Resistance to Culture Change in Qatari Oil and Gas Sector

Abstract

• Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic had a tremendous impact on all aspects of companies’ operations worldwide, including corporate culture. Culture needs to go through a planned change to adhere to the new external environment. However, in order to succeed in change management, it is crucial to address possible resistance to change. The purpose of the present research was to examine the factors that affect resistance to culture change in multi-national organizations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. The research was guided by four research questions, which was discussed in light of Lewin’s force field model, Kotter’s eight-step change theory, and Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions.
• Literature Review: The literature review provided significant insights into the topic of interest. In particular, five theoretical frameworks concerning change management were assessed, peculiarities of culture change were discussed, factors that contribute to resistance to change were listed, and practices that help to address resistance to change were provided. The core of the literature review was cultural problems in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. The literature review identified three significant gaps in the current body of knowledge that this study attempted to close.
• Methods: The utilized a mixed-method approach to answer the research questions. The quantitative part tested eight hypotheses utilizing a sample of 139 participants from multinational companies in Qatari oil and gas sector and analyzing it using multiple regression analysis and descriptive statistics. The quantitative part assessed the degree of resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas industry in Qatar and assess factors that affect resistance to culture change. The qualitative part collected data from 20 interviews with top and middle managers and designated change managers and analyzed it using thematic analysis. The qualitative part of the research described the peculiarities of change management in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas industry in Qatar and provide a list of possible strategies to address resistance to culture change.
• Results: The results of quantitative analysis revealed that the resistance to culture change in the sector was highly diversified. Regression analysis did not provide any significant evidence to accept any of the eight hypotheses. The qualitative analysis identified three themes for characterizing the peculiarities of the corporate culture in the oil and gas sector in Qatar that affected resistance to culture change, including unmanaged cultural diversity, high influence of the national culture, and multilingualism. Additionally, qualitative analysis outlined three themes that provided recommendations for overcoming resistance to culture change in the sector, including effective communication, participation, and benefits.
• Discussion: The analysis of the collected data revealed inconsistency between the findings of this paper and the results previous of previous research. The inconsistency was explained by the fact that the population is extremely diversified, as globalization had a varying effect on different organizations. The paper also considered that limitations of research design may be a reason for the inconsistency. A total of twelve limitations were acknowledged, among which the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic was considered the most powerful. Seven recommendations for managers working in the oil and gas sector in Qatar that could help to overcome resistance to culture change were provided. Moreover, four recommendations for future research were given.

Keywords: organizational culture, resistance to change, change management, national culture, oil and gas sector, Qatar, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions.

Introduction

Introduction

In modern organizations, organizational cultures became central of attention for human resource (HR) managers in all parts of the world. According to Sveningsson and Alvesson (2015), organizational cultures are of extreme importance for the companies, as they affect the bottom line of all the companies by influencing the efficiency and effectiveness of the employees. However, despite the extreme importance of corporate culture, less than 31% of HR managers in 2020 believed that the organizational culture in their company is adequate (Durinski, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on corporate cultures around the world (Spicer, 2020). As a result, many companies experience a need in organizational culture change.

Change is present in all spheres of people’s lives, and it is the driving power for development. There is no stability in life, every process consists whether of improvement or degradation. Therefore, it is significant not only for people but for companies, corporations, and businesses to seek change in their functioning. However, often people do not comprehend the importance of alterations, therefore, various organizations face challenges in change management implementation. One of the central challenges that change managers face is resistance of employees. This thesis aims at exploring the concept of resistance to culture change in multinational corporations in the oil and gas in Qatar.

This section introduces the general topic of the research and narrows it down to the research questions and hypotheses. Additionally, the first chapter provides all the relevant information needed to understand the importance of the discussed problem. First, background of the study is discussed with special attention paid to Qatar’s relevant history, recent rise of multiculturalism in the country, and the country’s oil and gas sector. Second, the chapter provides an overview of Lewin’s force filed model, Kotter’s theory of change, and Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions as the theoretical bases of the paper. Third, the chapter introduces the problem, purpose, research questions, and hypotheses of the paper. Fourth, implications of the research are provided discussing how the results of the study may be used by various stakeholders. Fifth, the limitations of the research are discussed for the reader to understand the boundaries of the applicability of the research results. Finally, the structure of the thesis is outlined for the reader to have a general idea of the points discussed in the dissertation. The chapter is concluded with a summary.

Background Information

Qatar

Qatar is a country in the middle East occupying the Qatar Peninsula on the Arabian Peninsula. Qatar boarders only with Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. The country’s government structure is an emirate, which implies that a sheikh is the chief of the state and the prime minister is the head of the government (GlobalEDGE, 2022). Qatar is member of the League of Arab States (Arab League) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The population of the country is estimated at 2,880,060, among which 84.67% are working age and only 1.69% aged 65 and above (GlobalEDGE, 2022). In 2020, the country’s GDP per capita was around $90,000, which was a lot higher than GDP per capita in the US ($63,500), Canada ($43,200), and the UK ($40,300) in the same year (GlobalEDGE, 2022). The main contributors to the GDP of the country are oil and natural gas resources along with services (GlobalEDGE, 2022). In 2022, Qatar is expected to host the World Cup, which made the construction and services boom during the past ten years (Millward, 2017).

Despite having a stable economy, Qatar is considered a country of no higher than acceptable risk of investment due to volatility of oil prices, degree of economic freedom, and the government structure. The country’s rate of economic freedom in 2021 was estimated at 72, which corresponds to the 31^st place in the world (Heritage Foundation, 2022). The country’s government structure is very special for the western worldview. As it was mentioned, the head of the country is the sheikh or emir, which is a hereditary position. Emir appoints a prime minister, and the head of the government acts under his control (GlobalEDGE, 2022). This may be considered as a source of risk due to the fact that the head of the country is not elected. The judicial power is represented by the Court of Cassation and the Supreme Constitutional Court, which are elected instances. The legislative power belongs to Majlis al-Shura, which is the advisory council part of which is appointed by the monarch and another part of which is selected by a popular vote (GlobalEDGE, 2022). Since the monarch significant influence on all the branches of power, the stability of the country is highly dependent on one person.

There are several weaknesses of Qatar’s economy that contribute to the risks of investing in the business of the country. First, the country is highly dependent on the oil and gas sector, which implies that volatility of oil and gas prices have a tremendous effect on Qatar’s economy (GlobalEDGE, 2022). Second, the COVID-19 pandemic made the tourism sector suffer a significant decline, which made the country even more dependent on oil and gas. Third, even though the plans to hold the World Cup in Qatar boosted the economy, the pandemic puts significant threats to gaining income from the event due to the fear of the virus spread (Alshahrani et al., 2021). Finally, Qatar-GCC conflict also had a significant impact on geopolitical situation of the country, which affects the stability of market in the country (Buigut and Kapar, 2020).

The Rise of Multiculturalism in Qatar

The population of Qatar increased tremendously during the past twenty years. In the beginning of the twenty first century, the country’s population was below 600 thousand people (World Bank, 2022). Today, the estimated population of the country in 2020 was almost 2.9 million, which signified almost a 500% increase in population in 20 years (World Bank, 2022). The rise in the population, however, it was not achieved due to an increase in birth rates; instead, the increase was due to the rise of migration into the country. In 2016, 88.4% of the Qatari population reported to be non-Qatari in origin, while there were only 11.6% of the population that claimed to be Qatari during the census (PSA, 2017).

As a result of increase migration, the country faced significant changes in the language use. In particular, even though the Arabic language remains the official language of the state, English became the primary language of both the private and the public sectors (De Bel-Air, 2014). Other language also became common, including French, Persian, Bemgali, Pilipino and even African causing the rise of so-called linguistic superdiversity in the country (Nebel, 2017). The government support cultural diversity looking, as it sees numerous benefits in attracting people and businesses from all over the world.

Qatar’s Oil and Gas Sector

Qatar has a vastly developed energy sector that has been developing steadily for the past half a century. The sector includes a diversified array of both state-owned and private companies that participate in nearly all major energy-related projects (Oxford Business Group, 2016). The major players in the industry include Doha Petroleum Construction Co Ltd, Dolphin Energy, Petrofac Qatar, Petrotec Group, Qatar Petroleum (QP), Qatargas, and Supreme Supply Service. The state giant and the dominant company in the sector, QP, controls almost all aspects of the gas industry in Qatar, including exploration, production, transportation, storage, marketing, and sales (Oxford Business Group, 2016). The company was established in 1974, and since then, it has been responsible for all oil and gas industries in the country. The major onshore locations include Doha, Dukhan, and Ras Laffan, while offshore locations include Halul Island and the North Field (Energy Year, 2021). The North Filed is known to be the largest non-associated natural gas field (Energy Year, 2021).

At present, Qatar has one of the largest reserves of oil and gas in the world. Its current gas reserves are 24.9 trillion cubic meters, while its annual production is 175.7 billion cubic meters (Energy Year, 2021). The oil reserves of the country are estimated at 25.2 billion barrels, while its annual production is 1.92 million barrels (Energy Year, 2021). The country invested in the liquefaction of natural gas at the beginning of the 21st century, which allowed it to become a world leader in liquid natural gas (LNG) production (Oxford Business Group, 2016). According to Energy Year (2021), “more than 90% of Qatar’s LNG production is committed through supply purchase agreements between 2014 and 2021” (para. 3). Even though the majority of exports have been shipped on the basis of long-term contracts, the percentage of short-term contracts is increasing due to the growth of the LNG market and the tendency to supplier diversification of the main consumers (Energy Year, 2021).

The COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on the world oil and gas market, which affected Qatar’s major players. In 2020, the demand for oil and gas decreased by 25% in comparison with the pre-COVID period (Deloitte, 2021). Even though the industry rebounded at the end of 2020, the overall industry growth was negative at 8% in comparison with 2019 (Deloitte, 2021). In 2021, the oil and gas industry is expected to grow at the level of 4-7% below the pre-VOCID period (Deloitte, 2021). Even though the industry experienced numerous economic recessions, the current situation is unlike any other, as the overall decline in consumption was unprecedented, and its combination with the long-term trend of petroleum and fossil fuel demand may make numerous players in the industry fight for survival (Deloitte, 2021). The tendency in the industry is reflected in the oil and gas price fluctuations provided in Figures 1 and 2, respectively.

One of the central attempts to address the growing problem of low demand for gas and oil, QP put increased emphasis on LNG production. Today, Qatari LNG is considered the cheapest in the world, as the break-even price of LNG is only $4 per million British thermal units (mmBtu), while Russia and Mozambique’s break-even price is between $5 and $8 per mmBtu (Jaganathan, 2021). Moreover, QP announced that it will increase the LNG output by 40% between 2021 and 2026, which will allow the company to cover the demand from both South Korea and Japan, the world’s largest LNG consumers (Jaganathan, 2021). Such dedication to LNG is expected to decrease the pressure on Qatar’s oil and gas industry associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Theoretical Context

Lewin’s Force Field Model

Lewin’s force field analysis is a valuable tool that helps to facilitate the decision-making process in all spheres. It was originally created by Kurt Lewin as a part of social psychology in the 1940s (Lewin, 2013). Today, the model is used for managing organizations and making business decisions based on the analysis of drivers and barriers to change. For instance, Mak and Chang (2019) examined the driving and restraining forces that affect the adoption of environmental strategies in the hotel industry. One of the conclusions of the study was that using the force field model was associated with significant benefits for analyzing organizational change. Sharma, Singh, and Matai (2018) analyzed the barriers and the driving forces for adopting strategic sourcing risk management in the automotive industry. Utilization of the model led to valuable insights through analysis of literature. Mahmud, Mohd Nasri, and Syed-Abdullah (2019) studied factors affecting the implementation of the whole-university approach towards sustainability using Lewin’s framework. The results revealed that the force field model is also applicable to decision-making in the education sector. Thus, the use of Lewin’s model appears suitable for analyzing the factors that contribute to the resistance to change in the multi-national corporations in the oil and gas industry in Qatar.

The decision-making model promoted by Lewin (2013) can be broken down into five stages described below:

1. Describing the proposal to change. This step includes stating the purpose of change and outlining all the steps that will lead to the desired goal. Describing the desired change can be helpful for understanding all the stakeholders and processes involved in the decision-making process, which will help to determine the drivers and barriers change.
2. Identifying forces for change. This stage is associated with describing drivers for change that can be both internal and external. The internal factors may be rapidly decreasing team morale, reduced operations efficiency, and declining profit margins. External factors may include disruptive technology, industry uncertainty, and changing demographic trends.
3. Identifying forces against change. This phase includes determining internal and external factors that can prevent the success of the change. Internal factors may include fear of uncertainty and dysfunctional organizational structure, while external factors may include government legislations and obligations to customers or creditors.
4. Assigning scores. This step includes a thorough assessment of the strength of all the factors to understand how impactful they are for achieving the purpose.
5. Analyzing and decision-making. This step is associated with making the final decision whether to implement the promoted strategy. If a high degree of uncertainty is still present, the change agent may consider which forces against change can be reduced and which forces for change can be strengthened. The strategies for manipulation with these forces should be described and implemented, which will allow the re-evaluation of the decision.

Kotter’s Theory of Change

John Kotter is considered a leadership and change management guru. A professor at the Harvard Business School and a world-renowned change expert, he has created an eight-step process for change management (Harvard Business School, no date). He is known to be “the premier voice on how the best organizations achieve successful transformations” (Harvard Business School, no date: para. 1). In 1996, Kotter published a framework of the eight-step model of change, which was recognized by scholars around the globe. These eight steps include the following (Kotter, 2012):

1. Creating a sense of urgency. The first step is associated with using appropriate techniques to give all the stakeholders an understanding that a change is urgently needed to avoid disastrous consequences or grab a unique opportunity.
2. Forming a powerful guiding coalition. This stage is associated with building a team that can lead the change in the organization.
3. Developing a strategy and vision for the change. During the third step, the team clearly describes the future that can be achieved by implementing the desired change.
4. Communicating change vision. This stage promotes the developed vision to all the stakeholders, which can lead to increasing the number of people in the coalition.
5. Empowering employees of broad-based action. During this phase, the barriers are to be removed, and drivers for change are to be promoted to enable action from all the employees.
6. Creating short-term wins. This step is associated with recognizing short-term results to motivate further improvement.
7. Consolidating gains and producing more change. The consolidation of all the micro wins is expected to increase the credibility of the change agent and increase the support to the change plan, which will lead to further change.
8. Anchoring the culture change in the organization. The final stage includes articulation of all the changes in behavior and connections between them to ensure that the change is sustained in the future.

Kotter’s change framework is an easy-to-implement, step-by-step model that provides clear descriptions of all that is required to guide the process of change successfully. This model emphasizes encouraging the involvement of all members and increasing the level of acceptability of the employees so that the overall process of change management is successful (Kotter, 2012). The described framework is expected to help in the analysis of the results achieved by the present research.

Hofstede’s Model for Cultural Dimensions

In 1980, Hofstede introduced a unique model for defining and understanding the national culture of a country (Dellner, 2014). This model includes five dimensions against which national culture can be assessed. The five national culture dimensions proposed by Hofstede are as follows (Dellner, 2014):

1. Power distance. This dimension refers to the extent to which less powerful members of the country accept the unequal distribution of power. The higher the power distance index, the more tolerant the people are to strict hierarchy and the absence of power.
2. Uncertainty avoidance. This dimension refers to the extent to which the people belonging to a culture feel comfortable in ambiguous situations. The higher the index, the more people tend to avoid situations associated with high degrees of uncertainty.
3. Individualism vs. collectivism. This dimension refers to the degree to which the people operating in that culture wish to work as individuals overworking as part of a team. The higher the index is, the more people value individual success and expect everyone to be independent.
4. Masculinity vs. femininity. This dimension refers to the degree people support either competition, achievement, and success (masculine values) or modesty, tenderness, and the quality of life (feminine values). The higher the index, the more a country supports masculine values.
5. Long-term vs. short-term orientation. This dimension refers to the consideration people give to the future. Cultures that are long-term oriented are generally characterized by the values of greater adaptability, persistence, and perseverance. On the other hand, national cultures with a short-term orientation invest less in building relationships and more in obtaining immediate results. The higher the index, the more people tend to be long-term oriented.

The utilization of Hofstede’s model is expected to help in explaining how cultural dimensions associated with Qatari people can help to explain the resistance to change.

Problem, Purpose, Research Questions, and Hypotheses

Problem Statement

The COVID-19 pandemic had a tremendous impact on all aspects of companies’ operations worldwide, including corporate culture. The large-scale social and economic shock has already had a huge impact on organizational cultures worldwide (Spicer, 2020). The cooler talks were replaced with chat room conversations, suits were replaced by face masks and gloves, and round table conversations were replaced by Zoom conferences. Cultures of many companies shifted from being creative and explorative to being defensive and preserving (Spicer, 2020). The problem with such culture change is that it may lead to a disaster if the transition is not controlled (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2015). However, even controlled change may be associated with multiple barriers. In particular, according to Elliot and Smith (2006), organization members may find the transformation of corporate culture deeply troubling, which may lead to resistance to change. For instance, the corporate culture of Nokia failed to acknowledge the shifted cellphone market in 2007 and resisted to change, which led to an unprecedented fall of the company (Vuori and Huy, 2016). Thus, it is crucial to address the problem of resistance to culture change to avoid problems with the competitiveness of the companies.

As it has been mentioned previously, culture change is an under-discussed topic in the current scholarly and professional literature (Denning, 2011). Even less literature is available on resistance to change in Qatar’s oil and gas sector. However, according to Del Val and Fuentes (2003), resistance to change may be one of the key issues that negatively affect the success of functional culture change. As the overview of the oil and gas sector demonstrated, culture change is crucial in Qatari multi-national corporations operating in the oil and gas market, as the recession in the market is expected to lead to a significant change in the trends of the market (Deloitte, 2021). Thus, it is crucial to determine the sources of resistance to culture change and the unique characteristics of resistance to culture change in Qatar’s oil and gas sector.

Purpose Statement

The purpose of the present research is to examine the factors that affect resistance to culture change in multi-national organizations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. Identification of these factors using different research methodologies and testing various theories is expected to help the managers of multi-national corporations to conduct planned organization culture change. Additionally, this study aims at exploring the unique characteristics of resistance to culture change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar and providing recommendations for overcoming the resistance to change in the industry. The research is also expected to close a significant gap in the current body of knowledge, as culture change in Qatar is an understudied topic. The research will also contribute to the overall literature concerning culture change during the COVID-19 period and will provide valuable insights for future research.

Research Questions

The present study will focus on the following research questions:

• RQ1. What are the unique characteristics of organizational cultures in multi-national corporations in Qatar’s oil and gas sector that affect culture change?

Hofstede’s theory of culture dimensions claims that all countries have unique cultural characteristics that affect organizational cultures. Qatar scored high (93 out of 100) in power distance, which demonstrates that Qatari employees accept a highly hierarchical order, where everyone has its place (Hofstede Insights, no date). At the same time, the country scored low (25) in individualism, which is associated with increased emphasis on group values rather than personal success (Hofstede Insights, no date). It is also crucial no note that Qatar’s uncertainty avoidance index is very high (83), which demonstrates that Qatari people prefer low degrees of unpredictability and tend to have rigid codes and models of behavior (Hofstede Insights, no date). However, multi-national corporations include representatives from many cultures, which implies that these companies will have unique organizational cultures.

• RQ2. What is the degree of resistance to cultural change multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar experience?

The degree of change may vary from country to country depending on the history and values of the nation (McCarthy et al., 2008). Thus, it is crucial to understand how much resistance to change do change managers face in the Qatari oil and gas sector.

• RQ3. What are the factors contributing to resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar?

Resistance to change is associated with multiple factors that contribute (Elliott and Smith, 2006). Every country and industry are expected to have a unique combination of such factors, which need to be assessed to address them and decrease their effect on the success of culture change.

• RQ4. How can resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar be reduced?

As it has been more than a year since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was expected that change managers have come up with effective strategies that help to address resistance to culture change. Accumulating all the knowledge is crucial so that other managers can use this information in the future.

Hypotheses

The research will utilize a mixed-method approach to answer the research questions provided above. RQ2 and RQ3 will be answered using quantitative methods, which implies that hypotheses will be tested. The hypotheses identified in the present section concern the factors that affect resistance to change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. The hypotheses were formulated after reviewing the literature provided in Section 2.4 of the present paper.

• Hypothesis 1. Quickly changing external environment is positively correlated with resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

Del Val and Fuentes (2003) supported the idea that a quickly changing external environment negatively affects the change process. The COVID-19 pandemic is a source of quick change in the outside environment, which may be a source of resistance in the population under analysis.

• Hypothesis 2. The level of participation in the change management process is negatively correlated with resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

This notion is supported by studies in other industries conducted by Gaylor (2001) and Ghanavatinejad et al. (2018), as well as the theoretical framework by Lewin (1947).

• Hypothesis 3. Manager-employee relationships negatively affect resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

The hypothesis was supported by Gaylor (2001), Del Val and Fuentes (2003), and Amarantou et al. (2016) that conducted research in different industries.

• Hypothesis 4. Free communication practices within organization have a negative impact on resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.
• Hypothesis 5. Quality of information exchange during internal communication is negatively correlated with resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

Gaylor (2001) stated that both quality of information and free communication practices have a significant impact on resistance to change. Del Val and Fuentes (2003) also supported this idea.

• Hypothesis 6. Perceived personal benefits from change have a negative impact on resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.
• Hypothesis 7. Perceived organizational benefits from change have a negative impact on resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

Amarantou et al. (2016) stated that both personal benefits, such as salary and career, and perceived benefits for the organization are closely correlated with the success of the change process.

• Hypothesis 8. Cultural diversity has a significant positive correlation with the resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

Amarantou et al. (2016) concluded that personality traits have a significant impact on resistance to change. Additionally, Del Val and Fuentes (2003) concluded that inconsistency in values among individual employees might lead to a significant increase in the resistance to change. Since both personality traits and personal values are the categories of national culture to some extent, it is reasonable to suppose that the fact that companies under analysis have employees from various cultures can affect resistance to change. This assumption is also coherent with Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimensions.

In summary, it hypothesized that resistance to change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar is affected by six factors. These factors include perceived benefits from the change, quickly changing external environment, manager-employee relationships, differences in national cultures, participation, and communication practices. The perceived benefits from change consist of two parts, including personal benefits and firm benefits. The concept map for the quantitative part of the present research is provided in Figure 3 below.

Implications of Research

The primary focus of the present research is identifying the factors that influence people to resist culture changes in the organizations and how they can be managed and minimized to proceed with the change successfully. It provides a practical solution to the issues related to culture change management faced by organizations the oil and gas sector in Qatar. First, the present research summarizes all the current knowledge about resistance to culture change, which can be helpful for future research. Second, the study examines a list of factors that were expected to affect resistance to culture change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. Third, the paper describes strategies for addressing resistance in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. The research provides a list of recommendations that can guide culture change in multinational companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. This research can also be replicated to improve the generalizability and reliability of findings by exploring other industries and countries.

Acknowledgement of Limitations

It is crucial to acknowledge the limitations of the present research to understand the area of applicability of findings. First, the study is limited by the scope. The purpose of the present research was to explore resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas industry in Qatar. Thus, the results are applicable only to the population under analysis, and applying the results to another country, industry, or type of organization is associated with significant limitations to reliability. In other words, the results of this study can be used to manage change in other organizations with caution.

Second, the research results are limited by the provided data. Field research results are limited by the credibility, accessibility, and volume of the provided information. During the field research, such problems as wrong, incomplete, or outdated information can be faced along with corporations’ confidentiality rules and their reluctance to provide access to the data. While the researcher used all means to increase the validity and reliability of research, data collection bias is expected to be an issue.

Third, the research results are applicable only to the period of the pandemic, as all the data will be gathered during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. The current period is associated with a significant degree of uncertainty due to the unpredictable development of the situation with the pandemic. Thus, participants may react differently to culture change during the period under analysis in comparison with their possible reactions during other periods. Thus, the research results may be applicable only to the period of the pandemic. Applying the results of the present research to any other period may be associated with significant bias, which implies that they should be used with caution in such a case.

Structure of the Thesis

This thesis has six chapters, an abstract, a reference section, and appendices. The description of each chapter is provided below:

• Introduction: The introduction section includes general information about the problem the research attempts to address and the background of the program. Additionally, the theoretical context of the study is discussed along with the hypotheses, implications, and limitations.
• Literature Review: The literature review section focuses on several aspects, including the concept of organizational and national cultures, change management, and resistance to change. The literature review section includes the description of the procedures for literature search. The central purpose of the second chapter was to understand the unique organizational culture in the oil and gas sector in Qatar and connect these characteristics to resistance to change. Additionally, the literature review section identified the gap in knowledge that this thesis attempts to close.
• Methodology: The third chapter focuses on the detailed description of methods used to answer the research question. The chapter identifies research design, paradigm, data collection methods, sampling techniques, and data analysis procedures. Additionally, the chapter focuses on privacy concerns, ethicality, reliability, and validity of the research methods. Special attention is given to justification of all the methods using relevant references.
• Results: The fourth chapter describes the qualitative and quantitative results of the analysis. For the quantitative part, descriptive statistics and regression analysis output is provided. For the qualitative part, the central themes along with examples that justify these themes are provided. All the results were expressed in the most objective matter to let the reader make conclusions.
• Discussion: The fifth chapter explains the results of the research and juxtaposes them to the current body of research. Additionally, the discussion section provides recommendations for managers about how the results of the analysis can be used to address resistance to culture change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. Guidance for future research is also provided to ensure that the reader understand how the results of research can be used to close other gaps in the current body of knowledge.
• Conclusion: The final chapter summarizes all the critical points of the present research. In particular, it outlines the most meaningful findings and underlines the strengths and weaknesses of the research design.

Chapter Summary

In the first chapter of this paper, theoretical and contextual foundations of the present research were discussed. The central benefit of the chapter is that it established the problem it is trying to address, the purpose, which was directly connected to the problem statement, the research questions, and the hypotheses. The central problem was that resistance to change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar is an under-discussed topic. Thus, the purpose of the study was identified as to examine the factors that affect resistance to culture change in multi-national organizations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. Four research questions were introduced, two of which were qualitative and two were quantitative in nature. Concept map was also provided in Figure 3, which guided the following chapters.

Literature Review

Introduction

This chapter provides a detailed literature review on the topic of culture change management and resistance to change. The central purpose of the literature review was to understand the context of the study and identify a gap in the current body of knowledge. Additionally, the chapter was expected to help the researcher understand how the results of the research fit into the current literature.

First, the chapter provides explanation of the literature search strategy, including the information on the scholarly data base use. Second, the chapter introduces the definitions of the central concepts, including culture, cultural diversity, change management, and resistance to change. Third, the section focuses on differences between national culture and organizational culture, and how the national cultures affect the organizational cultures of different companies. Fourth, the researcher provides an overview of the latest trends in change management along with change management models and organization culture change. Finally, the concept of resistance to change is discussed in detail with the focus on factors that affect resistance to change and strategies that can help to overcome resistance to change. The chapter is concluded with the summary of the literature review and identification of gaps in the current body of knowledge.

Literature Review Strategy

Literature review was conducted on two major topics, including culture and change management. Thus, these words were used as the key words during search in the relevant scientific and academic databases. The keyword “culture” was also searched as a part of phrases, including ‘corporate culture’, ‘organizational culture’, ‘culture change’, and ‘resistance to culture change’. Additionally, several aspects of change management were researched using keywords ‘change management models’, ‘culture change management’, ‘resistance to change’, and ‘factors resistance to change’. These keywords were used to search various databases including Research Gate, Google Scholar, JSTOR, and EBSCO. The researcher also looked for relevant books using recommendations of peers, Google Books, and different online search engines.

When a relevant article or a book was found, the researcher including the citation of the work in the preliminary reference list with links to the source. All the abstracts of the articles were printed out, read, and sorted according to their central themes. Some of the articles had several themes crucial for the present paper. After themes were identified, they were used subheadings for the second chapter of this thesis. These subheadings were later reviewed, as more in-depth knowledge of the subject was gained.

Definitions of Concepts

Defining the central concepts is a crucial step in every research, as it helps the reader to understand the central ideas on which the study focuses. According to Riggs (1979), by defining concepts, the researcher minimizes ambiguity of the terms used in the paper. Words in any language may have different meaning depending on the context, and researchers may use the same concepts in different meaning depending on the purpose of the research and philosophical stance. This paper sees culture, cultural diversity, change management, and resistance to change as primary concepts.

Culture

The concept of culture is very wide, as it can have numerous meanings depending on the context. In 1956, researchers Kroeber and Kluckhohn conducted a critical review of all the definitions of the concept culture. The result of this review was a list of 164 definitions of the concept which varied in their wording and area of applicability (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012). The majority of researchers conclude that culture is a collection of knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, laws, customs, habits, and capabilities that a person acquires by being a part of the society (Avruch, 1998). One of the definitions provided by Kroeber and Kluckhohn explained culture as a collection of implicit and explicit patterns of behavior transmitted by symbols among members of a society (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012). Kroeber and Kluckhohn also emphasized a central value of ideals, traditions, and values for forming a culture of a social group. Hofstede (2001) defined culture as collective programing of the mind that helps people distinguish between members of a group and non-members of a group. Matsumoto (2006) made a significant contribution to the understanding culture as a concept by stating that culture is viewed as a collection of attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors similar in one group but different for every individual. Matsumoto (2006) also emphasized that culture is communicated from one generation to another using implicit and explicit methods. This idea was developed in the definition provided by Spencer-Oatey (2008), which stated that culture is a system of basic assumption, values, beliefs, policies, procedures, and behaviors that affect but an individual as part of the group. However, this system does not determine the behavior or interpretation of meanings.

