excellent strategy have seen it important to invest in human resource development programs such as training, for the purpose of enhancing performance efficiency in output and client fulfillment (Armstrong 2000). Workers need some training so that they can run their responsibility after delegation of roles for quality. In addition, they need training in non-technical skills in order to contribute in quality progress activities and they require a wider variety of skills so that they can be flexible in responding to client and market requirement changes (Kaynak 2003).
2.2 Work Productivity
Productivity is defined as a contrast between the amount of goods and services yielded and the amount of resources engaged in producing these goods or services (Fabricant 1969). Nelson (1980) point out that productivity can be defined by many factors which comprises technological advancement, composition transformation of the work-force, human resource investment, redistribution of capital from lesser to higher productivity operations, and economies of scale. Economics expert have acknowledged that the fruitful capacities of human being and the creation of these fruitful capacities can be seen as human resource. As noted by Schultz (1971), the idea of resources comprises of units that contain economic properties of providing future service of some worth. The distinct label of human resource since it is engraved in man, and it is resource since it is a capital of future fulfillments or future earning or both. Hence, an individual employee with his/her praise of expertise and capabilities can be seen as an contribution in a production procedure, or a labor input able to contribute to the production of good and service that, when traded in the labor market place, gratifies man requirements. The employee's endowment of expertise and capabilities influence his/her efficacy on production level when merged with other inputs.
The significance of training as a causative feature to an individual's productivity is authenticated by empirical result on the relatedness of training and earnings. In this investigation, the relation between training and earning is in most cases taken as a substitute for the relation between training and productivity. It is presumed that training raises an individual's capacity to contribute in production and that this improvement in productivity is mirrored in increased wages. Nonetheless, wages might not show productivity in a number of circumstances. For instance, in UAE, earnings are managed by the government and not by the labor market. Oil and gas firms in UAE have their own specific pay scale where persons with immensely varied educational achievement levels hold equal ranks due to nationality. It is established that wages were linked to superiority instead of productivity (Medoff and Abraham 1981). Hence, Wages cannot essentially be used as a substitute for productivity and different ways of assessing productivity must be modeled. In UAE, the linkage between wages and productivity are even lesser because wages even in the private division are inclined towards civil service pay range. Instead of utilizing the earning as a measure of productivity, Felix (1968) integrates the use of job achievement as assessed by the worker's supervisor as a measure to authenticate the benefits of training.
3.0 Methodology
3.1 Research Design
The aim of this research is to investigate the correlation between the Career Development Center training and individual employee job performance at the ADNOC firms in UAE. The focus for this research will be on workers who have graduated from Career Development Center and working with ADNOC group of firms. Four level of measurement of training will offer the appropriate conceptual framework and that is reaction, learning, behavior, and results. For the purpose of this research, the researcher will employ behavior outcome as the criterion for assessment of Career Development Center training. A control group will be used in this research and because data will be from survey, a quasi experimental design will be used rather than an experimental design. In the quasi experimental design, a control group is utilized albeit random sampling is not applicable as it would be utilized in most cases of experimental design. In an assessment where just the investigational group is evaluated before and after, interpreting of the outcomes is hard and in most cases unpersuasive. Devoid of contrasting, it is difficult to establish how good the outcomes are, whether the outcomes could have been very good with several other plans and still whether the plan had any impact on the outcomes in any way. As observed by Warren (1969), the aim of a training task is to produce behavioral transformation. The outcome of this activity is that a person will do something in a different way than they did before the training. The assessment of training should use quasi experiment to give solutions for hypotheses and research questions under assessment.
3.2 Sample Population
Quasi Experimental Group
The quasi experimental group will comprise of male local graduates from CDC who enrolled in PCPT (Petroleum & Chemical Process Technology) course and working or have worked with either of the ADNOC group of companies.
Control Group
The experiment control groups will comprise both local and foreign middle level skilled workforce that has no training from Career Development Center. The workers will be those that were contracted from 1984 to date (both in experimental group and the control groups) by ADNOC group of firms since Career Development Center begun providing ADNOC group of firms with local workers with six to twelve years of education. Before then, the graduates had only a secondary diploma. Through limiting the non-local control group to workers contracted from 1984, a contrast will be carried out between local and foreign workers who had equivalent duration of term with ADNOC group of firms. The local workers who had no training with Career Development Center will be chosen regardless of their duration with ADNOC group of firms. These workers are assumed to be comparatively a small percentage of ADNOC firms' workers, hence restricting the comparison which could be carried out on the premises of tenure.
