Muna and Khoury analyze management in Palestine
In The Palestinian Executive: Leadership Under Challenging Conditions Farid A. Muna and Grace C. Khoury have put forth a quite readable analysis of a significant but too often ignored topic in international business. Indeed, in the “Foreword” (pp. xii-xiii), native Palestinian Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, now a prominent Jordanian accountant and guru on intellectual property, writes of Palestine's “incredible resources of talent” who “have been relatively anonymous to the outside world” (p. xiv). The reasons why Palestinian executives have not, in the past, been adequately researched are the tendency to lump them together with other Arabs or to view the Palestinians as almost an afterthought in respect to the far more affluent economy of Israel, together with the fact that Palestine has only recently emerged as a contemporary self-standing state.
Muna and Khoury are eminently qualified to write credibly on that topic. Muna, who resides in California, is Chair of the Board of Meirc (pronounced like “Merck”) Training & Consulting, Meirc being an acronym for Middle East Industrial Relations Counselors (see www.meirc.com). Muna (1980, 2003) received his PhD from London Business School and wrote The Arab Executive (1980) and Seven Metaphors on Management (2003); he co-authored, with Ziad A. Zennie, Developing Multicultural Leaders (Muna and Zennie, 2010, see Ramsey (2012)). Khoury, who received her PhD from the University of Bradford, was one of the editors (with Chapelet et al., 2005) of Rising to the Digital Challenge: Lesson from Mediterranean Enterprises. Khoury is a faculty member in the Business Administration Department of Palestine's Birzeit University. Both authors are native speakers of Palestinian Arabic and are fluent in English, with long experience in business both inside and outside the Middle East.
In the “Introduction” Muna and Khoury, picking up the theme from Abu-Ghazaleh's foreword that Palestinian managers have talents which have gone unnoticed, proceed to describe their research methodology using interviews of 110 business leaders from 63 organizations, the selection being carefully balanced between Palestine's two areas (Gaza and West Bank) and between privately owned and publicly traded companies. Early on, Muna and Khoury emphasize “the harsh conditions of [Israeli] occupation” (p. 1), a matter of frequent concern throughout the book. Muna and Khoury then help the reader anticipate the book's development in four parts.
Part I – “Palestine: a challenging context” (with chapters on “Understanding culture from within: culture and context do matter” and “Environmental pressures, challenges and opportunities”) – discusses culture, a pervasive influence (Hofstede, 2001), understanding of which is critical if one is to navigate the paternalistic style which it imbues on business in Palestine. Readers readily get the point that the top-down realities of military occupation by Israel echo in the paternalistic ritual which passes as managerial decision-making in Palestinian businesses large and small. Perhaps particularly striking are the economic comparisons (actually contrasts) between Palestine and its neighbors. Converted into gross domestic product per capita, Palestine's is one-tenth that of Lebanon and one-twentieth that of Israel. The rise of various forms of electronic communication such as Facebook has made Palestinians more aware of the stark differences between them and others in the Middle East.
The transition to Part II – “Leadership styles” – is, consequently, seamless. In chapters on “Roles of Palestinian executives” and “Leadership styles of Palestinian executives” fraught with gobs of data, Muna and Khoury delve into attitudes toward women managers, time, delegation, and open-door policy. Without fail, the data show a remarkable finesse on the part of Palestinian executives to practice traits exemplified in much of the rest of the world, specifically a difference between what they say and what they actually do. Part II ends with a chapter on “Performance and motivation” which posits that these attitudes are rooted in early childhood and thus not easily improved or even addressed among adults.
Part III – “Journey to leadership success” – is forward looking. The previous parts analyzed the cultural context and the established leadership styles, things already in Palestinian business. Thus, Part III's two chapters (“Ingredients for successful leadership” and “Advice to potential executives”) concern what to do next. Much of Part III deals with leadership theory and training, but in Muna and Khoury's book the application is, distinctly, to Palestinian business. Muna and Khoury particularly insist on the Delphic oracle's “Know thyself” advice. “Develop yourself” is indeed the initial kernel in a list of 16 points of advice which Muna and Khoury offer from their 110 interviews of Palestinian executives.
Part IV is titled “Final thoughts” and comprises two chapters, on “Recommendations for developing future leaders” and “Suggestions for future research”; a prevalent undercurrent with Muna and Khoury here is that one may not be able to do much with the incumbent oligarchs in Palestinian enterprises and that consequently more utility lies in the direction of mentoring the younger generation. Muna and Khoury's outlook toward future research ends essentially with the arena where they began, culture. They encourage more research involving cross-cultural studies of Palestinian executives vis-à-vis analogous managers in the Middle East and in other world regions.
The three appendices are, respectively, a bibliographic essay (literature review), a description of Muna and Khoury's research methods and results, and a display of the researchers' interview questionnaire and other documents. Muna and Khoury well chose to include these items as appendices without encumbering them into the chapters.
The references, glossary, and index all exude a clear sensitivity to the reader's needs.
Besides the strengths already mentioned (as in the deft role of the appendices and the ever-present awareness of the needs of the audience), The Palestinian Executive must be complimented for its cut-to-the-chase, no-nonsense approach. The research manifests a lot of planning and work, including countless hours in finding and selecting the interviewees and in interviewing them meticulously. Throughout, the prose is straightforward and well crafted. Each table or figure appears after being introduced. The reader has always been made aware of what is going on and what to expect next. Muna and Khoury offer here a professional example of how a business book should be organized. Typographical errors are rare; the book has a few, but they are at a level of paucity, especially for a first edition. Thankfully, this book facilitates note-taking in that it is printed on “normal” paper instead of glossy stock which smears ink and will not take pencil markings. The experimental design and measurement practices, using the interview method, are spot on, and Muna and Khoury deserve praise for overcoming hesitancy or unwillingness of managers to be interviewed on matters like sex discrimination, for example, in a culture which either agonizes over the self-evident uneasiness or tries to sidestep admission of it even though it is ubiquitous and vivid (Favero and Heath, 2012).
With respect to cultural factors which Muna and Khoury want to see probed in future research, some arenas additionally merit scrutiny:
Once Israeli occupation has been underscored in this first edition, perhaps Muna and Khoury can refrain from repeating it so often. Muna and Khoury are, however, rather pacific individuals writing about a situation where not everyone is.
The difference between Gaza and West Bank executives calls for more penetrating analysis. True, both are Palestinian, but can they necessarily be lumped into the same data?
Future research can probe more into respondents' religious inclinations.
Almost all 110 interviewees were surely Sunni Muslims, the once-sizable Christian minority in Palestine having dwindled considerably over the last decades (Robson, 2011). Although averring (p. 38) that historically Palestinians lived peaceably as Muslims and Christians, Muna and Khoury leave to future research the question of whether contemporary Palestine's homogeneous Sunni demographics influence the outlook of executives, particularly with the recent rise of Islamic militancy. What correlation if any exists on the basis of religious intensity with respect to leadership style today? Do attitudes toward Jews and Shia Muslims correlate to differences in leadership style? And do differences between Fatah voters (historically the West Bank majority) and Hamas voters (dominant in Gaza and possibly more intensely Sunni, influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood next door in Egypt) correlate to differences in leadership style?
The Palestinian Executive by Farid A. Muna and Grace C. Khoury is an indispensable resource for companies which do business in Palestine and for academicians who study Middle Eastern business (see similar comments in Bailie, 2013). The book is particularly suited for corporate training and for university classes which seek hands-on familiarity with culture's role in Middle Eastern enterprises. “Highly recommended!”
