The notion of expatriation in the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

Expatriation in emerging Arab Gulf States, specifically in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is unlike expatriation elsewhere. In most of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, the workforce mainly consists of expatriates, with the local population forming a small minority. Given its previous role and expectations of a continuing need in the future, expatriation and migration have become a key topic in many political and socio-economic agendas in the GCC. In this respect, decision makers are grappling with often virulently controversial aspects in an effort to establish a balance between localization and expatriation. To date, research has not been successful in fully capturing the factors influencing this peculiar phenomenon and its consequences for expatriates living and working in UAE. Hence, this study suggests an additional approach and proposes a conceptual model to advance the understanding of the various forms and dynamics of expatriation, influenced and shaped by the national culture, institutional factors and localization policies within the UAE. This study has implications for cross-cultural management scholarship on expatriation in a region that has largely been ignored, in providing a more thorough appraisal of the cultural and institution context. It also provides a framework for contextualizing expatriation within cross-cultural management studies, which should be useful for scholars working in other regions.

Expatriates at the base-of-the-pyramid. Precarious employment or fortune in a foreign land?

“…The government is very strict about our safety standards. (Nermin) This statement confirms the notion of Mahdavi (2011) andHaak-Saheem andBrewster (2017) that particularly self-initiated expatriates from underdeveloped countries perceive the UAE as a safe and modern place to work. The dynamic economic development offers them opportunities and perspectives that compensate for uncertainty and hardship:…”

“…They predominantly come from less-developed countries (often from rural areas), and their main motivation is to escape from poverty and unemployment in their home country. Many of these base-of-thepyramid expatriates work under precarious employment conditions, such as the many Asian manual workers in the Arabian Peninsula (Connell and Burgess, 2013;Haak-Saheem, 2016).…”

Organizational Learning of Absorptive Capacity and Innovation: Does Leadership Matter?

“…However, at the outset many of the formal rules of the game were not clearly defined, resulting in tremendous uncertainty (Aulakh and Kotabe, ). In contrast to the Western countries, most large incumbent firms were in state ownership, while the private sector follows the lead of the government sector (Haak‐Saheem, ). This rapidly changing environment raises some important questions on the absorptive capacity of firms within this institutional context.…”

“…Open discussions and knowledge‐sharing to stimulate the knowledge flow within the firm (Lane et al, ) becomes challenging in the context of fast changing and growing environments with a highly fluctuated workforce (Haak‐Saheem, ). For example, recent research argues that knowledge sharing in Saudi Arabia is influenced by the fast economic growth and the high turnover in organizations (Youssef et al, ).…”

Cost Risk’s Reliability and Validity of Residential Building Project’s Whole Life Cycle in the United Arab Emirates

“…The values of these risks can be obtained by field experts (Mieg, 2009;Zimmermann & Eber, 2017;Flores-Colen et al, 2010). However, those experts are not sustainable in the same company due to the challenges of having a large number of expatriate workers in the United Arab Emirates (Naithani & Jha, 2009; AlMazrouei & Pech, 2015; Saheem, 2016). The work force in UAE, specially in the construction and project base industries, are contributing to organizations for a certain period (i.e.…”