Exploring the Influence of Culture on the Ability–Motivation– Opportunity Framework to Enhance Employee Performance: A Case Study of Performance in Islamic Banks of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Culture is a vital component of society, and it influences all people regardless of their status— poor, rich, working, or non-working. This study focuses on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and employee ability, motivation, and opportunity (AMO). This thesis explores the influence of culture on the AMO framework in relation to how it can enhance employee performance. The two research questions concentrate on determining the influence of cultural dimensions on the AMO framework, and the second emphasises how culture and AMO can enhance employee performance. The research design uses a qualitative method approach. The research was exploratory, involving 35 semi-structured interviews with Islamic banking employees working in different positions. Their opinion was sought on whether cultural dimensions affect employee performance along with the collective effect of the AMO framework in Saudi Arabia’s Islamic banking sector. The analysis was performed in two stages to determine the desired results. At first, researcher conducted a self-assessment analysis of all recorded interviews and extracted themes and sub- themes from the recorded interviews. The self-assessment findings revealed that all of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions affected employee AMO. They also affected employee performance positively according to the cultural pattern of the country, such as collectivism/individualism, indulgence/restraint, short-term/long-term orientation, uncertainty avoidance, and femininity/masculinity. But there was no significant evidence for power distance. In the second analysis stage, thematic analysis was conducted by using NVivo-12 to confirm the results of the self-assessment analysis. Researcher applied the most suitable techniques, including a word tag cloud, codes compared by the numbers of coding references, items clustered by word similarity, and tree map analysis. Overall, the results confirmed that power distance had no influence on the overall performance of employees. Otherwise, all of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions positively affected the AMO framework and enhanced employee performance. The primary contribution arising from this study supports the claim that cultural dimensions are a useful theory to understand how employee AMO enhance performance. The second contribution relates to the changing cultural aspects of Saudi Arabia that negate the influence viii of power distance on employee performance. Only a handful of studies (e.g. Applebaum et al. 2000; Elbaz et al. 2018; Heriyanto et al. 2018; Hughes 2006; Obeidat et al. 2016; Van Waeyenberg & Decramer 2018) have examined the effect of cultural factors on employee performance in other cultural settings. However, none examine employee AMO in the context of Saudi Arabian Islamic culture and the Islamic banking sector. Therefore, the third theoretical contribution of this study is the provision of guidelines for future researchers who might be interested in conducting cultural research. Fourthly, the findings of this study suggest that self- assessment of the influence of AMO on employee performance should not just be limited to ability, motivation and opportunity. An accurate value for enhancing employee performance may only be realised if the influence on all levels of employees in the banking sector is also considered.