While there is no agreement among scholars about the wording of the definition of culture, there are several characteristics of culture that can be derived from the definitions provided above:

1. Culture is not inherited biologically after the parents of a child. It is something that individuals learn throughout their lives through experience (Avruch, 1998).
2. Culture can appear only in a group of people. Culture requires several members to appear, such as employees of an organization, members of a religious group, or citizens of one country (Hostede, 2001; Matsumoto, 2006; Spencer-Oatey, 2008). One person cannot create a culture, and culture cannot be a characteristic of an individual.
3. Culture is transgenerational. This characteristic of culture implies that it is passed from older generation to the next one (Matsumoto, 2006).
4. Culture is connected to symbols. Culture is transmitted from one person to another using symbols, which makes the ability to interpret symbols crucial for understanding a culture (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012). Culture may be understood as the capacity of human beings to create symbolic representations of concepts.
5. Culture is a system. This characteristic of culture demonstrates that all the aspects of culture are closely interconnected, and changing one part of a culture will affect all the other aspects.

There is also another crucial characteristic of culture that was mentioned by Schein (1991). Culture is adaptive in nature, which implies that it reacts to the changes in the environment. This aspect of culture is closely correlated with the humans’ adaptive nature, that allow individual to change as a reaction to the alterations in the outside environment. Reyes-García et al. (2016) state that the adaptive nature of culture is the key to the success of human species in evolution. Since humans all share similar genetic material, only culture can explain the diversity of local behaviors. In other words, García et al. (2016) states that different cultures were formed as a reaction to the outside environment, including climate and presence of different resources. Thus, there are six crucial characteristics of culture that should be mentioned to describe the concept of culture with a high degree of precision.

Culture may be understood on different layers, depending on the degree to which a researcher needs to examine the concept. Schein (1991) reports that when speaking of culture, one may consider physical artifacts on the lowest level of understanding, values on the middle level, and basic underlying assumptions on the highest level. The level of physical artifacts includes everything that can be touched, seen, heard, smelled, or tasted (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012). For instance, dress codes, national dishes, architecture, paintings, and music refer to this level. Additionally, the level of artifacts includes include all formally written papers, such as company philosophy, constitution of a country, or ethical code also belong to the level of artifacts (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012). One may argue that a company’s philosophy describes the values of a group, which implies that it should belong to the middle level of understanding of culture. However, Schein (1991) argues that formally written values do not always describe the actual values that a group of people has. Moreover, a company may include many subgroups that may have varying values depending on the department on location. Thus, the formally written philosophy is used only as an artifact that should be referenced when making company-level decisions.

The second level includes all the values that group members share that affect their behavior. This level of culture is difficult to assess, as there is no strategy that can help observe these values directly (Kalman, 2009). Researchers often need to infer the values by interviewing the key members of the social group to understand the shared values (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012). However, when analyzing the key values of a group of people, it is crucial to understand that people may not be absolutely sincere when explaining their actions. In particular, they may say how they would ideally explain their actions by values. Focusing on the words may create a biased understanding of actual values of the group. Thus, researchers need to find the shared meanings (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012).

On the highest level, culture is a collection of underlying assumptions that are even more difficult to decipher from behavior or even interviews. These assumptions are unspoken truths that may not even understood by the group members (Schein, 1991). These underlying assumptions are often what is behind someone calling a person insane or indecent without understanding a reason. For instance, almost everyone shares the assumption that businesses need to make profit, schools should educate, and healthcare aims at prolonging lives of people (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012). In some way, underlying assumptions are values; however, unlike other values, these assumptions are undebatable.

When speaking about the power of culture, researchers need to understand that it affects meanings people imply when using words and gestures (Hofstede, 1991). One of the most vivid examples of such quality of culture is the word ‘football’, which refers to different games depending on the culture of the speaker. The US citizens use the word ‘soccer’ for the game that the rest of the world knows as ‘football’. Spencer-Oatey and Franklin (2012) also provide an example of the meaning of the ‘ring gesture’ (thumb and forefinger touching). While in the western cultures, this gesture refers to approval, in the Mediterranean countries, this gesture is used as an insult.

The concept of culture should be differentiated not only from personality, but also from human nature. Hofstede (1991) stated that humans are programmed on three levels, demonstrated in Figure 4 below. Culture lies in the middle between human nature and personal traits. The basic level of the human programming pyramid is human nature, which is universal to all people and inherited on the genetic level (Hofstede, 1991). Universal human nature is the reason people have numerous common underlying assumptions even though some groups have never come in contact with the rest of the world. Culture, as it was mentioned previously, is the learned aspect of human programming, which is learned by person due to him being a member of a group (Hostede, 2001; Matsumoto, 2006; Spencer-Oatey, 2008). The personality is the highest level of human programming which is both inherited from parents and learned from the society (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012). Human nature affects culture and personality, while culture affects personality only, without affecting human nature.

It should be also noticed that culture affects the biological processes, which is indirectly mentioned previously. It is true to say that all people need to consume food to survive; however, culture affects how much people eat, what they eat, when they eat, and with whom they eat (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012). In other words, a person’s association with a cultural group may influence a person’s ideas about the appropriateness of various biological processes depending on the time and place (Kronenfeld, 2017). For instance, some cultures encourage that people should eat just enough to keep them healthy, while other cultures insist that people should receive pleasure from the process of eating. Spencer-Oatey and Franklin (2012) also provide an example that in some cultures high levels of pain are expected to be tolerated, while other cultures encourage expressing pain. The fact that some people suppress pain may lead to reduction of sensitivity to pain on the biological level (Ferraro, 1998). In other words, culture of pain tolerance affects the biological process inside a human body. Similarly, a culture of eating to gain pleasure may lead to obesity, which are also biological changes (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012).

While all the characteristics of culture provided above are important, there is one aspect of culture that is crucial to acknowledge for the purpose of the present thesis. Culture is subject to gradual change due to both internal and external factors (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012). On the one hand, culture change is attributed to its adaptive nature. As it was mentioned previously, culture evolves by adapting to the changes in the outside environment (Reyes-García et al., 2016). Externals factors that affect change include but not limited to changes in geopolitics, economic situation, climate change, and globalization (Schein, 1991). At the same time, culture is affected by internal dynamics of a group. As time passes, some of the practices or traditions may be found impractical or inefficient, which may lead to changes in the artifact, values, or even underlying assumptions (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012). Establishing that culture change is not only possible but inevitable is crucial for the present paper, as it confirms that culture management is possible.

There are several inadequate conceptions that should be understood to acquire a clear understanding of the concept of culture. Six misconceptions about culture were described by Avruch (1998):

1. Culture is homogeneous. Some people may think that that culture gives clear instructions about how a person should act in different situations, as it is free of internal paradoxes. Culture is not homogeneous, and a person learning a culture may not be able to use it to interpret the behavior correctly.
2. Culture is a thing. Culture is a not an independent object that can act separately from people. Instead, culture is a combination of interwind processes and ideas that cannot be operationalized with a high degree of reliability. Any documents that state the values of a group should be considered as attempts to describe its culture, but not culture as it is.
3. Culture is uniformly distributed among members. As it was mentioned earlier, cultures affect personalities, but do not determine the behavior of individuals. Variations inside one culture should not be dismissed as deviance, as it impairs the understanding of culture.
4. An individual possesses a single culture. An individual is usually a member of several groups, which implies it possesses several cultures. A person is usually seen as a citizen of country, part of the neighborhood, and an employee of a company, which all possess cultures.
5. Culture is a custom. Culture is not something that can be observed in its entirety. Customs within a culture are only a part of the complicated phenomenon of culture. If one believes that the concept of culture can be narrowed down to observable customary behavior, the concept of culture is reduced to the surface-level etiquette. While such etiquette is an integral part of any culture, it does not describe culture in its entirety.
6. Culture is timeless. The idea that culture stays the same without changing throughout time is biased. Therefore, when referring to Arab culture, it is crucial to specify the time period one to which one is referring, as the Arab culture of the sixteenth century is completely different from the Arab culture today. Knowing this is crucial when judging cultures based on theories and research that may be considered outdated.

In summary, the concept of culture is one of the most complicated and controversial ideas, as it may be approached from different angles. On the operational level, culture may be understood as a collection of customs, behaviors, artifacts, traditions, and values of a group. There are numerous characteristics of culture that should be understood, such as the fact that culture is learned, transmitted through generations using symbols, and non-equally distributed. Literature review also revealed that culture has three layers, including physical artifacts, values, and basic underlying assumptions. The central characteristic of culture as a concept for the present paper, is that culture can be changed and it changes under the influence of internal and external factors.

Cultural Diversity

The concept of cultural diversity is overview in the present paper as an equivalent to multiculturalism, which has a significant influence on the business world in Qatar. As it was mentioned in Chapter 1 of the present paper, Qatar is attracting businesses and talents from all over the world to benefit from cultural diversity. There are several benefits and drawbacks of cultural diversity (or multiculturalism) that will be discussed further in this literature review. However, before discussing the impact of cultural diversity on performance of companies, it is crucial to provide a clear definition of cultural diversity. Understanding cultural diversity is central for the purpose of the present paper, as multiculturalism is a crucial characteristic of Qatar’s workplace culture.

Cultural diversity is a complicated concept that is understood differently by various individuals. Galang, Ferris, and Frink (1993) stated that even though the details of the definitions of cultural diversity may be different, the majority of researchers, when speaking about cultural diversity in the workplace, refer to demographic diversity. However, the understanding of diversity remains different for various researchers depending on the applicability of the concept. For instance, O’Reilly, Caldwell, and Barnett (1989) understand cultural diversity as the composition of a group differing in the characteristic that define their social and cultural identity. The researchers explain that cultural diversity does not depend only on the national background; the categories of gender, socio-economic status, and education also impact diversity.

Loden and Rosener (1991) explain that there are primary dimensions of cultural diversity and secondary dimensions. The primary dimensions include sex, ethnical background, age group, and physical qualities. These attributes form a person’s worldview on a fundamental level, creating a self-image that affects interaction patterns with all the other representatives of the society, both withing and outside the cultural group (Loden and Rosener, 1991). Secondary dimensions include marital status, education level, religion, geographical location, and work experience (O’Reilly, Caldwell, and Barnett, 1989). While these dimentions also affect a person’s worldview, they are usually acquired in life.

Ranaivoson (2007) conducted a thorough overview of the concept of cultural diversity from different angles. First, cultural diversity may be seen as a mixture of variety, balance, and disparity (Moreau and Peltier, 2004; Stirling, 1998). The greater the variety, balance, and disparity, the greater the cultural diversity within a group. Variety is understood as the number of different types or categories in a group (Stirling, 1998). For instance, the greater number of nationality present in one group, the larger the cultural diversity. Balance is seen as the way every type within group is represented, measured in the number or proportion of each item (Ranaivoson, 2007). The more balanced the variety, the more culturally diverse a group is, which implies that if there are many different types of representatives, but there is one dominating majority, cultural diversity will not be seen as large. Finally, disparity refers to dissimilarity between the two types that are the furthest away from each other (Moreau and Peltier, 2004). In other words, if there are many different representatives from numerous Arabic countries in one group, cultural diversity will not be as large, as the cultures would be similar to each other in some aspects regardless of balance and variety.

It is also crucial to distinguish between the supplied and consumed cultural diversity in the workplace (Schmalensee, 1989; Van Cuilenburg and Van der Wurf, 2001). The supplied diversity is understood as what variety, balance, and disparity are available in a group, while the consumed cultural diversity is seen as the differences that are used by the organization or the group (Ranaivoson, 2007). In other words, a group may have a large variety, balance, and disparity of cultures, as there are many representatives of various cultures that differ considerably in the nature. However, not all of the diversity may be used by the group to generate benefits, meaning that the supplied diversity may be different from the consumed diversity (Van Cuilenburg and Van der Wurf, 2001). Additionally, it is crucial not to mix up the concepts of consumed diversity and demanded diversity, as the company’s demand for diversity may be different from both the supply and the consumption. Taking a step away from cultural diversity in the workplace, demanded, supplied, and consumed diversity may be applicable to products produced by a company, such as music of different types (Moreau and Peltier, 2004).

If the concept of cultural diversity is further detached from cultural diversity in the workplace, it is beneficial to distinguish between product diversity, producer diversity, and consumer cultural diversity (Ranaivoson, 2007). Product diversity refers to the variety, balance, and disparity of services and products provided by a company. Producer diversity refers to the differences in actors that create the products for consumers. Finally, consumer diversity refers to the differences in people that use the products for a certain purpose.

In summary, this paper views cultural diversity as a synonym to multiculturalism. The majority of researchers agree that cultural diversity as the composition of a group differing in the characteristic that define their social and cultural identity. However, cultural diversity may be also understood as a mixture of variety, balance, and disparity in a certain characteristic. There are primary (sex, ethnical background, age group, and physical qualities) and secondary (marital status, education level, religion, geographical location, and work experience) dimensions of cultural diversity. Other aspects of cultural diversity include supplied, consumed, and demanded diversity, as well as product diversity, producer diversity, and consumer cultural diversity.

Change Management

The concept of change management is crucial for the present paper, as it purpose to understand factors that affect resistance to culture change in multinational corporations in Qatar. This paper discusses resistance to planned or managed change, which should be differentiated from spontaneous change. Burnes (2005) differentiates between managed change within an organization, which is described and implemented by the management team, and spontaneous self-organized change that is independent from the efforts of the managing personnel. This paper assesses the factors that affect resistance to planned change initiated by managers rather than the spontaneous change.

Change management is a topic of increased attention from scholars and managers, as constant change is crucial for modern companies to stay competitive in the quickly changing external environment (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2015). Moran and Brightman (2001) define change management as “the process of continually renewing an organization’s direction, structure, and capabilities to serve the ever-changing needs of external and internal customers” (p. 111). All the companies experience constant change regardless of whether change management practices are employed or not (Burnes, 2004a). Managing change is crucial to ensure that change leads to the desired consequences (Burnes, 2004b). Therefore, change management is very closely correlated with strategic management, as change needs to be pointed at improving to reach strategic goals (By, 2004). There are numerous change theories designed to guide change managers in their endeavors (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2015). However, many of the theories contradict each other, which may cause confusion (By, 2004).

Change management is defined similarly by different authors. Change management is a structured process meant to help a company achieve a desired outcome (Paton and McCalman, 2008). McCabe (2020) also states that change management can be understood as a set of tools that designed to facilitate the transition from the current state to the desired state in different aspects of business. Voehl and Harrington (2017) define change management as methods and manners used by a company to describe and implement change in different aspects of business, including both internal and external processes. Change management usually includes the ideas of managing employees’ behavior and opinions, establishing steps crucial for completing change, and measuring the success of change (Pearce and Sims, 2002). The understanding of change management requires understanding of two crucial concepts, including change in itself and project management.

Change in itself may be viewed as a project designed to improve the current performance of a company or solve an identified problem (Paton and McCalman, 2008). This implies that project management and change management are closely correlated. Project management is defined as the use of specific skills, tools, and techniques to deliver something of value to a company (Kogon, Blakemore, and Wood, 2015). There are two sides of project management that should be understood. On the one hand, project management is a technical process, which is associated with using specific project management software and techniques that help to facilitate change (Lennon, 2021). These tools facilitate planning and implementing projects on all levels and stages, making the work of a project manager easier. On the other hand, project management is associated with project management is associated with helping the people affected by the project arrive at the desired state the most efficient way (Lennon, 2021). In other words, project management deals with transition from the current state of people’s mind to the desired state of people’s mind. In this aspect, change management is close to project management as both concepts imply that managers prepare, equip and support the employees to move to the desired state regardless of their views on the situation.

Change management is usually guided by a theory, which helps to identify the crucial steps on the way to the desired results. Additionally, theories provide justification of why these steps need to be taken and help to identify short-term and long-term outcomes of change (Voehl and Harrington, 2017). Some of the change theories include Lewin’s three-step model, Kotter’s eight-step model, ADKAR model, and McKinsey 7-S model (McCabe 2020). These theories will be discussed in greater detail in this literature review, as the purpose of this section is only to define the concept of change management and describe its crucial characteristics.

While the change models mentioned above have different approaches to planning, implementing, and sustaining change, they have four central principles in their core that should be identified. The first principle focuses on understanding what is change and why it is needed (Paton and McCalman, 2008). In other words, change management focuses on answering such questions as “What is the purpose of change?”, “What are the expected benefits of change?”, and “What is needed to achieve the planned change successfully?” All the change models agree that, in order to feel the benefits of change, stakeholders need to be dissatisfied with the current was of affairs and see the predicted outcomes of the proposed change (Batras, Duff, and Smith, 2016).

The second principle of change management is planning, as all the change management model insist that without thorough planning a project cannot achieve the desired result (McCabe 2020). The rigidity of planning may differ depending on the adopted model and the requirements of change; however, no model allows implementing change without a clear plan of action. The planning process usually includes finances, stakeholders, workforce, and milestones (Voehl and Harrington, 2017). There are numerous tools that can help to plan change, including Leavitt’s Diamond, impact analysis, SIPOC diagrams. Leavitt’s Diamond is an approach to change planning that focuses on four central aspects, including tasks, people, structure, and technology (Coffie, Boaten, and Asombala, 2018). Impact analysis focuses on identifying all the possible consequences, both positive and negative, to make the decision if the project should be implemented (Paton and McCalman, 2008). After the decision is made, impact analysis helps to identify all the possible risks and create a risk management plan to prevent or mitigate the effects of negative outcomes (Paton and McCalman, 2008). SIPOC diagrams help to plan the effect of the change on suppliers, inputs, processes, outputs, and customers (Gueorguiev, 2018). In summary, the instruments have one central assumptions, which is that change does not happen in a vacuum (Voehl and Harrington, 2017). In other words, any change affects the entire system, as all its parts are interconnected. Thus, when planning change, it is crucial to assess its impact on all aspects of business.

The third principle of change management is implementing the created plan in the most efficient way. Implementing change requires remembering about the people’s feelings while trying to focus on making a bridge from the current to the desired position (Voehl and Harrington, 2017). While different theories provide varying recommendations for implementing change, there are several suggestions that all change models share, including ensuring that everyone understands all the requirements and the end goal of change, all the stakeholders understand the success criteria, and the degree of involvement of every stakeholder is clearly defined (McCabe 2020). Additionally, all the change models agree that, during the implementation process, change agents need to be appointed, personnel should be trained, and all the stakeholders need to supported (McCabe 2020).

The fourth principle of change management is communication, which implies exchange information and knowledge efficiently to promote and support change. The center of the communication is always vision statement, which provides all the stakeholders with a clear idea of the desired outcome (Voehl and Harrington, 2017). The principle of communication is closely connected with the concept of stakeholder management, which is maintaining positive relationships with all the stakeholders using appropriate strategies (Karlsen, 2002). Stakeholder management is associated with using the exactly right amount of resources to keep all the stakeholders satisfied, which can be achieved by using the stakeholder matrix, which divides stakeholders into four different groups depending on the level of their power and interest (Meredith and Mantel, 2011). These groups include promoters (high power, high interest), latents (high power, low interest), defenders (low power, high interest), and apathetics (low power, low interest). Depending on the type of stakeholder type, the manager can use one of the four strategies, including managing closely, keeping satisfied, keeping informed, or monitoring (Meredith and Mantel, 2011).

In summary, change management is a structured process that helps to move the company from the current state to the desired state. The concept of change management is closely connected with the concept of project management, as change can be seen as a project. Close association between the concepts of change management and project management makes them share tools and techniques, such as stakeholder matrix, Leavitt’s Diamond, impact analysis, SIPOC diagrams. Change management is usually guided by a theory or a change model, which may differ significantly in the approach to planning, implementing and controlling change. However, all of the models share four basic principles, including understanding, planning, implementing, and communicating.

Resistance to Change

The concept of resistance to change lies in understanding the concepts of change and resistance. The concept of change was defined above as a project designed to improve the current performance of a company or solve an identified problem (Paton and McCalman, 2008). While it may appear a narrow definition, it is appropriate for the purpose of the present paper. The concept of resistance, however, is multidimensional and needs to be discussed with more detail to understand if the concept of resistance to change exists.

The concept of resistance is understood differently by various researchers, as it has been used to describe a wide variety of behaviors and actions in different settings, including politics, sociology, literature, and entertainment (Hollander and Einwohner, 2004). Resistance may be seen as anything from revolutions to hairstyles, and there is surprisingly little consensus among the researchers concerning the concept of resistance in any aspect (Hollander and Einwohner, 2004). Some researchers view resistance as acting autonomously in a person’s own interest (Fisher and Davies, 1993), while others saw resistance as “active efforts to oppose, fight, and refuse to cooperate with or submit to… abusive behavior and… control” (Profitt, 1996, p. 25). Modigliani and Rochat (1995) took a middle position between the two extremes provided, stating that resistance is mere disagreement or objection to an opinion or behavior. In their attempt to systematize the definition of resistance, Hollander and Einwohner (2004) stated that debating between different definitions of the concept may lead to an unsettling rivalry without a consensus, which is why a typology of resistance was developed to make the definition of the concept more inclusive.

The first and most evident forms of resistance is physical resistance, which can be observed and felt. Hollander and Einwohner (2004) explain this mode of resistance as acts, where resisters use their bodies to demonstrate their disagreement or objection. This form of resistance is usually associated with social or political movements that protest against the current way of things (Jasper, 1997). Thus, this for of resistance is usually represented in the forms of marching, picketing, strikes, and formation of such organizations (Rapone and Simpson, 1996). Such resistance can be as active as violence and as subtle as working slowly to sabotage the productivity and effectiveness of a company. Physical resistance is opposed to voice resistance, which can be observed in the form of talks or other types of symbolic behavior, such as gestures (Hollander and Einwohner, 2004). Example of such behavior may be continuing to speak the local language even though the government insists on switching to the national language. Additionally, voice resistance may be observed in the form of silence, when the resister is encouraged to speak (Hollander and Einwohner, 2004). For instance, if people refuse to reply to the questions of the police about a crime, they demonstrate their resistance to power.

Resistance can also be classified in terms of scale, place, organization, and target (Hollander and Einwohner, 2004). If scale is considered, resistance can be either large, which implies that a great of actors are involved, or small, meaning that the number of actors is relatively insignificant. Additionally, when speaking of scale, resistance can be individual or group-based. In terms of place, resistance can be local or widespread, while in terms of organization, it can be spontaneous or coordinated. The level of coordination among the participants of the resistance can also be a basis for subdividing resistance into several typologies (Prasad and Prasad, 1998). In terms of goals, resistance is most often associated with achieving some kind of change; however, the goal of resistance may be to oppose change (Hollander and Einwohner, 2004). The cases of opposing change are of increased interest for the present paper.

Resistance can be also classified depending on the source and the direction. The source of resistance is usually a minority, which is oppressed and refuses to be subdued; however, there are also numerous cases of the majority being the initiator of resistance. For instance, Moghissi (1999) describes “cultural resistnace,” which is connected with a minority group trying to preserve its cultural identity under the pressure of the culture of the majority. At the same time, the case of the White majority in the United States fighting against desegregation is an excellent example of how the majority resisted the change initiated by a minority group. Thus, it may be concluded that resistance is diversified and can be classified based on a wide variety of characteristics.

After conducting a through literature review, Hollander and Einwohner (2004) defined four elements of resistance. These elements are discussed below:

1. Action. Resistance is understood as action or behavior, which is compared to inaction. It is crucial to understand that mere thinking about not liking something is not resistance in its core. Resistance presupposes taking active steps demonstrating opposition that can disrupt the current way an organization or community functions (Prasad and Prasad, 1998). All researchers also agree that resistance is not a quality of an actor, but the demonstrated behavior towards a phenomenon.
2. Opposition. The second crucial element of resistance is opposition that can be demonstrated in a wide variety of forms. The majority of definitions overviewed by Hollander and Einwohner (2004) included synonyms to the word ‘opposition,’ including rejection, contradiction, and disruption. While there are other elements of resistance, ‘action’ and ‘opposition’ are the core aspects of resistance, which implies that resistance, in its essence, can be defined as “an opposing action.” There are two other elements that are optional for the understanding of resistance discussed below.
3. Recognition. Resistance may be both recognized and unrecognized by the target and by the observer. Resistance may not be recognized by the target, which makes it a covered resistance or externally defined resistance. Since resistance can be both recognized and unrecognized, recognition is not a core element of resistance. However, it is a crucial aspect for the definition of resistance as a concept in one case, which is discussed below.
4. Intent. Resistance may be both intended and unintended by the actor. The observer (or the target) cannot judge if resistance is intended or unintended, which implies that intent is a category of the actor. Similar to recognition, intent is not a core characteristic; however, it should be understood that if resistance is unintended and unrecognized by neither the actor nor the observer (target), it is not considered resistance. In other words, resistance must be either intended or recognize or both intended and recognized.

Based on the four elements of resistance described above, there may be eight types of resistance, given the two core elements (action and opposition) are present. Table 1 below provides a matrix of these types of resistance.

Table 1. Types of resistance (adopted from Hollander and Einwohner, 2004)

Based on the definition and aspects of resistance describe above, the concept of resistance to change may be defined as actions that oppose the alteration in the current state of matters within the organization. This definition is close to the definition provided by Grama and Todericiu (2016), which states that resistance to change is “any opposition to the alteration of a certain situation and represents a regular reaction to change” (p. 48). At the same time, this resistance may be both intended and unintended as well as recognized and unrecognized by the target and the observer.

While resistance to change is a common concept used by scholars and managers, some scholars challenge that resistance to change exists as a concept. The idea that employees are a source of resistance is largely based on Lewin’s force field model (Dent and Goldberg, 1999). The idea of the model is that managers need to identify the sources of resistance to change and address them to ensure smooth transition to the desired state (Lewin, 2013). The model essentially puts managers as the change agents against the employees as the source of resistance, which may lead to undesirable consequences. Kotter (1995) observed more than 100 companies and concluded that when a major change was needed, the employees understood the new vision and objectives and wanted change to happen. However, there were some obstacles to change that needed to be overcome to move to the desired state of the organization (Kotter, 1995). Therefore, it can be concluded that employees do not resist the change; instead, they protect their status, comfort, and salaries, which may be affected by change (Dent and Goldberg, 1999). Viewing the employees as an opposing force of change may lead to problems with participation in change management, which is a crucial success factor in change management (Gaylor, 2001; Del Val and Fuentes, 2003). Thus, it may be beneficial abandoning the idea of resistance to change, which may lead to emergence of new approaches to change management. However, this paper does not intend to challenge the existence of resistance to change

In summary, in order to understand the concept of resistance to change, it is crucial to define the concept of resistance in isolation. The analysis of the concept revealed that the term “resistance” is used by different researchers in different contexts with variations in meanings. However, all the definitions of “resistance” assume that it has four elements. The core elements are action and opposition, while non-core elements include recognition and intent. Based on these attributes, resistance can be of eight different types. While the concept of resistance to change is discussed by many researchers, some researchers deny the existence of resistance to change as a concept, as such resistance may be viewed as protection of employees’ status, comfort, and salaries, which may be affected by change. However, this paper does not intend to challenge the existence of resistance to change. It defines resistance to change within a company as actions that oppose the alteration in the current state of matters within the organization.

National and Organizational Cultures

This section of the literature review focuses on discussing the concepts of national cultures and organizational cultures. The primary purpose of the section is to demonstrate the differences and similarities between the two concepts. By discussing different national cultures, this section shows how multiculturalism in the workplace may be difficult to manage due to the differences in the values and underlying assumptions of different cultures. The section is concluded with a discussion of cultural problems in the oil and gas sector in Qatar stating that unmanaged cultural diversity and multiculturalism along with the impact of the pandemic are the key concerns of the industry.

National Cultures

This section focuses on classification and peculiarities of cultures of different nationalities, which is crucial to discuss in the context of multiculturalism in Qatar. When speaking about multiculturalism and cultural diversity, this paper implies diversity of national cultures in the workplace. As it was discussed in the definition of the concept of culture and multiculturalism, nationality is one of cultural diversity, which makes it relevant to discuss cultures of the entire nations. This section aims at discussing different approaches to understanding national cultures, such as Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and Schwartz’s cultural model. While this paper utilizes Hofstede’s cultural dimensions as the primary theoretical framework, other approaches to explaining national cultures are also overviewed to provide a theoretical background. It is also crucial to mention that the present section aims at overviewing the deepest levels of culture, which is underlying assumption and values. No consideration is given to the level of physical artifacts, as it is considered of no interest for understanding the problems of corporate culture of the multinational corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions

The model of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions was briefly discussed in Chapter 1 of the present paper as one of the central theoretical models on which this paper is based. This model is based upon six dimensions, including power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism vs. collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity, and long-term vs. short-term orientation (Dellner, 2014). While the model is widely used by researchers to understand cultural differences between various countries, it has met significant criticism in the modern world (Hofstede, 2002). As a result, the model of cultural dimensions went through significant changes throughout its history.

In its original research of 1980, Hostede collected data from companies in 40 countries suing a questionnaire consisting of 160 questions that touched upon all aspects of culture along with other personal questions (Hofstede, 1991). In 1985, another ten countries were added to the sample, which allowed to increase the study’s reliability and generalizability (Hofstede, 1991). The original study revealed four central dimensions that described national cultures, including power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity/femininity, and collectivism/individualism. The original study was based on the principles of the ecological approach, which allowed to view a separate country as an independent unit in terms of culture. The original research was followed by several other studies that encouraged Hofstede to introduce the fifth and the sixth dimensions, which were long-term orientation and indulgence (Minkov and Hofstede, 2011). The latest dimension (indulgence vs self-restraint) was added after a collaboration with Minkov in 2010 (Minkov and Hofstede, 2011).

