Efficient decision-making processes right at the core of government are extremely necessary for a leaner and well-operating public sector. However, many factors such as conflicting lines of authority, poor managerial skills, lack of evidence and analysis, poor central coordination and ongoing conflicts for resources destroy the government’s potential to define and execute policy- that has evident effect on the remaining public sector.
Change management and Leadership skills are a prerequisite for enabling organizations to provide effective performance, particularly public sector organizations. It is mandatory for public organizations to deliver results according to their mandates and growing expectations of the population and political leadership, in a low-cost and result-focussed way. Senior executives and managers are required to learn the best strategies to be able to lead their respective teams to achieve results as they themselves develop future leaders through the process. The present study highlights the possible factors which can be determined as a Manager’s weakness.
Public sector managers need to understand ways of working in the organization and on the organization, to transform it from its current position to a higher position, if it is client-centred and result-driven. This paper discusses the weaknesses in managers and puts emphasis on the various issues encountering businesses in Kuwait. As a case study, the current report presents the various barriers to the implementation of E-learning in Kuwait. The paper also acts as a recommendation for an E-learning development plan so as to fit the existing business scenario in Kuwait. This research attempts to offer a chief lesson which is the problem of e-learning arrangement in Kuwait does not only necessitate the discovery and understanding of its key barriers but also the suitable management approaches to be applied to aid companies in achieving business success.
Introduction:
Kuwait, although a small state in the Arabian Peninsula, has a substantial economic and financial status in global affairs. Kuwait’s stands among the major oil-producing nations in the world gaining from lucrative oil business and revenues to develop its overall economy. BBC (2006) reported that Kuwait’s dependency on oil revenues for building the nation’s economic backbone was not a prerequisite for the private sector, thereby making it difficult for this business industry to compete with the work environment and salaries offered in the government sector, specifically to Kuwaiti citizens. With increase in unemployment rates and decline in job opportunities, the government has seen a potential partner in the private sector to develop the nation. Therefore, the private sector businesses have accelerated in the build-up of Kuwait’s economy in the past twenty years, with cases of success in sectors such as banking, petrochemical industry, insurance and investment services, communication, telecom and construction. Majority of the concerns facing the private sector are identical to the ones seen in other Arab nations in terms of ways to capture market share and increase profitability.
Kuwait’s economy is in need for a continuous stream of newer talent, techniques and knowledge so as to remain competitive in the current business environment and combat global competition, mainly when the scarcity of skilled employees is among the largest problems for growth. Irrespective of Kuwait’s costly standard of living, it is losing pace due to its relatively weak innovation and productivity potentiality. Hence, it is essential that businesses and corporations persistently take efforts to update and upgrade their workforce skills and offer regular training not just to their managers but also to their clients and suppliers.
Leaders need authority, vision, energy, and a natural strategic ability. However, these factors don’t matter in creating inspiration for employees to be committed to them as a leader. The study presents some effective management characteristics.
Literature Review:
The Kuwait government introduced the National Manpower Support Law in 2003 that intended to increase the number of peoples migrating to the private sector. The joint statistics in 2005 of the Public Authority for Civil Information and the Restructuring Manpower Program and State Executive Body reported that the manpower in Kuwait crossed 1.63 million by mid 2005, with Kuwait natives constituting 18.3 % of the total. The private sector comprises of nearly 1,261,490 employees, with Kuwaitis occupying almost 2.4 % of the total till July 2005, with a rise of 132.7% in comparison to numbers for 2000, as recorded by the Kuwait Ministry of Planning (2005). The Al Qabas-published statistics of workforce in 2005 stated that 54,241 new managers have joined the workforce in various industries and business throughout the last six years (Kuwait Ministry of Planning, 2005). Indeed, since the new government now intends to deliver all services and business solutions electronically (e-government), company managers need accurate training, specifically in information technology (IT) skills.
Management of an organization is not a cakewalk and it necessitates the personnel to be professionally sound. Good and competent manager not only acts as an asset for his organization but is also beneficial for his subordinates. Being a good manager needs a set of skills which goes beyond being a good worker, such as motivational skills, strong communication and presentation skills and a creative vision for strategic thinking.
1. Interdepartmental relationships: every department in an organization must collaborate together to achieve common goals and develop the company. A weak manager does not possess the capability of interacting with other departments and might even develop a hostile relation with certain groups that could be extremely harmful for company growth. For instance, the marketing manager may disagree on how the marketing group is presenting its products. Instead of addressing and fixing the issue, the marketing manager may build an unhealthy relation between the sales department and the marketing group.
2. Favouritism: Any manager can have their core of productive manpower that strives to perform above organizational expectations. Whenever a manager displays favouritism for those core workers, the morale and production of the rest of the workforce decline. A strong and skilful manager knows the ways of leveraging top producers to compel the remaining staff members to succeed. However, the weak manager will end up creating an unbalanced workload which is inclined heavily towards the top producers. This estranges the remaining group and decreases the efficiency of productive workers.
