It is a well-established fact that increasing firms’ productivity is a necessary step to achieve sustainable growth and development. In fact, low levels of productivity, in particular in the registered manufacturing sector, represent a major challenge for the Indian economy. One key obstacle faced by these firms is the high level of employment protection, which makes it difficult to compete with the other sectors that largely rely on informal labour or flexible contracts. High labour protection increases the incentive for workers to be absent from the factories whenever they have access to better job opportunities elsewhere. Moreover, India is undergoing a process of structural transformation, which is characterised by movement of workers from agriculture into manufacturing. During this process workers are often engaged in both sectors, particularly so across seasons. In fact, the lack of job opportunities during the lean agricultural seasons allows manufacturing firms to pay relatively low wages but, during the peak seasons, workers may find casual jobs in agriculture attractive and leave the firm temporarily. Using firm level data, representative of the entire registered manufacturing sector, I find that absence rates are very high and negatively correlated with firms’ productivity. In particular, I notice that absence rates tend to be highest when labour demand in agriculture is highest, i.e. during the harvest seasons. Using worker level data from a large jute mill, I find that this behaviour is most common among workers who are recent migrants from rural to urban areas who have access to agricultural jobs in their home villages. I exploit exogenous shocks to agricultural productivity, that increase seasonality in agricultural labour demand, to estimate the effect of seasonal absences on firms’ output. Finally, I develop a theoretical framework that that illustrates how seasonal absences can be interpreted as a consequence of asymmetric labour market rigidities between the two sectors and estimate the cost of these rigidities in terms of loss in manufacturing output and employment.

Information quality issues have taken an increased importance in academia and industry and have many causes attributed to it. Poor information quality presents significant costs to an organisation, financially and non-financially. However, the issue of information quality has not been explored in depth in the field of facilities management. Thus, within the context of facilities management, this has led to failures in asset management programs undertaken by facilities management organisations and present a significant challenge in the decision-making process by facility managers. Achieving improved asset information quality in facility management operations is thus of immense importance to stakeholders in facilities management. To this end, various methods and frameworks have been developed to assess and improve information quality, but these have very limited scope and not applicable in facilities management organisation undertaking asset management. To this end, this research aims to evaluate the quality of information and determine what factors impact information quality of asset management programs in the facilities management domain. The research adopts an exploratory mixed-method methodology, which allows data to be collected and analysed using qualitative and quantitative techniques to provide greater insight of the phenomenon in facility management operations. The qualitative approach uses thematic analysis to determine what factors affect the quality of information from the information, organisation, and people domain respectively. The results from this analysis show that factors affecting information quality of asset management programs is multidimensional. In addition, 71 information quality attributes has been identified from the qualitative analysis. In the quantitative phase, principal component analysis (PCA) with direct oblimin rotation, ANOVA, and measure of central tendency (MCT) techniques were adopted to identify the specific dimensions of information quality in asset management, the effect of the structure of the organisation on information quality, and the prevalence of information quality issue in asset management respectively. The results from the analysis identified 12 information quality dimensions which was grouped into seven (7) categories. Also a high prevalence of information quality issue experienced by facilities management professionals was observed with a mean value of 7.90 and median value of 8.00 and standard deviation of 1.467 which was normally distributed. Further analysis indicated that the hierarchical structure of the organisation had an effect on information quality which was statistically significant. Based on the result of the analysis, a framework, using a perceptual map premised on multi-dimensional scale (MDS) technique, has been developed that seeks to assess the quality of information of asset management programs in facilities management.

This research examines the importance of developing Talent Management programmes at Abu Dhabi Police Department to develop and build a talent pool as a key human resource. It assesses the relevance of Talent Management and makes recommendations on how to develop an integrated Talent Management programme in the public sector in order to achieve the mission objectives of the government. It seeks to find out the challenges and obstacles that hinder the development of Talent Management within the Abu Dhabi Police Department, UAE. It critically evaluates the current HR practices in terms of attracting, developing, recruiting and retaining employees. While managing and developing employee potential in the UAE has recently been put at the top of the government agenda, this study examines the workforce challenges facing the UAE where foreign manpower is excessively high, to determine what are the strategies and vision of the decision makers regarding Talent Management. This study adopted mixed methods. The rationale for adopting a quantitative and qualitative research approach is based on the purpose of the study, the nature of the problem and research questions. Quantitative data are collected through a questionnaire involving managers at the AD Police Department. This will be supported by qualitative data using semi-structured interviews to provide rich descriptive data to support the quantitative data. The findings of this study have practical implications as they help raise awareness amongst the decision makers within the police force of the need for developing Talent Management capabilities. They will also make a valuable contribution to knowledge through reviewing and expanding the literature on Talent Management programmes, and provide an opportunity for researchers to undertake further studies which could be useful for different organisations wishing to develop Talent Management programmes.

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This study aims to make theoretical and methodological contributions to knowledge by examining how change is managed and to what extent employees at the Ministry of Interior in the UAE are ready to lead and implement change initiatives. The UAE has nowadays become synonymous with change. The fast growing pace of change is transforming the UAE landscape and the MOI needs to be prepared to implement changes in order to be competitive and comply with the government’s Excellence Vision for 2021. This research addresses aspects of change management and readiness for change within a context which is under-researched in the UAE. It examines how change is managed by assessing the level of readiness for change. Although there is vast literature on change management and many studies have investigated change models and initiatives, this topic still generates plenty of interest and is under-researched in the Arab world and in particular in the UAE public sector. Change management is viewed as imperative and inevitable for the survival and success of an organisation. The extensive literature has revealed that there is no single approach to change management—what works or fits best depends on the organisational and cultural settings which have a direct impact on the success rate of the change project. In general, the change management theories and models appear to be rather abstract and too broad. Although they offer some guidance on how change can effectively be managed, they fall short on supporting their claims with concrete empirical evidence. In addition, there is little research on the drivers or leaders of organisational change and the expertise and know how required to lead the organisation to successful change. In addition, change models and theories tend to overlap and correlate highly with each other. Based on the nature of the problem and research questions, a predominately positivist paradigm has been selected by this study. However, a mixed method approach is adopted to enhance the effectiveness of this study combining both qualitative and quantitative which help support each other and compensate for each other’s weaknesses, thus providing fresh insights and an in-depth understanding of the topic under investigation. The main findings of the study suggest employees are in general satisfied with the way change has been managed within the MOI. Interestingly, the results also reveal that most change initiatives have not generated a consensus or a united front of satisfaction but feelings of discontent and negative reactions were voiced from several individuals who perceived that the way aspects of change were handled lacked a sense of purpose and inadequate preparation. This minority of employees is not clear about the organisation’s strategic vision of the change, showing signs of resistance. This uncertainty is considered as a critical barrier to the change efforts initiated by the MOI leadership to enhance its performance and deliver quality service. The research contributes towards the change management debate by expanding the academic literature and the findings of this study have practical implications. They provide the MOI with the key mechanisms on how to prioritise and prepare for the different phases of change management activities to address the requirements of the development agenda. This study also helps to raise awareness of the decision makers about the flaws and shortcomings of the current change management practices within the MOI. Finally the findings of this study will enable the development of a change management programme and strategy tailored for the MOI and made by the MOI change management experts.