3.3 Sampling Techniques
Experimental Group
Purposive sampling will initially be carried out to obtain the quasi experimental. The research purpose is to assess the impact of Career Development Center training on job performance. Hence, the quasi experimental group then will be drawn purely from graduates from Career Development Center. A list of graduate from the center will be used and from the list an effort will be made to trace those graduates working in ADNOC group of companies. Once they are traced, a complete list will be prepared and a simple random sampling from that list will be carried out. Graduate to be sampled will be purely those who enrolled in Petroleum and Chemical Processing Technology.
Control Group
There will be two set of control group. The first group will be of the local workers who have not received any training from Career Development Center. The second category will comprise expatriate workers. Two different lists will be prepared for these two groups and out of each list, a simple random sampling will be carried out. Control group size will largely be influenced by the experimental group for the sake of balancing the outcomes.
3.4 Research Instruments
Human resource theory stresses the correlation between training and personal efficiency. This study was set to establish such relationship between training from Career Development Center and productivity in ADNOC group of companies. Career Development Center has two main objectives. The first objective is to reduce the shortage of skilled labor, and secondly, is to enhance human resources thus increasing job productivity at ADNOC group of companies. Different models can be used to assess the worth of human resource investment. One of such models is different individual pay. Basic wages is used as a measure of judging the efficiency of human resource investment. The other model is performance model. The researcher will use the performance model. Two instruments will be used to collect data based on performance model of assessment. The first instrument will be performance questionnaire. This questionnaire will be distributed to supervisors of the workers who have been sampled to participate in the study. The supervisor must have supervised the employee for not less than six month and if not, then the previous supervisor must fill the performance form. To structure the performance evaluation form, the research will first of all obtain copies of job description of ADNOC group of companies. From those descriptions, the researcher will formulate several areas of performance that will be evaluated. Since the sample population for the study traversed professions, the researcher will make an assumption that performance areas are standard for all professions. The second instrument will be employee questionnaires. This will be distributed to employees of ADNOC group of companies through the companies' managers. A range of demographic and social variables will be the focus of employee's questionnaires. These variables will be presumed to be linked with performance and serve as intervening variables.
3.5 Limitations
The researcher is mindful of several limitations that may arise during the entire research process and more so during data collection processes. The first limitation is availability and accessibility of data required to carry out the analysis. Access to respondent is rather going to be difficult due to the nature of their work. It is also expected that some supervisors or managers may be unwilling to cooperate as they may deem the study as a time consumer which would rather be used for production purposes. This may cause them to denial access to their employees. This will be overcome by the fact that all occupations performance is standardized across the ADNOC group of companies. The data that will be available from the companies that will cooperate will be used to generalize the findings. The second major limitation is time and financial constraints. As seen in the sampling section, the sampling process for the experimental sample group will take a lot of time and will require extensive movements while tracing the sample group. These movements will have financial implications on the entire research process. As a result it may leads to delay especially when funds are unavailable or even lead to reduced coverage of the intended areas. Hence, the sample population may not be representative of the entire population under study. The researcher will try all possible means to ensure that the sample population is representative of the entire population under study by making sure that all areas are covered.
3.6 Research Ethics Issues
The researcher will prepare letters for the managers of ADNOC group of companies to obtain permission to carry out the research. Once the permission is granted, the researcher will make known the research objectives, the performance assessment form content and workers' questionnaire, the sample size and the processes of administering the study. The researcher will request the departmental heads to fill the names of the workers on performance assessment from and questionnaire. The assessment form will be filled by the supervisor and the questionnaire by the workers.
Confidentiality of the data will be upheld. The supervisor will be advised not to place the assessment form in the worker's files as the assessment is purely for the purpose of study. The workers name in the assessment form and the questionnaire will be removed after they are filled up and the researcher will assign the employees number which will be used to identify the employees.
4.0 Conclusion
This research will be directed by founded body of literature in carrying out a primary research. From the information collected, the researcher will analyze and make inferences as per the data to ensure validity of the research. Reliable data is expected to be collected now that the respondents will be assessed on job.
Time Schedule
ID
Task Name
Nov 2010
Nov/Dec 2010
Dec 2010
Jan. 2010
Jan/Feb. 2010
10/10
15/10
25/10
06/10
16/10
27/10
03/10
15/10
20/10
30/10
10/10
1.
Abstract Review
2.
Literature review
3.
Interviewing &Document search
4.
Data Analysis &evaluation
5.
Write up dissertation
6
Submit dissertation
