A cross-cultural evaluation of the contemporary workplace and its managerial implications

Of many recent interventions to improve the workplace, Information and communications technology (ICT) is referred to as a major enrichment. Admittedly, ICT has impacted the worker's responsiveness, her interaction with colleagues or the boss, communication, and even QWL. However, diversity of the workplace appears to be now a strategic issue in organizations that employ a global workforce. Implicating diversity are culture- and gender- related factors that would also impact job design and productivity-aspects of great interest to management. This study has explored the associated perceptions prevailing among UAE's white collar diaspora that now comprises 70% expatriates. However, unlike other attitudinal studies, the present study avoids loss of information due to factor analysis-based techniques. This modification has led to easier discovery of actionable management interventions. To this end this study invokes the Kano Model of customer satisfaction to assess items influencing job satisfaction. In this way it uncovers implications for management by detecting differences in perception of QWL among male/female and national and the expatriate workforces. On the other hand, workplace automation, often used by management to tackle productivity bottlenecks, is perceived by these employees as a "must"-in Kano's terminology-i.e., as a basic requirement of white collar workplace such as the telephone or air-conditioning, rather than something that "delights" or is a "functional" attribute of the workplace.