Effective Policy: Overcoming Communication Barriers, Energy Dept, UAE

This research proposal investigates the communication barriers faced by the Department of Energy in Abu Dhabi, UAE, concerning the effective implementation of government policies. It aims to explore these barriers in policy making, documentation, and implementation, assessing how they can be overcome. The study highlights the significance of effective communication for responsible energy production and consumption in a multicultural environment, considering cultural differences and organizational structures. It reviews relevant literature on communication challenges faced by governments worldwide, emphasizing the importance of public health education and the impact of communication strategies on policy effectiveness. The research design employs a descriptive approach, utilizing interpretivism philosophy and inductive research, with a case study strategy focused on the Department of Energy, Abu Dhabi. The proposal outlines the methodology for data collection and analysis to provide recommendations for improving communication measures and enhancing policy implementation.

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Overcoming communication barriers for effective implementation of government policies:
Critical study on Department of Energy Abu Dhabi, UAE
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1RESEARCH PROPOSAL
1. Project title
“Overcoming communication barriers for effective implementation of government policies:
Critical study on Department of Energy Abu Dhabi, UAE”
2. Overview and significance of the proposed study
Effective communication in any sphere of work or organization is extremely essential for
efficient work process and implementing any measures. Whether in the public sector or private
sector of a nation, effective communication must be established to have a connection with the
citizens of the country as well as with the international audience. This research study will explore
the communication barriers faced by the Department of Energy, Abu Dhabi, UAE in the context
of effective implementation of policies. The Department of Energy, Abu Dhabi, similar to other
public departments within the country and those in other countries, make various policies and
modify those in every few years for various purpose, such as, energy production, consumption,
saving and environment protection. These policies must be followed by every individual as well
as organizations to implement responsible production and consumption of energy and reduce the
wastage (Zwetsloot et al. 2017). Thus, it is essential for the Department of Energy to successfully
and effectively communicate about their policies regarding energy production, and consumption
to the public and to the organizations so that the wastage of energy and the carbon footprint of
the organizations can be reduced.
However, UAE is a multicultural country and it is important to take into consideration the
cultural differences and language barriers while communicating with the citizens of the nations.
At the same time, during any new policy making or modifying any policy, organizations face
various types of barriers, such as, changes in the objectives of the organization, cultural

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differences of employees and communication gap due to hierarchical structure of the
organization (Reason 2016). Thus, similar to the private sector organizations, a government
sector department is also liable to communicate with the public about their policies, any
modifications in the policies, objectives and expected outcomes. However, the only difference
between public and private sector departments is that the private sector organizations are liable to
communicate their policies to the particular stakeholders, while the government departments are
liable to communicate their policies to the citizens of the nation. Thus, effective communication
is highly significant so that every citizen can understand the importance and purpose of the
policies and implement those accordingly to bring greater good for the communities and the
environment. However, the effectiveness of communication is reduced due to various barriers
and this research study will conduct an investigation on the communication barriers faced by the
Energy Department of Abu Dhabi in the course of policy making, documentation and effective
implementation of those policies.
3. Aim and Objectives
The aim of the research study is to explore the communication barriers faced by the
Department of Energy, Abu Dhabi in terms of policy making, documentation and effective
implementation of those policies and to assess how the barriers can be overcome by the
Department.
The objectives of the study are:
 To explore the communication barriers or challenges in Abu Dhabi
 To assess the importance of effective communication in the policy implementation by a
government department

