GUEST EDITORIAL

Expats and citizens: managing

diverse teams in the Middle East
Ingo Forstenlechner
College of Business and Economics, United Arab Emirates University,
Al Ain, United Arab Emirates
Abstract
Purpose The introduction to this special issue aims to describe the papers published in this volume
as well as the setting of labour markets in the Arabian Gulf as the basis for the understanding the
relationship between expatriates and the indigenous workforce.
Design/methodology/approach First, the context is explained, followed by a description of the
peculiarities of the research setting. Then, the articles in this special issue are described, followed by an
outlook on the future of the expatriate-citizen relationship and suggestions for future research in this area.
Findings Thanks to the efforts of authors, reviewers, and the editors of this journal, every single
one of the articles in this volume provides valuable insights from new perspectives on the theme of this
special issue.
Originality/value This special issue expands the understanding of a truly underrepresented topic.
Keywords Employees, Expatriates, Localization, Labour market, Arabian Peninsula, Middle East
Paper type Literature review
Welcome to this special issue of Team Performance Management on the topic of
managing diverse teams in the Middle East. While what constitutes the Middle East is, by
denition, more complex to pin down, the focus for this special issue is on the Arab Gulf
states, dened as those of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), i.e. Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait,
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Qatar. These countries, which are
mostly young and oil-rich, are marked by a degree of dependence on expatriates that is
often unimaginable by outsiders. Recent gures (Rutledge, 2009) put the percentage of
expatriates in the total labour force of the GCC at 61.7 percent though when looking at
individual countries, it canbe as highas 83.1percent inBahrainor 89.6percent inthe UAE.
When exploring the expatriate-citizen relationship, there are apart from the
expatriate majority setting at least two peculiarities that differentiate GCC from
most other regions of the world, making the GCC an interesting setting to conduct
research. The rst peculiarity is that expatriates are by law to remain expatriates for
an indenite period of time since they reside in the GCC on renewable three-year visas
and are discouraged to be permanent residents (i.e. can never be naturalized), which
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1352-7592.htm
The Guest Editor very much hopes that this special issue provides not only interesting insights,
but also potential starting points for further research in this area and he would like to thank those
making this special issue possible: Fiona Lettice and Martin McCracken for entrusting himwith this
special issue and their helpand patience throughout the process. The Guest Editor wouldalso like to
thank the reviewers for this special issue: Bakr Ahmad Alserhan, Hadyn Bennett, Kevin Schoepp,
Mansoor Nasser Suleiman Al Shabibi, Mark W. Neal, Mustafa Colak, Robert Studholme, Sabha Al
Sherai, Tariq Khan, as well as four anonymous reviewers.
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Team Performance Management
Vol. 16 No. 5/6, 2010
pp. 237-241
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1352-7592
DOI 10.1108/13527591011071322
creates a transient environment with high-turnover numbers and lack of focus on a
commitment-oriented corporate culture aimed to support long-term employees with
training or career paths (Al Ali, 2008).
The second peculiarity is related to the GCC countries efforts to create jobs for
indigenous workforce. As Davidson (2009) pointed out, Arab Gulf states have achieved
impressive progress on many aspects of social and economic development in very little
time, transforming desert villages into modern cities, building modern government
institutions, diversifying their economies, and running functioning and impressively
safe nations in a turbulent region. Literacy rates are around 90 percent (UNDP, 2009),
universities have sprung up and women while still underrepresented at senior levels
and somewhat limited by culture in their career choice hold ministerial positions in
several countries and represent the majority of students enrolled at universities across
all GCC countries (Moghadam and Roudi-Fahimi, 2003).
The impressive economic growth and the massive creation of jobs has, however, not
translated into sufcient jobs for Gulf citizens and governments are increasingly
realizing the very real threat of growing unemployment, almost certainly leading
to negative effects on current living standards and oil-wealth distribution to citizens.
As a consequence, the past few years have brought a surge in literature on the topic of
localization of jobs from multiple perspectives (Al Ali, 2008; Al Qudsi, 2006; Mellahi,
2007; Randeree, 2009; Rees et al., 2007).
The aim of this special issue is to explore the above-mentioned peculiarities in more
detail by examining the relationship between the indigenous workforce and the
expatriate majority in an environment where it is not immigrants (or guest workers)
who are in need of acculturation and adaptation, but indigenous citizens who are in
many ways forced to adapt to what is an essentially foreign work environment in their
own country (Al Waq and Forstenlechner, 2010).
This special issue contains four original articles, all of which have been specically
written for this special issue. Overall, I received 11 submissions, of which I accepted
ve after a double-blind peer-review process, one of which was unfortunately
retracted[1]. The papers in this volume bear witness to the richness of themes and
topics still under-researched in this part of the world.
In the rst paper, Mark Neal provides an ethnographic study of Arab-expatriate
work relations in Oman and offers a positive perspective on how a favourable work
environment can be sustained despite multiple sources of differences and potential for
conict. This is an important contribution since much of the existing work in this area
provides an often-gloomy outlook on the topic.
The second paper, by Hadyn Bennett and Norman S. Wright examines the impact of
diversity during education on team-related behaviours in the workplace among
female Arabs. Such inquiry is important not only because little research has been done
in the area of multi-cultural and mixed-gender teams in the Arab context, but also
because females are quite likely to hold the key to the successful localization of jobs
across the Gulf (Nelson, 2004), since they are outperforming their male peers in most
if not all aspects of educational attainment.
