Barriers of organizational inclusion: A study among academics in Egyptian public business schools

Abstract

We investigate the main barriers of organizational inclusion practices of academics in Egyptian higher education institutions and propose interventions to enhance academics’ sense of organizational inclusion. A total of 245 academics was interviewed in 49 face-to-face focus groups. Upon conducting the interviews, the authors used thematic analysis to determine the main ideas in the transcripts. We could not identify any adoptable paradigm for the systematic practice of organizational inclusion experienced by academics in the chosen business schools. Moreover, we identified three types of barriers hindering the sense of organizational inclusion among academics which are cultural, functional and psychological. However, the focus of our study is on a single perspective (academics) and a single area (Upper Egypt) - a matter that neglects a variety of other views including mainly the authorities of Egyptian higher education sector. As a result, we identified three prompt managerial interventions for Egyptian public business schools. The first is economic which proposes a link between the financial remuneration of professors and the number of academic theses they supervise, the second is functional which strongly recommends that units to be created for managing foreign educational grants and scholarships, and the third is cultural which proposes that cultural tolerance units be required to manage any discriminatory and unequal opportunity claims. Our paper contributes by filling a gap in HR management in the higher education sector, in which empirical studies on the practices of organizational inclusion have been limited so far.