Dubai Holding Company has been founded by the government of UAE in 2004. This company governs the control of 7 main companies operating in 13 industries of the country. This company has one of the most significant stakes in the business environment of UAE. The company has been strategically designed to boost the economic activity in the UAE region. The profiles of companies which are operated under the umbrella of Dubai Holding Company are as mentioned in the appendix.
Dubai Holding Company is committed to development of the physical and commercial infrastructure of the region so as to create an investment-friendly environment in the Dubai region. The company makes the direct effort to make the Dubai Strategic Plan (2015) possible to achieve for the government. The plan highlights the major economic aims
Sustainable annual GDP growth rate of 11
Improved real GDP per Capita to up to 44,000 by 2015
Improved labor productivity by 4
Enhancement and development of Dubais globally competitive sectors such as trade, transport, tourism, construction, financial and professional services
These in turn can be considered as the long term objectives for Dubai Holding Company in managing all the companies in the various industrial sectors of Dubai.
For the success of any organization, it is important for the management to be clear upon its vision, values, philosophy and goals. These form the guiding principles for channeling the resources employed in the organization. The most valuable resource for any organization is human capital and human intellect which eventually directs the growth of the organization. The culture of the organization which the people form, and the work ethics they adopt within the organization greatly influences how the organization performs on the whole in achieving its objectives. The aspect of the study of this perspective of behavior of people as an integral part of an organization is encapsulated within the definition of organizational behavior.
Why Study Dubai Holding Company in Context of Organizational Behavior
The Middle Eastern region of Dubai has been one of the most amazing business success stories of the recent past. The secret to this success is the hot topic to be discussed. The outreaching success of the region in the business environment is owed to many big companies which have been playing their roles effectively for the regions prosperity. These companies are operated under the umbrella of Dubai Holding Company. Thus, the reason to study a company like Dubai Holding Company within the context of organizational behavior will add to the overall understanding of how organizations in the Middle Eastern regions are operating from within. Students can draw many lessons from such a study about how to adjust in the business environment of a company operating in the UAE region. As the business is growing in these regions at a very rapid pace, jobs are being created and opportunities are presenting themselves each day for young students of business and environment to make an entry into this region and develop and grow along with the regions own growth.
Organizational Behavior and Dubai Holding Company
When studying organizational behavior, the culture of the organization plays an important role in determining the type of communication styles, group mechanisms, group roles, and leadership styles. Thus, workers derive quality of work practice from this, and are motivated accordingly. The consequential outcome of these factors is categorized as individual performance, satisfaction, growth and development.
The important thing to understand is that organizational culture are most commonly influenced directly by the regional cultures, as the organization does not exist independently but is in direct influence by its surroundings. Thus, the organization culture and organization behavior of a Middle Eastern company will be directly influenced by the strong Middle East historical cultural values and social system.
Thus, for a company like Dubai Holding Company it is directly influenced by the Middle Eastern regional cultural heritage.
This is even further evident in the case of Dubai Holding Company, which is a state owned company which is in direct link to the Royal family of the region. Thus the familial culture has an over-riding influence on the organization and the country at large. By far and large, the Royal family has taken up the responsibility to ensure Dubais future prosperity. For the purpose companies are guided in a way to create an environment of security and growth for investors and consequently local businesses may be established and eventually flourish. To create this internationally collaborative society, the realization has been seen to fine tune the internal structuring of local companies to be in-line with multinational organizational cultural values. Thus, enabling ease in adapting to modern management techniques most efficiently employed by the international organizations.
About Dubai Holding Company
Dubai Holding Company is a state company which has a holistic objective of regional development, which is valued much higher than just exploitation of economic opportunities and profit earning. This company is seen by the government as an administrative commercial liaison for the government with the regional business structure. The presence of Dubai Holding Company is by all means unavoidable if one wants to analyze the business environment of Dubai.
The organizational culture at the company has evolved over the years. The company is managed closely by the Royal Family representatives, who have major stakes in Dubais economy. Thus, they command most in control and authority beyond any other stakeholder concerned with the organization.