The introduction of cultural dimensions led to establishing a tradition in cross-cultural psychology, allowing managers to understand the peculiarities of perception of the reality of people from different countries (Hofstede, 2001). Some of the areas where the model of cultural dimensions was used include international communication, international negotiation, international management, and international marketing. The central advantage of the theory is that it appeals directly to values and underlying assumptions, which are difficult to observe and measure, as it was discussed previously in this chapter (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012). Knowledge revealed by Hofstede allowed to adapt the approaches of managers and negotiators to become more successful and ethical (Dellner, 2014).

Even though six dimensions were briefly introduced previously in this paper, it was decided to explain these dimensions in greater detail (Hofstede and Minkov, 2013):

1. Power Distance Index (PDI). This dimension describes the views on power distribution among members of the society. Higher scores imply that the representatives of the culture incline towards strict hierarchy in power, which means significant disparities in the benefits and privileges people enjoy on different levels of power. In other words, high PDI means that the people at different distances with different ranks have distinct peculiarities in terms of various characteristics, and it is difficult to change the rank within the system. Lower PDI means that the culture does not tolerate strict hierarchy and often destroy the barriers that separate people from different ranks of power. Another way of interpreting PDI is the level of equality a country enjoys. High PDI usually means that there is a significant inequality in the society associated with strict definitions of roles in the hierarchy. Conversely, low PDI signifies high levels of equality, as there are no strict boundaries between ranks, which implies less differences between representatives of different power ranks. Lower scores in the dimension also mean that the mobility among ranks is high, which is crucial for maintaining equality in a society.
2. Individualism (IND). This dimension focuses on the perceived values of being independent and being part of a group. High individualism implies that people view personal benefits as the central value in comparison with the benefits for the society. This implies that, when making decisions, representatives of cultures with high score in individualism will incline to the option that bring more benefits for the individual than for the group. At the same time, representatives of cultures with lower individualism index will tend to guide their decision-making process based on the perceived benefits for the group. Cultures with low individualism scores enjoy a sense of protection from being a member of a group, while highly individualistic cultures enjoy opportunity from being independent.
3. Masculinity (MAS). The masculinity score characterizes cultures in two ways. On the one hand, high masculinity score demonstrates that the central roles in the culture are confined to men, which implies that males become the dominant gender. Conversely, low masculinity score demonstrates that females become the dominant gender, and the power positions become taken by females. In other words, masculinity index describes gender roles in a culture, showing what is expected from men and women. On the other hand, masculinity index describes the set of values in a society, assuming that all values can be divided into feminine and masculine. In the cultures with high masculinity index, increased emphasis is put on material success, competition, and high achievement. Feminine culture focus on values that are seen feminine, such as modesty, tenderness, and the quality of life.
4. Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI). This dimension describes the extent to which representatives of a culture feel comfortable in highly ambiguous situation. High UAI demonstrates that people tend to avoid risky situations, when there is decreased control over the process. Low uncertainty avoidance index demonstrates that the representative of the culture feels comfortable taking risks and tend to try new approaches to problem-solving even if they are associated with significant ambiguity. Therefore, people that have cultures with high uncertainty avoidance prefer strict rules and enjoy following guidelines, while representative of culture with low uncertainty avoidance index prefer relative freedom in the approach to tasks.
5. Long Term Orientation Index (LTO). This dimension describes the priorities of benefits in the planning process. Cultures with high LTO are oriented toward long-term goals, which may mean sacrificing short-term benefits for a greater cause. At the same time, cultures with low LTO prefer short-term success over possible success in the long-term. Cultures with long-term orientation prefer stability and can adopt change even if its benefits are not immediately felt. Countries with low LTO can also change; however, they need to feel immediate results to sustain change long-term.
6. Indulgence vs Restraint Index (IVR). The IVR score demonstrates how freely the representatives of the culture can indulge in gratification of desires and feelings. Low IVR score demonstrates that the culture values restraining from material pleasures and promotes ascetism. On the other hand, high IVR scores implies that the society encourages gratification of pleasures, which is usually connected with indulgence in sex, consumption, and leisure activities.

Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions faced significant criticism from the researchers. Some of the points of criticism include relevancy, assumption of cultural homogeneity, division by nation, influence of politics, and lack of statistical integrity. First, critics of Hofstede’s model stated that the researcher utilized an instrument with limited validity, as variables appear to be more sensitive to some cultures more than to the others (Schwartz, 1999). Second, some researchers criticized Hofstede for assuming that culture is homogeneous and equally distributed among the representatives (Shaiq et al., 2011). While this assumption is clearly against the core of the concept of culture discussed in Section 2.3.1, Hofstede was forced to assume such homogeneity to be able to describe national culture to some extent (Shaiq et al., 2011).

Third, Hofstede was criticized for utilizing nationality as the central criteria for division, as it was inconsistent (McSweeney, 2000). Fourth, researchers pointed out that some of the indexes were influenced by the political situation in the world at the moment of study. In particular, many countries in Europe suffered from the consequences of World War II, which may have led to the high scores in the UAI (Shaiq et al., 2011). Since the war, the indexes may have changed, as culture is known to be a concept identified in time (Avruch, 1998). Therefore, the measurements of the dimensions may be both biased and outdated. Finally, the sampling methodology utilized by Hofstede may have led to significant bias due to inappropriate utilization of statistical methods. In particular, the sample sizes for different countries had significant variations. Which may have led to biases (Shaiq et al., 2011). While all the criticism provided above is relevant, Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions remains one of the most reliable, which is why it was used as the theoretical basis for the present paper.

Schwartz’s Cultural Model

One of the major theories that oppose Hofstede’s cultural dimensions is Schwartz’s Cultural Model, developed by an Israeli sociologist Shalom Schwartz. In 1990, Schwartz published an article that criticized the dichotomy of individualism and collectivism using three arguments (Gouveia and Ros, 2000). First, Schwartz stated that some values that serve both individualistic and collective goals, such as the desire to have a family. On the one hand, the family helps people to fulfill their personal desires, while, on the other hand, creating a family is beneficial for a society in general. Second, some values, while serving collective purposes, are not characteristic of the in-group, such as social justice. Third, dichotomy presupposes when a value supports collective goals, it is done at the expense of the personal goals and vice versa. However, hedonism, for example, does not necessarily affect collective goals even though it is clearly an individualistic value.

After publishing the criticism of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, Schwartz developed his own model that included seven dimensions described below (Schwartz, 1994):

1. Embeddedness. This value is also known as conservation, which stands for a type of social structure where security, conformity and tradition are the central priorities. Conservative cultures aim at avoiding actions of individuals that may affect the traditional order. In other words, countries with high score in embeddedness aim at protecting status quo.
2. Hierarchy. The value of hierarchy places increased emphasis on the legitimacy of authority by prescribing roles withing the society in terms of distribution of wealth and power. Conservatism and hierarchy are two dimensions that replace Hofstede’s dimension of collectivism.
3. Intellectual Autonomy. This dimension concerns the independence of ideas from the collective thought. Highly embedded cultures may try to control intellectual autonomy by limiting publications of new ideas to protect status quo. This implies that cultures with high score in intellectual autonomy enjoy free speech and avoid censorship.
4. Affective Autonomy. This dimension is associated with promotion of affective experiences, such as pleasure and varied life without censure. Usually, there are certain bans concerning affective autonomy, such as illegal substances or behaving in a way that disturbs others. Affective autonomy together with the intellectual autonomy are considered the opposite of embeddedness. In other words, increases in conservatism are always done at the expense of either intellectual autonomy or affective autonomy or both. Autonomy, in general, is understand as control over one’s own choices, which is the opposite of accepting the choices made by the society.
5. Egalitarianism. This dimension describes the equality of all members of society through social justice, taking responsibility, and help. These values are not much of interest for highly collectivistic countries, where self-identification of every person is associated with the identification of the group. Thus, egalitarianism is the opposite of hierarchy, where the society is unequal be definition. Thus, any steps towards egalitarianism are made at the expense of hierarchy.
6. Mastery. This dimension focuses on the values of self-affirmation, such as ambition, success, risk. Mastery is also called competency, and it is associated with affective individualism, when a person tries to dominate over others.
7. Harmony. Harmony is opposed to mastery, as it values connection with the environment to achieve harmonious life instead of trying to subdue nature. As mastery and harmony are the opposites of each other, development in one will lead to a degradation in another. Gouveia and Ros (2000) state that harmony is associated with “unity with nature, protection of the environment, world of beauty” (p. 27).

The values described above are usually visualized using a circle, which demonstrates three dichotomies (see Figure 5 below). While the model was similar to that of Hofstede’s, it addressed one of the central weaknesses identified by Schwartz, which was the traditional dichotomy of individualism vs. collectivism. However, the majority of weaknesses of the model remained unaddressed, such as assumption of cultural homogeneity, division by nation, and influence of politics (Gouveia and Ros, 2000).

Organizational Culture

Organizational culture is usually understood as a collection of values, practices, expectations, and norms within an organization (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2015). Schein and Schein (2016) describe 12 components that are usually included in the concept of organizational culture:

1. Observed behavioral regularities in the interaction of member of one organization. This aspect includes conversation patterns, typical responses to praise or criticism, interaction customs, and traditions.
2. Climate. This component is associated with the feelings conveyed through the interaction between members.
3. Formal rituals and celebrations. This aspect includes celebrations of key events in an organization. The list of all the events that are celebrated is also crucial for the organizations culture.
4. Espoused values. Such values are formally announced or written in the organization’s documents. These values are also usually included in the corporate website and recruiting documents.
5. Formal philosophy. Such philosophy is a clearly stated in the regulatory documents and includes key guiding principles of the attitude towards shareholders, customers, and employees.
6. Group norms. Unlike espoused values, group norms include implicit standards and values that emerge in the process of the communication between group members.
7. Rules of the game. This aspect of organizational culture includes unwritten rules of getting alone in an organization that a newcomer must learn to be accepted by the rest of the team members.
8. Identity and image of self. This constituency of organizational culture is associated with the statement of how organization understands its purpose and mission.
9. Embedded skills. These are abilities passed on from one member of an organization to another, which are not included in any written documentation.
10. Mental models. These models are explained as shared cognitive frameworks that influence perception, thoughts, and language of the group members.
11. Shared meanings. Words may have different meanings from one organization to another, and the set of meaning associated with different words is one of the key components of the organization structure.
12. Integrating symbols. These symbols are characteristics the organization uses towards itself.

Organizational culture also has four crucial characteristics described by Schein and Schein (2016), including structural stability, depth, breadth, and pattering:

1. Structural stability. When speaking about an organizational culture, people infer that it is not only stable, but also structurally stable, as it defined the group as a unit. Without such stability, a person cannot define oneself as a member of a group, as there would be no stable characteristics. As it was mentioned previously, culture changes constantly under the influence of internal and external factors (Avruch, 1998). However, culture needs to preserve some stability to be recognizable for both insiders and outsiders.
2. Depth. Organizational culture, similarly to other types of cultures, cannot be defined based on the external aspects. Schein and Schein (2016) introduce a term of “cultural DNA,” which is very close in definition to “underlying assumptions) mentioned by Spencer-Oatey and Franklin (2012) as the deepest level of culture. In other words, organizational culture cannot be observed in its entirety, as some aspects of organizational culture remain unseen.
3. Breadth. Any organizational culture affects all the aspects of functioning as a group, included its internal operations and communication with the external environment. In other words, there is no element of organization that is not affected by culture and changes in culture. This notion is crucial for understanding the importance of organizational culture for a company’s productivity and effectiveness.
4. Pattering and integration. This characteristic of an organizational culture implies that any element integrates in culture to become a part of the whole. In other words, culture changes to accept new elements or modifications in the old elements to avoid disorder in the culture.

While organizational culture can be measured using the same dimensions used for measuring national cultures. Shahzad et al. (2012) report, that utilization of four original Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, including power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and masculinity, can be applied to organizational cultures. Trompanaar (1993) identified seven dimensions of organizational culture, which were universalism versus particularize; diffuse versus specific, neutral versus emotional, individualism versus communication, ascription versus achievement, attitude to time and attitude to the environment. Shahzad et al. (2012) also mentioned that all organizational cultures may be subdivided into contractual and relationship cultures. In other words, the relationships within organizations may be based on contract and strictly documented rules or on personal relationships between employees and other stakeholders. Dimensions of organizational culture demonstrate that their differences between the national culture and the organizational culture lie primarily in the types of groups that they describe.

The importance of organizational culture is difficult to overstate, as it affects the performance of individual employees as well as the team in general. The central value of organizational culture is that it is directly connected with financial and competitive success of a company on several levels. Denison (1990) stated that competitive performance of a company is strongly correlated with the degree to which the values are shared by all members of the organization. Sustainable competitive advantage arises from the organizational competencies which cannot be imitated by the competitors (Shahzad et al., 2012). Emergence of such organizational competencies is closely correlated with the strength of organizational culture, which cannot be copied by writing the same rules or adopting the same leadership styles.

Saffold (1998) stated that organizational culture affects performance through three central mechanisms. First, organizational culture provides social control over employee behavior without involvement of the manager. Second, organizational culture connects the employees together because value sharing works a social glue. Finally, organizational culture creates a common paradigm for all employees that allows all the employees to understand corporate, goals, events, and employee roles in such events.

There are two types of organizational cultures, according to Deal and Kennedy (1982), which are strong and weak cultures. An organizational culture is called strong, when the majority of employees hold the same general beliefs and values. Strong organizational culture is also characterized by employees being more important than rules. Weak organizational culture is understood as a set of unclear beliefs that is not shared by all the employees. In weak cultures, the managers are often forced to impose strict rules to control behavior of employees.

The majority of research concerning organizational culture focuses on its influence of strong organizational culture on corporate performance (Shahzad et al., 2012). For instance, according to Saffold (1998), strong organizational culture may be a source of confidence of employees that reduces stress and improves ethicality of employee behavior. However, Deal and Kennedy (1982) state that weak organizational culture can also influence organizational performance. According to Barney (1991), the central conditions of a culture to become the key factor of competitive success include the culture’s rarity, viability, and inimitability. If the culture is weak, it is likely to have a significant impact behavior of employees; however, it is unlikely to impact the goals of employees (Deal and Kennedy, 1982). Thus, strong organizational culture is more likely to affect the company’s performance.

The central difference between the organizational culture and the national culture is that organizational culture can be managed. Lubis and Hanum (2018) stated that organizational culture is formed by the founders or leaders of the company. All the employees participate in the creation and evolution of workplace culture, which is natural, according to Avruch (1998). Careful management of organizational culture is crucial to ensure ethical behavior and unity of values for all employees (Lubis and Hanum, 2018). Thus, managers need to ensure that changes in the organizational culture lead to positive changes in the company’s performance.

In summary, organizational culture is a complicated concept, as it can be viewed from different sides. However, close analysis revealed that there are numerous similarities between national culture and organizational culture. In particular, organizational culture may be described using similar dimensions described by Hofstede (1991). There are two central differences between national cultures and the organizational cultures. First, national culture describes a culture of an extremely diverse group that is united on the basis of nationality, which is not always a viable criterion for association (McSweeney, 2000). Organizational culture describes or less diversified group due to a smaller size united by the criterion of being employed by one company. Second, organizational culture can be managed, as it highly influenced by the leaders of the company (Lubis and Hanum, 2018). The establishment of the fact that organizational culture can be managed is crucial for the present paper, as this research aims at identifying which factors contribute to resistance to culture change and how this resistance can be addressed.

Cultural Diversity in the Workplace

When speaking of cultural diversity in the workplace it is crucial to establish a clear definition of the concept. It was discussed earlier in the present paper that cultural diversity is not plurality of sub cultures within one organizational culture; instead, cultural diversity is the composition of a group differing in the characteristic that define their social and cultural identity (O’Reilly, Caldwell, and Barnett, 1989). In other words, cultural diversity is understood as composition of the group in terms of national cultures (Loden and Rosener, 1991).

Shahzad et al. (2012) state that subculture is a segment of culture which demonstrates some significant differences in terms of beliefs, values, and norms. Subcultures may differ significantly from the mainstream organizational culture or be its slight variation. Lok, Westwood, and Crawford (2005) state that perception of the employees of subcultures is connected to the employees’ commitment to the organizational culture. While understanding the concept of subcultures is crucial for realizing a deeper meaning of the concept of organizational culture, it is not valuable for understanding the concept of workplace cultural diversity.

Managing cultural diversity in the workplace is of extreme importance for Qatari managers due to growing multiculturalism in the country (PSA, 2017). The central problem of managing cultural diversity in the workplace is the difference in values and beliefs among different national cultures (Hopkins and Scott, 2016). Corporate leaders are in a constant search for efficient strategies for managing cultural diversity in the workplace, as effective management is crucial for staying competitive in Qatar.

The importance of managing cultural diversity lies in the ability to utilize the benefits of multiculturalism to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. There are several positive implications of cultural diversity in the workplace for companies. Lambert (2016) states that cultural diversity is associated with increased innovation in the workplace. In other words, companies with increased cultural diversity may benefit from innovation if managed carefully. Hirshleifer, Hsu, P., and Li (2018) state that increased innovation leads to improved financial performance of companies, as measured by financial position and profitability. However, innovation is possible only if managers follow three principles of cultural diversity managers, including fairness, constant learning, and legitimacy (Lambert, 2016). In this case, fairness is understood as a lack of discrimination against cultural minorities.

Cultural diversity in the workplace allows deeper understanding of the needs of diverse clients by providing cultural insights. Ellemers and Rink (2016) state that cultural diversity enables companies to cater for a larger variety of clients, offer a broader range of products, and has the potential to build more community credibility” (p. 49). In other words, managers that manager cultural diversity carefully can understand the needs of their clients better, which can be turned into competitive advantage.

Kim (2006) conducted a created a comprehensive summary of all the benefits of managing cultural diversity carefully. These benefits are listed below:

1. Increase ability to generate innovative ideas. Hiring employees with different demographical backgrounds is beneficial, as it can bring a wide variety of perspectives, experiences, and opinions. Homogeneous teams are unlikely to be creative, as they have similar backgrounds in terns of values, rules, and limitations. Creativity is crucial for succeeding in the conditions of globalization and modernization, as new approaches to problem-solving can create sustained competitive advantage.
2. Improved public image of the organization. If a company encourages cultural diversity and manages it carefully, employees and customers see the company as positive. Public opinion about the company is extremely important, as it directly influences financial performance by affecting customer satisfaction and ability to enter new markets.
3. Attraction of human resources. Cultural diversity in the workplace attracts new talents with different cultural backgrounds. Without carefully managed workplace diversity, international talents are hesitant in joining the organization, as they may be concerned with organizational fit.
4. Enhanced organizational growth. As cultural diversity allows penetration into new markets, attracts valuable human resources, and improves public image, it allows fast expansion of the company. Since people with different cultural backgrounds feel comfortable in the organization, they join it more easily.

Qatar’s National Culture

Before discussing the organizational culture problems in Qatar, it is crucial to understand the peculiarities of Qatar’s national culture. Even though the population of Qatar is highly diversified, the influence of national culture on the organizational cultures may still be high, as Qatar remains the host country. This section discusses Qatar’s culture in terms of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Even though it was considered beneficial to describe the country’s culture using Schwartz’s model, there are no studies that assessed Qatar’s national culture using it, as the original study by Schwartz (1994) included only 60 countries. First, the section describes Qatar’s culture in isolation, discussing every dimension in detail. Second, Qatar is compared to different countries around the world, including Germany, Japan, and Brazil. Finally, Qatar’s culture is juxtaposed with Saudi Arabia’s and the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE’s) cultures. It was assumed that Qatar’s culture will be closely correlated with other Arab cultures; thus, comparing Qatar’s culture to other Arab cultures was expected to help to determine the peculiarities of Qatar’s culture.

Qatari Culture in the Light of Hofstede’s Model

As the paper commences to a discussion of Qatar’s culture in terms of cultural dimensions, it is crucial state that the country’s culture was assessed using only four initial dimensions (Hofstede Insights, no date). The country was not reassessed in terms of two additional dimensions, which implies that the results are relatively outdated. In other words, only power distance, individualism, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance indexes were included in the analysis, while indulgence and long-term orientation were not included. According to Spencer-Oatey and Franklin (2012), culture changes over time under the influence of external and internal factors; which implies that culture needs to be reevaluated regularly to avoid bias. However, since no recent information on Qatar’s national culture is available, this research used the outdated information. The scores in the four dimensions are provided in Figure 6 below.

The power distance score was very high (93), which demonstrated that the representatives of the culture accepted the hierarchical order, where the roles in terms of power are clearly defined and require no justification. This implies that possessors of the Qatari culture are used to inherent inequality and centralization of power Hofstede Insights, no date). While it may be viewed as vulnerability by the economists (GlobalEDGE, 2022), such culture is crucial for maintaining the political order in the country (Hofstede’s Insights, no date). As it was mentioned in the first chapter of the present paper, almost all power is centralized in the hands of the monarch (GlobalEDGE, 2022). The citizens of the country accept such a way of things, which would be impossible if the power distance index was low.

As for the implications for managers, Qatari employees prefer to be told what to in detail and follow the instructions carefully (Dellner, 2014). Innovation and initiatives from the employees are minimal, as holders of Qatari culture do not feel that they have the power to make decisions (Hofstede, 1991). At the same time, managers expect obedience from the employees and make decision without consulting, if they are authorized to do them (Hofstede’s Insights, no date). Additionally, high power distance score presupposes that managers do not attempt to influence decisions over which they have no authority (Hofstede’s Insights, no date).

When speaking about individualism, the IND score was as low as 25, which demonstrates that the representatives of Qatari culture have more collectivistic values. In other words, Qatari people tend to give up their individual identity to the group in exchange for the benefits provided by the group, such as protection and acceptance (Dellner, 2014). This implies that Qatar’s culture is associated with long-term commitment to all the groups to which a person belongs, including family, extended family, employer’s organization, and religious group (Hofstede’s Insights, no date). As a result of the tendency to collectivism, the entire group tends to share responsibility for the mistakes of every individual member.

As for the implications for management, Qatari culture requires significant adaptation in comparison with managing employees that represent western cultures. Employer-employee relationship is considered in moral terms instead of the business terms, which means that the relationships between the boss and the subordinates are family-like, and offences lead to shame and loss of face (Hofstede’s Insights, no date). In general, management of representatives of Qatari culture is considered management of groups rather than management of individuals.

Masculinity index of Qatar’s culture was medium (55), with a slight inclination towards masculine values. Representatives of the Qatari culture are likely to seek success through hard work. Additionally, the index demonstrates that males dominate over females in the culture. As for the implications for managers, it is recommended to created the atmosphere of competition, where every employee could demonstrate their superiority over the colleagues in terms of competence. Conflicts in masculine cultures are resolved in open confrontation, which may be dangerous for collectivistic cultures (Hofstede’s Insights, no date). Thus, managers should be careful managing conflicts within groups.

While the information is applicable to cultures with high masculinity index, it is only partially applicable to Qatari culture. The problem is that the culture is uncertain in terms of masculinity index, which may mean that the dimension is not strongly marked. This may mean that managers need to diversify their strategy and sometimes demonstrate care and make increased emphasis on the quality of life (Hofstede’s Insights, no date). The relatively low score may be explained by the fact that even though competition, material success, and hard work are central values of the culture, the gender roles are more-or-less traditional.

The uncertainty avoidance index for Qatari culture was as high as 80, which demonstrates that possessors of the culture feel uncomfortable in the situations with increased ambiguity. Qatari culture expects clearly defined roles and rigid codes of conduct, as they help the representatives of the culture feel secure (Hofstede’s Insights, no date). Unclear roles and instructions lead to increased uncertainty, which may cause anxiety and stress.

Possessors of Qatari culture have an emotional need for rules, which implies that managers need to ensure that all the employees have clear understanding of expectations. Qatari people view time as money and work hard, as free time creates increased uncertainty about what should be done. Precision and punctuality are the key characteristics of representatives of cultures with high uncertainty avoidance index, and security is an important motivation tool (Hofstede’s Insights, no date). Managers of Qatari employees should not expect innovation from the employees; moreover, the employees may even actively resist change, as it causes significant uncertainty (Hofstede’s Insights, no date). This characteristic of Qatari culture is central for the present paper, as this dimension can help to explain resistance to culture change in the multinational corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

Comparison of Qatar’s National Culture with Others

It is crucial to compare Qatar’s culture with cultures of other major countries to understand the differences in national cultures. Figure 7 below juxtaposes Qatar’s cultural dimensions with those of Japan, Brazil, and Germany. Brazil was selected to represent the Latino countries, Japan was selected as a representative of Asian countries, and German was included as a typical European culture.

The analysis demonstrates that Qatar has the highest power distance among the four compared countries. While both Brazil and Japan also have high scores in power distance, Qatar is the leader among the four observed cultures, which implies that Qatari people are more inclined towards rigid hierarchy. This implies that managers need to pay special attention to instructing the representatives of the Qatari culture, as the they are not likely to make decisions for themselves. The representatives of the Qatari culture are least likely among the observed cultures to make decisions if they do not feel that they have the power to do so. Thus, if the managers expect the employees to make the decision, they need to explain that clearly to Qatari employees.

In terms of individualism-collectivism dichotomy, Qatari culture has the strongest inclination towards collectivistic values in comparison with Germany, Brazil and Japan. While Brazilian culture is relatively close to Qatari culture in terms of collectivism, the difference between the individualism score between Germany and Qatar is tremendous. Therefore, managers may experience problems trying to motivate teams if they have both Qatari and German representatives together.

All the analyzed countries, except for Brazil, have some inclination towards masculine values, which implies that the representatives of the culture are success-driven and competition. It should be noticed, however, that Qatar’s culture’s inclination towards masculine values is somewhat weak in comparison with Japan. Moreover, since Qatari culture is associated with collectivistic values, it is unlikely that individuals from Qatari culture will completely openly with other individuals. However, competition of several groups may be effective more motivating representatives of the Qatari culture.

Even though Qatar had a high score in terms of uncertainty avoidance, Japanese culture was highest among the four of the culture. However, it should be noticed that all of the countries had relatively high scores in terms of uncertainty avoidance. Therefore, providing clear instructions to representatives of all the analyzed cultures is crucial for effective management. In summary, Qatar has two distinct peculiarities in comparison with other analyzed cultures, which are the highest score in terms of power distance and the lowest individualism score.

While comparing Qatar’s culture is important to understand how Qatari culture differs in comparison with eastern and western countries, it is also critical com compare Qatar’s culture to other national cultures of the Arabic world. Figure 8 below demonstrates how Qatari national culture compares to that of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The analysis demonstrates that the three Arabic cultures have similar scores in four of Hofstede’s dimensions. While there are slight differences among the countries in masculinity and power distance scores, individualism and uncertainty avoidance indexes are similar. This implies that representatives of Qatari national culture and other Arab national cultures have much in common and can be managed similarly. Additionally, based on the assumption that Saudi Arabia’s national culture and Qatari national culture are relatively similar in all dimensions, Qatar’s national culture score in long term orientation and indulgence can be estimated, as Saudi Arabia’s scores are available.

Arabic culture’s score in terms of long-term orientation is low (36), which implies that culture is normative and focuses on achieving short-term results. Arabic culture is known to have a significant focus on establishing the absolute Truth (Hofstede’s Insights, no date). The culture is focused on following traditions and meets any changes in the society with suspicion and resistance. Arabic culture aims at quick short-term benefits without intention to save or prepare for the future. In terms of indulgence, Arabic culture appears to have a balance. The culture’s representatives do not appear to control their feelings and desires with increased intensity. At the same time, Arabic culture does not praise gratification of immediate desires without limitations.

Further Considerations

While the Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions provides some insights about Qatar’s culture it does not provide much detail. Thus, it is crucial to discuss other peculiarities of Arab culture as discussed by modern scholars. Before commencing into description of the Arab culture, it is beneficial to discuss some of the common misconceptions about Arab culture that may affect the perception of the reader. Some of these misconceptions are outlined below (US Army Training and Doctrine Command, 2006):

1. All Arabs are Muslims and all Muslims are Arabs. While the prevailing religion of the Arab world is Islam, there are still many Arabs that are Christians and Hindu. At the same time, Arabs make up only 18% of the Muslim world, which makes the idea that all the Muslims are Arabs inappropriate.
2. The Arab world is on big desert. The Arab world is geographically diverse, as it lies in numerous climate zones.
3. Arab countries are ruled by mad dictators. There are numerous types of political regimes in the Arab world, and most of the rules share their power with publicly selected representatives of the society to increase its efficiency.
4. The Arab world is underdeveloped and uncivilized. Arab countries are highly developed in terms of culture and economically. There numerous modern cities mingled with old ones, which represent deeply rooted culture.
5. All Arab women are oppressed by men. It is inappropriate to believe that Arab women are oppressed by men. Family is one of the central values of the Arab world, and oppression and violence within families is viewed as inadmissible.
6. All Arab women are forced to wear veils. In some places, such as Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon, women are not imposed by the authorities to wear veils, even though Islam requires all women to wear veils. However, in some place even non-Muslim women prefer to wear veils in order to escape attacks from Muslim fanatics.

While the misconceptions described above are common stereotypes, they are based on some of the key characteristics of the culture mentioned by numerous scholars (Al-Ammari and Romanowski, 2016; Al-Omari, 2008; Dwight, 2015; Frangieh, 2018). These characteristics are discussed in this section to help the reader understand the traditional culture of Qatar and recent changes in the culture that emerged due to globalization.

