Role Of ICT Tools & Techniques In Educating And Managing Immigrant Workforce: A Proposal

Background

Information Communication Technology has emerged as one of the most prominent factor for enhancing the organisational operations and even mitigating the threats and issues that an organisation faces (Andrade and Doolin 2016). One of the prominent challenge that the organisations are facing is associated with the communication and education of the immigrants at the workplace. Additionally, Australia have witnessed an increase in number of immigrants from the Asian continent which make it more difficult for the managing entities to manage and educate them in the organisational operations (Betts 2018). Hence, the deemed paper is proposed at identifying the role that ICT is capable of playing in managing the immigrants and educating them in the organisational operations.

Australian Bureau of Statistics the main contributor to the increase in Australia’s population of 2017-18 are the immigrants. According to the bureau Australia’s total population grew by 1.6% and of that figure 62% was contributed by the migrants while 38% was natural increase (Homeaffairs.gov.au 2018). Another fact presented by Forbes magazine cites that the second most prominent ingredient of Australian economy boom is the immigrants (Babones 2017). Hence, it would be justified to state that immigrants play a major role as the workforce of Australia. However, the cultural & communicational barrier along with the attitude of the immigrants and their lack of knowledge regarding Australian organisational processes disrupts the workplace productivity (Hart and Mareno 2014). Hence, the discussed threat needs to be mitigated and ICT tools & techniques with the mitigation strategy. Hence based on the importance of immigrants and the challenges associated with them, while citing focus to the development & adoption of ICT and their implications, it would be justified to state that the selection of discussed topic is justified and is in dire need of research.

The discussed section is aimed at identifying the current status of knowledge that still exists with relevancy to the topic in discussion. On reviewing the literature, the following identifications have been made:

Arvanitis and Loukis (2015), in their paper identified that the adoption of ICT tools and techniques cited positive effect on the employees and it also assisted in educating the workforce in organisational processes and tools. However, the effect was directly proportional to the education level of the employees. The tools and techniques reflected the most prominent effects on the highly educated employees while, the medium-educated employed were exposed to mixed results. Another critical finding of the paper revealed that the impact differed according to the geographical domain of research areas. The research work was done in Greek and Switzerland and the outcomes of both the countries slightly differed from each other. Hence, th reviewed paper can be summarised to state that the impact of ICT may vary according to the education and technology friendliness of an employee. Additionally, the difference base on the geographical domain also can be used to state that the impact of ICT varies according to the region of implementation.

Piabuo et al. (2017), in their paper have attempted at citing attention to the impact that ICT is capable of citing on the human resource management of an enterprises. The findings from the paper reveals that the use of ICT enables the firms to manage a more effective human resource management. The tools and techniques of ICT assists the human resource management to enhance their recruitment, training, development and other core processes. It is also capable of offering it assistance in other workforce related matters such as the shift management, work-shift scheduling, attendance and other prominent processes. Hence, post reviewing of the article it would be adequate to state that ICT have its potential use in managing and educating the workforce of an organisation.

Justification

The management of a diversified workforce is highly challenging and complex in nature (Wrench 2016). Patrick and Kumar (2012), also supported the above made statement in their article. They cited that the most prominent challenges are cultural and communicational barriers. Additionally, the attitude of the foreign workforce is also a challenging task for the management team. The diversity may also lead to conflict at the work force and hence, it becomes of great prominence that the immigrants are managed with adequate accuracy and attention. Hence, from the discussed review it could be summarised that there are certain challenges associated with managing and educating the foreign workforce.

The review of the articles above can be summarised to state that the literature has offered way in which ICT tools and techniques can be of assistance in managing and educating the workforce. However, no special attention at the role of ICT when discussing in context with the immigrants have been discussed. Hence, it would be adequate to state that ICT’s role in context with the immigrants is a matter of discussion that needs to be addressed and is a gap in the literature.

The aim of the paper is to identify the role that ICT is capable of playing in educating and managing the immigrants. Based on the aim of the paper and the gap in literature the following research questions have been developed which will be pursued by the proposed work.

