Research Proposal: Challenges to ADNOC's Growth and Development

This research proposal examines the challenges limiting the growth and development of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). It outlines the research objectives, focusing on identifying major and minor challenges faced by the company, and proposes a mixed methods research approach involving interviews and questionnaires with ADNOC workers and customers. The methodology includes a detailed explanation of the population, sampling design (simple random sampling), and implementation plan. The proposal also provides a project schedule and suggests questions for investigation. The anticipated challenges include a lack of competent workers, competition, corruption, and political instability. The report recommends training, improved customer service, and other measures to address these issues and enhance ADNOC's growth and development.

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Business Information Analysis MGT303A
The Name of the Student
The Name of the Course
The Name of the Professor
The Name of the School
The City and State where it is located
Date

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Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction...................................................................................................................3
2.0 The research objectives....................................................................................................3
2.1 The primary research question.....................................................................................4
2.2 The secondary research questions................................................................................4
3.0 The research approach to be applied................................................................................4
4.0 Details of the research and methodology to be applied...................................................5
4.1 The specific research techniques recommended..........................................................5
4.2 The population.............................................................................................................6
4.3 The sampling design to be used...................................................................................6
4.4 Implementation of the plan..........................................................................................8
4.5 Suggested questions or topics to be investigated.........................................................8
5.0 The project schedule......................................................................................................10
6.0 Conclusion and recommendations.................................................................................11

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References............................................................................................................................13
1.0 Introduction
Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) is one of the largest oil producing companies
in the world. In fact, it is ranked 12th in the list of the largest oil producing companies in the
whole world and produces about three million barrels of oil every day. The company has very
many service stations across the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has offered thousands of job
opportunities to different people across entire UAE. It has also played a great role in the growth
and development of Abu Dhabi. ADNOC has been undergoing rapid growth and development in
the last few years (Varun and Rai, 2012). However, its development has been limited by some
challenges faced by the company. The challenges facing the company are a major gap which
should be researched upon to help the company to achieve maximum growth and development.
In this research proposal, an analysis of some of the challenges facing ADNOC which have
limited its growth and development process will be done. The researchers will do detailed
research on Abu Dhabi to discover some of these challenges and come up with some
recommendations which can be implemented to overcome some of the challenges. The
companies should always identify the challenges which limit their growth for them to address the
challenges accordingly and achieve maximum growth. This will always help the companies to
offer the best services to their customers and compete favorably with their competitors
(DeFillipi, Grabher, and Jones 2007, pp.511-521)

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2.0 The research objectives
The objectives of the research are to determine the challenges which face the growth and
development of ADNOC. However, the researchers will also research on some other minor
challenges which face the company since they should also be known for the company to address
all of its challenges. The objectives of the research will be given in the form of the research
questions which need to be researched. The research questions shall be divided into two; the
primary research question and the secondary research questions which will be linked to the
literature gap of the research.
2.1 The primary research question
What are the major problems which limit the growth and development of ADNOC?
2.2 The secondary research questions
What are the other minor challenges which limit the growth and development of ADNOC?
What steps should ADNOC take to address the challenges which limit its growth and
development?
3.0 The research approach to be applied
To meet the given objectives, the researchers shall conduct a detailed research in different
areas of Abu Dhabi. They will interact with different workers of Abu Dhabi to hold interviews
about the performance of ADNOC Company and the major challenges which they face while

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working in the company. They will also give them some confidential questionnaire forms which
will have some questions about the performance of the company and the challenges they face as
the workers of the company. The researchers will also visit different places of Abu Dhabi to
interact with different customers of Abu ADNOC. The researchers will hold an extensive
discussion on the views of the customers about the products of ADNOC, and they will also give
the customers some questionnaire forms with some questions about the challenges they face as
the customers of Abu Dhabi.
Holding some interviews and giving questionnaire forms to the workers and the customers
of ADNOC will help the researchers to get direct responses about the performance of the
company and the challenges facing the company. The approach of using direct interviews and
questionnaires is to know the performance of the company and research on the problems facing
the company is superior when compared to the other approaches since in this approach the
researchers get the responses from the people who are directly involved in the running of the
company (Cod, 2008, pp.158-176)
4.0 Details of the research and methodology to be applied
This chapter describes the research methodologies and techniques which will be applied
for the researchers to get the best and the most satisfying results. It describes all the procedures
which should be followed to meet the objectives of the results.

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4.1 The specific research techniques recommended
As discussed above, the most suitable approach of conducting the research is the use of
direct interviews and questionnaire forms given to the workers and the customers of the
company. This approach will help the researchers to get first hand and accurate results which
will be very helpful. Apart from getting firsthand information and getting accurate data, the use
of interviews and questionnaire method will help the researchers to interact with as many
workers and customers they wish until they gather enough data. In the interviews, the researchers
can also raise supplementary questions which they feel need more elaboration for them to get the
most accurate and satisfying results.
4.2 The population
The researchers should determine the best population size for them to obtain results of high
accuracy. For the best accuracy, the researchers should use the highest possible population size
(Francis et al., 2010, pp.1229-1245). However, it is also good to note that the higher the
population size, the higher will be the cost of conducting the research, and therefore, as the
researchers choose the sample size, they should consider the budget of the research to avoid
going out of the budget. A reasonable sample size should selected after considering the available
resources and should be good enough to give fairly accurate results (Wisz, Hijmans, and
Peterson, 2008, pp.763-773). In this cases, the researchers will choose a sample size of 7500,
where 2500 people will be workers of ADNOC and 5000 people will be the customers of
ADNOC. A sample size of 7,500 will be good to give fairly accurate results of the research.
Direct interviews will be used to some respondents and questionnaire forms will be given to