First, Arab culture is closely intertwined with Islam and Muslim traditions (Al-Omari, 2008; Dwight, 2015; Frangieh, 2018). While there are some representatives of other confessions in Qatar, 70% of Qatar citizens are Muslims (PSA, 2017). However, even though Islam is a predominant religion in the Arabic world, all other countries are treated with respect (Al-Omari, 2008). The majority of Arabs believe that there should be no separation between church and the state, and religion should be the basis for school curriculum (Dwight, 2015). Such a tendency towards religiousness can be explained by the low long-term orientation index (Hofstede, 1991). Qatari people and other representatives of the Arab world are inclined to search for eternal truths and follow traditions, making the law of Sharia more important or at least as important as the state laws (Frangieh, 2018). State laws of Arab countries are often based on the law of Sharia, which emphasizes the link between the state and Islam (Frangieh, 2018). Mosques are considered holy places, and there are numerous rules associated with visits these places, such as dress codes for both men and women and prohibition of any photo and video recording (Al-Omari, 2008). Piety is considered the central virtue of any person, as so is written in Quran. This emphasizes a strong link between religion and Arab culture.

Dedication to family is another central characteristic of the Arab culture. Arabs view obligations before family before any other non-religious obligations (Al-Omari, 2008). This implies that obligations before friends and even professional duties come after family, which is crucial for any manager working with the representative of the Arab culture to understand (Dwight, 2015). Arab employees expect their managers to understand that if they were to select between a grandfather’s funeral and an important meeting, they would always select to attend the funeral. Moreover, a person’s dignity and honor come from the family rather from personal achievements and job status (Frangieh, 2018). Apart from that, it is crucial to understand that commitment to the family of the Arabs is different from commitment to the family in the western cultures. The gender roles in the Arab culture are strictly assigned, which is explained by high masculinity index (Hofstede, 1991). These differences in gender roles also apply to differences in the family duties of males and females.

When discussing Arab way of thinking, it is crucial to notice some peculiarities mentioned by Al-Omari (2008):

1. Arab people are not likely to accept their mistakes even though they may be evident. The reason for denying guilt is the will to safe face, as taking the responsibility for making a mistake means more for an Arab than for a representative of a western culture. If person takes responsibility for a mistake, it may affect the status quo of the family.
2. Even though Arabic culture is collectivistic, the representatives of the Arab culture prefer a personalized approach. In other words, when making deals or addressing an organization, Arabs communicate with people rather than with organizations or institutions. This fact is crucial for people that develop their businesses in the Arab world.
3. Arabs have a tendency to subjectivity rather than trying to achieve objectivity. This peculiarity is closely correlated with the personalized approach and personification of organizations.
4. Fatalism is a crucial characteristic of the Arab culture. Fatalism is close interrelated with the religious beliefs, as Islam supports the idea that all the events are predetermined and inevitable.
5. Hospitality is considered one of the sacred obligations of a home owner, which implies that people in the Arab world treat their guests differently than in the western countries. Arabs see satisfaction of the visitor as their top priority.

While the traditions in Qatar are still strong, globalization had a tremendous effect on the country’s culture, which can be seen in all its aspects. El-Haddad (2003) wrote that globalization was associated with ethnic, financial, technological, intellectual, and ideological influences that led to observable changes in Qatar’s culture. In the late 1990s, Qatar became the richest country in the world taking into consideration GDP per capita, which led to significant benefits for the country. In particular, globalization positively influenced the level of education in the country, as it allowed to design and finance and education reform (Al-Ammari and Romanowski, 2016). Additionally, globalization led to increased standards of living and changes in lifestyles, as Qatar residents became more economically prosperous (El-Haddad, 2003). However, these positive changes affected the traditional culture of the country, as modernization touched every aspect of people’s lives in Qatar (Al-Ammari and Romanowski, 2016).

Qatari people began to see traditional culture as economically impaired, assuming that trying to use traditional business models will lead to financial problems (Baroud, 2006). For example, traditional falafel shops became nearly obsolete in the majority of Qatari cities, while the number of American fast food restaurants is growing rapidly. Globalization also had a negative impact on traditions associated with religion, collectivism, and indulgence. El-Haddad (2003) stated that the consumption patterns reflected in costs of marriage, the quantity and types of cars, and housing patterns demonstrate that Qatari people became more self-indulgent, rather than reserved.

Family values have also been affected by globalization, as people started to value family less than friends. The rise of education created a new platform for the representatives of Qatari culture to socialize, shifting the family roles, functions, and traditions to more western standards (Al-Ammari and Romanowski, 2016). Globalization affected Qatari daughters the most, as they received access to communication with peers from different cultures (El-Haddad, 2003). As a result, young women started to search for more freedom and pay more attention to traditional education rather than to getting married (El-Haddad, 2003). The education reform also influenced the mean marriage age of Qatari citizens. Before globalization had its full effect, the standard marriage age was between 15 and 19. In the early 2000, the mean marriage age became 20-24, which was a significant increase (El-Haddad, 2003). While many representatives of Qatari culture still believe that large family is the key to economic and social prosperity, the importance of children started to decline in today’s Qatari society (Al-Ammari and Romanowski, 2016). Thus, the value of family is declining in the Qatari culture along with other Arab cultures.

Qatari women became less dependent on men, which is became acceptable in Qatari society. Before globalization started to have significant effect on Qatari culture, it was unacceptable for women to receive education or work (El-Haddad, 2003). Today, many Qatari women have jobs, which allows them to support their own living (Al-Ammari and Romanowski, 2016). Women gaining independence is closely connected to the decreased cases of polygamy, as women no longer need the support of men to become successful in life. Fewer women are willing to become second wives due to the influence of globalization, even though polygamy is still acceptable in the Qatari society (Al-Ammari and Romanowski, 2016).

Religion is having a Migration increased the number of interfaith marriages, which affected the status of religion being the center of the Arab culture. According to El-Haddad (2003), Muslim women are not allowed to marry Christian men, while, in rare cases, it is allowed Muslim men to marry Christian women. In general, according to Sharia laws, Muslims should marry only Muslims. However, in the recent years, a shift in views of representatives of Qatari culture emerged (Al-Ammari and Romanowski, 2016). More Qatari people started to accept interfaith marriage, which shattered the traditions of Qatari people (Al-Ammari and Romanowski, 2016).

In summary, Arabic culture is changing fast due to the influence of globalization. While traditional Arabic culture is closely connected with religion, family values, clearly defined gender roles, and collectivism, the values are changing rapidly due to the influence of globalization. Qatari culture is adapting to the western values, as the standards of living change and the education levels grow. In other words, the influence of globalization confirms that culture is not a timeless matter, as it changes under influence of internal and external factors (Avruch, 1998). Taking into consideration the recent study by Al-Ammari and Romanowski (2016), which assessed the changes in Qatari culture, it should be understood that the scores of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions for Qatar may have changed significantly. However, since there are no current studies that reassess Qatar’s culture in terms of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, the values provided by Hofstede Insights (no date) will be used for the present paper.

Cultural Problems in the Oil and Gas Sector in Qatar

This subsection focuses on discussing the culture in the multinational corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. The literature search revealed that the topic is understudied, and the information on the culture of the multinational corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar is scarce. The majority of culture problems were connected to unmanaged cultural diversity in the workplace, which emerged as a result of globalization and rapid economic growth described previously in this paper. According to Kim (2006), cultural diversity in the workplace may be associated with significant benefits, including increased innovation, faster growth, access to international labor markets, and improved corporate image. However, if managed inappropriately, cultural diversity may be a significant barrier to gaining competitive advantage. This section discusses the problem of unmanaged cultural diversity along with other cultural problems in the multinational corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

Globalization has forced Qatari corporations to change to be able to compete effectively on the global arena. One of the strategies to increase a company’s competitiveness is to implement quality control measures, such Total Quality Management (TQM). TQM is a philosophy that transforms an inefficient organization into a strong competitor through elimination of all wastes and inefficient practices. However, TQM is highly dependent upon organizational culture, as TQM requires a special attitude and a very specific set of values (Tata and Prasad, 1998). A study by Al-Khalifa and Aspinwall (2001) evaluated corporate cultures of companies in Qatar’s oil and gas sector and outlined several significant problems that influenced the success of TQM implementation. These problems are outlined below:

1. Bureaucracy. Qatar’s hierarchical culture requires that numerous approvals are received before a decision is implemented. Many of these approvals are formal, as no assessments or quality checks are made by the authorities before the approval is issued in the majority of cases. As a result, the efficiency of processes suffers, and reaction time to critical events is slow.
2. Lack of Freedom. The majority of employees to not have the benefit to organize the work process according to their expert opinion. Moreover, most of employees do not have the freedom to make decision even in their zone of responsibility. As a result, innovation and initiative is rare, which negatively impacts the change process for increased quality.
3. Useless rules. Qatari culture has a high score in uncertainty avoidance, which implies that every step of the employees is to be regulated. While increased regulation is comfortable for the representatives of traditional Qatari culture, it is not comfortable for representatives of other cultures. Moreover, many rules are no longer useful for regulating the behavior of employees, which makes them a significant barrier to improved quality.
4. Focus on guaranteed payment. In the majority of companies, employees receive fixed salary regardless of their performance. As a result, the effectiveness of employees and their motivation decreases significantly, which leads to decreased quality and individual productivity.
5. Low individual competition. Collectivism is not appropriate for implementation of the TQM model, as it is based upon high individual competition. The corporate culture in Qatar’s oil and gas sector supports group responsibility instead of individual responsibility, the members of the group are not likely to compete with each other.
6. Low focus on quality. The companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar have decreased emphasis on quality standards and quality checks. This makes the culture less susceptible to the TQM model.
7. Orientation on the process. Corporate cultures in the oil and gas sector in Qatar are more fixed on the process than on the results. Without increased control over outcomes, competitiveness of the companies on the global arena is questionable.
8. Increased focus on profitability. While profitability is one of the crucial measures of financial success, increased focus on profitability negatively affects long-term results. This problem is closely connected to the fact that Qatari culture scored very low in long-term orientation (Hofstede’s Insights, no date). Hence, managers do not care about sustaining financial performance, which may result in decreased concern over other aspects of performance, such as environmental sustainability and financial leverage.

After conducting a thorough analysis of the corporate culture, Al-Khalifa and Aspinwall (2001) provided several recommendations that were expected to have a positive impact on the effectiveness of organizational culture in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

1. Increase employee engagement. The employees in the oil and gas sector in Qatar need to acquire a feeling of belonging to the organization, which can be achieved through increased participation in the decision-making process. Additionally, the companies in the sector should offer ownership of the key employees, to increase their motivation and interest in improved results. Such changes can increase the freedom of the employees and decrease bureaucracy, which were defined as the key drawbacks of the current organizational culture in the sector.
2. Put more focus on human resources. One of the key sources of competitive advantage is the effective team. Therefore, it is crucial for the companies in the sector to assess employee needs systematically to ensure that employee satisfaction is at the acceptable level. Increased focus on the employees instead of the profitability will ensure high morale and increased trust to the organization, which is crucial for TQM implementation.
3. Build effective teams. Building teamwork is another crucial factor that is expected to address the problem ineffective workforce. These teams are expected to collaborate with each other instead of being subordinate to each other, which will decrease the influence of the traditionally hierarchical culture of Qatar.
4. Encourage taking risks. Employees are to be allowed to take risks without being blamed. Risk-taking behavior is closely correlated to the amount of freedom employees enjoy. If employees are given more freedom to act based on their own judgement, it is expected to increase the decision-making speed and created opportunity for the growth of employees and the company. Additionally, it will make the culture of Qatari companies more flexible, which is crucial in the quickly changing external and internal environment. Additionally, risk-taking behavior may lead to innovation.
5. Promote customer centricity. Companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar do not try to satisfy the needs of the customer. This may lead to decreased competitiveness, as customers may decide to turn to the competitors if the supply surpasses the demand.

As seen from the analysis of the organizational culture in the oil and gas sector in Qatar, national culture of Qatar has a significant impact on the organizational cultures. While traditional Qatari culture may be comfortable for the Qatari employees, it may be inappropriate for representatives of other countries. Currently, almost 90% of Qatari population are non-Qatari in their origin (PSA, 2017). The rise of globalization led to significant linguistic changes, as English has become the second unofficial language for the country’s business world (De Bel-Air, 2014). People numerous countries, like India, Philippines, France, and China came to Qatar in search for better opportunities (Nebel, 2017). While Qatar’s national culture may be acceptable for Arabs (Hofstede, 1991), it is alien to the representatives of other countries. In other words, cultural diversity should be managed appropriately to benefit from the cultural differences of the employees. Without efficient diversity management, cultural diversity in the companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar will be a liability rather than a source of competitive advantage.

Gottfredson (1992) introduced a three-level model that explained the development process of a culturally diverse organization. The first represents homogeneous organizations, which do not have any demographical diversity. The extreme level of homogeneousness includes lack of diversity in gender. The second stage of is plural representation of numerous cultures in one organization which appears unmanaged. Such organizations retain a homogeneous leadership styles, and the organizational culture is not adapted to accept different values of representatives of various national cultures. On the second level of cultural diversity, cultural minorities are either directly or indirectly encouraged to switch to the dominant culture. National cultures, other than the dominant one, form sub-cultures instead of influencing the dominant culture. At this stage, diversity is tolerated rather than embraced. The final stage of development of culturally diverse organizations is called ‘true diversity’, as all the subcultures and the dominant culture merge into one corporate culture that embraces different values, behaviors, and views. Such organizations are dynamic in terms of culture, which is achieved through two-way learning and interdependence of values. At this stage, the organization does not experience any negative effects of cultural diversity, as representatives of different national cultures feel comfortable, which enables their productivity. Currently, multinational companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar are on their way from the second stage to the third stage of embracing cultural diversity (Al-Khalifa and Aspinwall, 2001).

Unmanaged cultural diversity may lead to significant communication problems within groups. Cultural diversity is associated with significant linguistic diversity, which may hinder with the effectiveness of communication within and among teams. According to Matthews and Thakkar (2012), “global businesses must understand how to communicate with employees and customers from different cultures in order to fulfill the organization’s mission and build value for stakeholders” (p. 325). Even if employees speak a common corporate language, they may experience difficulties in information exchange due to different level of proficiency and varying cultural backgrounds (Thompson, 2018). People with different cultural backgrounds may interpret gestures, words, and phrases differently as they often have unique communication methods (Thompson, 2018). In other words, communication patterns are highly dependent upon cultural, ethnical, national, and language backgrounds, and managers need to be able to understand and manage those differences effectively.

Cultural diversity may lead to increased costs associated with the decision-making process in the situations of high ambiguity. The problem is that people with different national backgrounds are expected to have different characteristics in terms of uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede, 1991). As a result, harmonization of the decision-making process may lead to increase time and resource consumption (Amaram, 2007). As mentioned by Al-Khalifa and Aspinwall (2001), the decision-making process in Qatari firms in the oil and gas sector was slow due to bureaucracy and ineffective rules. Another reason for slow decision-making may be conflicts based on the differences in cultural backgrounds.

Prejudice and xenophobia are also significant problems associated with unmanaged diversity in the workplace. Without interference of managers, the relationships between employees may be guided by personal views and attitudes towards different cultures, which may lead to conflicts within the organization, reputation problems, and even legal issues (Allen et al., 2008). Some employees may prefer working with the people that have similar cultural background, which may cause disparities in the communication patterns among employees. Prejudice in the human resource department may lead to inadequate hiring practices due to discrimination based on gender, culture, or sexual orientation (Amaram, 2007). As a result, the phenomenon of ‘glass ceiling’ may have a significant effect on the organization, which is inability of certain cultural groups achieve higher positions in the organization. Since the diversity in the workplace in the companies in the oil and gas sector is unmanaged, multinational organizations are facing problems associated with discrimination, prejudice, and xenophobia.

D’Netto and Sohal (1999) stated that workplace cultural diversity may lead to decreased effectiveness of operations. Such consequences of are associated with decreased workplace satisfaction of employees with cultural background different from the mainstream culture. As a result, workplace diversity leads to increased absenteeism and employee turnover, which leads to additional HR casts related to hiring and training of new employees. Moreover, D’Netto and Sohal (1999) mentioned that unmanaged workplace diversity leads to unequal opportunities for the employees to training and on-the-job learning, which leads to decreased ability to improve performance. Since performance of individuals affects the performance of the team, the effectiveness of operations decreases significantly.

Gottfredson (1992) stated that cultural diversity also affects the leadership styles of managers. The problem is that mangers in culturally-homogeneous organizations utilize similar leadership styles to all employees, as representatives of one culture may be more susceptible to one specific leadership styles. In the culturally diverse companies, leaders are forced to adapt their leadership styles to meet the needs of employees with different backgrounds. However, the trend to a homogeneous leadership style remains for a long time period.

Kim (2006) stated that acknowledging cultural differences in the individual employees is not a viable strategy for managing cultural diversity. In order to avoid negative effects of cultural diversity, tolerance and internationalism should be embedded in the organizational culture. Managers need to take active steps to leverage differences, combat discrimination and xenophobia, and promote inclusive values.

Change Management

The modern reality of business is highly susceptible to change due to the quickly changing internal and external environments (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2015). Most international companies understand that without continuous change, the companies will become non-competitive quickly. Beer and Nohria (2000) state, “Not since the Industrial Revolution have the stakes of dealing with change been so high. Most traditional organizations have accepted, in theory at least, that they must either change or die” (p. 133). Thus, change management has become one of the central factors of success for companies of all sizes (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2015). Organizational change management is the key to companies’ growth, as it allows to adopt new technology, methods, and attitudes effectively and use it to improve organizational performance (Stobierski, 2020). Without a functional process of organizational change, companies’ transition can be slow and expensive, which can make them lose the competitive edge (Stobierski, 2020). Therefore, many companies often hire outside firms or individual consults to evaluate the current change management process and help to adopt more efficient change management processes.

Change management has grown into an industry of its own. Apart from the consultancy firms and individual gurus, change management industries encompasses mass media, business press, high-profile corporate executives, business schools, and politicians (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2015). Additionally, change management has received increased attention from scholars. For instance, a recent article by Rosenbaum, More, and Steane (2018) aimed at evaluating various change management frameworks, such as Lewin’s three-step theory. Mobtahej (2020) explored the psychology of change management in the software engineering industry. Kho, Gillespie, and Martin-Khan (2020) discussed change management practices in light of introducing telemedicine in hospitals of different sizes. Thus, change management in different industries is a topic of increased attention from scholars. Of the most complicated change management tasks is to modify the existing organizational culture.

Change Management Models

One of the most frequently used change management theories is Kurt Lewin’s three-step approach (Shirey, 2013). The three stages of change are unfreezing, changing, and refreezing. During the first step, change managers need to analyze how things currently work to identify weaknesses and disseminate knowledge about these weaknesses to arouse dissatisfaction among stakeholders about current practices. During the first stage, change is also planned and prepared. The second step is the implementation of the plans created during the first step. The final stage is associated with sustaining the change by transforming the policies and processes to ensure the long-lasting effect of change. There are several drawbacks to the theory mentioned by Burnes (2004b), including the assumption of the fact that a company operates in a stable state, applicability only to small-scale changes, and ignoring organizational powers and politics. However, even though Lewin’s three-step approach is more than 50 years old, it is still applicable in the current circumstances with acknowledgment of limitations (Burnes, 2004b).

Kotter’s eight-step theory may be seen as an extension of Lewin’s theory. Kotter’s (2012) steps include creating a sense of urgency, forming a powerful guiding coalition, developing a strategy and vision for the change, communicating change vision, empowering employees of broad-based action, creating short-term wins, consolidating gains and producing more change, and anchoring the culture change in the organization. The primary benefit of Kotter’s approach is its attention to detail in comparison with Lewin’s change model (Banerjee, Tuffnell, and Alkhadragy, 2019). However, there are also significant drawbacks, including failure to prepare the recipients of change, applicability only to command and control leadership style, lack of measures of success of change, and failure to address resistance to change (Banerjee, Tuffnell, and Alkhadragy, 2019).

While Kotter’s and Lewin’s approaches suggest changing directly by clearly defining goals and implementing relevant policies, the nudge theory suggests a more subtle approach (Kosters and Van der Heijden, 2015). The theory is based on the premise that “nudging” is more effective than forcing change (Hansen and Jespersen, 2013). In the case of nudging, employees are assumed to feel that the idea to change is coming from themselves, which makes the change easier to sustain, as employees themselves become drivers of change (Kosters and Van der Heijden, 2015). There are several steps that need to be accomplished before a change can be implemented, including defining change, considering employees’ viewpoints, gathering evidence for the best option, presenting change as a choice, gathering feedback, limiting options, and using short-term wins to sustain change (Hansen and Jespersen, 2013). While the approach is frequently cited in research, it has not been confirmed by enough evidence, and further research is required to ensure its effectiveness.

ADKAR change management model is another popular approach to change management. The model was introduced by Jeffrey M. Hiatt (2006) and included five drivers of success in change management. ADKAR is an acronym for awareness of the need for change, desire to support change, knowledge about how to change, ability to implement the change, and reinforcement to sustain the change (Hiatt, 2006). Hiatt (2006) claims that these are the basic five steps that cannot be reordered or changed without having a considerable effect on the effectiveness of the change process and resistance to change. The major drawback of the model is its lack of acknowledgment of the complexity of change, which implies that it can be used only for small-scale organizational changes or personal changes (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2015).

Another useful framework utilized for change management is the McKinsey 7-S model. The was described by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman in 1982 in their book In the Search for Excellence (Salvarli and Kayiskan, 2018). The model suggests that the company should look at seven factors that ensure best strategy execution practices. These factors include the following (Kaplan, 2005):

1. Strategy. The position and actions taken by the company in response to anticipated change.
2. Structure. The method the people and objectives are grouped, and the authority is distributed.
3. System. All formal and informal procedures utilized within the organization.
4. Staff. The people, their skills, experiences, knowledge, and background.
5. Skills. The special competencies of the organization that ensure competitive advantage.
6. Style. Leadership style and the decision-making culture in the organization.
7. Shared values. Explicit and implicit core values that are shared by all the employees in the organization.

The method is appropriate for analyzing the organizational structure to define flaws that can be addressed using change (Ravanfar, 2015). However, the framework does not provide the exact steps that should be taken to drive change effectively and efficiently.

Organizational Culture Change

Research about organizational culture change is scarce, as organizational culture is difficult to define, understand, and describe (Muscalu, 2014). In general, culture change can be described as a crucial organizational change that involves changing one or several aspects of organizational culture (Schein and Schein, 2016). The importance of culture change is difficult to overstate, as organizational culture can be a facilitator or a barrier to other organizational changes (Muscalu, 2014). Culture change is a challenging undertaking, as it presupposes a change of deeply rooted aspects of organizational behavior, which may not be evident (Denning, 2011). Culture change is a planned change that is usually sustained using one of the organization’s change frameworks or theories (Willis et al., 2016). Culture change is a significant undertaking that can be implemented only by a skilled leader. The success of the change is highly dependent on the ability of the change agent to use all the available organizational tools (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2015). According to Denning (2011), the organization tools for changing culture include leadership tools (vision, storytelling, persuasion, communication, role modeling), management tools (negotiating, strategic planning, decision-making, learning, role definition, control systems, incentives, rituals), and power tools (hiring, firing, threats, coercion). While culture change is an understudied topic in general, even less research is available for the oil and gas sectors in Qatar.

Organizational culture is often seen as one of the major sustained competitive advantages in the world of quickly changing outside environments (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2015). Thus, companies often have an urge to change organizational culture to fit the current situation; however, managers face significant resistance to culture change, which makes the process difficult to plan and implement (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2015). Organizational culture consists of three central components, including beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes accepted by the company in a certain situation for a certain person (Muscalu, 2014). These components should all be functional and adherent to top-quality practices (Schein, 1990). This requires a full understanding of the organizational culture and a clear definition of what is expected from organizational culture change (Schein, 1990). The final destination of change should also be coherent with the company’s long-term strategy (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2015). Additionally, the change should be achievable in the period of time given. Alvesson and Sveningsson (2015) stated that organizational culture is a very complicated set of explicit and implicit features that may take a long time to change.

One of the most successful culture changes happened in World Bank in the 1970s (Denning, 2014). World Bank had a very complicated culture due to the presence of numerous stakeholders from different countries. The organization had a very obscure culture that varied among different departments and subgroups, which is somewhat common for international organizations (Denning, 2014). Another crucial challenge was that the organization had no clear vision or mission that is crucial for having a functional culture (Schein, 1990). Robert McNamara was able to implement a culture change in the company without formal restructuring or hiring new people; the change was designed and implemented through careful assessment of the current culture, defining the desired state of culture, and close communication with managers to achieve the defined goal (Denning, 2014).

Communication is the key component of successful culture change in any organization. Alvesson and Sveningsson (2015) stated that successful implementation of culture change requires the participation of the entire company, which is impossible without adequate communication practices. Communication may take different forms starting from traditional meetings, online communication, and story-telling through sharing written information among employees (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2015; Denning, 2014; Briody, Pester, and Trotter, 2012). Communication is required for creating a positive attitude to culture change and forming a strong alliance among managers and employees (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2015). However, communication alone is not enough for successful culture change.

A successful culture change needs to be guided by a clearly defined framework to ensure success (Gibson and Barsade, 2003). The framework can be taken from either theoretical works or from the best practices described in the literature (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2015; Ogbonna, E. and Wilkinson, 2003). However, all change needs to be driven by a shift in strategic values and goals (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2015; Denning, 2014; Gibson and Barsade, 2003; Willis et al., 2016). The strategic goals and objectives are often dictated by the internal and external environment that affect organizational values both directly and indirectly (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2015). Sources of culture change outlined by Muscalu (2014) include:

• Reduced performance of the company in whole or some of its departments;
• Change in the focus of managers;
• Newly adopted organizational vision or mission;
• Response to a crisis or an incidence;
• Newly adopted roles of managers;
• Acknowledgement of differences between the desired and the actual practices and values within the organization;
• Changes in the recruitment or reward practices;
• Low ability of the company to adapt to the changed outside environment;
• Resistance or hostility to the new practices within the company due to inconsistency with culture;
• Change in the company’s rituals.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an urge for culture change in all types of organizations around the globe. Rituals and practices have changed automatically due to lock-down, social distancing, and remote work (Spicer, 2020). The culture of many companies has changed from that striving for innovation to that seeking resilience and safety (Spicer, 2020). One of the primary concerns of many organizational cultures became the reduction of risks of infection spread and associated morbidity (Singh et al., 2020). Instead of seeking new employment opportunities and career advancement, many employees started to value stability and the ability to work distantly as the primary reasons for selecting a workplace, which changed corporate culture drastically (Guan, Deng, and Zhou, 2020). Without effective practices of planned change, the culture of the companies may change uncontrollably, which may lead to disastrous consequences, among which inconsistency between the implicit and explicit values is the central problem (Muscalu, 2014). However, many researchers argue if planned culture is achievable.

Some researchers claim that managing culture change is impossible, as any culture is deeply rooted in the long evolutionary and revolutionary process (Gibson and Barsade, 2003). Therefore, while addressing some issues in organizational culture may be effective, the entire process of culture change cannot be controlled due to the increased complexity of the matter (Gibson and Barsade, 2003). The problem with managing culture change is the failure of managers to evaluate the deeply-seated values, beliefs, and assumptions that affect the performance of the companies and their internal practices (Fitzgerald, 1998). Thus, many managers fail to manage culture change effectively despite the urge to manage culture change directly (Fitzgerald, 1998). The possibility to manage culture change has been confirmed by empirical research (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2015; Denning, 2014; Gibson and Barsade, 2003; Willis et al., 2016). However, it is a complicated process that should be addressed with care and patience (Fitzgerald, 1998).

Resistance to Change

Factors Affecting Resistance to Change

There are numerous factors that may affect resistance to change. These factors were formulated from the analysis of different theories and empirical studies. After conducting a thorough literature review, Gaylor (2001) focused on five basic factors that affect resistance to change. First, the level of participation in change management plays a crucial part in how smoothly change is adopted. According to Lewin (1947), one of the best ways to decrease resistance to change is to increase the level of participation of the employees in the change process. In this case, employees co-create the change and acquire a sense of ownership, which makes them a supporter of change (Gaylor, 2001). Second, communication practices within the firm have a significant impact on resistance to change (McCallum, 1997). The rationale behind the idea is that the more open communication is between the managers and other employees, the more likely the employees will be able to communicate their concern or acceptance to change (Gaylor, 2001). Additionally, if the communication is open in the firms, managers can clearly explain the benefits of change to the employees.

The third factor mentioned by Gaylor (2001) is trust in management. The higher the trust in management, the more likely the employees support the opinion of managers in all matters. Therefore, if the managers support change, the majority of employees are likely to support this change also. The fourth factor described by Gaylor (2001) is the quality of provided information to the employees. Even if the communication between managers and employees is free, it is crucial that the managers provide only relevant information about the change to the extent the employees can understand the purpose of the stages of change (Moore and Wegner, 1996). Finally, Gaylor (2001) states that the education level of leaders is crucial for addressing the resistance to change, as more educated leaders can utilize more adequate measures to address the resistance of employees.

A systematic review conducted by Del Val and Fuentes (2003) identified a larger number of possible sources of resistance to change. The factors were divided into two categories, including factors that affect resistance during the formulation stage and factors that affect resistance during the implementation stage. The first category included managerial myopia, denial of unwanted information, the perpetuation of ideas, implicit assumptions, communication barriers, and organizational silence. Additionally, cost of change, history of change failures, inconsistent interests between employees and managers, fast and complex environmental changes, reactive mindset, and inadequate strategic vision are included in this category. The second category includes differences in the company and change values, resistance from departments that will suffer from change, strong disagreement about the nature of the problem, emotional loyalty, and forgetfulness of the social dimensions of change. Moreover, leadership in action, embedded routines, collective action problems, lack of necessary capabilities to promote change, and cynicism are also the key sources of resistance to change.