1. What are the challenges associated with educating and managing the immigrants?
2. What are the available solutions for managing and educating immigrants?
3. What role ICT is capable of playing in managing and educating the immigrants?

Outline: Secondary data collected by literature review is one of the most prominent methods to establish the background for research works and hence will be an integral part of the proposed research work. The philosophy for the proposed paper will the positivism while the research approach will be deductive in nature. The research design will be exploratory in nature. The collection of data will be done through mixed data collection methodology where both the primary and secondary data will be accounted for. The primary data will be collected by both the qualitative and quantitative forms. The sampling of the data will be done using mixed sampling method and will take consideration of both likelihood and non-likelihood sampling method. The analysis of the collected data will be done through thematic analysis, critical thinking and with assistance of MS excel statistical tool. If any additional tool is adopted for the analysis depending upon the size and type of data collected, it will be added in the final submission.

Philosophy: Interpretivism and positivism are the most prominent research philosophy and the reason for the selection of the positivism philosophy can be supported by the fact that it takes consideration of both social and scientific data unlike interpretivism which only considers scientific data (Kennedy 2017). The need for social data could be supported by the fact that humans and their needs cannot be assessed by taking account of only scientific data social data are crucial and hence the selection.

Approach: The selection of deductive approach could be supported by the fact that the aim of the paper is to deduce the role of ICT in managing and educating the immigrants and not to induce any new theory or offer any framework and hence the selection (Stage and Manning 2015).

Data collection: The secondary data will be collected by reviewing the literary work of the past to establish the base for the research work (Johnson and Sylvia 2018). Additionally, the data collected from the secondary means will be summarised to develop a questionnaire that will be used for collection of the primary quantitative data through electronics medium. As part of the primary quantitative data collection, the developed questionnaire will be distributed to different ICT and management professionals to collect the necessary data (McCusker and Gunaydin 2015). The selection of quantitative data could be supported by the fact that the data collected through the discussed means will be large in size that will offer reliability to the findings. Post collection of the quantitative data, interviews will be conducted with some professionals associated with management and ICT to collect the qualitative data (Cleary, Horsfall and Hayter 2014). The qualitative data is need for the collection of the social data and get an in-depth understanding of the situation.

Literature Review

Data Sampling and Analysis: Collected data will be sampled based on both likelihood and non-likelihood sampling method where the quantitative data will take account of likelihood, qualitative data will take consideration of non-likelihood sampling method (Botev, Zheng and Barber 2017). Hence, the data sampled from likelihood sampling method will be offered equal importance, however the data sampled using non-likelihood sampling method will discriminate with the response depending upon the designation and vitality of the respondent.

The analysis of secondary and primary qualitative data will be done through thematic analysis and critical thinking while quantitative data will be analysed using assistance of MS excel and other statistical tools.

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish	Predecessors
Role of ICT in managing immigrant workforce	87 days?	Mon 16-07-18	Tue 13-11-18
Initial Phase	18 days	Mon 16-07-18	Wed 08-08-18
Selection of Topic	2 days	Mon 16-07-18	Tue 17-07-18
Establishing background	5 days	Wed 18-07-18	Tue 24-07-18	3
Brainstorming	2 days	Wed 25-07-18	Thu 26-07-18	4
Preliminary review of literature	5 days	Fri 27-07-18	Thu 02-08-18	5
Deciding research question	4 days	Fri 03-08-18	Wed 08-08-18	6
Planning phase	10 days	Thu 09-08-18	Wed 22-08-18
Time scheduling	2 days	Thu 09-08-18	Fri 10-08-18	7
Budgeting	2 days	Mon 13-08-18	Tue 14-08-18	9
Drafting Proposal	5 days	Wed 15-08-18	Tue 21-08-18	10
Draft Submission	1 day	Wed 22-08-18	Wed 22-08-18	11
Draft Submitted	0 days	Wed 22-08-18	Wed 22-08-18	12
Execution Phase	29 days	Thu 23-08-18	Tue 02-10-18
Literature review	12 days	Thu 23-08-18	Fri 07-09-18	12
Developing Literature Summary	5 days	Mon 10-09-18	Fri 14-09-18	15
Primary Data collection	7 days	Mon 17-09-18	Tue 25-09-18	16
Summarising Primary data	5 days	Wed 26-09-18	Tue 02-10-18	17
Analysis Phase	19 days	Wed 03-10-18	Mon 29-10-18
Summarising data	7 days	Wed 03-10-18	Thu 11-10-18	16,18
Analysing data	4 days	Fri 12-10-18	Wed 17-10-18	20
Concluding	3 days	Thu 18-10-18	Mon 22-10-18	21
Report Drafting	5 days	Tue 23-10-18	Mon 29-10-18	22
Report Drafted	0 days	Mon 29-10-18	Mon 29-10-18	23
Closure Phase	11 days?	Tue 30-10-18	Tue 13-11-18
Report Submission	1 day?	Tue 30-10-18	Tue 30-10-18	24
Oral Presentation	10 days	Wed 31-10-18	Tue 13-11-18	26