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other respondents. The role of selecting those to be interviewed and those to fill the questionnaire
forms is left to the researchers.
4.3 The sampling design to be used
We have several types of sampling designs used by researchers in their research process.
The major research design used are the qualitative research design, quantitative research design,
and mixed methods research design (Smith, 2015). In this research, the researchers are going to
use mixed methods research design which is a combination of both qualitative and quantitative
research designs. It is a superior method compared to the other two since it overcomes most of
the limitations of each research designs. It’s the most suitable research design in this case since
the researchers will deal with both numerical and non-numerical types of data in their research,
and these two types of data are acceptable in mixed methods research designs (Onwuegbuzie and
Leech, 2009, pp.265–275).
After choosing the research design to be used, the researchers should select the most
suitable sampling technique to be applied in this research. There are very many types of research
sampling techniques used by different researchers depending on the type of their research.
Among the most commonly used sampling techniques include simple random sampling,
stratified random sampling, and the multi-stage sampling techniques (Cochran, 2007). The
choice of a specific sampling technique is determined by the researchers depending on the type
of the research they are conducting and the suitability of that specific sampling technique. In this
research, the best sampling technique to be used is simple random sampling technique since its
simple, cost friendly and will give all the people an equal chance of being selected without any

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bias or favor. Simple random sampling is the most common sampling technique used by many
researchers due to its simplicity and low cost (Gurevich and Bar-Yossef, 2008). Therefore,
simple random sampling will be the most appropriate sampling technique for this research since
the researchers can select the workers and the customers of Abu Dhabi randomly without any
bias or favor and this will ensure we have a satisfactory representation of all the customers and
workers which will yield to fairly accurate research results.
4.4 Implementation of the plan
To implement the research, the researchers shall have to visit different customers
and workers of ADNOC within different places of Abu Dhabi. The researchers will engage the
customers and the workers in face to face interviews and should ask general questions relating
the performance of the company and the challenges facing the customers and the workers of the
company. The researchers should be very careful to avoid asking very personal questions to the
workers or the customers of ADNOC as this may put off some respondents (Brinkmann, 2014).
The researchers will also give some questionnaire forms to some workers and customers,
especially those who fear to talk to strangers. By use of interviews and questionnaire method, the
researchers will be able to get the required results which will be very useful in answering the
research questions.

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4.5 Suggested questions or topics to be investigated
As we have stated above, the researchers should avoid asking very personal questions to
the respondents for them to feel free to participate in the interview. The researchers should
concentrate on the main questions of the research although they may also ask some general
questions about the respondents.
A questionnaire form with some sample questions which can be used in the collection of
data is shown below:
(Please answer all the questions correctly. The privacy of your information is
guaranteed)
Date..…………………..
1. What is your name? (optional)
………………………………………………………………………
2. What is your gender? (please tick accordingly)
Male Female Others

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3. What is your area of residence at Abu Dhabi?
……………………………………………….
4. What is your position at ADNOC? (please tick accordingly)
Customer Worker
5. As a customer/worker of ADNOC, what major challenges do you face? (Please give
one or two major challenges)
……………………………………………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………………………………………….
6. What other minor challenges do you face from being a worker/customer of ADNOC?
(Briefly, state six or less minor challenges)
……………………………………………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………………………………………….

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(Thank you for your honest feedback)
5.0 The project schedule
The schedule which will be followed to conduct the research is shown in the table below:
Research activity Proposed start date Proposed end date Proposed duration
Choosing the topic of
research
10/11/2017 15/11/2017 5 days
Doing a literature
review
16/11/2017 20/11/2017 4 days
Preparation of a
research proposal
21/11/2017 26/11/2017 5 days
Collection of the
required data
27/11/2017 9/12/2017 12 days
Analysis of the
collected data
10/12/2017 14/12/2017 4 days
Preparation of the
final research report
13/12/2027 19/18/2017 6 days
6.0 Conclusion and recommendations
From conducting the research, it will be realized that we have very many challenges
which face the workers and the customers of ADNOC. These challenges have played a great part

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to limit the growth and development of ADNOC. Among the expected challenges include lack of
enough competent workers, competition from other companies, cases of corruption within the
company, and political instabilities in Saudi Arabia. To address the challenge of lack of enough
competent workers, it is recommended that the company should train more workers to work in
their company, if need be, the company should employ competent workers even from other
countries. To deal with competition, it is recommended that the company should address all the
needs of their customers well and the best services to their customers, this will help to improve
the customers’ loyalty. On the issue of corruption, it is highly recommended that the company
should deal with the corrupt workers or customers ruthlessly to discourage the other people from
engaging in corruption. The challenge of political instability is beyond the control of the
company and can only be addressed by the government.
There are many other challenges facing the company which limits its growth and
development, and it’s the responsibility of the company to identify its challenges and address
them accordingly for it to achieve maximum growth and development.