Amarantou et al. (2016) conducted an empirical study that assessed six factors that may affect resistance to change in healthcare organizations. The researchers revealed that personality traits, perceptions of the benefits from the business process reengineering, job satisfaction, management-employee relationships, disposition towards change, and anticipated impact of change. The results revealed these factors were correlated with the level of resistance towards change. Similarly, Ghanavatinejad et al. (2018) provided evidence that perceived benefits from change and involvement in change have a significant impact on resistance to change. Additionally, Ghanavatinejad et al. (2018) supported the idea that cognitive rigidity, short-term focus, emotional attachment, and routine-seeking affect resistance to change.

Overcoming Resistance to Change

Resistance to change can be managed by addressing the factors that affect it. Lines et al. (2015) identified that one of the central problems with managing change is inadequate expectations from the change itself and the change management process. Therefore, it was found crucial to understand what is the adequate scope of change, the size and duration of change, organizational expectations of change implementation speed, the establishment of formal change agents, and involvement of the change agent in the implementation process (Lines et al., 2015). Change is an increasingly complicated process that requires the participation of a wide variety of stakeholders (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2015). Therefore, the expectations from change and the timeframe should be realistic to ensure the success of the endeavor (Lines et al., 2015). Additionally, the presence and active participation of the internal change agent can improve the effectiveness of the change process by up to 75% (Lines et al., 2015).

Participation in the change management process is another key to reducing the resistance to change. Lewin (1947) claimed that through participation, the employees receive a sense of ownership and become to see the change management process as their own idea. Alas (2007) concluded that motivation is the key to success in the change management process. Alas (2007) note that one of the best ways to increase motivation is to develop a sense of belonging to the process, which can be achieved through participation. Additionally, participation allows meeting the employee needs during the change process (Alas, 2007). Employees may feel that the change affects their status, which automatically causes resistance (Gaylor, 2001). Participation in the change management process can help to address this feeling, as the employees develop a new status in accordance to their needs during the change process (Gaylor, 2001).

Having adequate change management skills is another crucial factor that can help to address resistance to change. According to Bruckman (2008), managers need to be able to understand the change process entirely and navigate the company and its employees in proactive measures to change according to the trends in the outside environment. Managers need to formulate a clear vision and mission of change to understand the expected result and align interventions with the goals and objectives designed to achieve the desired change (Bruckman, 2008). Managers need to understand that resistance to change is another good nor bad, and it should be addressed through full understanding of the process of change rather than through instincts (Bruckman, 2008). While lack of necessary capabilities may increase resistance to change, having a clear understanding of the change process can reduce the barriers towards the aim of planned change (Del Val and Fuentes, 2003).

Leadership style is another factor that may decrease resistance to change. High empowering leadership style is associated with powering sharing and promotion of participation in the decision-making process (Arnold, al., 2000). As a result, employees experience increased participation in the process of change, which is a crucial success factor of change management (Alas, 2007; Gaylor, 2001; Lewin, 1947). Additionally, empowering leadership improves employee-manager relationships and increases trust in managers (Hon, Bloom, and Crant, 2014). According to Del Val and Fuentes (2003), both leader-employee relationships and trust in leaders have a significant impact on resistance to change, which implies that addressing these factors through empowering leadership style can lead to a significant decrease in resistance to change.

The climate within the organization also can help to address resistance to change among employees and managers. Hon, Bloom, and Crant (2014) stated that supporting atmosphere within an organization helps to address the resistance to change. Provision of the required resources, general friendliness, and help can help to overcome anxiety and nervousness at work (Chiaburu and Harrison, 2008). Since the change process is associated with a significant degree of uncertainty, which is usually associated with anxiety, a supportive environment within organizations can lead to decreased resistance from employees (Hon, Bloom, and Crant, 2014). Del Val and Fuentes (2003) also mentioned that implementation climate has a significant impact on resistance to change, which implies that changing the internal climate by providing more support to employees can decrease the resistance to change.

In their article titled Decoding Resistance to Change, Ford and Ford (2009) suggested several strategies that can help to address the change. These strategies are described below:

1. Boosting awareness. One of the primary problems that change managers face is the lack of knowledge among first-line personnel about the coming change and associated benefits. Therefore, increasing awareness about these matters can reduce resistance to change.
2. Returning to purpose. The employees need to understand that why a change needs to be implemented to form their opinion about it. The employees are more likely to support change when they see the personal reasons for change as well as the benefits for the organization the change may bring.
3. Changing the change. Change managers need to understand that employees often care about the company and what it to change; however, they disagree with the planned change due to the potential flaws they see. Therefore, change mangers need to adapt the change to include all the feedback from stakeholders.
4. Building engagement. Considering all the ideas in shaping up the change causes the feeling of engagement in the process. The stakeholders start to see the change as their own idea and begin supporting it.
5. Competing with the past. The majority of employees remember the results of the previous attempts to change, which may affect their attitude to the new change. Therefore, managers need to demonstrate how the new change is expected to be different from the past failures to ensure employees’ support.

Chapter Summary

The literature review aimed at overviewing the current body of knowledge concerning the problem this research attempts to solve. First, four crucial concepts were defined, including culture, cultural diversity, change management, and resistance to change. The literature review revealed that the concept of culture is multidimensional, which means that it can be discussed from different sides and on different levels. In particular, there are three levels of culture, including the level of physical artifacts, the level of values, and the level of underlying assumptions. When speaking of cultural diversity, the difference in values and behaviors is discussed; however, the level of underlying assumptions is also crucial for understanding different cultures. Examination of a literature review concerning culture change revealed that culture is a complicated concept that includes many implicit and explicit components, which makes culture change challenging to manage. However, there is enough evidence to conclude that managing culture change is possible if the leaders have the required skills.

After the definitions were given, the literature review focused on distinguishing national and organizational cultures. The review revealed that national and organizational cultures are similar concepts, as they have similar dimensions. The most commonly acknowledged dimensions were described by Hofstede (1991). Even though these dimensions were criticized, no viable alternatives for discussing the national culture of Qatar were found. Two underlying differences were found between the concepts of organizational culture and national culture. First, national culture describes a culture of an extremely diverse group that is united on the basis of nationality, which is not always a viable criterion for association (McSweeney, 2000). Organizational culture describes or less diversified group due to a smaller size united by the criterion of being employed by one company. Second, organizational culture can be managed, as it highly influenced by the leaders of the company (Lubis and Hanum, 2018).

This chapter provided a thorough review of Qatar’s national culture. First, Qatar’s national culture was described using insights from Hofstede’s cultural dimensions model. Second, Qatari culture was juxtaposed with other cultures based on the same model. After that, several critical features of Arabic culture along with common misconceptions were identified. The primary conclusions drawn from the overview of Qatari culture were that traditional culture of Qatar is closely connected to religious beliefs and family values. However, due to globalization, the culture is experiencing significant changes, as the traditional values and beliefs become less influential. As a result, the insights gained from Hofstede’s cultural dimensions model may be outdated, as the original research was conducted at the end of the twentieth and the start of the twenty first centuries.

The present section also revealed that even though change management is a topic of increased interest among scholars and leaders, resistance to culture change remains an underexplored subject. The review of five change models, including Lewin’s three-step model, Kotter’s eight-step framework, nudge theory, ADKAR framework, and McKinsey 7-S model, revealed that all of the steps have their benefits and limitations. Therefore, when managing change, it is crucial to select the most appropriate approach according to the needs of the company and the abilities of the manager. The review of factors affecting resistance to change revealed that communication practices, employee participation, manager-employee relationships, changing external environment, and perceived benefits from change are the key factors that lead to resistance to change. The strategies for reducing resistance to change are based on addressing the factors that contribute to it.

The central purpose of the present literature review was to understand cultural problems in the organizational culture in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. The analysis revealed that there were two major factors that influenced all the problems associated with organizational culture problems in the sector. First, Al-Khalifa and Aspinwall (2001) stated that corporate cultures in the sector are strongly influenced by the national culture of Qatar, which led to increased bureaucracy, lack of freedom, useless rules, focus on guaranteed payment, low individual competition, low focus on quality, orientation on the process, and increased focus on profitability. The second factor influencing cultural problems in the sector is unmanaged cultural diversity. Since the companies do not utilize full benefits of cultural diversity in the workplace due to improper management, which leads to inadequate communication practices, discrimination, xenophobia, decreased efficiency, low employee satisfaction, and increased turnover. In other words, the literature reviewed established a culture change in the sector is needed to take advantage of cultural diversity and mitigate its negative impact. However, in order to plan and implement organizational culture changes, resistance to culture change needs to addressed.

Gap in Literature

The literature review revealed several significant gaps in the current body of knowledge that this paper attempts to close. The identified gaps are listed below with explanations and justification.

1. The unique characteristics of organizational cultures in multi-national corporations in Qatar’s oil and gas sector are unclear. The only study that provided in-depth description of organizational cultures in Qatar’s oil and gas sector was conducted at the beginning of the twenty first century by Al-Khalifa and Aspinwall (2001). According to Avruch (1998), culture is not timeless and it changes rapidly under the influence of external and internal factors. Moreover, Al-Ammari and Romanowski (2016), reported that globalization affected national culture of Qatar, which has a significant influence on the organizational cultures in the Qatari enterprises (Tata and Prasad, 1998). Thus, the information about the peculiarities of organizational culture in Qatar’s oil and gas sector is outdated.
2. Insufficient information about the factors affecting resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in Qatar’s oil and gas sector. While the literature review concerning resistance to change is abundant (Amarantou et al., 2016; Del Val and Fuentes, 2003; Gaylor, 2001; Ghanavatinejad et al., 2018; McCallum, 1997), the information concerning resistance to culture change is scarce. Even less information is available concerning resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in Qatar’s oil and gas sector.
3. No studies focused strategies for addressing resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. The studies on strategies for addressing resistance to change in general are abundant (Alas, 2007; Arnold, al., 2000; Bruckman, 2008; Del Val and Fuentes, 2003; Gaylor, 2001; Hon, Bloom, and Crant, 2014; Lines et al., 2015; Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2015). However, the studies did not focus on culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

This research attempts to close all three gaps in knowledge by answering four research questions identified in the first chapter of this dissertation.

Methodology

Introduction

This chapter focuses on describing the methods utilize to answer the researcher question. The importance of the methods section is difficult to overstate, as it provides the reader with the details about how procedures that were taken to arrive at the conclusion (Gill and Johnson, 2010). Research methodology is meant to provide the reader with the information enough to repeat all the procedures to confirm the validity of results (Kallet, 2004). This section is usually written first by the researchers, as it is the most specific part of a paper (Dagnino and Chinici, 2015). Research methodology is written for experts so they can judge if the methods utilized by the researcher are appropriate for achieving the purpose of the study (Tharenou, Donohue and Cooper, 2007).

This chapter is divided into eight subsections. First, the purpose statement is provided to demonstrate that the methods are aligned with the aims of the present research. Second, the chapter focuses on research design and justification. Third, the chapter provides information about the central research method and justification of use. Fourth, the research paradigm utilized for the present paper is described. Fifth, data collection method is described along with the description of the population, sampling method, sample size, and the list of variables. Sixth, the questionnaires utilized for data collection are presented. Seventh, data analysis plan is provided. Finally, ethical considerations are outlined along with validity and reliability of methods. The chapter is concluded with a short summary of the utilized methods.

Restatement of Purpose

The present research is mixed in nature, as it seeks to achieve both depth and breadth of knowledge concerning resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. In Chapter 1, the purpose of the present research was identified as to examine the factors that affect resistance to culture change in multi-national organizations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. On the one hand, the research aims at testing the degree to which the factors identified during the literature review affect resistance to change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. On the other hand, this research aims at explaining why these factors affect resistance to change and identifying the unique characteristics of change management in Qatar’s multi-national companies in the oil and gas sector due to resistance to change. The research design and method are aligned with the purpose of the study and help to answer the identified research questions.

Research Design and Justification

Since the aims of the present research were mixed in nature, it was identified that a mixed-method approach would be most appropriate for achieving the purpose of the present study. Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, and it is used to test hypotheses that emerge from the exploration of a theory or from a literature review (Saunders, Lewis, and Thornhill, 2019). The quantitative approach requires a clearly formulated hypothesis and rigorous methodology aimed at testing the identified hypotheses (Creswell, 1994). Quantitative methods allow researchers to achieve high breadth, as large numbers of participants can be involved (Hair, 2015). Additionally, quantitative methods are praised for high objectivity and increased accuracy of results, as highly reliable statistical methods are used for data analysis instead of the possibly biased judgment of the researcher (Cooper and Schindler, 2014). Modern technology allows automation of the data collection process through an online survey platform, which makes the data collection process efficient and cost-effective. However, there are several drawbacks of quantitative research that should be considered. In particular, the results are limited by the pre-set answers to survey questions, and less detail can be achieved (Creswell, 2007). Additionally, quantitative research is usually conducted in artificial environment, which may lead to significant bias in the results (Hair, 2015).

Utilization of quantitative design is crucial for the present study, as it allows testing the hypotheses identified in Chapter 1 of the present thesis. In this regard, this research is correlational, as the it aims at identifying how several independent variables (factors) affect a dependent variable (resistance to change). According to Dagnino and Chinici (2015), correlational studies investigate relationships between two or more variables without manipulating them. This approach is useful for researchers, as its results can be generalized to large populations and are cheaper to conduct (Tharenou, Donohue and Cooper, 2007). However, using only a quantitative approach does not allow identifying unique characteristics of resistance to culture change in Qatar’s multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector. Therefore, the second part of the research is exploratory in nature, and the qualitative approach is inappropriate for exploring a phenomenon to achieve the desired depth of knowledge.

Exploratory studies are conducted to gain a better understanding of a problem that has not been clearly defined (Saunders, Lewis, and Thornhill, 2019). While the results of such research are important, they are often unpredictable, as the researcher should be willing to change the planned course of study (Creswell, 2012). The purpose of exploratory studies is to identify problems in the general area of interest for future research to focus on specific issues (Cooper and Schindler, 2014). Qualitative research is appropriate for exploratory research because qualitative research seeks to understand phenomena by analyzing behaviors, experiences, and observations made locally (Basias and Pollalis, 2018).

Unlike quantitative research, qualitative studies use open-ended questions and allow participants enough time to think about the questions and answer them in detail. Using qualitative research is associated with significant benefits, including generation of data specific to the industry, decreased number of participants, flexibility, possibility to understand attitudes and behaviors, and provision of much detail (Creswell, 2007). However, qualitative research is also associated with significant disadvantages, such as reliability and validity problems, increased possibility of bias, and low time efficiency (Creswell, 2007).

Utilization of the mixed-method approach for the present study allows benefiting from all the strengths of the approaches and mitigating some of the weaknesses of the approaches. In particular, the lack of depth from the quantitative approach will be complemented by the analysis of qualitative data. Low validity and reliability of the qualitative methods will be addressed by using rigorous methods for quantitative analysis. However, some drawbacks, like low time-efficiency and bias of qualitative data analysis, will remain a significant issue.

Research Method and Justification

All research methods are divided into primary and secondary research methods. Primary research methods include surveys, interviews, focus groups, and observations, while secondary research methods include online research using publicly available data, literature reviews, and case studies (Saunders, Lewis, and Thornhill, 2019). Since the information on the topic of interest was scarce, secondary research methods were not considered for the present research. Surveys are used to gather information from a defined population group (Creswell, 2007). The survey results are relatively simple to quantify; therefore, surveys are used primarily in quantitative research (Cooper and Schindler, 2014).

Interviews are helpful for receiving meaningful insights from experts in the sphere of interest (Creswell, 2007). Even though interviews may be difficult to analyze, they are a vital source of information for qualitative research (Hair, 2015). Focus groups are another source of data for researchers using the qualitative approach, as participants in the focus groups have a common background and can express their feelings and share their experiences freely (Saunders, Lewis, and Thornhill, 2019). Observations can be used for both qualitative and quantitative research, as they can provide crucial information from the natural environment without interacting with the participant directly (Creswell, 2012).

In order to achieve the purpose of the present study, surveys, interviews, focus groups, and observations were considered. Since surveys are the primary method of data collection in quantitative research, surveys were used for identifying the factors that affect resistance to culture change in the multi-national corporation in the oil and gas industry in Qatar. For the qualitative part of the research, semi-structured in-depth interviews were selected as the primary data collection technique. In-depth interviews provide more detailed information in comparison with surveys (Showkat & Parveen, 2017). While focus groups can be used for a similar purpose, a major drawback of focus groups is the dynamic group effect, which results in the collection of inaccurate information (Creswell, 2007). With one-on-one in-depth interviews, respondents have more time and must come up with words, phrases, and sentences to express their opinion and experience; and their opinions are not affected by other participants (Creswell, 1994). This improves the quality of the information collected. Additionally, confidentiality may be a significant factor in focus groups, as participants may be afraid to reveal sensitive information that may lead to ethical issues (Bougie and Sekaran, 2016).

As for observations, this data collection method is used to learn behavior and values through reading, listening, watching, and touching objects, beings, or phenomena (Creswell, 1994). Observations are crucial when the researcher needs to collect information without disrupting the natural environment (Hair, 2015). Additionally, the method may be crucial for understanding non-verbal behavior, which is a significant part of organizational culture. However, the drawbacks, such as the inability to learn about the past and lack of control, make the data collection method difficult to use for achieving the purpose of the present research. In summary, the primary data collection methods for the present research are surveys and in-depth interviews.

Research Paradigm

Aligning the research paradigm with the purpose and methods is crucial for answering the research questions in the most suitable and accurate manner. According to Kuhn (1970), a research paradigm is “the set of common beliefs and agreements shared between scientist about how problems should be understood and addressed” (p. 47). Research paradigms are differentiated based on researchers’ responses to three basic questions, including ontological, epistemological, and methodological questions. The ontological question is the researcher’s view on reality and the nature of the knowable. The epistemological question explains the relationships between the knowable and the inquirer. The methodological question explains how the inquirer needs to manipulate the reality to acquire knowledge about the desired subject. In other words, research paradigms provide the community of researchers with a specter of research questions that should be asked and instruments that can be used to answer these questions (Kuhn, 1970). Babbie (1998) states that these responses cannot be right or wrong; instead, they are either suitable or not suitable depending on the study’s design, purpose, and research questions.

Three possible paradigms were considered for answering the research question, including positivism, constructivism, and pragmatism. Uyangoda (2015) states that positivism presupposes that there is one single reality that can be measured and known due to objectivity of the world. When utilizing positivism as the primary paradigm for a study, researchers are expected to act in an unbiased manner and deduct the cause-and-effect relationships using context-free methods (Babbie, 1998). Positivists usually utilize quantitative research methods as they allow to measure the reality with high precision, minimize data collection and analysis biases, and help to test cause-and-effect relationships. Constructivism is the opposite worldview when compared positivism (Kuhn, 1970). In particular, constructivism assumes that there are multiple realities that coexist and require interpretation. Researchers that adopt this paradigm utilize qualitative methods, as they interact with the phenomenon of interest and gather data using biased methods, such as interviews and focus groups. The researchers that adopt constructivism as the primary approach to conducting a study utilize data analysis methods that allow much variation in interpretations.

While both positivism and constructivism are conflicting paradigms, they are both applicable to this study, as it utilizes both qualitative and quantitative methods. However, neither positivism nor constructivism can be applied to both part of research. On the one hand, this study explores cause-end-effect relationships using rigorous data analysis and collection methods. On the other hand, this research aims at interpreting the feelings and experiences of the participants to explain the unique characteristics of corporate cultures in Qatari multi-national companies in the oil and gas sector. Pragmatism presupposes that reality may be renegotiated and interpreted, which implies that the methods that should be used depend on the purpose of the study. According to Babbie (1998), pragmatists believe that both qualitative and quantitative methods can be used if they solve the problem. Frey (2018) stated that pragmatic paradigm is usually adopted in research where the methods are conflicting, which was said to be true for the present study. In other words, pragmatic worldview is most appropriate for mixed-method approaches. A literature review conducted by Gunasekare (2015) stated that mixed-method paradigm can be used for studies that have sequential explanatory design, which can be characterized by collecting and analyzing quantitative data and then collecting and analyzing qualitative data to explain the results of the quantitative part. Thus, was considered to be the most appropriate paradigm for achieving the purpose of this study and answering the research questions.

Data Collection

Data Collection Technique

The data for the qualitative part of the research was collected automatically. First, participants were sent e-mails with an invitation to participate in research. According to Heerman et al. (2017), technology-based recruitment methods are effective for securing the required sample. However, there are two major concerns with the technology-based recruitment process. On the one hand, technology-based recruitment is associated with comparatively low response rates (Moraes et al., 2021). On the other hand, emails may lead to a decreased diversification in the sample in terms of age and race (Heerman et al., 2017). Thus, the emails will be supplemented by an announcement from HR managers in the companies under analysis.

Second, after receiving the initial reply, the participants were sent a link to the survey on the Survey Monkey web-site. Survey Monkey, along with Qualtrics and Amazon Mechanical Turk, are frequently used online platforms for conducting research that provide the users with the ability to collect and analyze data in an efficient manner (Brandon et al., 2014). The second email included a description of the purpose and methods of the research. A detailed description of how the data would be used were also included in the email. The informed consent form was integrated in the first question of the survey, in which the participants were asked to confirm that they understand the terms of participation and provide their informed consent to taking part in the research project (see informed consent form in Appendix A). If the first question was answered negatively or left unanswered, the participant’s answers were not used in data analysis.

The survey included a total of 15 questions, among which five were demographic questions, nine were content questions, and one of the questions was the informed consent question. The content questions were based on a five-point Likert scale. The estimated time for the participant to complete the survey was ten minutes.

For the qualitative part of the process, 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted. The interviews were conducted in person and using Zoom. Johnson, Scheitle and Ecklund (2019) state that even though online and phone interviews may be beneficial for some researchers, using in-person interviews is preferred, as in-person interviews provide a higher richness of qualitative data. However, the COVID-19 pandemic, busy schedules, and inconvenience may incline the participants to prefer online interviews to in-person interviews. The estimated time for an interview is one hour. All the interviews will be conducted in English.

A pilot interview was conducted before conducting the interviews included in the data analysis. According to Majid et al. (2017), interviewing is a complicated process that requires practicing to achieve minimal bias and collect the needed data. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct a pilot interview to understand if the questions ask for the desired data. After conducting the pilot interview, the interviewee was asked to provide feedback on the questions, interview length, and the behavior of the researcher. After that, self-assessment of the interview procedure was conducted, and modifications to the interview process were made to ensure high reliability and validity of findings. The feedback from the pilot interview was considered during the modification process.

During the interviews, eight questions were asked in a consecutive manner. Even though variations in the ordering of questions was considered acceptable, the order of the questions was followed to ensure the reliability of findings. The interview questions were based on the insights gained from the literature review. The video and audio of the interviews was not recorded to ensure that the participants felt relaxed during the data collection process. Notes were made by the researcher during the interviews. After the interview, notes were converted into a script and sent to the interviewees for verification. Any information that was untrue or unethical was excluded from the transcripts.

Population

The purpose of the quantitative part of the analysis is to identify the factors that affect resistance to change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. Since, change is managed on all levels, population under analysis is the top- and middle- managers as well as designated change managers of multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. It was also decided to include participants from senior positions, as they were considered to have significant experience to understand the peculiarities of culture change and resistance to culture change. The population was estimated to be 20,000 people.

The purpose of the qualitative portion of the study is to identify the unique features of change management and resistance to change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. Since change management is a narrow area of management, it was considered that only specialized change managers, middle managers, and top managers could provide with enough detail about the peculiarities of change management in the organizations under analysis. Therefore, the population under analysis is top-managers and designated change managers in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. The population is estimated to be 5,000 people.

Sampling

Probability sampling method was used for recruiting participants for the quantitative portion of the present study. Probability sampling methods allow every member of the target population to have an equal chance of being involved in the research (Etikan and Bala, 2017). Probability sampling methods include four generally acknowledged subtypes, including simple random sampling, systematic random sampling, stratified sampling, and cluster sampling (Acharya et al., 2013). Since selection bias is a significant concern in quantitative research, it is crucial to use probability sampling to identify the factors affecting resistance to change. Simple random sampling will be used, as it allows minimizing bias from data collection. Additionally, simple random sampling was used for low possibility of mistakes during the sampling process.

The sampling process was performed by acquiring a list of managers with contacts from the HR department of the corporations and under analysis and associating every possible participant with an identification number. After that, random number generator was used to select the predefined number of participants. The selected representatives of the population were emailed invitations to participate in the research. The procedure was repeated several times to achieve the determined number of participants.

The required sample size was calculated using the Cochran’s (1977) formula provided below: n = t² * s² / d²

Where:

t = t-value for the selected alpha level;

s = estimated standard deviation in the population;

d = acceptable margin of error for mean being estimated;

It was considered, that the significance (alpha) level for the present research would be 0.05, which is correspondent to the t-value of 1.96. Since a seven-point scale was used, the standard deviation was 0.83. It was calculated by dividing the inclusive range of scale (5) by the number of standard deviations that include almost the entire population (6). The acceptable error was identified as 3%, which implied that d was 0.15. It was calculated by multiplying the points on primary scale (5) by the margin of acceptable error (0.03). After substituting the formula with the calculated values, the preferred sample size was estimated to be 119. The calculations are provided below.

n = t² * s² / d² = 1.96² * 0.833² /  (5 * 0.03)² = 118

Non-probability sampling methods was used for the qualitative part of research, as it is expected to help in achieving adequate representation. Non-probability sampling methods are based on a specific selection criteria and different members of the population have different chances of being included in the sample. While non-probability sampling methods may have their advantages, they are associated with significant sampling bias, as it is highly dependent on judgement and skill of the researcher (Elliott and Valliant, 2017). Non-probability sampling methods include convenience, purposive, snowball, and quota sampling. Non-probability sampling methods are used when there is low chance of sampling bias and finding the target audience is simple (Cooper and Schindler, 2014).

A combination of purposive and convenience sampling methods was used for the present research. According to Showkat and Parveen (2017), purposive sampling is selection of the participants by the researcher, keeping in mind the purpose of the study. In other words, researchers prefer using purposive sampling methods for all the participants to fit an identified profile. Consequently, researchers need to think through the selection criteria in great detail to minimize the sampling bias. While this approach to selection was considered appropriate for the present research, underrepresentation was a significant concern to the researcher. Therefore, convenience sampling was also used to increase the number of participants and ensure reliability of findings.

Convenience sampling refers to selecting participants that are readily available to the researcher due to close geographical proximity or personal acquaintance (Showkat and Parveen, 2017). The COVID-19 pandemic and busy schedules of the representatives of the population under analysis were considered as the major barriers to achieving the desired sample size through purposive sampling only. Thus, convenience sampling was selected to be a supplementary sampling approach.

Qualitative research does not usually intend to generalize to a large population; instead it aims at acquiring a rich and meaningful understanding of an issue. This implies much smaller sample sizes are required in qualitative research than quantitative research. Boddy (2016) concluded that sample sizes are dependent on the research framework utilized for the study. Any sample sizes, even as low as one can be justified, if the research provides meaningful insights (Boddy, 2016). While there are numerous recommendations for the sample size, it is generally considered that a sample of 20 carefully selected participants is appropriate (Sim et al., 2018). Thus, it was decided to conduct 20 interviews for the qualitative part of the research.

Instrumentation and Operationalization of Constructs

The quantitative part of the study took into consideration a total of seven constructs, including resistance to culture change, perceived benefits from change, quickly changing external environment, manager-employee relationships, differences in national cultures, participation, and communication practices. These constructs are correlated with the six hypotheses described in the first chapter of the present paper.

Resistance to change is understood as acting against the modification in the current culture change by the employees of the company. This paper defines perceived benefits from change as the advantages that can be achieved as a result of implementation of the change. Quickly changing external environment is understood as the alteration of political, economic, social, legal, ecological, and technological factors that affect the company both directly and indirectly. Manager-employee relationships were defined as functional business relations between the managing and non-managing personnel. Differences in national cultures were defined as diversification of cultures based on the nationality, as described by the Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions. Participation was considered to be the degree of involvement of the personnel in the decision-making process and implementation of change. Finally, communication practices were understood as patterns of internal communication within multi-national corporations.

The seven constructs described above were operationalized as nine variables, including resistance, personal benefits, firm benefits, free communication, communication quality, environment, culture inconsistency, relationships, and participation. These variables were measured using a self-created questionnaire consisting of fourteen questions. The fourteen questions were associated with a dependent variable, eight independent variables, and four control variables, which were demographic variables. The association between questions, variables, constructs, and concepts are provided in Table 2 below.

Table 2. Operationalization of constructs

Survey and Interview Questions

Survey Questions

The survey started with the general instructions that included the title of the research project and information about the purpose of the quantitative section of the study. General instructions also asked the participants to read the informed consent form that was sent together with the invitation email. Even though the informed consent form included the information on how the participant could resign from the study, the general instructions section also had this information included.

The questionnaire for the managers was divided into two parts. The first part included demographic questions along with the question that was used as informed consent for participating in the study. No personal information that could be used for identifying the participant was included in the questionnaire to ensure that the participants felt free to share all the information without the pressure of being mistreated. In particular, names, organization names, exact age, and exact position names were not included in the survey. All the survey questions and rationales for them are described below. The survey can be found in Appendix B.

The first question was used to confirm that the participants have read and understood the informed consent form. Including an informed consent form is crucial for following the guidelines for ethical research (Creswell, 2012). Including the informed consent form in the questionnaire rather than having it as a designated form allowed to exclude the responses on the basis of this question using one document. Additionally, it emphasized the importance of reading the informed consent form to the participant. The informed consent form is provided in Appendix A of the present paper.

The second question of the survey focused on the age group of the participants. A total of five age groups were introduced for the question. While there was an option to ask the participants to enter their exact age, it was considered a possible liability in the design of the questionnaire, as the participants may be concerned about including their exact age.

