Outsourcing, national diversity and transience: the reality of social identity in an ELT context in Omani higher education

Abstract

The developing structure of Omani higher education sector depends upon a culturally diverse group of international academics who outnumber their Omani colleagues. This creates a unique group composition that is inconsistent with the largely Omanising workplace context. Drawing on data gathered from a case study, this paper explores the reasons and the effects of group instability resulting from faculty’s national diversity on establishing a group’s social identity, the latter being an antecedent for establishing an intellectual capital. The findings of the study suggest that national diversity is associated with a number of factors that impede longevity within work groups thus affecting identification with a common group prototype. These include human resources management practices, such as outsourcing recruitment, inconsistent recruitment standards, low faculty agility and a number of personal factors that emphasise individual identity. The paper concludes by arguing that the absence of social identity in higher education hinders establishing an intellectual capital that represents a cornerstone for establishing a knowledge-based economy that fuels the realisation of Oman 2040. The findings have implications to the GCC¹ contexts that are characterised by depending on largely nationally diverse workforce.

Keywords:

• Omanisation
• prototypicality
• national diversity
• longevity
• higher education
• group identity

Ethical approval

This paper is based on a PhD project that involved human participants. The ethical approval has been obtained from the University of Southampton Ethics and Research Governance Online (ERGO), ethics reference: 23423. The individual participants were asked to complete a consent form before the start of the data collection process. Participants and the specific research site were anonymised to avoid any harm.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Gulf Cooperation Council countries, which are Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and The United Arab Emirates.

2 While these colleges are merging with another set of colleges to form the University of Technology and Applied Sciences, they are still strategically guided by the Ministry of Higher Education’s (MoHE) vision.

Additional information

Funding

This paper is part of a PhD project funded by the Ministry of Higher Education in Oman and the British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society (BELMAS bursary awarded in 2016).

Notes on contributors

Amal Al Muqarshi

Amal Al Muqarshi is an assistant professor at the College of Applied Sciences-Ibri at the University of Technology and Applied Sciences in Oman. She is currently the Head of English Language Department. She is a joint winner of British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society (BELMAS) Best Thesis Award 2019. Amal’s main research interests are cultural diversity and organizations, higher education, qualitative research, and language teaching and management.