Organizational Development in the United Arab Emirates ; Prospects for change in the Public Sector

Although Organisational Development (OD) has become a feature of large contemporary organisations there remains a lack of OD research in the Middle East. A number of factors exist within Arab countries that could facilitate or inhibit OD interventions, thereby questioning the validity and generalisability of Western theories and models when applied to the Middle East. The purpose of this study was to explore different aspects of OD in public sector organisations in the UAE.
The research aims to determine the attitudes of leaders and employees towards OD interventions and resulting change within a traditional organization. It also examines problems of achieving fundamental attitude change in the top management of traditional organisations. Additionally, it also contributes towards Human Resource Development thinking on the context, role and impact of OD interventions and identifies practical challenges confronting leaders in transforming traditional public sector organisations into project-oriented organizations. The research utilises a mixed method (qualitative and quantitative) approach. The findings of the study indicate that ISO implementation as an OD intervention can help traditional organisations to transform into a project-based organisations by improving overall effectiveness, reducing costs, improving the overall service quality. Other useful findings include managing resistance to change, institutionalising change, and training the employees to implement ISO as an OD intervention. The study has some limitations including small sample size; time available with respondents; and questionnaire response rate. Nevertheless, this research contributes to our knowledge of the utilization of ISO interventions for Organisation Development and offers some practical evidence-based strategies for transforming traditional public sector organisations into project based organisations.