Page 299 - Aamir Rehman - Dubai & Co Global Strategies for Doing Business in the Gulf States-McGraw-Hill (2007)

Enabled Organization: Setting Up for Success 281

or Kuwait. Government bureaucracy is tedious, with less customer
orientation than is found in the UAE and other states. Female visi-
tors, like all women, cannot drive and must dress conservatively in
public. Postings in Saudi Arabia are generally considered by expa-
triates to be far less attractive from a lifestyle perspective than post-
ings in the UAE, making it all the more difficult to attract global
talent to a regional head office if it is in Riyadh or Jeddah. Visits by
overseas management to a Saudi office require far more planning,
including visa formalities that are not required in the UAE. For
these reasons and others, a large number of consumer goods lead-
ers like Pepsi maintain regional head offices outside Saudi Arabia
despite Saudi Arabia’s far greater sales volume.
Saudi authorities are, of course, eager to make their business
environment friendlier and easier to deal with for multinationals.
King Abdullah Economic City, with its first-rate infrastructure, is
one important initiative aimed at enhancing the business environ-
ment for all. Other Economic Cities are planned around the
Kingdom. Saudi Arabia’s tremendous scale advantage and status as
the region’s core market make it a natural place for firms to increase
their presence, as soon as the business environment becomes more
competitive with that of other states in the region.

MAINTAINING GLOBAL STANDARDS

In designing and enabling their Gulf organizations, global firms
should ensure that their global standards—for quality, business
processes, and people management—are stringently maintained.
Fortunately, Gulf business norms in many of these areas exceed or
meet global standards. Service quality, for example, tends to be very
high. This is especially true in the hospitality sector, where hotels
are managed at world-class standards with eager staff recruited
through highly competitive processes.
Corruption in the Gulf exists to a far smaller degree than in
other emerging markets. Bribery is rare. All GCC countries, in fact,
score better than both China and India in transparency ratings con-
11
ducted by global organizations. A strength of the GCC’s business
environment is its rule of law and the enforcement of contracts.
Central banks have introduced regulations in line with global
best practices to prevent money laundering and adhere to strict