Our Knowledge Safeguards our Jobs and We’re not Sharing! Knowledge Withholding Experiences of Emirati Private Sector Employees

Abstract

Since the beginning of its rapid development following the oil boom of the 1960s, the United Arab Emirates has relied heavily on imported labour, largely from low GDP countries. This has resulted in a massive workforce imbalance with currently only about 4% of citizens in the private sector and 60% in the public sector.

To address this, the government has implemented workforce localisation policies which provide better conditions, including greater job security, to citizens than to expatriates. Many expatriates perceive the presence of Emirati workers in their organisation as a direct threat to their own employment security. Research has demonstrated that this leads to Emiratis experiencing discriminatory behaviour. This qualitative study gathered data through narrative interviews with 16 Emirati private sector employees conducted to probe their experience of knowledge sharing within their organisations. The dominant themes that emerged from analysis of this data were 1) outgroup identity marking of Emirati employees; 2) purposeful knowledge withholding on the part of expatriate colleagues.  Exclusion from knowledge sharing practices were accounted for by participants as due to the perception of employees from low GDP countries that Emiratis enjoy exceptional privilege because of their citizenship of a high GDP country. The implication of these findings is that exclusion from knowledge sharing exerts substantial restriction on the successful integration of citizens within the country’s heavily expatriate dominated labour force. This study’s contribution is its demonstration of citizenship and job security status as moderators of knowledge sharing practices in multicultural workforces.