A paradigm shift in the Arab region
knowledge evolution
Mirghani S. Mohamed, Kevin J. O’Sullivan and Vincent Ribière
Mirghani S. Mohamed is an
Assistant Professor at the
New York Institute of
Technology, Manama,
Bahrain.
Kevin J. O’Sullivan is an
Associate Professor of
Management at the New
York Institute of Technology,
New York, New York, USA.
Vincent M. Ribière is an
Assistant Professor at the
Institute for Knowledge and
Innovation, Bangkok
University, Bangkok,
Thailand.
DOI 10.1108/13673270810902975
Abstract
Purpose – The paper seeks to pinpoint new directions of the evolution of knowledge in the Arab region,
and to outline the role of knowledge management principles in constructing the knowledge society.
Design/methodology/approach – The article addresses initiatives towards narrowing the knowledge
gap and building an egalitarian knowledge society in the Arab region. It reviews, interprets and relates
the relevant literature and sheds the light on the Arab region’s future plans.
Findings – The article outlines some of the regionally relevant elements needed for building the
knowledge society. It also suggests some means of tapping the diversified workforce’s tacit knowledge,
reversing the ‘‘brain drain,’’ and building potential leadership models.
Originality/value – This article represents an overview and interpretation of the role of knowledge
management as it relates to the effectiveness of concepts such as ‘‘knowmadism’’ and the practicality of
‘‘megatribe knowledge.’’ The article provides rendition and a roadmap for decision makers, knowledge
workers, and future researchers in the domain of the ‘‘knowledge society’’ within the Arab region.
Keywords Knowledge management, Sustainable development, Leadership, Middle East
Paper type Viewpoint
Introduction
Following the publication of the second Arab Human Development Report by the United
Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 2002, the Knowledge Economy, a division of the
World Bank Development Gateway, solicited comments from its advisors on the report’s
findings. The principal author of this paper’s observation, at that time, can be summarized as
follows:
B There are conspicuous ontological/epistemological and metaphysical dissimilarities
between the West and the Arab world. These differences can be attributed to various
philosophical and cultural factors, but can be employed for synergy rather than dissonance.
B The deficiency in knowledge assimilation and the shortfall of knowledge sharing in the
region are due to a perplexing set of economic and political intricacies. Paradoxically,
both problems are direct opposites in relation to the cultural roots of the region; therefore,
the knowledge gap is unquestionably transient.
B The region now needs a knowledge management (KM) strategy more than at any
previous time. However, the two main obstacles are a mediocre research and
development (R&D) strategy and inadequate information and communication
technology (ICT) infrastructures. The low ranks in these two areas can be attributed to
high levels of illiteracy, which are as yet unaddressed by agendas of governmental
policy-making.
B Despite these deficiencies, the region is not intellectually dead and there is expectation
for contemporary knowledge to be nurtured while simultaneously the gap can be
narrowed.
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 ‘‘ Recently, there have been a couple of noticeable
groundbreaking models pursued by Dubai and Qatar to
transubstantiate the region’s population into a ‘knowledge
society’. ’’

The principal author states that the styles of governance in the region have significantly
contributed to the continual inertia of knowledge and the internment of innovation. As a
result, the most compelling entrepreneurs and thinkers in such a situation ask, ‘‘What is the
cost of not knowing?’’. Ironically, most of the regimes in the region ask, ‘‘What is the benefit of
not knowing?’’, and that is a serious governance issue. This continues to be disappointing,
since there is still implicit warfare between some governments and their élites, a situation
that has forced the latter to leave for the Western hemisphere. This resulted in the acute
‘‘brain drain’’ problem, which, in turn, has influenced the region’s competitiveness.
Recently, there have been a couple of noticeable groundbreaking models pursued by Dubai
and Qatar to transubstantiate the region’s population into a ‘‘knowledge society.’’ Both of
these initiatives deemed human development a central goal and targeted narrowing the
knowledge gap between the Arab region and the rest of the world. At the latest Middle East
World Economic Forum, held in Jordan in May 2007, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al
Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, launched an
endowment of ten billion US dollars for an avant garde foundation called the ‘‘Mohammed
Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation’’ to promote knowledge in the region. Although the effort
is not the first of its kind, it is nonetheless the largest contribution to the enterprise of
knowledge in the region’s known history.
The second major initiative occurred in Qatar, where the government gathered leading world
university representatives into a center for knowledge-creation called ‘‘Education City,’’
which is headquarters for the ‘‘Qatar Foundation.’’ The main objective is to form the most
powerful educational and research hub in the Middle East.
The establishment of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation has undisputedly
come at the right time and in an ideal context for the following reasons:
B It comes as a result of lessons learned from a state with one of the highest economic
growth rates in the world.
B The latest Middle East World Economic Forum came at a time when knowledge
economies and globalization contributed prominent effects in the region.
B The audience for the announcement was comprised of leaders of the region. The
expectation, therefore, is that they will not only be motivated, but also implicitly
challenged, to reform their policies and strategies, and thus to prepare their countries for
the approaching knowledge society.
In general, this announcement is expected to spur dialog about the status of knowledge in
the region. It will provide a unique opportunity for the new generation to compete in the new
world. The speech was utterly unambiguous in depicting the failures of the Arab world. If the
region takes it seriously, the result will be an entirely new intellectual and human
development agenda. ‘‘The challenge facing the region currently is not only restricted to the
lack of knowledge, but goes beyond it as there are graver problems associated with
providing the right atmosphere for building knowledge and equipping the right people with
proper tools to embrace it,’’ stated Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation’s statement of objectives is a holistic
view of building knowledge infrastructure, research centers, scholarships, authorship and