The third paper, written by Tariq M. Khan, Fintan Clear, Ahmed Al-Kaabi and
Vahid Pezeshki, adds to knowledge on diversity management in a setting as multicultural
as the UAE, providing data from 406 employees in nine organizations with a hugely
diverse workforce. Since diversityis oftenconsideredthe normincountries of the GCCdue
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to the aforementioned make-up of the labour markets, a nuanced inquiry such as this adds
tremendous value to the discussion.
The fourth paper, written by Kevin Schoepp and Ingo Forstenlechner, picks up on the
theme of expatriate adjustment inanenvironment where the majorityof residents consists
of fellowexpatriates and examines how this changes our understanding of the expatriate
adjustment process. One of the ndings is that Gulf countries can safely be considered
anything but a hardship posting by now, where family has actually become a motivation
to remain expatriated rather than to return home, showing that in terms of quality of life
GCC countries have made huge progress over the past decades.
Outlook for the expatriate-citizen relationship
A somewhat bleak picture is presented by most studies focusing on the future of labour
markets in the GCC, with a recent policy modelling exercise for Kuwait (Chemingui and
Roe, 2008) suggesting that even with the best policies, the capacity of the private sector to
employ all Kuwaitis-seeking employment until 2015 is unlikely to be realized. In Bahrain,
a government-sponsored study (Allen Consulting Group, 2009) suggests that
unsustainable restraints on the economy will result from having an under-participating
and an under-skilled labour force unless a variety of internal issues concerning labour
force management, skills development and the interaction of labour market and education
planning are addressed.
At the same time, the need for expatriates to staff the infrastructure at the quantity and
experience levels needed has not been declining since the inception of the era of oil wealth
when the indigenous population was lacking in both quantity and experience (Mohamed,
2002). Until today, the majority of expatriates are labourers since construction and
low-skilled labour remain a main employer while at the same time, Gulf citizens see
themselves as a natural middle class not accepting certain jobs and being prohibitively
expensive to employ in such positions. Further, at the upper end of the skills and
experience requirements, 91 percent of Gulf CEOs still depend on expatriates to ll key
positions (Lootah and Simon, 2009).
Fromtime totime, initiatives are fuelling(or respondingto) the indigenous populations
concerns against the expatriate majority in their countries, without taking into account
that particularly without the millions of low-skilled and low-paid migrant workers doing
jobs hardly any citizen would do, the infrastructure and the comfortable lifestyle
would no longer be sustainable (see Keane and McGeehan, 2008, for an overview on the
situation of the mostly Asian migrant workers). Uponrealization of this dilemma or
resistance by the private sector, whose main beneciaries are well-connected citizens
understandably unwilling to forego the prots arising from exploitation of cheap
labour such plans are usually quickly shelved, however, they serve as a reminder of the
transient nature of the expatriate employment relationship and cause confusion among
citizens. Examples of such ill-advised initiatives are suggestions by GCC labour ministers
to recommend a maximum six-year legal stay for expatriates ( Janardhan, 2006) or a
somewhat more sensible approach in Bahrain to levy a tax on the employment of foreign
nationals in order to close the salary gap and thereby make the employment of expatriates
less attractive (The Economist, 2010). Both ideas disappeared soon after they emerged but
ideas such as these re-emerge from time to time and burden the relationship between
expatriates and citizens by making themsocially acceptable for the latter and serving as a
constant reminder of their lower value for the rst group.
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Future research in GCC labour markets
While the topics covered in this special issue provide an impressive breadth of research
foci, there is still much work ahead for academics and practitioners alike to shed light
on some of the other pressing issues in the Arab Gulf states.
One major theme is the immediate need to nd solutions to national unemployment
problems, while at the same time not endangering the efciency of organisations
operating in the region or scaring away foreign investors. Unfortunately for national
jobseekers, there is a consensus among practitioners and academics that localization is
not actually advantageous for organizations operating in the region (Harry, 2007;
Mellahi, 2007; Mellahi and Al Hinai, 2000). So far, the only empirical evidence for
tangible benets of localization is the gain of legitimacy and goodwill with legitimizing
actors such as respective governments and the ruling class. These gains increase
organizations chances to access critical resources and help them obtain favourable
treatment in the bureaucratic processes and in competing for government contracts, in
addition to reducing their vulnerability to external uncertainties and risks
(Forstenlechner and Mellahi, 2011).
For this special issue, the intention was to look at the interaction between
expatriates and citizens as this aspect is often being neglected in research and practice
since all focus is on the development of local human resources and research funding for
this inquiry is almost unobtainable in the GCC (as opposed to localization, which is
generally well funded). While it is entirely understandable to focus on the pressing
needs of the indigenous population, neglecting the aspect of expatriate management or
expatriate relations means neglecting the majority of the workforce and the population
in the GCC, dependency on which is unlikely to ease anytime soon. Many practical
problems related to this dependency are still not fully understood, such as the
potentially negative impact of the aforementioned transience on expatriate motivation
(Osland, 1995) or the overall work environment (Al Ali, 2008).
Note
1. Ironically, the paper was retracted since the author felt the publication of this special issue
would be too early, i.e. before she would leave her GCC host country.
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About the Guest Editor
Ingo Forstenlechner is an Assistant Professor in Human Resource Management at United Arab
Emirates University. He obtained his PhD from Craneld University during his ve years of
working for a London-based multinational law rm. His research interests are in international
human resource management, particularly on the intersection of expatriates and their
relationship with and impact on the local workforce. Currently, Ingo Forstenlechner is involved
in research and consulting work to raise the levels of workforce participation among young
citizens in the UAE. Ingo Forstenlechner can be contacted at: ingo.forstenlechner@gmail.com
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