If Allah puts anyone in the position of authority over the Muslims’ affairs and he secludes himself (from them), not fulfilling their needs, wants, and poverty, Allah will keep Himself away from him, not fulfilling his need, want, and poverty.1
Managers new to the region may find the approach to management in the Gulf quite different from what they have experienced in other parts of the world. This chapter presents an overview of management styles typical in the Arab world, and the Gulf in particular. We also consider cultural and historical reasons behind the management approach commonly used in the region and identify some cultural issues that may confuse non-Arab managers. Finally, we discuss the role of women in Gulf management contexts.
The GLOBE Project and Arab Management Style
The GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) Project is an ongoing project conducted by an international group of social scientists and management scholars who study cross-cultural leadership, the relationship between culture and society, and the effectiveness of organizations and leadership.2 The current findings of the project are based on the results of a survey administered to 17,300 middle managers operating in 62 cultures. The study divided participating countries into culture clusters, and its Middle East cluster included two Gulf countries, namely, Kuwait and Qatar, along with Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey. The study assessed managerial style in terms of six qualities of culturally endorsed leadership:
Charismatic/value-based—focus on high standards, innovation, and decisiveness; attempts to inspire employees by being true to the organization’s vision and core values.
Team-oriented—focus on pride, loyalty, collaboration, and cohesiveness among organizational members; stresses common goals.
Participative—emphasizes equality, delegates authority, and seeks collaboration in decision making.
Human-oriented—prioritizes employee welfare, compassion, and generosity; displays patience and support to organizational members.
Autonomous—an independent, individualistic, and self-centric approach.
Self-protective—concern with procedure, status-consciousness, and face-saving behaviors; highlights the safety and security of the individual and the group.3
The study found that managers within the Middle East cluster scored low on the leadership traits of charisma, participation, and team-orientation, and high in terms of reliance on procedure, face-saving, self-centeredness, status-consciousness, and conflict induction.
Other studies describe Middle Eastern management style in similar terms and illustrate a tendency toward authoritarian and patriarchal styles of leadership.4 However, more recently a trend toward management by exception (MBE) and a laissez-faire approach has also been identified.5 MBE refers to a management approach in which employees have autonomy in carrying out their duties and only involve management if exceptional situations arise. Laissez-faire management refers to granting employees considerable freedom in making decisions and conducting their work.
Sociocultural Roots of Gulf Management Style
Naturally, certain cultural traits inherent in the Gulf that we have discussed have influenced the customary approach to management. This includes the high value placed on personal connections and loyalty, people orientation rather than task orientation, a strong open-door policy, a keen sense of duty to stakeholders, a consultative approach to decision making, and prompt conflict management.6 These management traits reflect the Gulf’s robust power distance and hierarchy that we discussed in Chapter 2.
Religious beliefs and the prioritizing of tribal and family values over business demands also have an impact on management practice in the Gulf.7 The norm of strict compliance with authority, which developed during the Ottoman and European colonial administrations, provides the historical background to the region’s acceptance of obedience to authority and centralized decision making. Another factor that plays a significant role in the Gulf approach to management is the attitude to Western influences. Some Gulf nationals perceive Western ideas as modernizing factors while others regard them as corrupting, and such perceptions affect the degree to which individual managers decide to incorporate elements of Western management styles.
In addition, qualities ascribed to the Gulf’s early religious leaders, namely, humility, courage, and concern for others, still influence how managers are expected to behave. A consequence of this is that managers who prioritize stability and are conservative and adept at managing personal relationships tend to be well regarded.8
Multiple Roles of the Manager and the Concept of “Bedoaucracy”
A significant difference in how the role of manager is conceived in the Arab world as compared to other cultural contexts is the greater number of functions that are considered to be part of the managerial role. Managers in the Arab world are expected ipso facto to be better than their subordinates; they are expected to take care of the people who work under them; they are expected to respond to the needs for national development most especially in terms of the workforce localization policies discussed in Chapter 1; and, at the same time, they are expected to promote organizational efficiency as much as possible.
In an attempt to locate these various, sometimes mutually conflicting, demands within a single managerial framework, scholars have developed an alternative management model that is in keeping with Gulf culture. This has been termed “Bedoaucracy,” and it attempts to mesh the managerial role with the traditional Bedouin culture of the region: “It combines elements from both Western models of bureaucracy, with its emphasis on efficiency, and the traditional Bedouin culture with its emphasis on tribal solidarity, collective decision making, and communal welfare.”9
The expectation that managers will prioritize the care of their employees may seem alien to those from other cultural contexts, most especially when such care is in conflict with organizational goals. Moreover, as discussed in Chapter 3, the importance of relationships can lead to an emphasis on the development of personal associations that might confuse a manager accustomed to a task-focused approach. That is, a manager may feel somewhat disconcerted by overtures of friendship beyond what might seem normal among colleagues or in leader– follower dyads.
Participative Versus Autocratic Management?
