Organizational policies and diversity management in Saudi Arabia

The purpose of this paper is to report empirical research conducted in Saudi Arabia on the impacts of organizational policies and practices on the diversity management of the Saudi private sector. To this end, the Saudization policy and views of key respondents have been tested and discussed.

Primary data were collected through questionnaire surveys from the largest 11 private sector organizations listed on the Saudi Stock Market in the financial/banking, oil and gas, petrochemical, private higher education and private health service sectors. Statistical tools such as means and standard deviations and one-sample t-tests were used for analysis.

The findings suggest that Saudization, retention, pay with benefits and health insurance policies significantly affect the diversity management in the Saudi private sector. Therefore, there is a need to develop organizational policies that support the existence of foreign employees for private businesses in Saudi Arabia. Considering differences as strengths that can be utilized to enhance performance, a diverse workforce might better be able to serve diverse markets.

Collecting data from a closed environment such as Saudi Arabia is constrained by access difficulties, as well as inadequate literature on relevant diversity issues. However, the convenience sampling method and snowballing approach adopted in this study generated reliable data. As a result, this study has implications for both the multinational corporations operating in Saudi Arabia and Saudi owned companies operating in the West and intending to adopt and implement diversity management initiatives for branches in different countries. As such, further research on the gulf countries’ diversity management issues would be critical.

The current study is a first survey-based research endeavor on the topic of diversity management in the Saudi context. The findings contribute to the limited knowledge base on middle eastern countries, thus presenting new empirical evidence on the organizational policies and practices of Saudization, retention, pay and benefits and health insurance policies. The study of the Saudi case, thus adds value to the existing knowledge on diversity management.