The Company as an Open System Organization
The open system concept for an organization looks at organization as integral part of their external environment, where they have to negotiate consistently with their environment when looking to arrange for resources, such as raw material, human resources, technology etc. (McShane and Van Gilinow, 2009)
The Dubai Holding Company is actually a very complex business establishment. This company is constant interacting with the external environment and is always directly influenced by extraneous factors. The internal managements of the service-oriented companies such as Dubai Group and Dubai International Capital have to keep track of international fluctuations in economic conditions and similarly the construction business is dependent directly upon metal and commodity prices for forecasting the cost of material and equipment for their high-scale projects undertaken in the Dubai region.
Model of Organizational Behavior
A mix of authoritative and custodial organizational behavior model is the basic model that may be employed to describe the organizational behavior at Dubai Holding Company. This is a likely case as with any other organization operating in the Middle Eastern region.
Dubai Holding Company is a conglomerate of many companies operating in many industries, so it is a highly complex task to categorize any single organization behavior model to Dubai Holding Company. But, across the board, though developing over time in different ways in their particular industries, the companies usually abide to either an authoritative or custodial form of organizational behavior.
The authoritative model is derived by the high level of prevalence of compliance and obedience by the employees to top management. The companys top management under direct coordination with the Royal Familys checks and balance defines goals and the employees are usually expected of to cooperate and trust their judgment, and in most cases they exhibit limited tendency to contradict the boss. Thus, there is more formality and structure in communication. But, in companies where there is more involvement of management attracted from foreign countries there is a tendency for the organization to incline towards a more custodial perspective, where employees are more concerned about security and pay for performance. In this regard the talent is attracted from foreign countries and is only rendering services for the companys performance. Little understanding prevails for the cultural heritage and belongingness for the country.
The Leadership in the Organization
In context to organization behavior, the leadership roles and styles have direct influence on the overall direction of the organizations performance. The leadership roles in the Middle Eastern cultures are far more formalized and distant from participatory than western countries. The team leaders usually place them at the front-end of the team, and then limit the amount of authority delegation from therewith. The team leaders are considered answerable for all aspects of performance of their team members.
At Dubai Holding Company, the cultural and educational background of the Sheikh family representatives in the top management directly influences policies and values across the board throughout the company. More than any other factor, the growth oriented vision of the top management in all the companies that operate under the flagship of Dubai Holding Company is well communicated with all tiers of management. But, at the same time the top management exhibits more authoritative control over resources and team activities. Thus, strict and formal control is considered vital for attainment of organizational goals.
The concept of organizational citizenship can be regarded very important for management at Dubai Holding Company. The organizational members need to relate to the objectives of the top management to make the extra bit of effort to achieve the goals of the organization. In the long term objectives of attainment of the Strategic Plan 2015, the organization culture has to instill an air commitment amongst the employees to the strategic goals of the organization.
Participation Intervention programs are introduced frequently at Dubai Holding Company to allow for better motivation of employees. This is the phase of the organizations growth where it has had the realization that employees need to grow along with the organization, and be more confident about organizational objectives. The company can obviously benefit through such programs employees are allowed to generate more innovative and creative ideas.
Power Distance and Decision Making
Power and control is more centralized in context to the state-controlled organizations in the Middle Eastern companies. This renders the ill-fated effects of limited motivation for employees, and limited predictability of bureaucratic leaders (UNDP- Arab Human Development Report, 2002, 2003). But in a company like Dubai Holding Company this is not easily detected. The situation is such that authority and decision making is mostly centralized, in control of the Royal family members, setting the general directives for the companies under the umbrella of Dubai Holding Company, but the top management has traditionally also been dependent upon foreign experts for guiding activities in business. Thus, the decision making process at a macro-level is directly influenced by these consulting agencies, and international experts.
