Originally Posted by
BigGeordie
So it is silos (or, if you prefer, ivory towers) and the company culture that is the problem? I'm pretty sure any of us could have told them that!
The big question is, how to change the company culture when it not only ingrained in the company but also comes from the countries that (some of/most of) the workers come from?
Yet again, nobody told them that.
EK doesn't have a culture, that is its biggest problem. Everything was left for random occurrences (influenced by mix of cultures from all over the world) to form a substitute for culture (of fear), while the company was growing fast and employing more and more wasta incapable and uneducated "managers".
A multinational (multicultural) company has to have a strict organizational culture - a set of rules, work ethics and talent/motivation strategies so that nobody's personal or local culture or religion can't influence it much. And that organizational culture has to have strong mechanisms of support (non-corrupted, capable HR with integrity and power to decide plus educated, modern locals as their supervisors). This way that British arrogance and greediness and Indian administration silliness plus local lack of knowledge and know-how brought the company down.
EK lost a human resources management battle.
Edit:
I forgot to mention Labour Law. Nobody and nothing should be above the law. Not even Sheikh. If he wants to keep his multicultural business. Otherwise, he should employ only locals. And there is nobody who would tell him this in his face. The fact that EK is not the subject of the Labour law causes the fact that EK doesn't have an organizational culture. It's a vicious circle and the solution requires changes in the very UAE political system. That is why it is almost impossible to change things in EK.