الموضوع: Current Training and Development Practices and Problems in Arab Countries

Current Training and Development Practices and Problems in Arab Countries

Abstract
The inability of Arab countries to cope with the increasing pressures resulting from globalisation, internationalisation and the expansion of population and information technology has forced these countries’ businesses to pay more attention to improving their insufficient manpower capabilities. Human resources are perceived to be a significant element for economic development. T&D management and the other managerial behaviours have been influenced largely by socio-cultural factors resulting from Arab culture and Islamic rules and principles.
Religion and family are very important influential factors on Arab organisations. In Arab society the family plays an important role in creating a system, which implies and creates loyalty and obligations, which each family member should respect. That creates very negative unprofessional managerial values which managers and employees should respect and accept, such as nepotism, favouritism and the power of the strong personal and social contact relationships, as more important elements than formal procedures.
In the majority of the Arab and Jordanian organisations, there is an absence of systematic employee training needs assessment and of effective procedures for evaluation. The organisations prefer to send their employees to external training providers rather than train them in the organisations. The most commonly used delivery method is off-the-job training, namely lectures, seminars and case studies. T&D is not characterised by strategic human resource development criteria (SHRD) and it plays a reactive rather than a proactive role in these organisations. T&D in Jordan faces many problems: lack of motivation among employees to attend T&D programmes; inaccurate TNA processes; poor training planning in terms of contents and delivery methods; sending inappropriate persons to the training programmes and lack of on-the-job training.