Workforce Diversity and Demographic Considerations
The business environment of Dubai has evolved greatly in recent years owed to the demographic changes that have been taking place in recent years. Dubai is mostly considered a trading hub and the businesses and organizations have attracted workforce from all over the world because of their promising growth and development in the Dubai region. Consequently, the organizations that now operate in the Dubai regions have employees coming from multiple nationalities. Thus, management has now started becoming conscious of this important factor that directly influences their style of management, which has to vary according to cultural background and ethnicity of the employees. The spread of immigrants to the region is so wide spread that majority workforce employed, up to eighty percent is non-Emirati. Majority workforce is moving from Asian countries to Dubai, in search for better employment opportunities (Census Statistical Data of UAE, 2005)
In this regard, it must be mentioned that Asian ethnicity groups tend to rate very highly upon scales adjudged collectivism, responsibility avoidance and increased power distance. This culture of distance from authority and collectivism is further reinforced by Middle Eastern inbound tendency to promote collectivism, and the show of reverence for the leadership and family elites of society. Thus, though there is a difference in overall orientation, the overall impact is that there is increased structure decision making with limited participative efforts from the employees, who are generally guided through directive leadership. (Khalid Al-Yahya, Richard Vengroff, 2005)
The Workforce Related Challenges for Organization
In the spheres of understanding organization behavior one has to pay heed to the ongoing changes in the business environment on a holistic perspective across the globe. The world in many ways is becoming flat, enabled through better communication technology. There is a prevalence of the globalization phenomenon, where businesses are truly operating beyond boundaries. There is also now the employees need for attaining work-life balance, as employees now have more work and less time off, owed to high outreaching growth targets set by hyper-growth oriented companies like Dubai Holding Company.
These factors part of the integral planning process for future growth plans at Dubai Holding Company. It is an important aspect to manage diversity in the organization and so is practiced by Dubai Holding Company. It is important to analyze and realize the benefits of a diverse workforce and so is done by the Dubai Holding Company. The company is not reluctant to hire employees from diverse cultural backgrounds as they believe it is the employee that becomes the backbone of an organization.
Dubai Holding Company is not a very different company from all the other that are operating around the globe and face the challenge of maintaining a healthy workforce that has optimum efficiency and effectiveness. In this scenario the Human Resource Department is actively involved in latest methodologies to bring out the best from the employees and make sure they are satisfied with their work and experience at the organization. In order to identify different needs of the work force regular surveys are conducted to get feedback from employees. Questionnaires are circulated in order to get a response from the employee about his or her experience at the organization. Focus groups are held to make the company a better place for the employees based on their own feedback regarding the current situation.
The field of organizational behavior helps shed some light upon the key internal workings of organizations internal structures. But even more importantly it gives us an insight upon how the human capital of an organization is performing what it is required. In the Middle Eastern region of Dubai organizations have been performing very well in the international business community. The organizational behavior of such companies is greatly influenced by the organizational cultures that have developed over the years. The organizational culture in turn is directly influence by the cultural heritage of the region.
Thus, the local culture of the people of Dubai directly influences how and what people do within the spheres of a business organization. Values and clear communication of future vision is also critical to set the direction and scope of the organizations future growth targets. Amongst the most important factors, leadership directly influences organizational culture. In case of Middle Eastern companies, also the case for Dubai Holding Company, there is prevalence of high power distance and an authoritative style of leadership and organizational behavior model is identified in the region. The fact of decision-making dynamics is that in these regions decision-making is highly centralized and teams are also structured to have hierarchical distances within themselves. Additionally, in case of Middle Eastern companies and especially Dubai Holding Group, workforce diversity is an important concern in managing organizational behavior and goal attainment. There is a large influx of Asian immigrants and management is now being trained to tackle the issues of cultural differences. Accordingly, concerns about the impact of work-life balance and globalization of resource availability are also of concern in managing behavior, performance and satisfaction of members of business organizations.
The significance of studying Dubai Holding Company for gaining insight about Middle Eastern Organizational Behavior patterns is simply exhibited by the overall presence of the company in the economic development of the region. The sheer size and scope of the organization helps one gain close insight upon complex organizational behavior. Additionally, this company is a model company from the region as it is specifically not an old establishment, and is more forward-looking in its overall direction and strategies for the ultimate appraisal of Dubais status as a business hub of the world. Thus, as a student of organizational behavior this company presents a very good case study upon recent developments in the Middle Eastern region, in the field of business, economics and industry.
