Page 287 - Aamir Rehman - Dubai & Co Global Strategies for Doing Business in the Gulf States-McGraw-Hill (2007)

Enabled Organization: Setting Up for Success 269

In preparing their organization for entry into the GCC market,
multinationals must ensure that mechanisms are in place to enforce
their global standards. These standards include a high level of
product and service delivery and maintenance, integrity and best
practices in corporate processes such as credit and compliance, and
fairness and sensitivity in human resources issues such as labor
practices and gender equity. The business environment of the Gulf
can, at times, differ from environments elsewhere, but firms should
enforce their global principles firmly both for ethical reasons and to
safeguard their reputations.

PRESENCE AND EMPOWERMENT
A GCC organization, like regional organizations elsewhere,
typically needs both local presence and a meaningful degree of
empowerment in order to achieve its business objectives. A natural
question, however, for a multinational to ask itself is, Why should
the GCC region be treated as a separate “business unit” rather
than as part of a broader set (e.g., the Middle East and North
Africa)?
There are two compelling reasons why the Gulf should be
viewed as a distinct business unit. The first is that the economies of
the GCC states are fundamentally different from other markets
within the Middle East. As discussed earlier in this book, the Gulf
has long been a separate economic cluster, sharing some elements
with the countries of the Levant—Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and
Israel and the Palestinian Territories—and North Africa, but being
different from them in very meaningful ways. The oil booms of the
1970s and 2000s have made the differences starker, as the GCC is
now far more prosperous than the other clusters—its GDP per capita
is about four times that of North Africa and more than five times that
of the Levant. The Gulf states have been fairly stable monarchies, or
“sheikhdoms,” with a capitalist orientation while the other regions
have seen less stability and have exhibited a variety of political
philosophies including, at times, those having socialist tendencies.
Even the Arabic dialect of the Gulf can easily be distinguished from
colloquial Levantine or North African speech. These and other eco-
nomic and social differences have long made the Gulf a very differ-
ent place, with unique commercial characteristics and dynamics.