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collaboration with top international institutes to benefit forthcoming generations. The
foundation is expected to make a quantum leap in the region’s intellectual assets as Beit
Elhikma did in the ninth century. It is mentioned in the Foundation’s declaration that its
objective is to promote human development through establishing and maintaining
knowledge infrastructure, knowledge culture, decision networking, translation, and
through the development of regional future leaders, affording fair opportunities.

The Foundation’s four pillars

There are four non-sequential pillars that uphold the initiative of the Mohammed bin Rashid
Al Maktoum Foundation, namely:
1. building a knowledge society;
2. leadership;
3. R&D; and
4. sustainability.
The context of these pillars can be elicited from Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s
conference speech as follows:
B Knowledge society – Statistics on indicators of development, such as decreased
illiteracy and unemployment, increased intellectual production and numbers of scholars
and their publications in the Arab world, are all currently unacceptable. The United
Nations Development Programme (2005) reports that the illiteracy level in the Arab world
exceeds the world average, and is even higher than that of developing nations.
B Leadership – Historically, it is known that the Arab world dominated international trade
between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries. After that, the Arabs chose not to
pursue their advancements in trade and science. The weakening of their civilization can
be attributed to a refusal to carry out necessary reforms in institutionalized organizations,
leadership, education, research and innovation, such as Europe had pursued during its
Renaissance, which, paradoxically, mainly originated from Arab civilization. In the quest
to regain such leadership status, the region must understand that the rules of the game
have changed. Due to globalization, competitive advantage cannot be reached through
self-centeredness: it depends on openness and sharing of knowledge with the world.
Mohamed (2007) reports that ‘‘globalization is misunderstood and misused by many
egotistical multinationals that arrogated the ownership of globalization and shoehorned it
to their purpose, then called upon the rest of the world to comply.’’
B R&D – Research is one of the important pillars that uphold the knowledge society in the
region. Spending on research in the region is minimal compared to the developed world.
The Arab world offers only 0.02 percent of its GDP to fund research, while the developed
world spends up to 5 percent of its GDP on research. Solutions and reforms in different
aspects of the region require innovation. The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum
Foundation will establish research centers across the region with international standards
while also embracing the boosts brought out by creativity, innovation and introspective
action-research.
B Sustainability – Most of the fundamental requirements of sustainable development are
currently lacking in the region. ‘‘Sustainable development is the biggest challenge for the
Arab region. Unless we focus our efforts on sustainable development, any achievement,
in any sector, will only be a temporary success,’’ states Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al
Maktoum.

Narrowing the K-gap

At its macro scale, the knowledge gap in the Arab region can be represented in two distinct
ways:
1. Intra-regional level – This level expresses the differences between Arab countries in
regard to human development, education system, ICT infrastructure and related activities