The third question focused on the gender of the participant. Three options were considered for males, females, and gender-non-binary participants. The third option promoted the idea of inclusion and supported the rights of the queer population.

The fourth question asked the participants to mention their nationality. Only two options were included in the questionnaire to differentiate between Qatari and non-Qatari participants. Since one of the aims of the present research was to identify how the unique culture of Qatari people affected the resistance to culture change, it was considered beneficial to differentiate between the Qatari citizens and the foreigners.

The fifth question of the first part focused on position of the participant. While the exact position name was excluded for privacy reasons, it was considered beneficial to differentiate between top managers, middle managers, and designated change managers to see of the position affected the perception of resistance to culture change among the employees in the oil and gas sector.

The final question of the first part of the questionnaire asked the participants to identify their organization’s sector. Four options were provided, including “multinational company in the oil and gas sector in Qatar,” private, government, and other. This question was used only for filtering purposes, as all the participants that identified themselves to work in the private, government, or other sectors were excluded from the final sample.

The second part included nine seven-point Likert scale content statements used to measure the nine variables identified in Section 3.6.4. All the questions had high face validity; however, since it is a self-created instrument, other types of validities were not measured.

The first statement was used to measure the independent variable, which was resistance to culture change. This statement declared that resistance to culture change in the organization was high and offered the participant to either agree or disagree with the statement. The design of this question assumed that the higher the score the high the perceived resistance to change in the company of the participant.

The second statement measured the participant’s idea concerning how much perceived benefits one could received from change. Two examples of personal benefits, including career advancement and increase in salary, were mentioned to ensure that the participants understood what was understood under personal benefits.

The third question measured how beneficial for the company the participants perceived culture changes. No explanations of benefits for the company were provided; however, it was assumed that the benefits included improved financial performance, as it is the central measure of the company’s success. Additionally, benefits may have included improved employee satisfaction, efficiency, and effectiveness.

The fourth statement measured how free the communication practices were in the companies that employed the participants. A clarification was given to the statement to ensure that the free communication demonstrated that there were no significant barriers to communication between managers and non-managers. The higher the score for this question was the less barriers for free communication the appeared to be.

The fifth statement measured the efficiency of information sharing among employees and company managers. The statement did not include any clarification, as it was considered self-evident. The higher the score for this question was the more efficient the quality of communication practices were assumed.

The sixth statement measured how the external factors affected the company. The COVID-19 pandemic was given as one of the examples of possible external factors that may have affected resistance to change in the company. The higher the score was the more affected the company was assumed to be.

The seventh statement measured how high diversity of national cultures affected the organization culture change. It was assumed that the participants understood the differences between the national and the corporate cultures, as the population under analysis were top and middle managers along with designated change managers. The higher the score was the more diversified in terms of national cultures the company was perceived to be by the participants.

The eighth statement measured how were the relationships between the managers and the employees perceived. The higher the score was the better the relationships between the managers and the staff was assumed.

The final statement focused on the engagement of employees in the change process. The higher score was reported the more participative the employees were assumed during the change process.

All the questions were reviewed by the peers to ensure validity of the instrument. No significant flaws of the instrument were found. Peer review revealed that the questionnaire was a cost-efficient and convenient approach to measuring all the variables under analysis. The convenience of the instrument lied in the required time to answer all the questions. It was estimated that the participants needed no longer than 10 minutes to read and understand the instructions and the consent form and reply to all the questions. The fact that the questionnaire was concise was assumed to have a positive effect on the response rate.

Interview Questions

Open-ended questions were asked during the interviews. According to Creswell (2012), open-ended questions assume that the participant can give free-form answers, while close-ended questions provide the participant with a set of possible variants for the answers, such as yes-no questions. Open-ended questions allow the participants to think through the answer and provide as much detail as possible (Creswell, 2007). Additionally, open-ended questions do not set a guided path for the answer, which allows the researcher to receive unique replies. Therefore, open-ended questions are crucial for explorative purposes.

All the questions were carefully evaluated before being included in the research. First, the questions were checked for clarity of wording by rereading them several times. Second, the questions were evaluated by experts to decrease the bias of the researcher. Finally, the insights from the pilot interview were also considered to ensure that the questions were appropriate for collecting relevant and reliable information. The interview questions are provided in Appendix C of the present paper.

Before starting the interview, the researcher introduced himself and established the purpose of the meeting. The researcher also gave an overview of all the questions that were included in the interview and described the privacy policy of the interview. Increased emphasis was put on the fact that the interviews were not taped or filmed to ensure that the participants were not afraid to share any sensitive information. The participants were also informed that the interviews were expected to take no longer than 60 minutes.

The interview questions were divided into three sections. A brief overview of the purpose of each section was given by the interviewer to set the mind of the interviewee. The first section includes warm-up questions that help to establish positive relationships and help the interviewee focus on the topic of further discussion. The first and the second questions of the interview aimed at focusing the attention of the interviewee un culture change as the general topic and its importance. Additionally, the questions helped the researcher evaluate how well the participant was aware of the concept of culture change. The third question allowed the participants to remember the most recent culture change they experienced to help them answer the questions from the second and the third section of the interview.

The second section of questions aims at narrowing down the topic to barriers and resistance to change. Three questions included in this section were meant to contribute to understanding of the topic by understanding the unique characteristics of organizational cultures of Qatari multi-national corporations that affected the culture change process. In other words, questions from the second section helped to answer RQ1 of the present paper.

The final section of questions aims at focusing on overcoming resistance to change. The first question in this section asked the participants to remember how the resistance to change was addressed in their company. The second question asked for recommendations for addressing the resistance to culture change. In other words, the last question of the interview helped the interviewees to reflect on how well resistance to culture change was addressed in their company and share if any other methods may have worked based on the participants’ experience.

Data Analysis Procedures

This section focuses on data analysis procedures that were used to draw conclusions from the collected data. According to Babbie (1998), data analysis is a process of finding patterns in the data that was collected using both qualitative and quantitative measure to understand if it can answer the research question. Quantitative data is analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics (Creswell, 1994). Statistical analysis is usually conducted using specialized software, such as Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), Microsoft Excel, MiniTab, and Statista. Analysis of qualitative data is associated with analyzing unstructured textual data to look for themes and patterns (Creswell, 2007). When analyzing qualitative data, the researcher is the main instrument of data analysis (Basias and Pollalis, 2018). As the research utilizes a mixed-method approach, this section describes both qualitative and quantitative analysis procedures.

Quantitative Data Analysis

Quantitative data analysis is associated with putting all the data in a matrix and applying statistical analysis to gain insights. Quantitative analysis can also be conducted by visualizing data using appropriate graphs and charts, such as dot plots, histograms, and pie charts (McClaive, Benson, and Sincich, 2018). The type of statistical analysis that can be used for data analysis depends on the type of data used. According to McClaive, Benson, and Sincich (2018), there are four types of data, including nominal, ordinal, discrete, and continuous. Nominal data is textual that does not have natural ordering, such as color, gender, occupation, and location. Ordinal data is a set of values that have their natural order, such as clothing size or education level. Ordinal data have clear ordering but do not have even distribution between the values. Discrete data type is also known as integer or interval data, as it is based on whole numbers, such as the number of speakers or cameras in a smartphone. Continuous data is numeric data that also includes fractions.

The data acquired from Likert Scale questions are considered ordinal, as there is a clear order between the values but the distribution between the values are unknown (McClaive, Benson, and Sincich, 2018). Sometimes, data acquired from Likert scale questions may be considered integer, as it is measured using whole numbers. Additionally, some nominal data, such as gender, position at the company, and nationality.

Statistical analysis was used to answer RQ2 and RQ3. In particular, descriptive statistics will be used to estimate the level of resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. Mean, median, and standard deviation was estimated for the entire sample and for different types of respondents, depending on their age and position. Additionally, descriptive analysis was used for understanding the characteristics of the sample. Appropriate charts and tables were used to represent the data in the paper.

RQ3 will be answered by creating a multiple regression model. The purpose of regression analysis will be to assess correlations between the dependent variable, independent variables, and control variables. According to Dean and Illowsky (2014), the most commonly used methods for quantifying the relationships between two variables are regression analysis and Pearson’s R. Perason’s R provides a standardized degree of correlation varying between -1 and 1, where -1 is the perfect negative relationship, 0 stands for no correlation, and 1 is the perfect positive correlation. Person’s R coefficient is the easiest to interpret; however, it can be used only for quantifying relationships between two variables. Since the dependent variable will be assessed against several variables, multiple regression analysis was used. Regression analysis assessed the model illustrated Figure 3 provided in Chapter 1.

The proposed regression model is provided below:

Before analyzing the model provided above, it was tested for satisfying all the assumptions of the regression analysis. According to McClaive, Benson, and Sincich (2018). The assumptions of the regression analysis including linearity, homoscedasticity, independence, and normality. The assumption of linearity implies that there is a linear correlation between the dependent variable and the explanatory variables. Independence means all the observations were taken independent from each other, which was true for the present study by design. Finally, homoscedasticity meant that there were no intercorrelations between the independent variables that may have affected the analysis. Pearson’s R was used to check for correlations between all the dependent variables. All the analysis was conducted using SPSS 26. The results were represented using the relevant tables and figures to ensure that the reader can interpret them easily.

Qualitative Data Analysis

Thematic analysis was used for analyzing the acquired qualitative data. Creswell (1994) states that thematic analysis is appropriate for explorative studies as it helps to determine common views, ideas, knowledge, concepts, and values. Thematic analysis aims at detecting ideas and patterns that appear in the interviews repeatedly. The data analysis process for the present study followed a six-stage protocol developed by Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke (Sang and Sitko, 2015). The process is described below:

1. Familiarization. This stage was associated with reading the transcripts to gain a general idea about the collected data. During this stage, no notes were made to avoid destruction from the process.
2. Coding. The second step was highlighting the parts of the transcripts that focus on same general ideas using different colors. All the colors were assigned with a code word, which appears most appropriate for the matter.
3. Theme searching. During this phase, several codes were combined into groups to identify common themes. Some codes were excluded during this step as they are too broad, vague, or not frequent enough.
4. Reviewing patterns and themes. This stage was associated with reviewing the identified themes and uniting some of them with similar wording. Some themes were excluded from the analysis at this stage as they were of low value to the purpose of research.
5. Naming themes. This phase was associated with giving short names to the themes.
6. Producing results. The final step of the process was explaining the results in the paragraph form so that it can be comprehended by the reader. Quotes were used as examples of each theme to enhance the understanding the general ideas. All the themes were organized by the research question they answer.

Privacy Concerns and Ethical Considerations

Ethical considerations in research requires that the participants do not need to endure more than minimal risks. Therefore, it was ensured that all the data was protected on all levels of data collection and analysis. The following measures were used for protecting the participants during the quantitative part of research:

• No personal data, such as names, contact information, and date of birth, were collected during the survey process;
• All the information was gathered by a third-party service, Survey Monkey, which utilized top-level data protection practices;
• Data was stored in a laptop protected by password, antivirus, and firewall software with latest updates.

The qualitative part required additional privacy protection measures, as the data collection process was not technology-based or automatic. The privacy protection measures needed to ensure that no-one could overhear the interview process and the transcripts could not be seen by third parties. The following data protection measures were used for the qualitative part of data collection and analysis:

• The interviews were not taped or filmed to avoid including unethical in the analysis;
• The face-to-face interviews were conducted in a separate room, where nobody could overhear the conversation;
• The places of face-to-face interviews were selected by the participants from the variants provided by the researcher to ensure that the participants feel safe to talk about sensitive matters;
• The online interviews were conducted in a password-protected Zoom conference with a lobby, which allowed the researcher to control that no third-parties were involved in the interview process;
• The camera of the researcher was always turned on during the interview, and both parties were encouraged to wear headphones to avoid anyone overhearing the conversation;
• The transcripts of the interviews were emailed to the participants in a password-protected archives (passwords were provided to participants using different communication channels);
• The participants were allowed to moderate the transcripts if they considered that any included information was unethical or inaccurate;
• All the attachments were checked several times to ensure that the transcripts are sent to the relevant participants.

Reliability and Validity

Validity is a degree of accuracy the method measures what it intends to measure (Creswell, 1994). In order to increase the validity of the interviews, several methods recommended by Creswell (2007) were used.

1. Triangulation. The research questions were approached by using different methods and different groups of participants will be included. The results from different sources were juxtaposed to understand the limits of generalizability of results.
2. Peer review. The wording of all the questions as well as the data analysis methods were checked by peers with relevant expertise. The recommendations of peers were used to modify the approaches to data collection and analysis.
3. Bias acknowledgement. A thorough literature review was conducted concerning possible biases of the researcher. Awareness about the possible biases associated with data collection and analysis helped to minimize the effect of the researcher’s beliefs and predispositions.
4. Check for credibility. The credibility of all the participants was checked through HR managers of the companies. The researcher ensured that all the participants had the skills and experience relevant for the purpose of the research.
5. Thorough explanations. Rich explanations of the research process and the obtained results were provided to let the reader decide if the conclusions are objective.
6. Face validity. All interview and survey questions were checked for high face validity.
7. Pilot interview and surveys. The validity of methods were checked during the pilot interview and pilot surveys. The feedback from the pilot interview and surveys were used to increase validity.

Reliability refers to the ability of repeating the results by using the same methods (Creswell, 1994). The primary method for increasing reliability of findings was ensuring that no recording was used during the interviews. The absence of video or audio recording and using all other privacy protection measures was expected to let the participants feel relaxed and share their sincere opinions about the question under analysis. Additionally, reliability was increased by keeping the questions in the survey simple and clear. Clarification questions were asked during the interviews to ensure that the researcher understands the responses correctly.

Chapter Summary

The third chapter of this thesis focused on the methods that were used to answer the research questions an achieve the purpose of the study. First, the research design was described. It was decided that a mixed-method approach was the most suitable for the aim of the study. Additionally, the research design was expected to minimize the drawbacks of both qualitative and quantitative approaches and benefit from their strengths. Second, it was established that only primary data was to be used, as secondary data on the matter was difficult to acquire due to the research question being understudied in the current literature. Third, the research paradigm was selected. It was decided that pragmatic paradigm is the most appropriate for the research design, as it is more flexible in terms of accepted methods.

The chapter also described data collection methods in detail. It was decided to use a self-created 15-item questionnaire for the quantitative part of the research. This questionnaire was meant to measure which factors had the most effect on the resistance to change in the multinational corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. A total of thirteen variables were identified, including resistance to change, which was the dependent variable, eight independent variables, and four control variables. The independent variables included resistance to change, personal benefits, firm benefits, free communication, communication quality, environment, culture inconsistency, relationships, and participation. The control variables were age, gender, nationality, and position. The qualitative data was collected using semi-structure interviews from senior managers and designated change managers. The quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and multiple regression, while the qualitative data was assessed using thematic analysis. Privacy concerns and ethical considerations along with reliability and validity of methods were also discussed in detail in this chapter.

Results

Introduction

This chapter focuses on outlining the results of both quantitative and qualitative results in the most objective manner to allow the reader draw conclusions. This chapter does not intend to discuss the results against the current body of knowledge, nor it aims at drawing conclusions using the theoretical frameworks selected for the present study. The purpose of the section is to overview all of the available results, data collection peculiarities, and assumptions to demonstrate the reader if the results can be trusted.

The chapter is divided into two large subsections, which focus on quantitative research results and qualitative research results correspondingly. The quantitative part of results describes data organization, data profiles, and patterns of personal data entry to provide a clear understanding of the sample characteristics. After that descriptive statistics of the variables are provided to summarize the data in the most efficient manner. Descriptive statistics also helped to answer RQ2, which concerned the current level of resistance to culture change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. After that inferential statistics was used to test the linear regression model and describe the results in light of eight hypotheses introduced in Chapter 1 of the present paper.

The qualitative part was subdivided into three subsections. The first subsection describes the participants, which was meant to establish the reliability of information sources and integrity with the discussed research methods. The second subsection focused on answering, which concerned unique characteristics of organizational cultures in multi-national corporations in Qatar’s oil and gas sector that affect culture change. The third subsection aimed at answering RQ4, which was associated with discussing strategies that could help to overcome resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in Qatar’s oil and gas sector.

Quantitative Analysis Results

Data Organization

In order to achieve the desired sample size, several organizations were selected for participation, and the questionnaires were distributed among all the employees that wanted to participate in the survey. A total of 672 responses were received, which was significantly above the minimum sample size of 119 identified in Chapter 3 of the present thesis. However, the responses were received from employees at different positions, including junior, senior, designated change managers, top managers, middle managers, and others. Moreover, some of the participants stated that they did not work for a multinational company in the oil and gas sector. After excluding the data collected from participants outside the population under analysis, the total number of responses 146, which was also above the minimal number of responses suggested calculated using Cochran’s (1977) formula.

The completion rate of questionnaire was 96.3%, which implies that all 647 out of 672 participants completed the questionnaire entirely. A high response rate was expected, as the instrument included an adequate number of items, and all of the items were carefully overviewed to be clear for the participants. Among all the participants, 12 respondents did not give their consent to utilize the information collected from them for the research purposes. It should be understood that those participants did not skip the question; instead, the replied “No” to Questions 1.1, which asked the participants to confirm that they have read and understood the informed consent form, and that they agree with all the conditions described in the form. One of the respondents that answered “No” to Question 1.1 was in the population under analysis, which made the final sample size to decrease from 146 to 145. All the responses with skipped questions were excluded from data analysis, which decreased the final sample to 139 responses, which acceptable, according to Cochran (1977).

The final sample included respondent who identified themselves as ‘top managers’, ‘middle managers’, ‘designated change managers’, and employees in ‘senior’ positions. It should be acknowledged that no explanations were given concerning the criteria the participants were to use to determine the group of positions to which they belonged. It was considered that participants were able to identify their position reliably. The participants were invited from different organizations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar, including Doha Petroleum, Construction Co Ltd, Dolphin Energy, Petrofac Qatar, Petrotec Group, QP, Qatargas, and Supreme Supply Service. No limitations concerning the department of the multinational companies were described, so the participants could be from any department of these companies.

Internal Consistency Measurement

Internal consistency of the questionnaire was measured using Cronbach’s alpha, which is a common reliability measure. Cronbach’s alpha measures the latent variables in multiple Likert scale questions. Cronbach’s alpha measures how closely the measures within a group a related to each other. The coefficient varies between 0 (not reliable) and 1 (perfectly reliable). As a rule of thumb, Cronbach’s alpha of 0.9 and above stand for excellent reliability, the interval between 0.8 and 0.9 stands for good reliability, and the interval between 0.7 and 0.8 stands for acceptable reliability (McClaive, Benson, and Sincich, 2018). It is crucial to notice, however, that very high reliability score be a result of high correlation among the variables, which leads to the problem of high collinearity (McClaive, Benson, and Sincich, 2018). There are also other possible issues with Cronbach’s alpha that should be considered, including sensitivity to the number of items in the questionnaire and unidimensionality. The dataset was carefully assessed for the presence of possible issues, and no problems were identified.

Two Cronbach’s alpha tests were conducted using different datasets. First, the test was conducted for the original datasets that included 672 responses. Cronbach’s alpha for this dataset was 0.873 (9 items), which stands for good reliability. The second test was conducted for the dataset that included the respondents from relevant population only, which had 146 responses. Cronbach’s alpha for the dataset was 0.9, which stood for excellent reliability. Table 3 below demonstrates the changes in Cronbach’s alpha for the final dataset if any of the items was deleted.

Table 3. Item-total statistics

Demographics of the Sample

Before commencing into the discussion of the demographic characteristics of the sample, it is crucial to notice that all the respondents completed the first part of the questionnaire without skipping any answers. In other words, all 672 respondents completed Questions 1.1-1.6 without omissions. Thus, the pattern of personal detail entry was not analyzed in the present paper. A discussion provided below summarizes the information about the sample size by item.

Age Distribution

A total five age groups were identified for the analysis. In the original sample of 672 respondents, 57 participants reported to be between 18 and 24 years old, 201 participants reported to belong to the age group between 25 and 34 years old, 310 participants reported to be between 35 and 44 years old, 77 participants reported to be between 45 and 54 years old, and 27 respondents to be 55 years old or older. This information is summarized in Table 4 and visualized in Figure 9 below.

Table 4. Age distribution of the original sample

Age distribution of the participants included in the final sample was different in characteristics. However, the differences were insignificant, as the percentages of participants belonging to different age groups were similar. Age distribution of the participants in the final sample is provided in Table 5 and visualized in Figure 10 below.

Table 5. Age distribution of the final sample

The analysis of age distribution revealed that the pattern was close in pattern to the normal distribution curve. Thus, it may be stated that the age of the participants was normally distributed, which is one of the central assumptions of the regression analysis (McClaive, Benson, and Sincich, 2018). Hence, age can be used as a variable in the regression analysis as a control variable, which is crucial for including it in the proposed regression model as a control variable.

The discussion of age distribution is included in the present paper, as the age of the participants may have a significant effect on the perception of resistance to change and change management in general. According to Kunze, Boehm, and Bruch (2013), age has a significant effect on resistance to change and perception of change. In particular, older people are more likely to be resistant to change, which implies that there is expected to be a positive correlation between age of the employees and their resistance to culture change. The analysis of the respondents’ age distribution revealed that the sample was relatively young, as the majority of respondents (82.7% of the final sample) were younger than 45 years old. Obtaining a relatively young sample is coherent with Qatar’s demographics (PSA, 2017). Obtaining an older sample would lead to possible limitations to consistency and representability of the sample.

Gender Distribution

The original sample included three gender groups, including males, females, and participants that selected ‘other / prefer not to say’. The final sample included only those participants that identified their gender as male and female. In the original sample, 519 respondents identified themselves as males, and 151 participants identified themselves as females. Only 2 participants selected the third option in the question. Gender distribution of the original sample is provided in Table 6 and visualized in Figure 11.

Table 6. Gender distribution of the original sample

Gender distribution of the final sample was similar to the original sample, as 77% of the participants identified themselves as males and 23% identified themselves as females (see Table 7 and Figure 12).

Table 7. Gender distribution of the final sample

Gender distribution of the sample was similar to gender distribution of Qatar’s population. According PSA (2017), the current percentage of females in the country is 25% due to influx of male migration to Qatar. The percentage of females in the country decreased significantly since the beginning of rapid economic growth in the late 1980s (PSA, 2017). As a result, numerous male immigrants from India, Filipins, Indonesia, Pakistan, and other countries in search for economic prosperity.

The discussion of gender distribution is crucial for the present paper, as it may be misinterpreted. According to Al-Ammari and Romanowski (2016), Qatari culture has clearly defined gender roles, which often implies that females are not expected to work. Therefore, unequal gender distribution in the sample may be interpreted as discrimination against women in the workplace. However, such interpretation would be wrong, as the gender distribution of the sample is consistent with the percentage of women in the country. Additionally, it should be noticed that the analysis revealed no glass ceiling effect on the basis of gender discrimination, as the percentage of women in high positions (middle managers, top managers, designated change managers, and employees in the senior position) is similar to the percentage of women in the original sample that included junior positions.

Nationality Distribution

Both samples included two nationality groups, which were Qatari and non-Qatari citizens. The original sample included 573 participants that identified their nationality as Qatari, and 99 participants that identified their nationality as non-Qatari. The summary and visualization of nationality distribution of the original sample are provided int Table 8 and Figure 13 below.

Table 8. Nationality distribution of the original sample

The nationality distribution of the final sample differed from the nationality distribution of the original sample. The percentage of Qatari representatives was higher by 6.2%, which may represent that Qatari employees are more likely to be in higher positions in multinational companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. However, such differences may also be due to change, as the difference was not tested for significance, since it was not purpose of the present paper. Additionally, it should be mentioned that nationality distribution of the final sample was different from the nationality distribution in the country. According to PSA (2017), the last census of Qatar showed that only 11.6% of Qatari citizens identified their nationality as Qatari. In other words, the percentage of Qatari people in the sample was almost twice as high in comparison with percentage of Qatari people in Qatar’s population. This may also be a sign of Qatari people being favored in the higher position in multinational corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. Nationality distribution of the final sample is provided in Table 9 and visualized in Figure 14 below.

Table 9. Nationality distribution of the final sample

The discussion of nationality distribution of the sample is crucial to mention, as national culture has a significant influence on people’s values and underlying assumptions (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012). As a result, people may have different perceptions and attitudes towards culture change. For instance, according to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions model, different nationalities have different uncertainty avoidance indexes, which makes representatives of different cultures have different tolerance towards ambiguity (Hofstede, 1991). Since change is always associated with a significant degree of ambiguity about the future, nationalities with high uncertainty avoidance index may be more resistant to change in comparison with those nationalities that have lower uncertainty avoidance index. Similarly, the dimension of long-term vs short-term orientation impacts resistance and susceptibility to change. According to Hofstede (1991), short-term oriented cultures are more likely to promote traditional values and any changes in the society are treated with suspicion and resistance. The division of the sample between Qatari and non-Qatari people was done to help the reader assess the degree of influence of Qatari national culture on the organizational cultures of multi-national companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

Position Distribution

The original sample included six categories of positions from which the participants could select. A total of 35 participants identified their position in the company as top managers, 74 respondents identified their position as middle managers, 22 participants claimed to be in the position of designated change manager, 165 participants reported to be in senior positions, 328 participants claimed to be in junior positions, and 48 participants identified their positions as “other.” The characteristics of the sample in terms of the positions of the participants are summarized in Table 10 and visualized in Figure 15 below.

Table 10. Position distribution of the original sample

The final sample excluded participants that identified their positions as “junior” and “other.” Thus, the distribution of the positions in the final sample was different from that in the original sample. The majority of the participants (81 out of 139) were in senior positions, which was 58.3% of the sample. The sample also included 8 designated change managers, 30 middle managers, and 20 top managers. Distribution of positions is provided in Table 11 and visualized in Figure 16 below.

Table 11. Position distribution of the final sample

The representation of the sample in terms of positions is crucial, as it allows the reader to understand the level competence of the participants. It was assumed that participants in the four positions identified above were expected to have enough experience in the company they work to assess the level of resistance to culture and help to measure other variables. Junior employees were assumed to have insufficient level of competence to measure the variables, which is why they were excluded from the final sample.

Sector Distribution

Sector distribution of the sample is provided in this paper to help the reader understand how many participants were excluded on the basis of belonging to other sectors. The majority of participants in the original sample (424 out of 672) worked in multinational companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. Among other participants, 157 participants worked in the private sector, 91 participants worked in government sector, and 25 participants worked in other sectors. The final sample included participants only from multinational companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. The distribution of participants by sector is provided in Table 12 and visualized in Figure 17 below.

Table 12. Distribution of the original sample by sector

Descriptive Statistics of Variables (Research Question 2)

Descriptive statistics is an important tool for researchers, as it helps to overview data in a meaningful way using a limited set of standardized measures. Descriptive statistics helps to understand the pattern of data distribution; however, such statistics does not allow the researcher to draw conclusion about any hypothesis that was made (McClaive, Benson, and Sincich, 2018). Hypotheses are measured using inferential statistics, which includes a wide variety of tests for both numerical and categorical data, such as t-tests, chi-square test, and regression analysis. Descriptive statistics presents large amount of data in a comprehendible way to allow the researcher interpret the patterns of responses to instruments.

All descriptive statistics are subdivided into measures of central tendency, including mean, median, and mode, and measures of dispersion, such as variation, standard deviation, range, skewness, and kurtosis. The mean value is a measure of central tendency, which represents the arithmetic average use. This measure of central tendency is preferred when there no significant outliers that may affect the value. Median is the middle value of all the observations in a sample if arranged in the order of magnitude, which is less susceptible to skewness and outliers (McClaive, Benson, and Sincich, 2018). Mode is the most frequent value among the replies, which is a crucial measure for categorical variables. However, mode may also be used for non-continuous numerical variables to help the researcher acquire a deeper understanding of data distribution. This paper overviews all three measures of central tendency for all the variable.

Among measures of dispersion, the most frequently used statistic is standard deviation, which is the square root of the sample variance. Range, which is the difference between the maximum and the minimum vales, may also be valuable for the researcher; however, this statistic is non informative for Likert scale question, as both the maximum and the minimum values are identified by the researcher (McClaive, Benson, and Sincich, 2018). Skewness is also a crucial characteristic of dispersion, as it allows the researcher to understand if the distribution is symmetrical along the x-axis. Skewness also represents the differences between the mean and the median of the distribution. Kurtosis demonstrates how heavy are the tales of the normal distribution graph. Lower kurtosis statistic means the tails are heavier in comparison with the normal distribution graph. This paper provides an overview of standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis of the dependent and independent variables.

The mean of resistance was 3.19 with a 95% confidence interval of the true population mean lying between 2.95 and 3.44. Both median and mode of the variable were 3; however, it should be noticed that there were two modes (3 and 5). Standard deviation was 1.45, which is the highest standard deviation among all the variables. Skewness statistic was -0.29, which implies that the distribution is slightly left-skewed. The kurtosis was -1.23, which demonstrates that the tails of the distribution were significantly heavier in comparison with the normal distribution. The distribution of the variable is visualized in Figure 18 below. As seen in the histogram, the data does not appear to be normally distributed, which may be a source of bias when conducting regression analysis. The histogram below, as well as the discussion of the descriptive statistics is helpful answering RQ2, as they help to describe the level of resistance to culture change in the multinational companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. The discussion concerning the level of resistance to culture change among in the sector is provided in Chapter 5 of the present dissertation.

The discussion of descriptive statistics for the independent variables is less important for the purpose of the present paper. The descriptive statistics of all the independent variables and the dependent variable are provided in Table 13 below. The means of the majority of independent variables were relatively close in value varying between 3.55 and 3.66. The only exception was the mean value of environment, which was 4.04, which implied that the majority o the participants believed that the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors of external environment had a high effect on corporate culture in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. Similarly, standard deviations of all the dependent variables were also close, varying between 1.217 and 1.309. However, standard deviation of environment was lower than that of other variables (1.148). In other words, the opinions of the opinions of the participants concerning the impact of external environment on the company’s workplace culture were more homogenous in comparison with other independent variables.

