Page 285 - Aamir Rehman - Dubai & Co Global Strategies for Doing Business in the Gulf States-McGraw-Hill (2007)

CHAPTER 10

Enabled Organization: Setting Up

for Success

INTRODUCTION
A few years ago, a major multinational faced a peculiar challenge
with its Middle East business. The business unit and the global
head office wanted the company to grow more aggressively, in line
with the booming prosperity of the region. This prosperity, of
course, was linked to the increased wealth of the Gulf states. The
multinational’s Middle East organization, however, was not posi-
tioned to capitalize on the market opportunity. The regional head
office was in Egypt—the region’s most populous country and once
its economic powerhouse. In the 1950s and 1960s, the period when
the multinational entered the region, Cairo was the natural choice
for a Middle East regional office. The multinational had kept its
headquarters there for decades even though the region’s dynamic
economies were now being driven by the Gulf.
Being far from the action in the GCC states, the multinational
tended to understaff its Gulf offices, underestimate the opportunity
there, and underinvest in market intelligence and competitive
analysis within the Gulf. Even worse, the few executives based in
the GCC countries required frequent approvals from Cairo for
much of their activity, and these approvals could take weeks

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