The UAE's business story is missing important chapters

Colours of the World Parade during UAE National Day at Expo 2020 Dubai. Christopher Pike for Expo 2020 Dubai

The UAE is a nation that spends a lot of time thinking about its future, and a global byword for ambition. Its airports are international hubs, its universities are rising in world rankings and its IPOs are increasingly making headlines.

These transformations are driving great progress, but I believe we need to spend a little more time thinking about how we analyse the country’s overall business landscape, with a view to ensuring continuous improvement.

There is much raw material to be tapped into, which lends itself well to rich and insightful research. From well-functioning government departments that deliver large-scale projects to fast-growing tech firms and retail businesses, there is considerable scope for research into UAE business and management.

Academic research that tries to make sense of these successes or failures is, however, thin. For example, although there are a few case studies on subjects such as the now-defunct Abraaj private equity firm and the collapse of NMC Health in 2020, these do not entail exhaustive multi-perspective analyses based on extensive organisational data, which internationally reputed research outlets require.

The UAE’s business landscape is not forgotten. It is simply under-researched

Similarly, how much is studied about various organisations’ systematic operations and decision-making of the kind that resulted in outstanding successes like Expo 2020 Dubai or Cop28? Not much, and that’s a problem.

In the absence of this kind of work, university professors like me fall back on the usual suspects. We teach our students about Google, Amazon, Starbucks and Apple – fine companies, but not Emirati. We study theories created and tested elsewhere and hope they apply here. Sometimes they do but often they don’t. Slowly but surely, we raise a generation of graduates fluent in imported thinking but not necessarily equipped to tackle local challenges.

Part of the difficulty lies in the UAE’s unique context. The population is highly international and globally mobile; because of this, behaviours shift. There is no neat control group.

The bigger issue, however, is access. Most companies and organisations in the region remain reluctant to open their doors to researchers. There is mistrust, or perhaps just inertia. What value does academic research really bring? How would executives and their organisations benefit from research undertaken by universities like mine?

Here’s why: organisations that don’t understand themselves are doomed to keep making the same mistakes. Good research doesn’t sit in libraries; it changes how leaders think. There is a phrase attributed to the American philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

We already know how important this is in other fields. The military has been documenting “lessons learnt” for decades. They examine what went right, or wrong, and what could be done better next time. These lessons are accessible to members who serve in the organisation.

The UAE’s business landscape is not forgotten. It is simply under-researched. And that, in the long run, is just as dangerous.

UAE universities teach their students about Google, Amazon, Starbucks and Apple – fine companies, but not Emirati. AP

The Emirates is full of fascinating questions that researchers would love to explore. What happens to executive decision-making when state-owned firms are merged? How do Emirati-led teams perform compared to mixed expatriate ones? How are young Emirati employees faring in the private sector? What drives success in one organisation and paralysis in another?

These aren’t abstract curiosities. They are practical questions, the answers to which could make organisations better run and better prepared. Critical analysis of a superior level based on high-quality data is very important, as real progress starts with knowing where we currently stand.

The findings of such detailed country-specific research would attract the attention of reputed international research journals, further enhancing the nation’s research credentials. There is currently a notable lack of research of a level acceptable to top-ranked international research journals, into how a wide range of businesses and organisations in the UAE work.

It’s not that there is a lack of opportunities to study. Quite the opposite. Universities must play their part and do a better job of explaining our relevance. Researchers need to be more proactive and must make their case. If businesses don’t see the value in what we do, perhaps we’ve not been clear enough.

To the organisations, my call to action is simple: open your doors, even if just a little. If you allow light in, the benefits are clear: better decision-making, more “lessons learnt”, a more skilled workforce and a grounded education for Emirati students. Once this begins to happen, our academics wouldn’t need to look beyond our shores to seek topics to undertake research on.

Right now, the UAE’s business education reads like a book missing its most important chapters – the ones about itself. It’s time we wrote them in. For this, however, it needs two hands to clap.