Table 13. Descriptive statistics of the variables

The analysis of distribution of the independent variables revealed that all of them failed to fulfill the assumption of normality. Along with analyses of histograms, Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests were conducted for each of the variables, which confirmed that the variables were not normally distributed (See Table 14 below). According to McClaive, Benson, and Sincich (2018), violations of the regression analysis assumptions may lead to inaccurate estimations which implies that the regression analysis provided further in the present paper may be biased. Violation of the assumption may be considered a significant limitation of the model.

Table 14. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test results

Correlation Analysis

Correlation analysis was conducted to estimate multicollinearity among the variables under analysis. Correlation analysis was using Pearson’s r coefficient, which is used to quantify inter-relationships between two variables. Pearson’s r is a standardized measure, which varies between -1, and 1, where -1 stands for direct negative correlation, 1 stands for direct positive correlation, and 0 stands for no correlation (McClaive, Benson, and Sincich, 2018). The higher the absolute value of the coefficient, the stronger the inter-relationships between two values. While Pearson’s R is a reliable test for measuring correlations, it cannot be used for this paper, as it does not allow to assess the effect of several independent variables on one dependent variable. However, Pearson’s r is one of methods that can be used for estimating multicollinearity. The present paper assumed that if the correlation coefficient between any two variables was above 0.8, the assumption of multicollinearity was violated. The correlation matrix is provided in Table 15 below.

Table 15. Correlation matrix

The analysis of the correlation matrix revealed that multicollinearity was not a significant issue for the present paper, as the highest correlation coefficient was below the 0.8 threshold. However, it should be mentioned that two strong correlations were identified, including the relationships between free communication and quality of communication (0.727) along with free communication and relationship (0.717).

Hypothesis Testing (Research Question 3)

This subsection is the central part of the quantitative results section, as it focuses on the answering RQ3 by testing eight hypotheses stated in Chapter 1 of this thesis. The hypotheses were tested by creating a regression model provided in Chapter 3. P-values of the coefficients together with the coefficient of determination of the regression model were considered. The summary of the regression model is provided in Table 16 below. It is crucial to mention that the position variable was converted into four dummy variables for SPSS to conduct calculation.

Table 16. Regression model summary

The coefficient of determination demonstrated that the model had a moderate predictive ability. In particular, the variations in the dependent and control variables could explain 35.46% of variation in the independent variables. However, only one independent variable and one control variable had a significant impact on the outcome variable. It also crucial to notice, that adjusted R² is more appropriate for this model in comparison with R² coefficient, as it has numerous dependent variables. According to McClaive, Benson, and Sincich (2018), the coefficient of determination naturally increases with the increased number of predictors, regardless of their influence on the outcome variable. Adjusted R² provides the researchers with the opportunity to mitigate the influence of the number of independent and control variables on the coefficient of determination.

Interpretation of the model in light of the hypotheses is provided below. The alpha level of 0.05 was used for assessing the significance of the dependent variables on the independent variable.

Hypothesis 1

• H₀1: Quickly changing external environment does not affect culture resistance to change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.
• H_A1: Quickly changing external environment is positively correlated with resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

The analysis of the created regression model revealed that the effect of the “environment” variable was statistically insignificant (T = 1.43; p = 0.155). Since the p-value was above the identified alpha-level, the test provided no significant evidence for rejecting the null hypothesis. Thus, the null hypothesis was accepted, which implies that quickly changing external environment had no significant effect on resistance to culture change in the sector under analysis.

Hypothesis 2

• H₀2: The level of participation in the change management process does not affect resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.
• H_A2: The level of participation in the change management process is negatively correlated with resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

The analysis of the created regression model revealed that the effect of the “participation” variable was statistically insignificant (T = 1.03; p = 0.304). Since the p-value was above the identified alpha-level, the test provided no significant evidence for rejecting the null hypothesis. Thus, the null hypothesis was accepted, which implies that participation in the change management process had no significant effect on resistance to culture change in the sector under analysis.

Hypothesis 3

• H₀3: Manager-employee relationships do not affect resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.
• H_A3: Manager-employee relationships negatively affect resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

The analysis of the created regression model revealed that the effect of the “relationships” variable was statistically insignificant (T = 0.6; p = 0.548). Since the p-value was above the identified alpha-level, the test provided no significant evidence for rejecting the null hypothesis. Thus, the null hypothesis was accepted, which implies that manager-employee relationships had no significant effect on resistance to culture change in the sector under analysis.

Hypothesis 4

• H₀4: Free communication practices within organization do not affect resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.
• H_A4: Free communication practices within organization have a negative impact on resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

The analysis of the created regression model revealed that the effect of the “free communication” variable was statistically insignificant (T = 0.4; p = 0.687). Since the p-value was above the identified alpha-level, the test provided no significant evidence for rejecting the null hypothesis. Thus, the null hypothesis was accepted, which implies that free communication practices had no significant effect on resistance to culture change in the sector under analysis.

Hypothesis 5

• H₀5: Quality of information exchange during internal communication does not affect resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.
• H_A5: Quality of information exchange during internal communication is negatively correlated with resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

The analysis of the created regression model revealed that the effect of the “communication quality” variable was statistically insignificant (T = -0.9; p = 0.371). Since the p-value was above the identified alpha-level, the test provided no significant evidence for rejecting the null hypothesis. Thus, the null hypothesis was accepted, which implies that quality of information exchange during internal communication had no significant effect on resistance to culture change in the sector under analysis.

Hypothesis 6

• H₀6: Perceived personal benefits from change do not affect resistance to change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.
• H_A6: Perceived personal benefits from change have a negative impact on resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

The analysis of the created regression model revealed that the effect of the “personal benefits” variable was statistically insignificant (T = 1.17; p = 0.242). Since the p-value was above the identified alpha-level, the test provided no significant evidence for rejecting the null hypothesis. Thus, the null hypothesis was accepted, which implies perceived personal benefits from change had no significant effect on resistance to culture change in the sector under analysis.

Hypothesis 7

• H₀7: Perceived firm benefits from change do not affect resistance to change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.
• H_A7: Perceived firm benefits from change have a negative impact on resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

The analysis of the created regression model revealed that the effect of the “firm benefits” variable was statistically significant (T = 2.86; p = 0.005). Since the p-value was below the identified alpha-level, the test provided significant evidence to reject the null hypothesis. However, the alternative hypothesis could not be accepted, as the coefficient was positive. Thus, it was concluded that perceived firm benefits from change had a positive effect on resistance to culture change in in the sector.

Hypothesis 8

• H₀8: Cultural diversity has no effect on resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.
• H_A8: Cultural diversity has a significant positive correlation with the resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

The analysis of the created regression model revealed that the effect of the “cultural diversity” variable was statistically insignificant (T = 0.93; p = 0.352). Since the p-value was above the identified alpha-level, the test provided no significant evidence for rejecting the null hypothesis. Thus, the null hypothesis was accepted, which implies cultural diversity had no significant effect on resistance to culture change in the sector under analysis.

Qualitative Analysis Results

Characteristics of the Participants

A total of twenty interviews were conducted among middle managers, top managers, and designated change managers of the multinational companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. Seventeen of the participants were males, and 3 of the participants were females. Six of the participants were Qatari, while other participants identified themselves as Indian, Kenyan, Nepalese, Pakistani, and American. Most of the participants (n = 18) were between 35 and 44 years old, and two of the participants were between 45 and 54. The participants were recruited from Doha Petroleum, Dolphin Energy, Petrotec Group, and Qatargas.

The characteristics of the participants in terms of gender was different from the sample of recruited for the quantitative analysis. In particular, only 15% of the sample were females, while the sample for the quantitative part included 23% of females. This may mean that females were less likely to take high positions in the multinational companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar than males. As for the distribution of nationalities, the final sample for the qualitative part of research included more participants from Qatar (30%) than the sample utilized for the quantitative part of research (20.9%). Additionally, age distribution of participants for the quantitative part of research was different from age distribution of the sample used for the qualitative part of research. This was explained by the differences in the target populations for different parts of research.

Nineteen interviews were conducted using Zoom, and only one interview was conducted in person due to the COVID-19 restrictions, that limited the number of personal meetings and encouraged online conferences.

Themes for Research Question 1

The section discusses three themes that helped to answer RQ1, which was associated with identifying unique characteristics of the workplace culture that contribute to resistance to culture change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. A total of three themes were discovered, including unmanaged cultural diversity, strong national culture, and multilingualism. All the themes are developed and explained using quotations from interviews with the participants below.

Theme 1: Unmanaged Cultural Diversity

This theme was associated with respondents stating that cultural diversity in the workplace, which was understood as presence of multiple national cultures within one organization, was a significant barrier to effective culture change.

• “Globalization is the one of the resistances faced during the culture change process. Multiple cultures exist within an organization, so we have to manage the multi culture in a sensitive and synergistic way. At this point, I can’t say that our organization manages multiple cultures effectively.”
• “Cultural diversity is a barrier to change in itself. Many employees are not willing to abide to changes, as its against their social norms.”
• “We should understand that it is a multinational company. Many different people with different cultural backgrounds work here. Most of these people believe that their culture is superior to other cultures. We try to manage that by promoting tolerance and respect for other cultures. However, we had only minor success with that.”

It should be mentioned, however, that the participants understood that managing cultural diversity is a crucial step towards overcoming resistance to organizational culture change along with any other organizational change. The interviewees also mentioned that adequate cultural diversity management is associated with significant benefits for the company, such as increased innovation and employee satisfaction.

• “Presence of multiple national cultures is one of the driving forces of positive culture change, as we consider accepting each individuals’ beliefs and practices crucial for the success of the company. We called it mutual respect.”
• “People from different countries have valuable knowledge that our company can benefit from. This knowledge can contribute to innovation, and innovation can help continuous culture change.”

Middle managers also mentioned that culture diversity management in their companies was inadequate, as instead of trying to harmonize the relationships among different cultures, managers try to force all the employees accept the dominant culture of the organization, which is usually the culture of the host.

• “Our company can be characterized with lack of multiculturalism. I believe that our top managers are exhausting people [with different cultural backgrounds]and forcing them to accept another culture. Such actions cause resistance inevitably.”
• “Top managers try to homogenize everyone. This way the culture change settles into one direction. This is inappropriate for multinational companies, as I see it.”

It should be mentioned, however, that three respondents stated that unmanaged cultural diversity was not a problem in their organization. Two of the participants worked for the same employer, which confirms that unmanaged cultural diversity is not a problem for the entire sector, and some companies had significant success in managing cultural diversity.

• “I enjoy the multicultural we have in [our organization]. Presence of multiple national cultures is not a problem. All of our employees enjoy free communication and gladly participate in the decision-making process regardless of their cultural background.”
• “The presence of multiple national cultures helps people to know more about their cultures, and develop their knowledge about cultures around the world. We all enjoy the international atmosphere in our company.”

Theme 2: Strong National Culture

This theme included numerous subthemes that were united on the basis Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and the overview of the peculiarities of traditional Qatari (Arabic) culture provided in the present paper. First, the participants mentioned that their companies had strict rules that everyone was expected to adhere. A strong emphasis on regulation negatively affected innovation and change, which affected culture change as well. According to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, Qatar’s culture is characterized by high level of uncertainty avoidance, which is associated with the tendency to create to follow rules and norms (Hofstede Insights, no date).

• “Our company has numerous rules, protocols, and guidelines everyone needs to follow. It may be confusing at times. It interferes with the freedom to act. It cuts all the innovation. Culture change is innovation in some sense. Our corporate culture does welcome innovation. Instead, managers like to follow rules.”
• “When I first came here, I was surprised by the rules I was meant to follow. <…> Rules here concern everything starting from dress codes and ending with expression of religion. It is difficult for the outsider to fit.”

Another crucial characteristic that prevented innovation is high influence of Islam and religious practices on the workflow. While Muslims are allowed to practice their religion openly, they may become offended if representatives of other religions engaged in any kind of religious practices or even tried to discuss their religious views in the workplace. As it was mentioned in the literature review, numerous researchers agree that religion plays the central role in the traditional Arab cultures (Al-Omari, 2008; Dwight, 2015; Frangieh, 2018). Even though the influence of Islam is becoming weaker due to globalization, influence of Islam on the national culture of Qatar remains significant (Al-Ammari and Romanowski, 2016). On this basis, high influence of religion on the workplace culture was included as a subtheme to strong influence of the national culture.

• “I see that culture resistance experienced during culture change process is mostly related to religion. Non-Muslims may feel oppressed by other employees, which cause poor relationships withing the teams and failure to adhere to the culture change process. We try to work on the problem; however, it remains a challenge. Qatari culture is strongly connected to Islam.”
• “Muslims seem to have trouble with accepting other religions. It really hurts our ability to work with them.”
• “I often feel that managers discriminate on the basis of religion. If an employee is a Muslim, he receives a raise, and non-Muslims employees do not receive a raise. I really hate working in such conditions. <…> Many employees feel the same way. <…> It causes them to resist change.”

Another subtheme that was mentioned by the participants is failure to recognize innovation as one of the central values. Many employees in the sector believe that the traditional way of doing business is the key to success. Such a belief leads to inability to embrace change in technology and internal processes. According to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions model, Qatari culture scored high in uncertainty avoidance and power distance, and the score was low in long-term orientation, which is closely correlated to the tendency to avoid innovation (Hofstede Insights, no date). On this basis, the subtheme was included in the theme of strong influence of the national culture.

• “Many employees and even middle managers still believe that the old way is the best way. We still have numerous people using ancient technology to compete on the international arena. If people can’t accept simple things that can their work easier, imagine how they react to culture change.”
• “Employees do not believe in innovation. Managers keep talking about innovation; however, most of employees cannot care less. Most people like thing the way they are.”
• “We reached significant success in promotion of innovation among our employees. However, many employees see innovation as just another source of uncertainty, and they don’t like uncertainty.”

Theme 3: Multilingualism

Multilingualism also appeared to be a significant barrier to culture change, as it prevented effective communication among employees. It was first considered to include lack of effective communication as one of the themes that explained crucial characteristics of organizational culture in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. However, no other aspect of effective communication was frequent enough to be included in the list of themes. Additionally, it was considered to include multilingualism as an aspect of unmanaged cultural diversity. However, it was decided to include multilingualism as a separate theme, as linguistic superdiversity is a significant factor that affects the development of Qatar in general (Nebel, 2017).

Multilingualism was discussed in light of unmanaged linguistic diversity. Active use of more than one language in the workplace is associated with significant barriers to communication unless managed properly (Sanden, 2016). One of the most common practices aimed at addressing the issues associated with cultural diversity is establishing a linguistic policy that promotes the use of common corporate language for all the business purposes (Sanden, 2016). However, such policy does not guarantee that all the barriers to effective communication will be overcome, as employees may have different levels of mastery of the language and different attitudes towards speaking the common language. The experiences of the participants were similar to that described by Sanden (2016).

• ”Language barrier was a significant issue for some of our employees. We have a hired translator that helps us address the communication problem. However, he is not always available, and people are forced to use their phones to translate phrases to each other. This undermines communication, really.”
• “We have people from all around the world here, Indians, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Europeans, and even Americans. All of them speak different language. Even though we try to use English to speak to each other, people have different accents and mastery levels. Indians use their language to talk o each other, and we usually speak Arabic to each other.”
• “I often feel left out as I don’t speak Arabic. I always feel that I am missing out on something, as I don’t speak Arabic. I think that people do not resist change, they just do not understand the motivation for change because of language diversity.”

Themes for Research Question 4

This subsection includes three themes that aimed to answer RQ4, which was associated with outlining strategies that can help to overcome the resistance to culture change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. These themes, including effective communication, participation, and benefits, are discussed below.

Effective Communication

The respondents stated that one of the central strategies for addressing resistance to culture change is improving communication practices within the company. This could be achieved by establishing a comprehensive communication policy that can allow the employees to be aware of everything that is happening in the company. The respondents stated that many employees resist culture change because they do not understand the motivation behind change, which is crucial, according to Kotter’s change model (Kotter, 2012).

• “Managers often fail to establish effective communication with the employees. This problem needs to be resolved to address resistance. <…> Without effective communication <…> front-line employees don’t understand why change is needed.”
• “We need to be able to communicate the purpose of change clearly to all the employees. Otherwise, I met overwhelming resistance.”

Free communication was one of the subthemes that emerged during the interviews with the participants. The interviewees stated that without free communication, which is the ability of the employees to express their opinions and views concerning change, it is impossible to manage culture change effectively. Thus, the participants recommend that managers allow the employees to communicate freely with managers about their concerns and doubts to make the employees feel valued.

• “Free communication is the key. We can’t promote culture change without acknowledging all the interests of all the stakeholders. Managers need to navigate the change management process in close contact with employees.”
• “I think that managers should give more freedom to employees to talk about their problems. Otherwise, they feel unheard and refuse to adhere to change management process.”

Establishing a comprehensive language policy was also among the central recommendations for establishing effective communication. Extreme language diversity and lack of comprehendible language use pattern hinders with the managers’ ability to implement change.

• “We currently working on developing a language policy that will guide the communication practices in the company. We decided that without a clear language policy, we cannot guarantee that everyone understands what is expected of them. <…> The policy will also help to minimize discrimination on the basis of language. So, this is my recommendation.”
• “I think companies should consider establishing a formal language policy. Many employees are confused about what language should be spoken at what time. Moreover, people tend to hang out in small groups and speak their national languages. We basically see segregation in the workplace. This needs to be stopped.”

Participation

The respondents also stated that one of the central strategies for the addressing resistance to change is participation of the employees in the change management process. This theme is closely connected with the subtheme of free communication practices, as participation without being able to communicate freely may be challenging. However, it is inappropriate to assume that participation and free communication practices are interchangeable concepts, as managers may allow their employees to speak freely without using the insights received from them. Participation implies that all employees have the ability to influence the decision-making process.

• “Participation is the key. In the US and Europe, it is common that managers make employees co-creators of change. Here, in Qatar, things are different. I think that Arab managers are not used to the idea that employees should participate in change management. I think that managers need to change their viewpoint. <…> Training programs for managers can help to achieve that.”
• “Managers need to share power. Without participation of employees in decision-making, it is unlikely the organizational culture can be changed adequately.”
• “All employees are a part of change and they have the right to shape the culture, to participate in the decision-making.”

Benefits

This theme is based upon the replies of the participants who stated that employees resist culture change only because they do not understand the benefits of change. The employees see culture change as a hostile process aimed at attacking their status quo. Culture change is perceived by employees as a way for top managers to increase profits and their own salary at the expense of comfort of all the employees. However, if benefits of culture change are effectively communicated to all the workers, and if these benefits are important to the employees, the resistance to change will decrease.

• “If you want to decrease resistance to culture change, show the benefits. You need to be specific. Employees need to see what they will have and when they will have it to agree with change. Sometimes, these benefits can be straightforward, like salary increases or more opportunities for growth. Sometimes, the benefits are not so evident, but you still need to show them. <…> Last year, we told our employees that they needed to adopt change to save their jobs. It was harsh, I understand, but it worked.”
• “Managers need to create incentives for the employees and communicate them clearly. If employees do not see that the change is positive for them personally, they are unlikely to adhere.”
• “May recommendation is – make the employees want to change. Show them that they way we live no is outrageous. Share the vision of bright future for them and they will follow.”

Respondents mentioned that benefits do not need to be personal, as some employees are willing to support the change if they see benefits for the company. However, participants stated that company benefits are important only to the participants that have high organizational commitment.

• “Sometimes, seen the benefits for the company as whole is enough for employees to get motivated. If managers share a vision of bright future for the company with the employees, they may get excited to follow through.”
• “Another possible strategy is to raise organizational commitment. Devoted employees will embrace change if they see that it can help development of the company. I believe that this will work for culture change as well as any other change.”
• “Both personal benefits and benefits for the company are important. I noticed that people here in Qatar are collectivistic and they like to be a part of a successful team. Maybe, in some way, perceived company benefits are even more important.”

Chapter Summary

The fourth chapter provided a detailed overview of both qualitative and quantitative results and characteristics of the participants. The quantitative part of the results was received from the analysis of responses from 139 participants selected according to the inclusion criteria from a sample 672 participants. The demographics of the final sample did not differ considerably from the demographics of Qatar, which shows that the representation was adequate. However, it was noticed that the percentage of Qatari participants in the final sample was higher than the percentage of Qatari people living in Qatar. This may have demonstrated that Qatari people are more likely to receive promotion, as the final sample included employees in senior positions, middle managers, top managers, and designated change managers.

The qualitative part of the results section focused on answering RQ2 and RQ3 using descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics demonstrated that the mean level of resistance was 3.19 with a 95% confidence interval of the true population mean lying between 2.95 and 3.44. The standard deviation of the sample demonstrated than the data was dispersed along the x-axis, which demonstrates a high level of variability of resistance to culture change. Moreover, it was noticed that the values were not normally distributed. A regression model was created to test eight hypotheses associated with influence of different factors on resistance to culture change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. Significance testing provided no significant evidence to accept any of the eight hypotheses.

The qualitative analysis aimed at answering RQ1 and RQ4, which was associated with identifying the unique features of the of the organizational culture in the oil and gas sector in Qatar that affected resistance to culture change along with determining the best strategies for overcoming resistance to change in the sector. Three themes, including unmanaged cultural diversity, strong national culture, and multilingualism, with several subthemes were extracted from semi-structured interviews with 20 participants. The analysis of possible strategies that could help to overcome resistance to culture change also established three themes, including effective communication, participation, and benefits. The results to both qualitative and quantitative analyses are discussed in detail in Chapter 5 of the present paper.

Discussion

Introduction

This chapter provides a discussion of both qualitative and quantitative research results outlined in the previous chapter. The purpose of this research was to achieve both depth and breadth of knowledge concerning resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. The depth was achieved through quantitative part of the research, while breadth gained through the qualitative part of the research. The purpose of this section of the study was to analyze the findings of both surveys and interviews in light of the previous research and the theoretical background. In other words, this section attempts to explain the research results and their similarity or difference to findings of previous research.

First, this section focuses on answering all the research questions introduced in Chapter 1 of this paper. Each research question is discussed in detail in a separate subsection against the current body of knowledge, Kotter’s theory of change, and Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Second, this section provides recommendations for manager to overcome resistance to change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar as well as recommendations for future research taking into consideration the findings of the present paper and their explanations in light of empirical knowledge and different theoretical frameworks. Third, limitations of the present research are discussed to provide the reader with understanding of possible limits associated with methodology of the paper. Fourth, the section describes implications of the study for managers and researchers. The chapter is concluded with a short summary of its crucial points.

It is necessary to mention that this chapter provides detailed discussions of limitations and implications of the research results. Chapter 1 of this thesis provided a brief discussion of limitation and implications of research to inform the reader about the limitations and implications that were expected before the study was conducted. After all the data was collected and analyzed, the list of possible limitation and implications was expanded.

Before the section commences to discussion of this research findings against the current body of knowledge, it is crucial to mention that most of studies overviewed for this paper concerned organization change in general. Studies that focused specifically on culture change were scarce, which may have caused inconsistency among results of this paper and results of previous research. Moreover, no research was found to concern change management in Qatar, which implies that this research is unique in its nature. The uniqueness of the topic of this paper may also be a source of inconsistency between the results of this study and previous research.

Research Question 1

The first research question was associated with discovering unique characteristics of organizational cultures in multi-national corporations in Qatar’s oil and gas sector that affect culture change. The question was answered using semi-structured interviews with 20 participants from the relevant population. Three central peculiarities of organizational culture in the sector were discovered, including unmanaged cultural diversity, strong national culture, and multilingualism.

Unmanaged cultural diversity had a significant impact on resistance to change among employees in the oil and gas sector in Qatar as seen by top managers, middle managers, and designated change managers. In particular, the results revealed that unmanaged cultural diversity caused significant problems with change management due to its consequences. Among the consequences of unmanaged cultural diversity, the respondents mentioned discrimination on the cultural basis, decreased job satisfaction of employees, and conflicts within and among teams. These findings were coherent with the result of previous research.

Matthews and Thakkar (2012) stated that managers of multi-national companies need to learn how to communicate effectively with representatives of different national cultures in order to enjoy all the benefits of cultural diversity. According to Kim (2006), these benefits include increased innovation, improved public image of the organization, attraction of human resources from around the globe, and enhanced organizational growth. According to Thompson (2018), one of the reasons that benefits of cultural diversity in the workplace could not be enjoyed was barriers in communication. Employees with different cultural backgrounds may have varying underlying assumptions and values that influence the perception of the reality and judgement (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012). As a result, employees may have conflicts on the cultural basis due to misunderstanding or xenophobia (Spencer-Oatey and Franklin, 2012). The problem with the management of cultural diversity in the sector lies in the fact that the organizational culture in the oil and gas sector in Qatar is in the transition between the homogeneous workplace culture and true diversity (Gottfredson, 1992). This stage is associated with organizational culture being not adapted to accept different values of representatives of various national cultures (Gottfredson, 1992). The cases of unequal opportunity for representatives of different cultures, xenophobia, and discrimination in organizations with unmanaged cultural diversity were also mentioned in previous research (D’Netto and Sohal, 1999).

It is crucial to mention, however, that the problem of unmanaged cultural diversity does not affect all the organizations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar equally. Some managers reported that their organizations enjoy all the benefits of cultural diversity, which implies that they have used effective culture management strategies. However, other participants reported that even though managers attempted to manage cultural diversity within their organizations, their methods were inadequate, as they tried to enforce the values of the dominant national cultural, which caused further discrimination and xenophobia leading to decrease workplace satisfaction. In other words, according to Gottfredson’s (1992) classification, the organizational culture in the oil and gas sector in Qatar varies between the transitional stage and true diversity.

Another factor that was found to have a significant impact on resistance to culture change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar is the presence of strong national culture, which is coherent with the findings of the previous research. In particular, the organizational culture in the oil and gas sector in Qatar is associated with high influence of religion, increased number of rules and regulations, and lack of innovation. Numerous researchers mentioned that Islamic values are in the center of Qatar’s culture, which has sin (Al-Omari, 2008; Dwight, 2015; Frangieh, 2018). Hofstede (1991) stated that Qatari national culture is associated with high uncertainty avoidance and power distance, which leads to inclination to increased regulation and decreased innovation from the employees due to the expectation of strong hierarchy in the workplace. Al-Khalifa and Aspinwall (2001) stated that Arab culture has a significant impact on the organizational culture in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. As a result of strong dominance of Qatari national culture, organizational cultures in the multinational companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar face bureaucracy, lack of freedom, increased number of questionable rules, and low individual competition.

National Qatari culture is associated with traditional values and conservatism, which creates resistance to any change. While Qatari national culture may be acceptable for Arabs, it appears alien to the representatives of other cultures. As a result, the employees with cultural background different from Arab express their concern and resist managers trying to force Qatari national culture as the basis for the organizational culture in the organizations of the sector under analysis. Such concern causes mistrust to managers among representatives of different national culture, which leads to resistance to change.

Research conducted by Al-Ammari and Romanowski (2016) demonstrated that Qatari national culture was changing due to the impact of globalization and migration. In particular, the researchers mentioned that the importance of family values, religion, and gender roles was decreasing in Qatar due to the influence of the western value system. However, the results of this research demonstrate that traditional Arab culture is still strong in Qatar, which can be seen in the characteristics of organizational culture in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. However, it should be acknowledged that the magnitude of the influence of the national Qatari culture on organizational cultures in the sector differs among companies.

Finally, multilingualism, or coexistence of several languages to exchange information in the workplace, was found to impact resistance to change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. In particular, the fact that employees speak several languages was found to have a negative effect on communication practices within organizations. As a result, managers have difficulties communicating change to the employees. According to Kotter’s change theory, the first step of any change is to create a sense of urgency of change among employees (Kotter, 2012). It is impossible to help the employees to realize that change is needed without adequate communication practices. Moreover, the fourth step of the model is to communicate the vision of change, which may also be challenging without effective communication (Kotter, 2012). According to Sanden (2016), multilingualism is known to be a significant barrier to effective communication in the organization if unmanaged.

Lack of a clearly established language policy may lead to alienation of language minorities, discrimination on language basis, and confusion, which leads to decreased efficiency of communication and decision-making (Thompson, 2018). One of the most frequent solutions for addressing the problem of unmanaged language diversity is introduction of a common corporate language, which is usually English. Piekkari (2015) stated that the purpose of introduction of English as a common corporate language is to systematize the information exchange among different departments in multinational companies. On the one hand, introduction of a language policy leads to improved internal and external communication efficiency, increased sense of belonging, and increased effectiveness of operation (Sanden, 2016). On the other hand, introduction of a common corporate language may lead to increased discrimination on the language proficiency basis, isolation of people with insufficient language mastery levels, and sidetracking, which is inability to be promoted due to the lack of language skills regardless of work experience and proficiency in the professional area (Piekkari, 2015). However, it should be mentioned that unmanaged language diversity is always associated with negative consequences (Piekkari, 2015; Sanden, 2016; Thompson, 2018). Thus, it may be concluded that the finding of the present research that multilingualism is associated with increased resistance to culture change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar is in accord with the findings of previous research and Kotter’s change theory.

Research Question 2

The second research question was to determine the level of resistance to culture change in multinational companies the oil and gas sector in Qatar. Descriptive statistics was used to estimate the level of resistance in the sector. The results demonstrated that companies in the sector were extremely diversified in terms of resistance to culture change. The distribution of the estimates of culture change did not follow the normal distribution curve, and the mean value was close to the median of the distribution.