In many contexts, both Western and non-Western, a participative, democratic leadership style has been shown to increase employee commitment to the organization.10 However, this approach may fail if employees expect specific instruction and control from their manager. While many Western managers may feel an inclusive style will lead to enhanced employee engagement and productivity, workers that are accustomed to a more autocratic style may lose respect for a manager who, in seeking to gain their input, may appear to be unsure and unqualified for the managerial role.11 Arab managers traditionally take an autocratic approach and tend not to delegate authority. Their subordinates typically accept this top-down line of command and have little wish to share power with their managers. Indeed they would generally be wary of their managers’ attempts to bring them into the decision-making process.12
This tendency toward authoritarian leadership stems from the cultural trait of high power distance discussed in Chapter 2 that is strong among Gulf nationals, as well as among the large numbers of workers from countries such as India, Pakistan, and the Philippines. This high power distance encourages the acceptance of power structures and total obedience to managers. The high uncertainty avoidance that is also a feature of these cultures means that people want things to be clearly defined and regulated. The cultural trait of masculinity, which is also prevalent in these cultures, means that employees expect a certain degree of assertiveness in a manager’s identity.13
Managers from cultures which display low power distance, low uncertainty avoidance, and very feminine leadership traits will need to think about how best to interact with workers to avoid unnecessarily frustrating employee expectations of managerial behavior.
Birds of a Feather Flock Together: Fragmentation of Workforces
The large numbers of expatriate workers in the Gulf hailing from countries with strongly collectivist cultures are prone to establishing in-groups/out-groups according to nationality. In Chapter 1 we referred to the Similarity Attraction Paradigm, a social-psychological theory that suggests that the more similar people are, the more likely they are to become close to each other and develop alliances.14 While this “birds of a feather flocking together” dynamic may have positive outcomes in that communication and collaboration among these in-groups can be effective, it can also produce several negative consequences. One issue is that it is more difficult to establish team identity when the team is composed of individuals from different cultures.15 An additional problem is that in-group loyalty may supersede organizational loyalty, meaning that workers’ actions may be motivated more by attempts to support and protect their in-group members than it is by delivering a good performance.
Another serious result of in-group/out-group thinking is that members of an in-group may alienate and ostracize nonmembers, thus making it harder for these individuals to operate within the organization. Those individuals who are perceived as being very different are often excluded from existing alliances within the organization, and it is common for negative stereotype images to be developed about them.16 As discussed in Chapter 1, this divide is particularly strong in the way in which Gulf workers are viewed by expatriate workers.17
Diversity Climate: Embracing and Capitalizing on Difference
The concept of diversity climate has become very important globally, given the increasingly diverse workforces and the need in companies to incorporate all kinds of personal differences within a shared organizational identity. Diversity climate refers to the culture of an organization that not only employs workers who display obvious differences such as gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, and cultural background, but that also establishes mechanisms to celebrate these differences as a potential source of enrichment within the organization and make provision for the different needs of individual workers.18 It represents a conscious decision and commitment to use value differences as a source of organizational enhancement. In organizations with a positive diversity climate, the tendency for workers to fragment into nationality-based groups is less common and employees can develop a greater sense of company-wide identity, commitment, and task performance.
While creation of a diversity climate is receiving attention in various Western countries such as the United States, it has not been given much importance in the Gulf. As we have discussed, in the Gulf countries, workforce diversity initially came about for extrinsic reasons, that is, the lack of available local workers. It has remained in place partly because of a shortage of local labor but also through an organizational preference for workers whose salary expectations are lower than those of local workers. Against such a background of economically motivated workforce diversity, it is difficult to establish a sense of the equal value of all workers for the organization.
Given the disjointedness of many private sector workforces in the Gulf, there is a need for an overarching culture that can embrace diverse employees within a single identity of organizational goals that benefit both the company and its individual members. Individual managers can contribute to the development of such a diversity climate by focusing on the ways employees interact with each other. That is, managers can establish a code of communication that encourages networking across formal work teams as well as across informal nationality-based groups. Such a code should be in keeping with the local Gulf culture but also accommodate the different communication practices of other cultural groups.19 In the case of the UAE, for example, local workers have been shown to welcome colleagues from different cultural backgrounds and to appreciate the benefit of their more varied experience. Developing a code of communication relating to personal interactions that capitalizes on this willingness to engage with others could boost the development of a positive diversity culture that would enhance employee relations and lead to greater organizational identity.20
Diversity Climate and Trust Within Multinational Workforces
Experienced managers are aware that gaining the trust of employees is crucial in order to secure high morale and good performance. Low levels of trust in management result in limited engagement and contribute to employee turnover. Establishing trust is always a complex issue affected by many variables such as work conditions, job security, and the different personalities of individuals. However, establishing trust can be extremely difficult when the members of the working group are from different cultures and hold different basic assumptions about what is correct behavior as well as very different expectations of the leader-follower relationship.
