Business Environment Gets Competitive and Volatile

Introduction

Owing to changes in the domestic and global economy, increased competition, and the rapid rate of technological change, more organizations in the 21st century, are giving employee well-being more prominence. Work and well-being affect an employee's standing, sense of self-worth, and satisfaction, which provides the environment in which social interaction and friendship grow (Jayasinghe, 2017). Employee well-being (EWB) is fundamental to the success and growth of an organization (Porath et al., 2012). The importance of employee well-being is supported by various theories, including the theory of planned behavior (TPB), conservation of resources theory (COR), the theory of reasoned action (TRA), social exchange theory (SET), and positive organizational behavior (POB) theory. Maslow's hierarchy of needs also determines the levels of employee satisfaction, which, in turn, affects their perception of well-being (Jerome, 2013). According to the literature, taking care of the well-being of the employees enhances productivity, organizational and economic performance, and also serves as a source of competitive advantage for the organization (Uly, 2003).

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Organizational failure in handling change has been cited as one of the primary causes of poor employee well-being. Leaders paying less attention to employee well-being may lead to undesired outcomes (Jayasinghe, 2017). Leadership style is an important management tool, which, if properly used, can enhance positive relationships with employees, improve the organizational climate, and increase service performance (Kozak and Uca, 2008). It has been linked to worker well-being and organizational factors within the oil industry. According to Gannon (1996), a working environment that promotes significant well-being removes unfair discrimination. However, research shows only limited companies consciously introduce a program to manage employee well-being (Alilyyani et al., 2018). Besides, there is a gap in assessing the effect of benevolent leadership style on employee well-being.

Knowledge sharing behavior (KSB) is essential to organizational outcomes (Foss et al., 2010). It leads to the development of new knowledge and can also result in a greater individual problem-solving capability, which can be practical to the organizational degree work-related capability (Nickerson et al., 2019). Several studies agree that knowledge sharing generates a positive effect on the performance of organizations and constitutes a source of competitive advantage (Ma et al., 2017). However, it is necessary to deepen the identification of background factors, principles, and practices related to knowledge sharing.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is among the biggest players in the global oil industry. The Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco) is the state-possessed oil organization in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is concerned with creation, exploration, and marketing, refining, and international shipping (Alomi et al., 2018). Headquartered in Dhahran, Aramco has more than 65,000 (Woodman and Jaoua, 2018). Globally, Saudi Aramco holds significant projects in refinery and commerce activities in Japan, the Republic of Korea, the USA, and China, and also has market interests in urban areas of Europe, the Far East, and North America (Aldulaimi, 2016). The relationship between employee's well-being and their knowledge sharing behavior in the petroleum industry in Saudi Arabia has not been addressed sufficiently in the literature (Aldulaimi, 2016). According to the literature, work challenging factors such as workplace conflict may affect the well-being of Aramco employees as an antecedent of employee well-being (Skakon et al., 2010). The literature on conflict and conflict management also rarely addresses employee well-being as an antecedent or result of workplace conflict. This study views workplace conflict from the perspective of employee well-being as a precursor (Sonnentag, Unger, and Nägel, 2013). Understanding how employee well-being would impact Aramco employees' honesty in sharing their experience will have a significant impact on the employee and human resource policies and problems connected with an employee's work satisfaction and functionality (performance) (Jayasinghe, 2017).

Saudi Aramco has embraced knowledge sharing in its quest to become the world's leading energy provider (Yeo et al., 2016). Hayman (2016) conducted a health assessment risk in Saudi Aramco and confirmed that fatigue and job hazards are the leading factors relating to health risk and absenteeism. In this context, Saudi Aramco reported several employee incidents over the years. In 2017, according to the Civil Défense agency, ten employees were killed in a fire, and in another incident in 2017, one of the company's contractors was killed and many other employees injured in an oil pipe leaking incident (MOI, 2017). These incidents affected the company's trend toward achieving its goals by 2020. In response, Saudi Aramco adopted a leadership development designed for mid-level managers in 2018 (Aldulaimi, 2018). The aim of this study, therefore, was to gain insight into the extent of investments in employee well-being in the workplace within Saudi Aramco as well as aspects of KSB. Additionally, this knowledge could be used to provide further incentives for other organizations within and outside Saudi Arabia to devote resources to employee well-being.

Methodology

This study used the positivist paradigm. The quantitative approach is the most suitable in this research since it seeks to examine theory affirmed relationships (Uma et al., 2013). The 65,000 employees of Saudi Aramco were the target population of this study (Woodman and Jaoua, 2018). A total of 400 employees in Saudi Aramco were invited to complete questionnaires. A purposive sampling technique was used to distribute the surveys to the respondents. The selection criteria required that the participants should have worked at Aramco for at least two years and that their job position must be highly exposed to fatigue and work hazards. Since the current study was conducted in Saudi Arabia, where the national language is the Arabic language, all measures were translated from English to Arabic by the researcher. Then, the translated questionnaires in Arabic were translated back into English by independent bilingual translators. The smart PLS software was used for the data analysis. The result of the analysis was presented in the form of plots, tables, and discussions. The survey was executed based on a five-point Likert Scale (strongly disagree=5, disagree number=4, Neutral =3, agree=2, strongly agree=1) to gauge the degree of influence on the antecedents determined for the current study.

Findings and Analysis

The result obtained from principal component factor analysis illustrated that variance explained by the first factor was 14.133% (<40%), suggesting that CMV bias is not significant in this study (Podsakoff and Organ, 1986). The majority of the respondents were male and unmarried at 97.00% and 74.00%, respectively. In terms of age, about 43.10% of them were between 41-50 years old. Respondents who hold a high school degree or equivalent made up 72.90% of the study population. In addition, 50% of the respondents had 11-20 years of industry working experience, while 43.90% had worked in Saudi Aramco for between 6 and 10 years. As for job positions, 53.30% of them were working as operational workers and earned between SR 5,000-SR 10,000 per month.

On the other hand, using Jöreskog, s (1971) guideline, all the constructs with CR ranged between 0.842 and 0.864 are considered satisfactory as they have exceeded the recommended value of 0.70 and higher. As seen in the table above, the findings also indicated that all the reflective constructs (i.e., explicit knowledge sharing behavior, tacit knowledge sharing behavior, and psychological well-being- thriving at work, feeling of competency, and desire for involvement) correspond to a sufficient level of construct reliability and convergent validity.

Using the bootstrapping technique, the study established that most of the items of benevolent leadership are significant at p<0.001, three items non-significant, and two items (i.e., BL9 and BL 11) are deleted due to negative results. For fatigue, three out of six items are statistically significant (p<0.001), one item (i.e., FAT 1) non-significant, while two items (i.e., FAT 5 and 6) are eliminated due to negative outer weights.