Dubai Holding Company is committed to development of the physical and commercial infrastructure of the region so as to create an investment-friendly environment in the Dubai region. The company makes the direct effort to make the Dubai Strategic Plan (2015) possible to achieve for the government. The plan highlights the major economic aims
Sustainable annual GDP growth rate of 11
Improved real GDP per Capita to up to 44,000 by 2015
Improved labor productivity by 4
Enhancement and development of Dubais globally competitive sectors such as trade, transport, tourism, construction, financial and professional services
These in turn can be considered as the long term objectives for Dubai Holding Company in managing all the companies in the various industrial sectors of Dubai.
For the success of any organization, it is important for the management to be clear upon its vision, values, philosophy and goals. These form the guiding principles for channeling the resources employed in the organization. The most valuable resource for any organization is human capital and human intellect which eventually directs the growth of the organization. The culture of the organization which the people form, and the work ethics they adopt within the organization greatly influences how the organization performs on the whole in achieving its objectives. The aspect of the study of this perspective of behavior of people as an integral part of an organization is encapsulated within the definition of organizational behavior.
Why Study Dubai Holding Company in Context of Organizational Behavior
The Middle Eastern region of Dubai has been one of the most amazing business success stories of the recent past. The secret to this success is the hot topic to be discussed. The outreaching success of the region in the business environment is owed to many big companies which have been playing their roles effectively for the regions prosperity. These companies are operated under the umbrella of Dubai Holding Company. Thus, the reason to study a company like Dubai Holding Company within the context of organizational behavior will add to the overall understanding of how organizations in the Middle Eastern regions are operating from within. Students can draw many lessons from such a study about how to adjust in the business environment of a company operating in the UAE region. As the business is growing in these regions at a very rapid pace, jobs are being created and opportunities are presenting themselves each day for young students of business and environment to make an entry into this region and develop and grow along with the regions own growth.
Organizational Behavior and Dubai Holding Company
When studying organizational behavior, the culture of the organization plays an important role in determining the type of communication styles, group mechanisms, group roles, and leadership styles. Thus, workers derive quality of work practice from this, and are motivated accordingly. The consequential outcome of these factors is categorized as individual performance, satisfaction, growth and development.
The important thing to understand is that organizational culture are most commonly influenced directly by the regional cultures, as the organization does not exist independently but is in direct influence by its surroundings. Thus, the organization culture and organization behavior of a Middle Eastern company will be directly influenced by the strong Middle East historical cultural values and social system.
Thus, for a company like Dubai Holding Company it is directly influenced by the Middle Eastern regional cultural heritage.
This is even further evident in the case of Dubai Holding Company, which is a state owned company which is in direct link to the Royal family of the region. Thus the familial culture has an over-riding influence on the organization and the country at large. By far and large, the Royal family has taken up the responsibility to ensure Dubais future prosperity. For the purpose companies are guided in a way to create an environment of security and growth for investors and consequently local businesses may be established and eventually flourish. To create this internationally collaborative society, the realization has been seen to fine tune the internal structuring of local companies to be in-line with multinational organizational cultural values. Thus, enabling ease in adapting to modern management techniques most efficiently employed by the international organizations.
About Dubai Holding Company
Dubai Holding Company is a state company which has a holistic objective of regional development, which is valued much higher than just exploitation of economic opportunities and profit earning. This company is seen by the government as an administrative commercial liaison for the government with the regional business structure. The presence of Dubai Holding Company is by all means unavoidable if one wants to analyze the business environment of Dubai.
The organizational culture at the company has evolved over the years. The company is managed closely by the Royal Family representatives, who have major stakes in Dubais economy. Thus, they command most in control and authority beyond any other stakeholder concerned with the organization.