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 To evaluate the communication or documentation measures taken by the Department of
Energy, Abu Dhabi
 To propose recommendations to improve the communication measures taken by the
Department of Energy, Abu Dhabi for effective policy implementation
4. Relevant literature
A report by Khamis (2017) showed that the governments across the world are facing
communication challenges and this is leading to a decline in the trust level in the government.
The author stated that the modern age is characterized by insecurity and instability. The
communication from the government sectors across the world are dealing with five crucial
challenges and the major challenge is the declining trust in government. Moreover, the audiences
are increasingly polarized that undermined the broadcast model of communication adopted by
many governments. The nature of conversation is also primarily one way with less engagement
from the people, which reduces the effectiveness of the conversations. Furthermore, bureaucracy
and rigid hierarchy in the government systems is also a major communication barrier, which
reduced capability of the government communication teams. Lastly, communication as a part of
policy development and delivery has still not gained much importance and therefore lacks the
influence it is meant to have. According to Khamis (2017), citizens of majority of the countries
think that the government does not consider communication to be important in delivering the
policy and implementing that correctly and hence, due to the lack of communication initiatives,
the effectiveness of policy implementation gets affected negatively. Thus, it can be inferred that
to have an effective communication, the government must take initiatives and measures to
establish a connection with the people.

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Hornik (2018) highlighted that the public health education and communication policies
have important impact on the health behavior. In other words, the author found from his study
that proper communication strategy or measures and its implementation increased the
effectiveness of the health education policies as proper communication with the people helped to
increase their awareness about the health related aspects and also the measures to e taken
regarding any health issues. The author gave examples of AIDS campaigns in Switzerland and
Netherlands, sudden infant death syndrome, Reye’s syndrome and smoking immunization in
Philippines. Thus, from this study, it can be inferred that efficient communication strategy can
bring better benefits of a health policy to the audience by increasing their awareness and
knowledge.
Dozhdeva, Mendez and Bachtler (2018) addressed the issue of EU Cohesion policy
performance and the communication in Scotland and its impact on the attitude of the citizens
towards EU. In the case study, the authors focused on two ERDF and two ESF operational
programs from the period 2007-2013. The authors also highlighted that the effectiveness of these
policies are higher in the time when the communication strategies are practiced more rigorously.
On the other hand, policy implementation in a country in any aspect or level has various
types of challenges, such as, economic condition, resource capabilities, political stability,
language barriers etc. As stated by Vanyoro (2018), language barrier is one of the biggest
challenges that the government of South Africa faces during policy formulation and successful
implementation. In the case of public health policies, especially for medical xenophobia, the
country has poor public health care system, which is again not adequately engaged with
migration. The author found that to overcome the language barriers, the government has
introduced innovative on-site interpretation services, such as, informal translations to cope with

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structural constraints, however, it was also found that the innovations are beneficial but only to
those group of patients, whose languages are more accessible. Thus, it can be inferred that, the
governments are developing policies in health care and other sectors, but if the language barriers
across people of different regions with different cultures and languages are not addressed
through innovative ways to make them understand, then the effectiveness of the policies get
reduced.
Sherman, Chang and Nager (2018) conducted their study on the effectiveness of
communication on team work and policy implication in Pediatric Emergency Department (PED).
The authors found that the nature of a barrier is different for different teams of PED, such as,
physicians, nurses, pharmacists, technicians or therapists. Hence, lack of effective communication
leads to mismanagement among the teams and therefore, results in inefficient healthcare service and
ineffective health care policy delivery.
On the other hand, Ra, Chin and Lim (2016) conducted their study on the benefits of
information and communication technology to the government in addressing the key challenges
of equity, quality, and efficiency in the education sector. The authors highlighted that the
governments of the developed countries have started to enjoy the benefits of the new technology
for effective studying and communication in the education sector, but many developing countries
of Asia and the Pacific region have not been able to implement the policy measures effectively.
The socio economic settings, language barriers, investment capacity and attitude towards
implementing the ICT plans and policies in education are often the challenges in the developing
economy. Thus, it can be inferred that in the developing economies, communication is not the
only barrier, but there are other factors also that affect the effective policy and plan
implementation in the education sector as well as in all other sectors.

