An examination of the Impacts of Nepotism (Wasta) on Intrapreneurship in the Jordanian Telecommunications Industry Sector

RESEARCH PROPOSAL

Abstract

Table of contents

Abstract ii

CHAPTER 1: Introduction 2

1.4 Rationale 5

1.6 Research Questions 7

2.3 Impacts of Wasta in intrapreneurship 13

2.4 Organisational culture in MENA and Jordan 14

3.1 Research Limitations 18

CHAPTER 4: Expected outcomes 19

Appendices 26

CHAPTER 1: Introduction

1.0 Background

The Telecommunication industry in Jordan is handled by Jordan Telecom (JT) which is Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) provider that operates fixed public telecommunication network that provides international, national and local telephony services and leased lines.

1.1 Research terminology

Entrepreneurship: According to Drucker (2014, p-39), entrepreneurship is the practice of an innovative mindset where the persons involved with the entrepreneurial activities can analyse and take risks for the effective outcome.

Intrapreneurship: refers to a system that allows an employee within a company or other organisation to act as an entrepreneur (Drucker, 2014, p-43).

After stating the research terminologies in this section, In the next section, the researcher will state the problem statement of this research.

1.2 Problem statement

Jordan's telecommunication sector is the most developed and competitive in the region due to the 2001 telecom liberalisation (Akroush et al., 2011, p-81). According to Rosbo (2020), the market share of the Jordanian mobile telecommunications sector, which is the most competitive sector of the telecom market, is currently fairly evenly divided between the three operators, with Zain, owned by MTC Kuwait, maintaining the largest share (40%), followed by France Telecom's brand Orange (31%) and Umniah (29%), which is 96% owned by Bahrain's Batelco. According to Kenresearch (2020), with the financial assistance of the Central Bank of Jordan, the newly formed Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship has focused on the development of the high speed, more comprehensive and accessible telecom sectors in the Jordan. In the race of telecom sectoral development, the Jordanian government hassuccessfully launched the 4G or fourth-generation telecom service with the successful installation of IoT/M2M facilities over the country.

1.3 Purpose of the study

1.4 Rationale for the research

There is limited empirical and qualitative research that has been undertaken in Jordan concerning intrapreneurship and in the telecommunication sector. Additionally, the effect of nepotisticpractises and the consequences of such actions on intrapreneurship, innovation and organisational culture remain largely unexplored. Janssen et al., (2019) undertook a systematic literature evaluation of conference papers for the preceding decade on the adoption and diffusion of intrapreneurial efforts in the telecommunications sector across the world and determined that there is limited research on the subject. Their research established that the expected number of intrapreneurial projects and initiatives have not been seen in the preceding decade because of lower involvement of creative minds in the decision-making process. However, this research work has been found as limited to the context of nepotism impacts. Farrukh et al., (2016, p-598) have shown that the lacking intrapreneurial practices in the business enterprises is creating a substantial barrier in the annual research and innovation projects. This research indicated that as intrapreneurship activities are vital to the competitive advantage of the companies, through limiting dependency on the third-party research and development, they are a source of competitive advantage for technology-focused companies. Thus, this research has been limited to the importance of practising intrapreneurship in the organisation. Aris et al., (2019, p- 2771) pointed out the importance of training and development opportunities in the organisation to motivate the employees in the process of intrapreneurship in the public sector managerial environment. Their research found that if companies can successively manage the facility and training opportunities in the organisational environment, the employees who have an entrepreneurial mindset could be motivated to bring these talents to intrapreneurship benefitting their employers. While there are research gaps, there is a good literature base concentrated and focused to the area of telecommunication with the effects of Nepotism. The telecommunication industry and allied sectoral areas are fast-moving and constantly evolving and changing with emergent and advanced technologies. Liu et al., (2015) analysed the presence of Nepotism in the context of family-based business and how this creates impacts on the managerial innovation. Their research has not clarified the linkage or the impacts of the nepotism practise on intrapreneurship in the organizational arena. The research of Jaskiewicz et al., (2013) pointed out the effects of the nepotism in the business organisation and tried to find out whether this could be good or bad for the managerial success. Ombanda (2018) asserted that the presence of nepotism in the workplace or organisational structure might create supportive ways for the relatives or groups linked with favouritism in the recruitment process. Specifically, new studies on the analysis of the presence of nepotism in the practice of intrapreneurship in telecommunication companies have not to be conducted in the earlier years. Therefore, the research gaps including how nepotism create impacts on the employee motivation, employee engagement in creativity and intrapreneurial growth with annual new projects in the research have created a good rationale behind this research topic. The current research is interested in addressing the impacts of Wasta and how cultural nuance creates impacts on intrapreneurship in the telecommunication companies of Jordan by investigating the presence of Wasta as an inhibitor or facilitator of intrapreneurship. The data and study will focus on the case of three major telecommunication companies including Zain, Orange and Umniah.

Research Questions

Primary research question

1.7 Theoretical Framework

In this section, theories on the nepotism, cultural dimensions and interpreneurial models linked to the research topic are described.

Reciprocal Nepotism

Uncertainty avoidance dimension

Hofstede (2003) defined that uncertainty avoidance refers to the degree of the tendency of a group of people regarding the unpredictability and facing the uncertain situation as a result of actions taken in the cultural. Under this dimension, Mazanec et al. (2015) asserted that uncertain situation or unpredictable situation might generate inner mental discrepancies regarding the intention for taking the responsibility for practising as a successful intrapreneur in the organization which might work or be responsible as an emerging inhibitor in the process of intrapreneurship in any particular organization. Considering the scenario of Jordanian society in uncertainty avoidance Hofstede Insights (2020) has shown that the culture of Jordan has an intermediate score of 65 which indicates a higher rate of concern regarding the avoidance of uncertainty. This theory could be linked to the research topic because the researcher has underpinned the question regarding the intention of avoiding uncertainty works as a major inhibitor of Intrapreneurship practice in three Jordanian telecommunication companies.