The Company as an Open System Organization
The open system concept for an organization looks at organization as integral part of their external environment, where they have to negotiate consistently with their environment when looking to arrange for resources, such as raw material, human resources, technology etc. (McShane and Van Gilinow, 2009)
The Dubai Holding Company is actually a very complex business establishment. This company is constant interacting with the external environment and is always directly influenced by extraneous factors. The internal managements of the service-oriented companies such as Dubai Group and Dubai International Capital have to keep track of international fluctuations in economic conditions and similarly the construction business is dependent directly upon metal and commodity prices for forecasting the cost of material and equipment for their high-scale projects undertaken in the Dubai region.
Model of Organizational Behavior
A mix of authoritative and custodial organizational behavior model is the basic model that may be employed to describe the organizational behavior at Dubai Holding Company. This is a likely case as with any other organization operating in the Middle Eastern region.
Dubai Holding Company is a conglomerate of many companies operating in many industries, so it is a highly complex task to categorize any single organization behavior model to Dubai Holding Company. But, across the board, though developing over time in different ways in their particular industries, the companies usually abide to either an authoritative or custodial form of organizational behavior.
The authoritative model is derived by the high level of prevalence of compliance and obedience by the employees to top management. The companys top management under direct coordination with the Royal Familys checks and balance defines goals and the employees are usually expected of to cooperate and trust their judgment, and in most cases they exhibit limited tendency to contradict the boss. Thus, there is more formality and structure in communication. But, in companies where there is more involvement of management attracted from foreign countries there is a tendency for the organization to incline towards a more custodial perspective, where employees are more concerned about security and pay for performance. In this regard the talent is attracted from foreign countries and is only rendering services for the companys performance. Little understanding prevails for the cultural heritage and belongingness for the country.
The Leadership in the Organization
In context to organization behavior, the leadership roles and styles have direct influence on the overall direction of the organizations performance. The leadership roles in the Middle Eastern cultures are far more formalized and distant from participatory than western countries. The team leaders usually place them at the front-end of the team, and then limit the amount of authority delegation from therewith. The team leaders are considered answerable for all aspects of performance of their team members.
At Dubai Holding Company, the cultural and educational background of the Sheikh family representatives in the top management directly influences policies and values across the board throughout the company. More than any other factor, the growth oriented vision of the top management in all the companies that operate under the flagship of Dubai Holding Company is well communicated with all tiers of management. But, at the same time the top management exhibits more authoritative control over resources and team activities. Thus, strict and formal control is considered vital for attainment of organizational goals.
The concept of organizational citizenship can be regarded very important for management at Dubai Holding Company. The organizational members need to relate to the objectives of the top management to make the extra bit of effort to achieve the goals of the organization. In the long term objectives of attainment of the Strategic Plan 2015, the organization culture has to instill an air commitment amongst the employees to the strategic goals of the organization.
Participation Intervention programs are introduced frequently at Dubai Holding Company to allow for better motivation of employees. This is the phase of the organizations growth where it has had the realization that employees need to grow along with the organization, and be more confident about organizational objectives. The company can obviously benefit through such programs employees are allowed to generate more innovative and creative ideas.
Power Distance and Decision Making
Power and control is more centralized in context to the state-controlled organizations in the Middle Eastern companies. This renders the ill-fated effects of limited motivation for employees, and limited predictability of bureaucratic leaders (UNDP- Arab Human Development Report, 2002, 2003). But in a company like Dubai Holding Company this is not easily detected. The situation is such that authority and decision making is mostly centralized, in control of the Royal family members, setting the general directives for the companies under the umbrella of Dubai Holding Company, but the top management has traditionally also been dependent upon foreign experts for guiding activities in business. Thus, the decision making process at a macro-level is directly influenced by these consulting agencies, and international experts.