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Thus, it is seen that communication is often a major barrier in achieving effectiveness of
the government policies in different sectors. However, how the communication barriers affect the
policy formulation, documentation and implementation for the Department of Energy, Abu
Dhabi has not explored yet. Thus, this study will explore these factors in an in-depth manner to
suggest recommendations to the Energy Department of Abu Dhabi for designing more effective
policy implementation measures.
5. Research Design
Research design refers to the step-by-step plan and actions to collect information for the
study and analyses those using appropriate analysis methods to address the research aim and
objectives (Creswell and Poth 2017). In this study, the factors or challenges in communication
faced by the Department of Energy, Abu Dhabi during policy making and effectively
implementing those will be studied. Hence, the nature of the study entails an exploratory
research. Under exploratory study, the researcher needs to investigate the research topic in a new
direction without any prior perspective or notion (Reio Jr. and Shuck 2015). Furthermore, the
most commonly used research designs are descriptive, correlational, experimental and semi-
experimental. In the given study, descriptive research design will be applied. As stated by
Sekaran and Bougie (2016), descriptive research design allows the researcher to observe the
behavior of the subjects in their original condition and describe those without affecting them in
any manner. Thus, while exploring the communication barriers in Abu Dhabi that affects the
effectiveness of policy making and implementation, descriptive study is the most suitable
research design as that would help in observing the subjects in the natural condition and evaluate
the impact of the communication barriers on the policy implementation to get the overview on
the research issue and to suggest recommendations to overcome the challenges.

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6. Methodology
Research methodology refers to the processes of identifying the data, collecting and
analyzing those to answer the research questions (Kumar 2019). It includes research philosophy,
research approach, strategy, data collection process, sampling techniques, and data analysis
process. In the given study, interpretivism research philosophy will be followed as that allows
the researcher to apply the interpretation skills on the information collected and present those in
a qualitative manner. The nature of the research topic is qualitative and hence, interpretivism is
suitable philosophy for this study (Antwi and Hamza 2015).
The study will apply inductive research approach. According to inductive research, the
research topic is studied in a completely new perspective and a new aspect is generated from the
findings. On the other hand, under deductive approach, the research topic is examined using
research hypothesis against established theories, which will not be done in the given study.
Hence, by using inductive research approach, the researcher will explore the research
phenomenon in a new angle to find out the communication barriers and their impact on the
effectiveness of policy implementation for the Department of Energy, Abu Dhabi.
As stated by Lewis (2015), research strategy represents the foundation for data collection
and are of various types, such as, case study, experiment, survey, action, research, grounded
theory, narrative inquiry and archival research. In the given study, the case study strategy will be
applied and Department of Energy, Abu Dhabi is the case study organization. This strategy helps
in narrowing down the research topic to gain a specific approach on the research topic and
conduct the study in a controlled direction. It also helps in getting a realistic overview of the
research phenomenon and getting feasible solutions to address the issue.

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To conduct the study, both the primary and secondary data will be collected. The nature
of the research topic is qualitative and hence qualitative data, that is, non-numeric data will be
collected. Primary data will be collected through interview process. The interview questions will
be open ended and it will be a structured interview process in which all the participants will be
asked same questions in the same order. This helps in collecting systematic qualitative data. For
the secondary data, various secondary sources, such as, academic journals, books, government
publications and reports, industry reports and news articles will be explored to get information
on the policy making and documentation by the Department of Energy, Abu Dhabi,
communication barriers in Abu Dhabi and its impact on effective policy implementation.
Sampling is essential for primary data collection. Since the population for the study is
large and it is not possible to study the entire population, hence, by applying appropriate
sampling technique, a small subset, known as sample, is drawn from the large population,
bearing the same characteristics (Pitard 2019). It is useful for getting accurate research findings.
In the given study, 5 employees of the Department of Energy, Abu Dhabi will be chosen for
conducting the interview process. Convenience sampling will be applied to choose the 5
employees. It is a non-probability sampling technique, in which each sample does not have equal
and random probability of being chosen (Etikan, Musa and Alkassim 2016). In convenience
sampling, the proximity and accessibility of the subjects determine the selection of sample.
Regarding the data analysis method, since qualitative data will be collected, to analyze
the data, qualitative method will be applied. Descriptive method will be followed to interpret the
findings and analyze the data. The secondary information will also be documented under various
themes in the literature review section.