Table: Project Schedule

(Source: Created by Author using MS Project)

                                              

                                                                                   Figure: Gantt Chart

                                                                (Source: Created by Author using MS Project)

Conclusion

Hence, the proposal can be summarised to state that ICT has proved its prominence in different management operations of a business enterprises. However, no evidences are available to state that ICT is capable of managing and educating immigrants adequately because of the challenges that are associated with the immigrants. Hence, based on the identified gap in the literature, the proposed paper will aim at identifying the role that ICT is capable of playing in managing and educating the immigrants.

References

Andrade, A.D. and Doolin, B., 2016. Information and communication technology and the social inclusion of refugees. Mis Quarterly, 40(2), pp.405-416.

Arvanitis, S. and Loukis, E., 2015. Employee education, information and communication technologies, workplace organization, and trade: a comparative analysis of Greek and Swiss firms. Industrial and corporate change, 24(6), pp.1417-1442.

Babones, S. (2017). Australia’s Economic Miracle Depends On Immigration. So Why Curb It?. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/salvatorebabones/2017/10/26/australias-economic-miracle-depends-on-immigration-so-why-curb-it/#24ea6e6141e9 [Accessed 11 Aug. 2018].

Betts, K., 2018. Immigration and public opinion in Australia: how public concerns about high migration are suppressed.

Botev, A., Zheng, B. and Barber, D., 2017, April. Complementary sum sampling for likelihood approximation in large scale classification. In Artificial Intelligence and Statistics(pp. 1030-1038).

Cleary, M., Horsfall, J. and Hayter, M., 2014. Data collection and sampling in qualitative research: does size matter?. Journal of advanced nursing, 70(3), pp.473-475.

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Foner, N., 2018. Benefits and burdens: Immigrant women and work in New York City. In Immigrant women (pp. 1-20). Routledge.

Fuglseth, A.M. and Sørebø, Ø., 2014. The effects of technostress within the context of employee use of ICT. Computers in Human Behavior, 40, pp.161-170.

Hart, P.L. and Mareno, N., 2014. Cultural challenges and barriers through the voices of nurses. Journal of clinical nursing, 23(15-16), pp.2223-2233.

Homeaffairs.gov.au. (2018). Work in Australia. [online] Available at: https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/reports-publications/research-statistics/statistics/work-in-australia/key-trends-457-program-as-at-31-march-2018 [Accessed 11 Aug. 2018].

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Kennedy, A.M., 2017. Macro-Social Marketing Research: Philosophy, Methodology and Methods. Journal of Macromarketing, 37(4), pp.347-355.

McCusker, K. and Gunaydin, S., 2015. Research using qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods and choice based on the research. Perfusion, 30(7), pp.537-542.

Mellar, H., Peytcheva-Forsyth, R., Kocdar, S., Karadeniz, A. and Yovkova, B., 2018. Addressing cheating in e-assessment using student authentication and authorship checking systems: teachers’ perspectives. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 14(1), p.2.

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Piabuo, S.M., Piendiah, N.E., Njamnshi, N.L. and Tieguhong, P.J., 2017. The impact of ICT on the efficiency of HRM in Cameroonian enterprises: Case of the Mobile telephone industry. Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, 7(1), p.7.

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