Workforce Diversity and Demographic Considerations
The business environment of Dubai has evolved greatly in recent years owed to the demographic changes that have been taking place in recent years. Dubai is mostly considered a trading hub and the businesses and organizations have attracted workforce from all over the world because of their promising growth and development in the Dubai region. Consequently, the organizations that now operate in the Dubai regions have employees coming from multiple nationalities. Thus, management has now started becoming conscious of this important factor that directly influences their style of management, which has to vary according to cultural background and ethnicity of the employees. The spread of immigrants to the region is so wide spread that majority workforce employed, up to eighty percent is non-Emirati. Majority workforce is moving from Asian countries to Dubai, in search for better employment opportunities (Census Statistical Data of UAE, 2005)
In this regard, it must be mentioned that Asian ethnicity groups tend to rate very highly upon scales adjudged collectivism, responsibility avoidance and increased power distance. This culture of distance from authority and collectivism is further reinforced by Middle Eastern inbound tendency to promote collectivism, and the show of reverence for the leadership and family elites of society. Thus, though there is a difference in overall orientation, the overall impact is that there is increased structure decision making with limited participative efforts from the employees, who are generally guided through directive leadership. (Khalid Al-Yahya, Richard Vengroff, 2005)
The Workforce Related Challenges for Organization
In the spheres of understanding organization behavior one has to pay heed to the ongoing changes in the business environment on a holistic perspective across the globe. The world in many ways is becoming flat, enabled through better communication technology. There is a prevalence of the globalization phenomenon, where businesses are truly operating beyond boundaries. There is also now the employees need for attaining work-life balance, as employees now have more work and less time off, owed to high outreaching growth targets set by hyper-growth oriented companies like Dubai Holding Company.
These factors part of the integral planning process for future growth plans at Dubai Holding Company. It is an important aspect to manage diversity in the organization and so is practiced by Dubai Holding Company. It is important to analyze and realize the benefits of a diverse workforce and so is done by the Dubai Holding Company. The company is not reluctant to hire employees from diverse cultural backgrounds as they believe it is the employee that becomes the backbone of an organization.
Dubai Holding Company is not a very different company from all the other that are operating around the globe and face the challenge of maintaining a healthy workforce that has optimum efficiency and effectiveness. In this scenario the Human Resource Department is actively involved in latest methodologies to bring out the best from the employees and make sure they are satisfied with their work and experience at the organization. In order to identify different needs of the work force regular surveys are conducted to get feedback from employees. Questionnaires are circulated in order to get a response from the employee about his or her experience at the organization. Focus groups are held to make the company a better place for the employees based on their own feedback regarding the current situation.
The field of organizational behavior helps shed some light upon the key internal workings of organizations internal structures. But even more importantly it gives us an insight upon how the human capital of an organization is performing what it is required. In the Middle Eastern region of Dubai organizations have been performing very well in the international business community. The organizational behavior of such companies is greatly influenced by the organizational cultures that have developed over the years. The organizational culture in turn is directly influence by the cultural heritage of the region.
Thus, the local culture of the people of Dubai directly influences how and what people do within the spheres of a business organization. Values and clear communication of future vision is also critical to set the direction and scope of the organizations future growth targets. Amongst the most important factors, leadership directly influences organizational culture. In case of Middle Eastern companies, also the case for Dubai Holding Company, there is prevalence of high power distance and an authoritative style of leadership and organizational behavior model is identified in the region. The fact of decision-making dynamics is that in these regions decision-making is highly centralized and teams are also structured to have hierarchical distances within themselves. Additionally, in case of Middle Eastern companies and especially Dubai Holding Group, workforce diversity is an important concern in managing organizational behavior and goal attainment. There is a large influx of Asian immigrants and management is now being trained to tackle the issues of cultural differences. Accordingly, concerns about the impact of work-life balance and globalization of resource availability are also of concern in managing behavior, performance and satisfaction of members of business organizations.
The significance of studying Dubai Holding Company for gaining insight about Middle Eastern Organizational Behavior patterns is simply exhibited by the overall presence of the company in the economic development of the region. The sheer size and scope of the organization helps one gain close insight upon complex organizational behavior. Additionally, this company is a model company from the region as it is specifically not an old establishment, and is more forward-looking in its overall direction and strategies for the ultimate appraisal of Dubais status as a business hub of the world. Thus, as a student of organizational behavior this company presents a very good case study upon recent developments in the Middle Eastern region, in the field of business, economics and industry.
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