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7. Ethical issues
The research study will maintain the following ethical considerations. Firstly, the
originality of the paper will be maintained by citing the references for the information correctly.
Secondly, the participants will be asked to give informed consent before participating in the data
collection process. The objectives and the purpose of the study will be stated clearly to the
employees of the Department of Energy, Abu Dhabi and they should participate voluntarily. No
participants will be forced or bribed to participate. Thirdly, data confidentiality and anonymity
condition will be maintained. No personal information of the participants will be collected and
the data will be kept confidential according to Data Protection Act. It will be stored in the
university data library and will be used only for academic purpose.
8. Assumed Outcomes
The expected outcome of this study is to gain an overview about the communication
challenges in Abu Dhabi and how those affect the effectiveness of the policy implementation by
the government departments. It can be understood that a policy can be most effective when the
citizens know about that and implement that. However, the Department of Energy, Abu Dhabi
faces challenges in effective communication with the people of the nation and hence, the
efficiency of the policies are reduced as those are not fully implemented. Hence, this study is
expected to highlight the communication issues that affect the policy implementation by the
Energy Department and will give suggestions on how to overcome those challenges.
9. Implications
The implications of this study include two aspects. It will contribute in the academics on
the importance of communication on the effectiveness of policy formulation, documentation and

10RESEARCH PROPOSAL
implementation. On the other hand, the outcome of the study will help the Department of
Energy, Abu Dhabi to understand the communication issues that affect their policy effectiveness
and take measures accordingly to overcome those challenges.
10. Expected Timescale
Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
Task Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
Making a strategy
Making a framework
Literature review
Primary data collection
Conducting interview
Secondary data
collection
Data analysis
Presenting the findings
and discussion
Providing the conclusion
Thesis submission
(Created by author)

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References
Antwi, S.K. and Hamza, K., 2015. Qualitative and quantitative research paradigms in business
research: A philosophical reflection. European Journal of Business and Management, 7(3),
pp.217-225.
Creswell, J.W. and Poth, C.N., 2017. Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among
five approaches. Sage publications.
Dozhdeva, V., Mendez, C. and Bachtler, J., 2018. Cohesion policy implementation, performance
and communication: Scotland case study.
Etikan, I., Musa, S.A. and Alkassim, R.S., 2016. Comparison of convenience sampling and
purposive sampling. American journal of theoretical and applied statistics, 5(1), pp.1-4.
Hornik, R., 2018. Public health education and communication as policy instruments for bringing
about changes in behavior. In Social marketing (pp. 45-58). Psychology Press.
Khamis, J., 2017. Report shows communication challenges faced by governments worldwide.
[online] Gulfnews.com. Available at: https://gulfnews.com/uae/government/report-shows-
communication-challenges-faced-by-governments-worldwide-1.1991281 [Accessed 29 May
2019].
Kumar, R., 2019. Research methodology: A step-by-step guide for beginners. Sage Publications
Limited.
Lewis, S., 2015. Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five
approaches. Health promotion practice, 16(4), pp.473-475.

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Pitard, F.F., 2019. Theory of Sampling and Sampling Practice. Chapman and Hall/CRC.
Ra, S., Chin, B. and Lim, C.P., 2016. A holistic approach towards Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) for addressing education challenges in Asia and the
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Sherman, J.M., Chang, T. and Nager, A., 2018. Communication and Teamwork Barriers During
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White, R., Bornman, J., Bryen, D.N. and Johnson, E., 2016. Identifying barriers in the South
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disability. Acta Criminologica: Southern African Journal of Criminology, 29(1), pp.1-17.
Zwetsloot, G.I., Kines, P., Ruotsala, R., Drupsteen, L., Merivirta, M.L. and Bezemer, R.A., 2017.
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