Globe cultural dimensions

Assertiveness

House et al. (1999) defined the performance orientation could be used as a successive degree of measurement regarding what extent an organization or society is motivating and rewarding the person who is focused to the innovation and creativity. In this research, the claim has been asserted that when the organization or society is performance-oriented and motivate the employees who are trying to share the idea and creativity in the organization, the employees might introduce new and potential research-based business portfolio for the future business success. According to Katigbak et al. (2002), the countries in the middle east region of the world are highly concentrated on the people and relationship with the persons in the family and organization. As a result, the performance of the employees or the contribution of the idea and intrapreneurial activities are not highly motivated and highlighted by the organization. this theoretical basement is related to the research because performance-oriented society could support the intrapreneurship over the Wasta practice.

Entrepreneurial models

CHAPTER 2: Review of the Literature

2.1 Wasta and Nepotism

Wasta (In Arabic) is a widely used concept in Middle East business culture and can be summarised as a social network of interpersonal connections rooted in family and kinship ties (Jackson et al., 2019). Weir, (2020) mentioned that Wasta is considered as an important practice in Middle East business culture which ensures information sharing through politic-business networks, the exercise of power and creation of opportunities which is much related to Chinese business culture. This research claimed that in both business cultures that are the Middle East and Chinese, sharing of knowledge is not extended outside the trustful relationship ties. According to Jaskiewicz et al. (2013, p.123-124), the reciprocal nepotism might create a substantial obligation in the management practices of the organization to place a family member or the responsible relative in the highest position where the working performances are ignored. They also added that Entitlement nepotism could form a certain business environment in the organization where the long-lasting practice of placing or encouraging the favoured family members and relatives could create a substantial destructive scenario regarding the business sustainability. This research has indicated that the presence of long-lasting nepotism and ignorance of talents and intrapreneurs in the organization might fail to take the immediate strategic decision of the business.

2.2 Intrapreneurship

Falola et al., (2018) defined that Intrapreneurship involves people within a company discover or create new business ideas which lead to the creation of new parts of business even new businesses or acquire small businesses. This researcher added that intrapreneurship is the supportive objectives of every established business for their employees and management to display the characteristics and traits of the entrepreneurs. Urbano et al., (2013) stated that intrapreneurs are the organisational assets that make emerging and challenging ideas into real practise by distributing the risks in the initiatives. They claimed that if the organisation wants more ideas and initiatives to enhance the competitive advantage, the only way to get it is to identify, develop, trust and empower their intrapreneurs. Therefore, it can be said that an organisation should understand the process of selecting, managing and creating the environment for intrapreneurs to thrive.

2.3 Impacts of Wasta in intrapreneurship

2.4 Organisational culture in MENA and Jordan

CHAPTER 3: Research Methodology

This study intends to execute the mixed research approach of both qualitative and quantitative data. The respondents for the study will be drawn from the three Jordanian telecommunication companies. The research questions will examine the impacts of Nepotism on the Intrapreneurship. the companies’ employees will be asked the questionnaire and open-ended questions to support the quantitative and qualitative data (Harrell & Bradley, 2009). According to Davies & Hughes (2014), quantitative research methods involve the quantifiable and numerical expression of the collected data to visualize and represent the research findings in a numerical manner. On the other hand, Qualitative research includes the descriptive and thematic analysis of the collected answers from the respondents (Terrell, 2012).

3.0 Sampling and data collection methods

As a part of quantitative research and data collection, the researcher will produce a set of questionnaires ( See Appendix A) with the constructed questions to collect the quantitative data from the respondents. In this case, about 60 employees (20 from each company) will be asked to answer the question based on the random sampling method.

What about a pilot study of the questionnaire? Who will you get to check reliability, validity and generalisability of the method and data?

What is SEM and why is it the best choice of quantitative measures?

3.1 Hypothesis

H5 There is a positive relationship between Wasta and Tribe/race importance

H6: There is a positive relationship between Wasta and Presence of Kinship,

Figure: Structural Equation model

Source: (Ombanda, 2018)

3.2 Contingency plan

3.1 Research Limitations

CHAPTER 4: Expected outcomes

4.1 Theoretical contribution

4.2 Practical contribution

This research will generate some practical contributions to business and social sciences. . Based on the motivation of examining the impacts of nepotism on the intrapreneurship in the telecommunication sector, other researchers could reflect the same research question in other countries and other companies to examine the impacts of nepotism on the intrapreneurship in other business, social science or different sectors. Besides, the managers of Middle East business enterprises will be able to find pragmatic insights regarding their internal organizational culture and environment and could change or facilitate their organizational policies for an effective outcome.

CHAPTER 5: Recommendation

Telecommunication companies in Jordan should continue creating new products and services for the customers though it is essential for the employees working in these companies to have an environment that motivates them to be intrapreneurs. In their intrapreneurial efforts, the companies need to embrace and promote the uniqueness of their product and services to increase their market share. In most cases, when one telecommunication company introduces a new product of other companies by reducing the Wasta influence, competing telecommunication will observe the success trend. At the end of the journey, the overall industry will try to reduce the effects and practise of Wasta in the organisation. In any attempt to introduce an already existing product or service then the value should be added.

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Appendices

Open-ended Questions

1. Do you encourage the practice of Wasta or not? Why or why not?

6. Do you think that the employees who have been participated in the idea sharing and decision-making process are closely influenced by the Wasta practice?

Table 1: Timelines

Table 2: Proposed budget