National culture influence on management practices in the construction industry of United Arab Emirates

Environmental and cultural differences have been recognized by management researchers as an important element in differentiating management systems. They have acknowledged that managerial approaches, values, behaviours and efficiency differ across national cultures. National cultures and unique societal and institutional structures will continue to support different models of organizational culture and management practices. However, in the majority of existing studies, researchers have either focused almost exclusively on the American and European context and developed explicit theories of management practices, or suggested that most management theories need modification for different national contexts. Limited research has focused on cultures and behaviour of management in the modern Arab world, although a number of previous studies attempted to elucidate and characterize the behaviour and attitude of managers in the Arab Middle East countries. Whilst these studies are valuable to the extent that they call attention to this central part of the world, none have developed a definitive model/style of management practice and organizational culture specifically for this region of the world. As part of extensive research to establish the management practices model and organizational culture adopted in the construction industry of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and empirically examine its impact on performance, a model is developed. This model seeks to determine the relationship between Management Practices and National Culture. Analysis of data collected through a questionnaire survey revealed that construction companies in UAE are generally adopting a mixed approach that combines Western and Eastern management practices. Results of an analysis based on three groups of management dimensions yielded a detailed profile of the type of management applications used.