3. Discipline: It is necessary to treat discipline in a professional manner. Whenever a manager has a problem with a staff member, he/she needs to discuss that issue in a private setting to avoid any case of embarrassment to the employee or raising attention to the problem. A weak manager is likely to reprimand employees in presence of the entire staff, will display rage instead of showing a reason to discipline employees, and make a public display of organizational issues that ought to stay confidential.
4. Support: As a subordinate group assembles a project or a solution to an organization issue, the managers ought to give full support to the group's collective efforts. Similarly, when a weak manager faces such adversity, he/she often accuses the subordinates and fails to back up his employees when crucial problems are discovered. This issue leads to the staff members immediately losing respect for a manager who does not provide enough support to his group, thereby resulting in turnover and a decline in morale.
A strong manager is goal-oriented focusing on the delivery of high quality services and understands that relationships will merge as employees cooperate to create successful outcomes. Most of the managers have one specific weakness, a blind spot or something they are unaware of but their employees know. A few symptoms are: intervening before their employees finish talking, initiating problem-solving too early, even before the understand employees’ ideas and suggestions. Identifying a blind spot can be even more transformational than tackling a known weakness, due to the extensive learning involved. The best way a manager can address their weak spots is by means of an anonymous self-assessment test.
Methodology
The Kuwait Chamber of Commerce was contacted in an attempt to obtain a list of companies that implement e-learning in Kuwait. Total 16 e-learning based business companies were included in the list; five were associated to the public sector and the remaining 11 were related to the private sector, whose core business activities were banking and financial services, retail, logistics, tourism, petrochemicals and investment. However, the current study disregards the five public sector companies mainly for two reasons. Firstly, merging companies from public and private sector within the sample would make less valid the findings in terms of the varying operation conditions of the two sectors. Secondly, the sample group from the public sector was thought to be very small to form a sample by itself. Various sectors presented in the 11 organizations in the sample were a beneficial element since it provided a wide perspective of the barriers and challenges in various forms of business environments.
The survey comprised of separate interviews carried out with senior managers and executives from the HR department, one from every company. In many instances, even the IT managers were interviewed since they were the personnel directly involved in undertaking E-learning projects in the companies. 20 interviews were conducted in all. The present report does not make any claims of external validity or transferability to a scope outside of the private companies in Kuwait due to the scarcity of public sector companies in the sample. Furthermore, given the size and significance of the organizations in the sample as well as the accuracy of the interviews, the study findings can be transferred to Kuwait’s private sector as well.
Findings and Discussion
After examining the interviews, highlighting the main points and merging them, several inconsistencies were detected, studied and listed, followed by which common ideas were reorganized and chief interests or problem areas were outlined according to the literature and the objectives of the study.
A major section of the survey involved the identification of the factors that restricted the companies surveyed from developing an environment supporting implementation of E-learning as part of employee development policies. It was found that 8 out of 11 participants interviewed on the restrictions of e-learning, revealed lack of management support and dedication to be the primary barrier. In most cases, the attitudes of senior and high-level managers were incompatible with the purpose to create an E-learning culture. Some respondents stated that middle management was not supportive of empowering staff members and finally giving way to those managers who were more skilled and informed. One respondent cited that some managers were computer illiterate; therefore, they did not wish to incorporate the new technology and felt comfortable with the conventional tools. Since top managers were the source of opposition, the lower subordinates did not truly invest in the e-learning projects. A ‘lack of trust in E-learning’ was identified as noted by one of the interviewees while describing the interrelationships of staff members.
Conclusion
The two chief drivers for integrating E-learning into the training scheme in the organizations surveyed were the economical (cost-efficiency) and technological (accessibility and usability) rewards of E-learning. All interviewees commented that there was enough room for advancement but the intensity of the seriousness of barriers was high enough to erode the positive effects gained from the e-learning experience. Also, due to the management’s lack of strategic planning of training programs, the value of e-learning was questioned. That is, as the E-learning objectives were not aligned with companies’ goals, implementation of E-learning was ineffective. Because of inappropriate placement of strategic planning, E-learning failed to improve the employees’ ability to gain information, synthesize and identify connections, and share knowledge at the right time.
Clearly, the above scenario depicts the presence of fear of change which in turn indicates the absence of support from top managers. Therefore, most of the respondents regretted the low commitment level displayed by senior management to buy into the development of their workers.
The present study provides firm indications in regards to the state-of-play and contributes to the evolving literature on e-learning business in Kuwait. However, further research is recommended for incorporating and validating the current conclusions in the public sector. A similar study can be adopted at a later stage to cover a broad spectrum of nations in the Arab region to analyse their E-learning experience as well as to benchmark the barriers of implementing business based on E-learning. Many recommendations can be given for the welfare of Kuwait companies as well as of companies in nations with identical characteristics to Kuwait.
References:
BBC, (2006). Country Profile: Kuwait. Retrieved from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/country_profiles/791053.stm
Kuwait Ministry of Planning. (2005). Annual statistics. Kuwait: Ministry of Planning
Publications.
