Our HRM major undergraduate student Ghalia Aljeneibi [SID 201517229], with assistance from Dr Reynold James, presented a paper at the 2022 Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (Hybrid format) Conference held at Cape Town, S. Africa, on the 22nd July 2022. The paper that Ghalia presented (online) was titled: ‘An exploration of the role of job seekers’ attitudes as an impediment to workforce nationalization in a GCC nation’. The conference was well attended (22 attendees, physical + virtual), and Ghalia’s session highly regarded.

Ghalia’s paper that adopted a qualitative approach contended that there are reasons beyond those listed in the academic literature that need exploring, regarding the rather low extent of Emiratization that has been achieved in the UAE’s private sector. This is since various (top-down and bottom up) approaches and initiatives deployed thus far to spur Emiratization have yielded less than satisfactory results for over 3 decades. Despite concerted efforts of the government to reduce various gaps between the public and private sector, the latter is still perceived as unattractive by most Emaratis. The research question that Ghalia’s work -in-progress attempted to find answers to, was whether ‘entitlement mentality’ had a role to play for this situation. Preliminary findings suggest that this indeed is the case.

More information can be found here.