UAE Business Major College Students: Preference to Work in the Public Sector for Future Careers and Their Perceptions of the Private Sector in the UAE
[Thesis]
Alkatheeri, Ali Abdullla
Choi, Daniel
California State University, Fullerton
2019
161 p.
Ed.D.
California State University, Fullerton
2019
Higher business education of United Arab Emirates citizens can influence private-over-public-sector career choices, thereby overcoming the dependence upon foreign labor, and past failures to implement Emiratisation. Through and online platform, this study quantitatively surveyed UAE business majors attending a multicampus college system and human resources professionals from both private- and public-sector organizations regarding this research problem. Albert Bandura's reciprocal determinism and Max Weber's rationalization of authority structures undergirded the conceptual framework guiding this inquiry. Nonparametric statistical analyses had been chosen due to lower-than-expected online survey return rates. Descriptions, correlations, and significant differences between groups were applied to the predominantly Likert-scale closed-ended quantitative answers of business students and human resources professionals who completed the surveys. Ironically, UAE students majoring in business have historically chosen public sector nonbusiness careers. This study uncovered the cultural, social, educational, and economic variables that may have influenced this outcome, as well as those that can increase the likelihood of reversing this unusual public-sector career choice towards the private sector that would be more consistent with a higher education business major and Emiratisation.