A bottom-up approach to establishing a diversity climate will work to enhance levels of trust since it will contribute to greater transparency in communication. As discussed in Chapter 3, the role of trust is particularly important given that it is a fundamental element in the operation of the high context cultures that make up the Gulf workforce.
High Context Cultures and the Practice of “Face Time”
The practice of “face time,” that is spending long hours in the workplace to make a good impression on bosses and colleagues, needs a special note in the discussion of Gulf workforce practices. The practice of face time in some Western contexts has been shown to demotivate employees who feel they spend too much time in the workplace regardless of the level of productive behavior.21 However, in more high context cultures, it is part of how individuals expect to behave.
People from high context cultures rely on personal contact to communicate effectively, and they tend to prefer meetings and other face-to-face contact rather than less direct methods including email or phone conversations. This means that managers from Western cultures may find themselves overwhelmed by the need to have meetings about what they consider to be trivial matters that can be handled more efficiently via email or phone. They might also see their subordinates “hanging around” more frequently than they would in other parts of the world.
Micro-Management and High Uncertainty Avoidance Cultures
The notion that keeping track of employees’ movements can be counter-productive22 has not gained popularity in the Gulf. The high uncertainty avoidance that is characteristic of many of the cultures represented in the workforce may lead to levels of micro-management that would not be considered efficient in a Western context.23 Thus, managers from uncertainty avoiding cultures typically feel compelled to micro-manage their subordinates. Employees from such cultures expect this kind of close supervision and may not respond positively to a less controlling approach. The notion that “When the cat’s away, the mice will play” often comes into practice when employees who expect close supervision are assigned to a manager who operates by giving subordinates a greater degree of freedom in their work.
Female Managers in the Gulf
The Gulf is a region where traditional notions of job suitability and gender remain strong;24 and as observed in Chapter 1, female participation in the workforce remains low. Women are even less visible in management levels, and figures for females serving on company boards of directors in the Middle East have been calculated as being as low as 3.2 percent.25 Some parts of the Gulf, however, have set greater involvement of women in leadership roles as a national priority; the UAE government in particular has declared its objective of setting “a new benchmark for female empowerment in the region.”26
Yet, while female involvement in senior business roles is increasing, only 7 percent of the UAE’s legislators, senior officials, and managers are female.27 This limited presence of women in influential roles means that female managers’ experiences may be quite different from that of their male counterparts. Research has shown that many Gulf women managers feel they are discriminated against, earn less, and are not respected as much as their male counterparts.28 However, other research indicates that young Gulf Arabs are shifting away from the traditional patriarchal views on women in managerial roles.29
Over recent decades many parts of both the Western and non-Western world have witnessed a shift toward greater gender equality in the workplace and in society in general. However, the Gulf region retains traditional notions of gender and womanhood, and the gender-neutrality that is aspired to within Western organizations (although many claim that it does not actually exist in reality) is not a typical part of the management agenda. In addition to the obstacles faced by women managers in many parts of the world, studies have illustrated that in the Arab world they also have to deal with the challenges posed by the powerful patriarchies of their societies.30 For instance, in a study of Arab women managers conducted by the Dubai Women Establishment and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), 42 percent of the 96 female Arab leaders interviewed described their countries’ legal systems as presenting substantial challenges to women; 44 percent reported the religious environment as unfavorable to women.31
Alongside these challenges for female managers in the Gulf, however, there exists a strong element of concern for women that originates in the region’s cultural norm of taking care of women and according them special consideration. This concern manifests itself in various ways such as the provision of female-only services in government entities and banks, the existence of a floor for women only in the Abu Dhabi stock exchange, and the general tendency to give women priority in such situations as queues, and so on. This focus on displaying respect for women is also reflected in the managerial context through the tendency of senior organizational members to grant meetings requested by women managers more readily than would be the case if a male manager made a similar request. This privilege allows female managers the opportunity to gain access to higher management and potentially exert greater influence on senior decision making.32
Women and Leadership Styles
As discussed earlier in this chapter, a paternalistic—and male—style of leadership is very common in the Gulf.33 Many organizations in the region continue to operate within this paternalistic, authoritarian style of leadership, particularly those that are family-run businesses. Paternalism does not, however, represent the full picture of management in the Gulf today, and more modern styles of leadership have also become more common in the past few years. The increasing participation of women in leadership means that many organizations no longer exclusively apply traditional styles of leadership. There is evidence that transformational leadership has become much more popular, for instance, particularly among the new wave of female leaders that have risen to prominence.34 Transformational leadership refers to a style of leadership in which managers work collaboratively with their employees and allow them to carry out their tasks autonomously without close control. Very recent work among young educated Gulf Arabs from the UAE, for instance, would suggest that there is a strong preference for collaborative styles of leadership involving autonomy and discussion.35
In short, managers from outside the Gulf region need to understand that leadership styles are in a state of flux and that traditional forms of management may coexist alongside more modern ways of managing people.36 This means that managers need to be sensitive to the expectations of their workforce and develop a management and communication style, or perhaps multiplicity of styles that will resonate most effectively with all its members.