title: An investigation into how Human Resource Management practices reflect specific leadership styles in different employment sectors in Palestine
Creators: name: Irshaid, Farid
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Human Resource Management (HRM)
subject: Palestine
subject: Middle East
subject: sociocultural environment
subject: authoritarian leadership
subject: For-Profit (Private)
subject: Not-For-Profit (NFP)

description: Human Resource Management (HRM) is a critically important function that contributes to organizational performance (Bowen &amp; Ostroff, 2004; Leroy, Anseel, Gardner, &amp; Sels, 2015). Its presence in an organization is influenced by the organization’s leadership style/s (Vermeeren, Kuipers, &amp; Steijn, 2014). In the Middle East, the notion of leadership has often been associated with an authoritarian – or directive - style of control (Dorfman, Javidan, Hanges, Dastmalchian, &amp; House, 2012; House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, &amp; Gupta, 2004). But there has been limited empirical research to establish this notion of leadership. Research on HRM in the developing countries of the Middle East are few and far between, especially in politically unstable environments like Palestine (Budhwar &amp; Mellahi, 2016). This thesis seeks to address this gap in the literature by exploring the way in which HRM practices in organizations operating in Palestine reflect different leadership styles in different employment sectors. Palestine is the focus of this research because Palestine and the Middle East region more broadly are an important part of the global economic system in the sense that they are home to large multinational organizations particularly in the production and export of crude oil and liquid natural gas (Fesharaki &amp; Isaak, 2016; OPEC, 2018). Additionally, researchers have for years been urging more studies to investigate HRM practices in the Middle East, due not only to the importance of this region, but also to the interesting idiosyncrasies of its sociocultural environment. Furthermore, this study seeks to understand whether authoritarian leadership is indeed the dominant style of leadership in the sampled organizations – and, if so, what it looks like in practice. In this thesis, I conducted studies focussing on HRM practices in two types of Palestinian organizations: For-Profit (Private); and Not-For-Profit (NFP) organizations. I compared the relationships between the practices and leadership styles in these organizations in order to investigate sectoral differences between them. Moreover, I explored the ways in which their employees perceive the Humane Resources (HR) practices of their organizations (and whether employees’ perspectives align with the perspectives of their managers). The findings of my empirical research, in this project, show that HRM practices at Palestinian Private organizations are mostly influenced by a functional style of leadership with some elements of transformational leadership. In contrast to expectations based on earlier literature on this topic (e.g., House et. Al., 2004), there is little evidence that authoritarian leadership dominates HRM practices in these organizations. I hypothesise that this largely because the sampled organizations are significantly influenced by Western HRM practices. After all, my sampled organizations are large and operate in the formal labor market (cf. small businesses such as street venders). In NFP organizations, HRM practices are more also influenced by functional leadership (again, contrary to the expectation that authoritarian leadership plays a dominant role). But, unlike in Private organizations, elements of transformational leadership play a much smaller role. Moreover, some directive-leadership style of management was observed – and seems to be more evident in these NFP compared to Private organizations. The (lesser) influence of transformational leadership style on NFP organizations’ HRM functions could have originated from cross-cultural exchange with Western aid organizations which o ten participate in conducting development projects with NFPs in Palestine. These include USAID and UNDP among others: organizations that are likely to abide by Western best-practice standards in their dealings with personnel. A factor that adds to the complexity in my analysis is the fact that the relationships between HRM practices and leadership styles are often perceived differently between employees and managers. Employees tend to have a more cynical view of HRM, whereas managers perceive HRM practices as benign if not benevolent in nature. In this thesis, I contribute to the fields theoretical understanding of the models of HRM that managers use in Palestine in both Private and NFP organizations and propose a framework for understanding these in relation to the leadership in the organizations. My practical contribution is to provide a better insight to the HRM practices in Palestine and the factors that drive these in both Private and NFP organizations. Limitations of my research and potential future directions for this study are discussed.