The impact of knowledge, skills, and attitude on organisational performance among Kuwaiti employees within the private oil and gas sector in Kuwait : the moderating effect of power distance

Baroun, AE

Abstract

There are many successful, expanding business organisations in Kuwait (Kipco, 2019). Business success does not only depend on the intelligence and hard work of the founder, but the whole workforce - from the lowest to the highest position in an organisation. Interest in and research on human capital and organisational performance has notably increased among managements and academics. Moreover, attention is now paid to the importance of organisational culture as a catalyst/inhibitor to strengthen or dampen the performance of organisations (Rafiei & Pourreza, 2013). In Kuwait, the petroleum industry is the largest industry in the country, accounting for nearly half of the country's GDP (Central Intelligence Agency 2017a). Kuwait has proven crude oil reserves of 104 billion barrels (15 km³). Kuwait is estimated to hold 9% of the world's reserves. Kuwait's oil reserves are the fourth largest in the world and Burgan Field is the second-largest oil field. Kuwait is the world's eleventh largest oil producer and seventh-largest exporter. Kuwait's oil production accounts for 9% of worldwide oil production (KOC, 2019). Based on this, the performance of oil and gas sector organisations is very important to the country’s economic development and, therefore, an improvement in the quality of life for the people of Kuwait. Moreover, in the Global Competitiveness Report (2018), which was concerned with the extent of staff training, Kuwait’s ranking is not promising. It ranks 86 out of 137 countries. Comparing this rank to neighbouring countries will show how far Kuwait is in this matter which definitely impacts the performance of organisations because the skills and knowledge of employees will need to be improved and, consequently, improving organisational performance. Additionally, this also calls for an examination of the impact of human capital dimensions that include knowledge, skills, and attitude on the performance of organisations. Much of the existing research on human capital has focused on the developed world – specifically within Anglophonic and Scandinavian nations (Bontis, 2007). There is also great interest in human capital development in the Arab region. This study is one of several initiatives to offer a number of insights to policy makers and managers in Kuwait’s private sector in gas and oil services and is intended to yield effective information on and recommendations regarding human capital and its influence on organisational performance. In addition, the Kuwaiti economy also benefits from the large market size which involves all Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. In the current study, the population under examination consisted of Kuwaiti employees working at private oil and gas companies in Kuwait. Since the number of workers in the Kuwaiti private oil and gas sector is 20,000, the researcher set the size of the sample at 377 in order to fulfil minimal sample size criteria. The data were further analysed by the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) via SMARTPLS 3.0. The study selected the sample by using probability random sampling. The results shows that knowledge, skills, and attitude, have a significant impact on the organisational performance among Kuwaiti employees within private gas and oil sector. Moreover, power distance has a moderation effect between attitude and organisational performance, while it did not have any moderation effect between knowledge, skills and the organisational performance. The variance explained through the theoretical model is 31%, which indicates that there are different factors that affect the organisational performance in the Kuwaiti private oil and gas industry. More discussion about the results in chapter 4; and chapter 5 discuss more about the findings and recommendations. Moreover, future recommendations are stated. Further, results give more insights for the practitioners and policy makers to improve the organisational performance.

Citation

Baroun, A. (in press). The impact of knowledge, skills, and attitude on organisational performance among Kuwaiti employees within the private oil and gas sector in Kuwait : the moderating effect of power distance. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Acceptance Date: Sep 6, 2021
• Deposit Date: Oct 5, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 5, 2021
• Award Date: Jul 1, 2021