Such results can be explained in two ways. On the one hand, high diversification of the resistance to culture change scores demonstrated that the companies in the sector are not a homogenous population. According to Del Val and Fuentes (2003), there are numerous factors that may affect resistance to change. The combination of these factors may vary among different companies and even departments within these companies. Thus, resistance to change may differ considerably within the population due to variations in level of participation, communication practices, trust in management, and implicit assumptions. Moreover, the teams may be different in terms of national culture composition, which may affect both values and underlying assumptions of the members. Thus, it may be inappropriate to talk about the level of resistance in the sector in general. Instead, it would be more efficient to conduct case studies for several departments within one multinational company in the oil and gas sector in Qatar to improve the reliability of results.

On the other hand, such results can be explained by insufficient validity of methods. This research utilized a self-created questionnaire that was not tested for validity, which implies that it may be inappropriate for measuring resistance to culture change (Saunders, Lewis, and Thornhill, 2019). Even though the instrument had high face validity, it may be inappropriate for measuring the desired variable and another instrument should be created for the purpose.

No research was conducted previously to estimate the level of resistance to culture change in the sector, which implies that no there are no previous findings that can be used for comparison for this thesis. This study is unique in its attempt to quantify resistance to culture change in the sector. In summary, the results of the analysis demonstrate that resistance to culture change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar is extremely diversified.

Research Question 3

The third research question was associated with determining factor affecting resistance to culture change in multinational corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. The research attempted to answer the research questions by creating a regression model that had eight independent variables and four control variables. A total of eight factors were assessed for having a statistically significant effect on resistance to culture change in the sector, including resistance to culture change, perceived personal benefits, perceived firm benefits, free communication, quality of provided information, quickly changing external environment, cultural diversity, manager-employee relationships, and employee participation in the change process.

Identification of factors that affect resistance to change is crucial, according to Lewin’s Force Field model. The model describes forces that push for change, which are also called the driving forces, and forces that resist change, which are also called restraining forces. One of the most significant restraining forces is employees trying to preserve their status quo (Lewin, 2013). At the same time, employees may become a valuable driving force if they are communicated correctly to become inspired for change. The analysis of factors that affect resistance to change may help to understand which factors act as retraining forces and which factors act as driving forces, which can help managers to manage change effectively.

The created model aimed at testing eight hypotheses based on previous research (Amarantou et al., 2016; Gaylor, 2001; Del Val and Fuentes, 2003; McCallum, 1997). However, none of the hypotheses were accepted based on the assessment of the model. External environment was found to have no statistically significant on the resistance to change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. Even though, the respondent reported that external environment, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, had a high impact on the multinational companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar (M = 4.04, SD = 1.148), it was not correlated with resistance to culture change. The findings were inconsistent with previous research, as Del Val and Fuentes (2003) stated that quickly changing external environment positively affected resistance to change. The inconsistency can be explained by the fact that the most recent change in the external environment was the COVID-19 pandemic. Its effects were evident to people around the globe due to extensive coverage of the media. Since everybody understand the importance of culture change, the resistance was minimal.

Participation was also found to have no correlation with resistance to culture change in the sector, which was inconsistent with the previous studies (Gaylor, 2001). It was supposed that the inconsistency could be explained by the unique characteristics of the organizational cultures in multinational companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar (Ghanavatinejad et al., 2018). As it was established, organizational cultures in the sector are characterized by high influence of Qatari national culture, which means that the employees are comfortable with high power distance (Hofstede’s Insights, no date). High power distance index is associated with strictly hierarchical power structure, which implies no power sharing is expected by employees (Hofstede, 1991). Thus, according to Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimensions, employees in the organizations under analysis do not expect participation in the decision-making process. Therefore, participation may have a differing effect on resistance to change in Qatar than in the European countries.

Manager-employee relationships were found to have no impact on resistance to culture change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar, which was inconsistent with previous research (Amarantou et al., 2016; Gaylor, 2001; Del Val and Fuentes, 2003). The finding was also inconsistent with Al-Omari (2008), who stated that Arabs prefer personalized approach in the relationships, which can be applied to the organizational culture in the sector under analysis. It was expected that the better the relationships between manager and employees, the lower resistance to culture change would be. Similarly, the effect of both personal benefits along with communication practices were also found to have no significant effect on resistance to culture change in multinational companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar, which was inconsistent with previous research (Gaylor, 2001; Del Val and Fuentes, 2003). It was assumed that these factors would have negative correlation with resistance to culture change; however, it was not confirmed by the results of the present research.

This inconsistency can be explained by the peculiarities of Qatari national culture, which was established to have impact on the organizational cultures of Qatari companies. According to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, Qatar has a high score in uncertainty avoidance index (Hofstede’s Insights, no date). Such score means that the representatives of Qatari culture meet any innovation with alert. Since culture change can be considered a type of innovation, the employees resisted to change regardless incentives in the form of personal benefits or communication practices. In other words, the strength of effect of national culture may be higher than the magnitude of effect of personal benefits and communication practices. This hypothesis should be tested in future research, as the research design of this paper did not test for the strength of influence of national culture on resistance to culture change. However, the participants interviewed for the qualitative part of this research mentioned increased influence of national culture as one of the central characteristics of organizational culture in multinational corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar that influence resistance to culture change.

Cultural diversity was also found to have no significant impact on resistance to culture change in multinational corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. The results of this research were inconsistent with previous findings, as Del Val and Fuentes (2003) concluded that differences in values in fundamental assumptions may lead to resistance to change. Moreover, the findings of the quantitative part were inconsistent with the results of the qualitative part of this research, as analysis of interviews revealed that unmanaged cultural diversity was one of the crucial factors that affected resistance to culture change.

Such inconsistency may be explained by heterogeneity of the sample. The survey and interviews demonstrated that the resistance to culture change varied among different organizations. Moreover, several respondents reported that cultural diversity was effectively managed in their organizations. According to Kim (2006), diversity can be associated wit significant benefits and drawbacks depending on how well it is managed. In some organizations, cultural diversity may be managed poorly, which will lead to increased resistance to culture change, while in other organizations cultural diversity may be managed effectively, which will lead to decreased resistance to culture change. Thus, the positive effects of cultural diversity may have cancelled out its negative effects, which led to cultural diversity becoming an insignificant factor.

The most controversial finding of the quantitative part of this research was that firm benefits had a positive effect on resistance to culture change. In other words, the higher the perceived benefits from change for the firm, the higher the resistance to change. This is controversial to the results of previous research, which stated that there was a negative correlation between the two concepts (Del Val and Fuentes, 2003). Moreover, the finding contradicts Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimensions, which stated that Qatari culture is collectivistic (Hofstede’s Insights, no date). Future research should attempt to explain this phenomenon by creating a more complicated statistical model or interviewing specialists in the sphere about the matter.

The inconsistency between the expected results and the findings of the quantitative part of this research may also lie in the limitations of methods. These limitations will be discussed in detail further in the chapter.

Research Question 4

The fourth research question was associated with collecting recommendations that could help to overcome resistance to change in multinational organizations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. The results this research provided three general recommendations to overcome resistance to culture change. First, the participants suggested that managers use effective communication practices at work to help the employees gain the understanding of importance of change and learn the steps need to achieve culture change. The participants suggested that communication between managers and employees should be free, which implies that employees should be free to express their concerns, doubts, and ideas about any processes in the company. This recommendation is in accord with findings of the studies by Del Val and Fuentes (2003) and Gaylor (2001). However, this suggestion contradicts the findings of the quantitative analysis.

Additionally, participants suggested that an effective communication policy and language policy should be established to create clear rules depending on the type, means, and aim of the communication. This suggestion is in accord with Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 2001). Since Qatari national culture has a high impact on the organizational cultures in multinational corporations in oil and gas sector in Qatar, employees are expected to feel more comfortable when they follow rules due to high score in uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede’s Insights, no date). Thus, creating a clear communication policy will help to make collaboration process more effective, which will help to communicate change easier. Creation of a language policy will help to address the problem of linguistic superdiversity in Qatar mentioned by Nebel (2017). According to Sanden (2016), a linguistic policy may lead to significant benefits for the company if implemented with caution.

Second, the research findings suggest that managers should promote participation in the change management process to decrease resistance to culture. The findings are consistent with previous research, as Ghanavatinejad et al. (2018) stated that participation is the key to addressing resistance to change. However, the findings of the qualitative part were inconsistent with the results of the quantitative part of this research, as participation was found to have no significant effect on resistance to culture change in multinational companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. The results are also inconsistent with Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions, which states that representatives of the Qatari culture prefer to have strict hierarchy of power and responsibility. Taking active participation in change management goes against the principle of strict hierarchy described by Hofstede (1991).

This inconsistency may be explained by the influence of globalization on Qatari business. According to El-Haddad (2003), globalization led to tremendous ethnic, financial, technological, intellectual, and ideological changes in Qatar’s national culture. Al-Ammari and Romanowski (2016) stated that the influence of western culture decreased the influence of religion and family on the lives of people. In general, Qatari people became more individualistic and risk-taking, which is against traditional Arab culture. The influence of globalization may have affected the power distance index, which has not been re-evaluated since the original study on Qatar. According to Avruch (1998), culture is a dynamic matter, which implies that it changes under influence of internal and external factors. Thus, a shift towards globalization may have affected the organizational cultures in the sector. However, the influence of globalization was not homogeneous and impacted different companies at a varying magnitude, which explains the inconsistency of the results.

The third recommendation provided by the participants of the qualitative part of this research was to create incentives for the employees to embrace culture change. This suggestion was in accord with the findings of previous research. Amarantou et al. (2016) mentioned that both personal benefits, including payment raises and promotion opportunities, along with benefits for the company, such as acquiring an edge over competitors, may reduce resistance to change. However, the results are inconsistent with the findings of the qualitative part of research, which rejected the hypotheses associated with personal and firm benefits. This inconsistency may be also explained by the varying effect of globalization on different organizations in the sector under analysis.

Limitations

This subsection focuses on methodological limitations of the study design that may have affected the research results. Acknowledging the limitations of the study is crucial for any research, as it helps to identify the weaknesses of applied methods to address them in future studies. This section describes limitations of both qualitative and quantitative parts of the study in terms of participant selection, lack of previous research, time constraints, data collection techniques, and data analysis.

Before commencing into the discussion of specific limitations for qualitative and quantitative parts of research, it is crucial to acknowledge one central aspect that ma have affected the research results, which was briefly mentioned in Chapter 1 of this paper. All the data was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was seen as a significant external factor that may have affected reliability and validity of findings. The pandemic limited the researcher’s ability to conduct face-to-face interviews, which may have influenced the research results and the quality of collected data. Johnson, Scheitle, and Ecklund (2019) stated that, even though phone interviews and online interviews are reliable, in-person interviews are most appropriate for data collection for qualitative research, as they produce data of the highest quality. Similarly, the pandemic prevented the researcher from meeting people that were asked to help recruiting participants for the quantitative part of research. Moreover, the pandemic has affected the mindset of employees and managers and their attitudes towards organizational change. People were forced to accept culture change regardless of their will due to the regulations associated with the pandemic. Therefore, heavy influence of the external factors may have affected the reliability and validity of the results of this research.

Limitations of the Quantitative Part

There are several of the quantitative part of this research that should be acknowledged, some of which were mentioned previously in this paper. First, the study is limited by the lack of previous research on the topic. The literature review revealed that resistance to culture change is an under-researched topic, as the majority of studies focused on change management and resistance to change in general. Culture change is one of the most challenging types of organizational changes, as it requires altering values and underlying assumptions, which are not evident (Denning, 2011). Moreover, no research was found on organizational culture change in Qatar. The lack of previous research limits the ability of the researcher to build relevant hypotheses and select appropriate methods to test these hypotheses. Availability of previous research on resistance to organizational culture change in Qatar may have provided the researcher with examples of successful research designs. Moreover, availability of previous studies on the topic may have prevented the researcher from mistakes that affected the research results.

Second, the study is limited by the participant selection technique. The survey was distributed inside the organizations under analysis to acquire the required number of responses. However, due to the danger of not receiving the required minimum number of responses, the participants were encouraged to share the link to the research with their friends. As a result, the original sample included numerous irrelevant responses, as they were acquired from participants outside the population under analysis. Additionally, since the control over the selection of participants was limited, the final sample may have included respondents from other populations. Thus, the findings of research may be biased, as they may be applicable to other populations. Moreover, the research design did not allow the researcher to identify the company that employed the respondents, which implies that there is no strategy that can be utilized to understand if members from different companies were equally represented. Moreover, it appears impossible to confirm that the final sample was truly random.

Third, the quantitative part of the research is limited by the instrument, which was self-created by the researcher. The questionnaire was created based on the literature review, which allowed to outline possible factors that affect resistance to culture change. However, the review focused on resistance to change in general rather than resistance to culture change, which may have affected the relevance of the items. Moreover, the questionnaire has not been tested for validity, which may have affected the research results. While the instrument has high face validity, it had not been used for studies before, which makes the assessment of its validity challenging. Insufficient validity may have led to failure to measure the variables that were intended to be measured (Cooper and Schindler, 2014). As a result, the research findings may be biased.

Fourth, the quantitative part of the research was limited by the time constraint, as all the data was collected within one month. Such a time constraint impacted the quality of acquired responses, as the researcher did not have the time to recruit more respondents from the population under analysis. The pandemic contributed to the challenges associated with the acquiring top quality responses, which may have led to biases in the collected data.

Fifth, the research results are limited due to the nature of the responses. The participants were asked to quantify the level of their agreement to a set of statements using a five-point Likert scale. Thus, the responses were subjective in its nature, as they revealed the respondents’ attitudes and beliefs rather than objective facts. The respondents may be influenced by their culture when replying to questionnaires and try to represent their organization in a better light in comparison with the reality. According to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, Qatari culture is collectivistic, which may have induced the respondents to evaluate their companies higher than in the reality (Hofstede, 1991).

Finally, the quantitative part of the study is limited by the data analysis techniques utilized for the present study. According to McClaive, Benson, and Sincich (2018), correlation and regression analyses are the most appropriate types of data analysis to use for finding inter-relationships between variables. However, both correlation and regression analysis require that the variables should be normally distributed. This assumption was violated for the dependent and all the independent variables, which was seen in the results of Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests and visualizations with the help of histograms. Since the assumption was violated, it was inappropriate to use regression analysis. Conducting the analysis regardless of the assumption violation may have led to significant issues with reliability of findings.

Limitations of the Qualitative Part

The qualitative part of research, in its nature, is more subjective in comparison with the quantitative art of the research. First, according to Creswell (2007), in qualitative studies, the researcher is the collector of the information and data analyst in one person. The results of the research are heavily dependent on the skills and experience of the researcher. The researcher has limited experience in collecting and analyzing qualitative data for large scale research. Even though the researcher’s experience and skill in interviewing were acceptable, data analysis may have been associated with bias due to lack of relevant experience in analyzing qualitative data. The limitation was addressed by consultations with experts in the sphere and overviewing relevant literature concerning thematic analysis and other qualitative data analysis techniques. However, regardless of the efforts of the researcher, the results may still be biased due to the level of skills and experience.

The second limitation of the qualitative part of the research is associated with researcher-related biases that may have influenced the results of the analysis, including confirmation bias and question-related bias. Before collecting and analyzing the data, the researcher had reviewed a large body of research concerning resistance to change that may have shaped his opinion concerning the probable outcomes of data analysis. This opinion may have influenced the results of data analysis. Additionally, such an opinion may have influenced the wording of the questions along with the question order to induce the participants share the judgement of the researcher. Thus, the researcher may have influenced the objectivity of the data collection process.

The third limitation is associated with the selection of the participants, as the researcher was forced to utilize convenience sampling along with purposive sampling method to acquire a sufficient number of responses. Two factors contributed to the researcher’s decision to use convenience sampling. On the one hand, all the data was collected within one month, which limited the researcher’s ability to search for reliable respondents. On the other hand, the pandemic impeded the researcher’s ability to communicate with the potential participants due to the measures imposed by the government to reduce the spread of coronavirus.

The characteristics of the sample utilized for the qualitative part of research did not support the generalizability of findings. The number of participants was limited to 20, which is appropriate for qualitative research but not enough for generalizing for the population. The analysis of the level of resistance to culture change in multinational companies in Qatar revealed that it was highly diversified inside the population. This implies that the data acquired from the participants may be implacable to the entire population due to significant variations in cultures and management practices in the companies included in the population.

The final limitation is associated with qualitative part of the research is the possibility of the social desirability bias. As it was mentioned previously, Arabic culture is associated with the priority to save face rather than be subjective (Al-Omari, 2008). It was noticed during the interviews that respondents tended to be cautious about evaluating the resistance to change and its causes. Instead, they tended to say that there was little resistance to culture change, which may be a sign of trying to save the organization’s face. In general, social desirability bias is associated with the respondents’ will to be liked and accepted by the society, which makes them respond inaccurately to the questions that may be controversial.

Recommendations

This subsection provides recommendations for managers to overcome resistance to culture change. Additionally, the subsection includes suggestions for future studies for the researchers. The recommendations for overcoming resistance to change are based on the results of this research along with the analysis of previous studies. The recommendations for future research were based on the limitations of this study and results of literature analysis.

Recommendations for Managers

During the interviews, the respondents were asked directly to provide recommendations to overcome resistance to culture change. The analysis of recommendations revealed three central themes, including effective communication, participation, and benefits. The recommendations included in this subsection are based upon these themes and supported by literature.

1. Focus on effective communication. Resistance to change may be explained by the change manager’s inability to implement all the steps of culture change. According to Kotter’s change model, there are eight steps that should be implemented before change is considered successful (Kotter, 2012). Implementation of these steps are impossible without effective communication within and among teams, as change requires creating a sense of urgency, communicating change vision, and empowering employees of broad-based action (Kotter, 2012). Managers need to make building effective communication as a top priority and make organized efforts towards improving current communication practices. In order to achieve effective communication, managers need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the current communication patterns and improve them based on best practices in the industry. Such a step is supported by the results of this research along with the results of previous studies (Del Val and Fuentes, 2003; Ford and Ford, 2009; Gaylor, 2001).
2. Create a formal communication policy. One of the most effective strategies for improving communication practices is to create a formal communication policy. This policy is expected to include information on the official and official channel of communication that should be used by employees. Additionally the communication policy needs to describe when these channels should be used and norms that employees should follow when using these channels. According to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, representative of the Arab culture, which is dominant in multinational corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar, do not enjoy ambiguity in any part of their lives (Hofstede Insights, no date). Establishing a formal communication practices will reduce the uncertainty concerning communication patterns and improve the current communication practices, which is crucial for addressing resistance to culture change.
3. Establish a language policy. Establishing a formal language policy is expected to further decrease ambiguity of the communication practices. Additionally, the policy can help to manage linguistic superdiversity in the workplace, which is one of the current issues in Qatar due to globalization (Nebel, 2017). It is recommended that companies declare English as the common corporate language and describe all the situations, which allow use of other languages. Establishment of English as a corporate language, however, will lead to introduction of a new requirement to all the employees to have a certain level of language proficiency.
4. Promote free communication. Managers need to receive feedback from employees to understand their attitudes towards the change process. Such feedback can help to make corrections in the process to ensure the support of employees. In order to achieve that, managers need to encourage free communication, which implies that they should ask about the opinions of the employees and accept these opinions without judgement of punishment if the employees express their dissatisfaction with the manager’s efforts. The influence of the local culture is expected to limit the employees desire to express concerns and dissatisfaction (Hofstede, 1991). Thus, managers will need to make a strong effort to establish free communication.
5. Encourage participation in the change process. The employees need to feel that culture change is not an alien process that is being forced by the upper management. Employees need to become a part of the change process and co-create the new organizational culture.
6. Identify benefits of change. In order to be successful, every change needs to be beneficial for both the employees and the company as a whole. Managers need to understand these benefits to be able inspire the employees to change their status quo. According to Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions, firm benefits may be just as important to individual employees as personal benefits due to the collectivistic nation of the Arabic culture (Hofstede, 1991). If a change brings no benefits to individuals, they need to redesign the process and vision to ensure that benefits are worth abandoning the current status quo.
7. Communicate the benefits clearly. Understanding the benefits is not enough to motivate the employees; managers need to be able to communicate these benefits to employees. Even though benefits of change exist, employees may be unaware of them, which will lead to increased resistance. Managers need to ensure that all the employees are aware of both personal and firm benefits of change.

Recommendations for Future Research

Future research should focus on addressing the limitations of the study, which were mentioned previously in this chapter. First, the researchers should create and validate a questionnaire that will be able to measure the variables accurately. Similarly, future research should ensure that the sampling techniques are adequate, the sample size is sufficient, and the sampling techniques ensure the representation ability of the sample. The results of the quantitative part of this study was controversial to the results of qualitative analysis and previous research. Eliminating the possibility of bias associated with the limited validity of methods and representation of the sample may lead to resolving the controversy.

Second, researchers are recommended to focus on individual organizations to learn the dynamics within them instead of trying to study all multinational companies as a homogeneous sector. This study demonstrated that the companies are highly diversified within the sector in terms of resistance to change, which implies that the sector is not homogeneous. Thus, it appears inappropriate to unite the companies into one population.

Third, other business sectors and industries in Qatar should be analyzed using similar methods. Resistance to change may be different in other industries that are more influenced by globalization. For instance, tourism, one the key industries in Qatar may be less influenced be the traditional Arabic culture, as it is associated with international service. Moreover, the sector may be more homogeneous in comparison with the oil and gas sector, which will make the methods utilized for this paper more applicable to the industry.

Finally, similar research should be conducted after the influence of COVID-19 restrictions disappears. The results of this research can be applied only to the period of the pandemic, as culture change was forced in many companies due to the influence of the outside environment. The results of research even if the methods are replicated from this study are expected to be different during the post-COVID period.

Implications of the Research

This research provided several crucial insights concerning resistance to change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. First, the paper provided an extensive review of the current body of knowledge concerning the resistance to culture change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. In particular, the thesis reviewed the concept of culture, organizational culture, change management, and resistance to change. The results of the review revealed that while the topic of change management and culture change were of increased interest to researchers and managers, little information was available on the peculiarities of culture change in Qatari organizations. This research attempted to close this gap in knowledge by focusing the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

Second, the paper provided valuable recommendations for managers for overcoming resistance to change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. A total of seven recommendations based on the results of this research along with the findings of previous studies were provided. While some of the recommendations were applicable only to the population under analysis, some of them can be used by managers from other industries.

Third, the paper provided methodological basis for future research on resistance to culture change. The methodology was discussed in detail with special given to limitations of the research design for future research to address these weaknesses and improve the reliability of results. Additionally, valuable recommendations for future research were provided to set a direction for the scholars.

Fourth, this paper can be used as a basis for modifying corporate policies. In particular, two policy recommendations were provided for the sector that can help to reduce resistance to change and improve operations efficiency in the oil and gas sector in Qatar. The study recommends to create a comprehensive communication policy and establish English as a common corporate language to facilitate internal and external communications.

Finally, this research had implications for Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimensions. In particular, this paper provides evidence that current score of Qatar in terms of cultural dimensions needs to be reviewed, since it may have changed due to the influence of globalization. This paper demonstrated that traditional Qatari culture shifted towards western values, which may have affected the uncertainty avoidance index and the power distance score along with four other dimensions. Another important implication for the theory is that Saudi Arabia’s score of indulgence and long-tern orientation index can be used as Qatar’s score, as Arab countries have common values, which was confirmed empirically.

Chapter Summary

This chapter provided a detailed discussion the research results introduced in Chapter 4 of this thesis in light of previous research and theoretical frameworks. The discussion revealed significant inconsistency between the qualitative results and quantitative results of the study. Moreover, the results were inconsistent with previous research. The chapter attempted to explain these inconsistencies using different approaches. Some of the inconsistencies were explained by the lack of homogeneity in the population, while others were explained by the unique characteristics of the organizational culture in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

Additionally, it was supposed that the inconsistencies in the results may have been caused by the limitations of utilized methods. A total of six limitations for the quantitative part of the research and five limitations for the qualitative part of the research were acknowledged. These limitations concerned participant selection, lack of previous research, time constraints, data collection techniques, and data analysis. The central limitation of this study was that it was conducted during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected organizational cultures around the globe, including the oil and gas sector in Qatar.

This chapter also provided recommendations for managers to overcome resistance to culture change and for future research. A total of seven recommendations were given for managers, and four recommendations were provided for scholars. Implications for theory, practice, policy, and methods were discussed, which was expected to allow the reader appreciate the contribution of this study.

Conclusion

This study aimed at exploring resistance to culture change in multinational organizations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar, which was successfully achieved. The research approached the topic from different angles in terms of theory and methods of scientific inquiry. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect and analyze primary data. Three theoretical frameworks, including Lewin’s force field theory, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, and Kotter’s change model, were used to interpret the collected information and convert it into valuable knowledge. The acquired knowledge helped to answer four research questions that concerned the unique characteristics of the organizational culture in multinational companies in the oil and gas sector in Qatar, the level of resistance to culture change in these companies, factors that affected resistance to culture change, and strategies to overcome such resistance.

The results of this research were controversial, as they were inconsistent with the current body of knowledge. In particular, quantitative analysis did not accept any of eight hypotheses that were formulated after reviewing scholarly literature on resistance to change. The inconsistency was explained by the unique characteristics of the population and limitations of the research design. Recommendation for future research were provided to overcome these limitations.

There are several contributions this paper has made to the current body of knowledge. First, it provided a detailed description of the characteristics of the organizational culture in the sector under analysis that may affect resistance to change, which is crucial according to Lewin’s force field theory, as it is a restricting force. Second, this study assessed the level of resistance to culture change in the sector, and concluded that the it was highly diversified. Finally, the research provided valuable recommendations for overcoming resistance to culture change.

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Appendix A: Informed Consent Form

• Research Study Title: Resistance to culture change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar
• Purpose of the study: The purpose of the present research is to explore examine the factors that affect. Identification of these factors using different research methodologies and testing various theories is expected to help the managers of multinational corporations to conduct planned organization culture change. Additionally, this study aims at exploring the unique characteristics of resistance to culture change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar and providing recommendations for overcoming the resistance to change in the industry. The research is also expected to close a significant gap in the current body of knowledge, as culture change in Qatar is an understudied topic. The research will also contribute to the overall literature concerning culture change during the COVID-19 period and will provide valuable insights for future research.
• Risks: The associated risks are minimal. The participants my feel challenged by the ideas or concepts that have not considered before.
• Privacy Concerns: The survey will not gather any personal data that can be used to identify the respondent. Maximum protective measures will be used to secure the collected data. The survey will be conducted using Survey Monkey, which is a trustworthy service that uses the best data protection instruments and policies.
• Benefits: The participants will receive an opportunity to reflect upon practices within their workplace and their effect on resistance to culture change. Additionally, the participants will receive a chance to contribute to the current body of knowledge concerning change management in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.
• Terms of Participation: The participation in the research is voluntary. The participant may terminate participation in the research by simply closing the survey website. No penalties will be applied. After the survey has been submitted, it will be impossible to delete the collected data, as no sources of identification of the participants are present.

Appendix B: Survey Questions

General Instructions

You were invited to take part in a doctoral research in management. The title of the research is “Resistance to change in multi-national corporations in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.” This questionnaire aims at determining the factors that affect resistance to culture change in multinational corporations in the Oil and Gas sector in Qatar. This survey is expected to take between five and ten minutes of your time. Before continuing with the present questionnaire, please, read the informed consent form that was sent to you in the invitation email.

Please, reply to all the questions selecting the most appropriate answer as you see it. Note that the Question 1.1 asks you to confirm that you have read and understood the informed consent form. All the questionnaires that have Question 1.1 unanswered or the selected reply is “No” will be excluded from data analysis.

Remember that you can withdraw from the present study by simply stop asking the questions. As soon as you have sent all the replies, they cannot be excluded from data analysis as there will be no way to identify them.

Part 1: Demographic Questions

Survey Question 1.1

I have read and understood all the information from the informed consent form that has been sent to me through email together with the link to the present survey. Hereby, I confirm that I agree with the terms of participation in the present study.

• Yes
• No

Instructions: For Questions 1.2 – 1.5, please, select the answer that best describes you.

Survey Question 1.2

My age group is:

• 18 – 24 years old
• 25 – 34 years old
• 35 – 44 years old
• 45 – 54 years old
• 55 years old and older

Survey Question 1.3

My biological gender:

• Male
• Female
• Other / Prefer not to say

Survey Question 1.4

My nationality:

• Qatari
• Non-Qatari

Survey Question 1.5

My position:

• Top manager
• Middle manager
• Designated change manager
• Other

Survey Question 1.6

What is your organization’s sector?

• Multinational company in the oil and gas sector of Qatar
• Government
• Private
• Other

Part 2: Content Questions

Instructions: For questions 2.1 – 2.9, identify how much you agree with the statements on a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 stands for “totally disagree,” 3 stands for “neither agree nor disagree,” and 5 stands for “absolutely agree.”

Appendix C: Interview Questions

Section 1

The first section includes warm-up questions that help to establish positive relationships and help the interviewee focus on the topic of further discussion.

1. What is culture change for you?
2. Why do you think culture change is important?
3. Please, describe the most recent culture change your company experienced.

Section 2

The second section of questions aims at narrowing down the topic to barriers and resistance to change.

1. Please, describe any resistance to culture change that you experienced during the culture change process?
2. How did presence of multiple national cultures affect the culture change process?
3. What are unique characteristics of organizational culture that affected culture change?

Section 3

The final section of questions aims at focusing on overcoming resistance to change to answer RQ4.

1. How were you able to address resistance to change in your company?
2. Please, provide recommendations for addressing resistance to change in the oil and gas sector in Qatar.