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 such as publications, literacy, computer skills, innovation and R&D. These variations in
the knowledge gap are more or less a reflection of the economic status as well as the
returns from the knowledge-intensive activities of each state. It is a fact that the temporary
existence of intellectual assets, collectively from foreign workers, contributes to this
variability. Hence, different, decidedly new KM strategies are needed to address this
notional ‘‘pseudo-knowledge divide.’’
2. Inter-regional level – This level reflects differences between actual regional development
and the planned strategic goals, as compared to the rest of the world. Apparently, the
existing knowledge gap between the Arab world and Western societies is widening
(Bontis, 2002; United Nations Development Programme, 2002a, 2003, 2004). Openness
to Western philosophy and exotic knowledge is not new to the Arab world, where over the
centuries Muslim philosophers such as Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Ghazali and Ibn Rushd
(Averroes) greatly appreciated, translated and thereby enlivened Greek philosophy and
knowledge. It is well known that Avorism is based on the philosophy of ‘‘there is only one
shared human intellect’’. Al Ma’mun Ibn Harun al-Rashid established Beit Elhikma (i.e.
‘‘House of Wisdom’’) in Baghdad, the intellectual city as described at that time, in the first
half of the ninth century. One of the main objectives was to translate Greek manuscripts
into Arabic and to create a research center where knowledge workers could synthesize
knowledge. For example, Al-Khawarizmi wrote his famous book about the foundation of
Algebra known as Kitab al-Jabr in Beit Elhikma.
In effect, a comprehensive investigation is needed to answer critical questions such as:
B Where does the gap exist?
B How did it happen?
B When did it happen?
B How can the region regain its intellectual leadership?
B As compared to its past, why does the region currently lack prominent scholars and
philosophers?
B Is it possible to ‘‘brain gain’’ the lost skills?
B Does the discovery of oil have anything to do with the deterioration of Arab intellectual
contributions?
B Can the diminution of oil reserves in some countries, and the emerging sources of
renewable and alternative energy become motivation for the Arabs to establish a
‘‘knowledge society’’?
These questions should comprise a serious subject for investigation using sound
methodolgies of knowledge archeology.

The role of knowledge management

An exemplary strategy for the region is to narrow the knowledge gap by espousing a
systemic learning approach. This approach must reflect the needs of the region as an active
member in the social fabric of its knowledge economy. In reality, there is no specific utopian
panacea or precise prescription for building the ‘‘knowledge society’’. However, the
strategic importance of developing KM has been commended by many organizations and
research centers around the globe (Pan and Scarbrough, 1999; Lubit, 2001). Other
investigators consider it the only source of competitive advantage (Bristow, 2000; Gupta
et al., 2000; Williams, 2001). Although Senge (1990) has argued that the current state of
learning-disablement may prevent many organizations from functioning as
knowledge-based organizations in the newly emerging knowledge economy, still there is
not enough inquiry into the role of KM in the region’s knowledge society as a knowledge
economy (Rowley, 1999). The intromission of KM principles amplified by capacity building is
a critical driving force for the Arab region to enter the knowledge society. The importance of
KM in such an effort is expressed by Myburgh (2000), who states that the increased
relevance of KM as a new discipline can be attributed to the emergence of the knowledge

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society, and the increasing acknowledgement that knowledge is gaining as the most
valuable organizational asset.
Regional collaboration necessitates the development of a common vision and
understanding of the exact contribution of knowledge to the new economy. Particularly
vital are the roles of systems thinking, process approach, concurrent engineering and
intra-community communication and collaboration to form value networks. The Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development (2002) recommended that countries at
different levels of their economy must bilaterally and multilaterally collaborate to improve the
decision-making process for sustainable development. Malone and Yohe (2002) encourage
the formation of new knowledge affiliations between different societal sectors and various
organizations for purposes of sustainable development. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al
Maktoum concurs, and states furthermore that ‘‘we have to build our own model that reflects
Arab culture and lives up to international standards. We have to engage in dialogue and
believe in partnership in deciding the future of the world.’’
Culture and religion configure the societal framework and may result in incomparable
indigenous knowledge rich with tribal intelligence. This knowledge should not be ignored,
nor substituted in its entirety. In an effort to revitalize knowledge in the Arab world, new
strategies and action plans need to be explicated. This may call for a sophisticated hybrid
framework to be determined, a ‘‘knowmadism’’, as it were. The framework, in such cases,
crossbreeds the traditional nomadic knowledge style with filtered contemporary Western
knowledge capacities. In the realm of knowmadism three foci must be considered:
1. people;
2. KM processes; and
3. ICTs.

People
The ultimate goal of the proposed knowledge society in the region should be the transfer of
the region’s population from consumers to producers, or at least to participants in the
knowledge product. In fact, importing highly sophisticated goods without knowing the ideas
behind their operations may be a hampering factor for regional advancement. As stated by
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ‘‘Attempts to import ready-made solutions not
indigenous to this part of the world and enforce them is not the correct option for our region.
Such actions have only resulted in chaos, confusion and weakness and served as barriers to
reform. They hindered social, political and economic growth and have led to huge failure’’ (Al
Maktoum Foundation, 2007). A knowledge society requires problem-oriented learning
processes that are connected to national goals. The region is characterized by two distinct
cognitive sources that can be exploited to the greatest benefit for building the foundation of
the knowledge society. These two elements are:
1. an amalgamation of culture and religion; and
2. a diversified workforce in the region.
Culture and religion. Culture and religion in the Arab world are inextricably interrelated. Due
to this, in effect the region has for centuries been culturally, religiously and linguistically
equipped for knowledge nourishment. For instance, the first known community of practice
(CoP) in the region, the ‘‘Souk Oukaz’’, was established in the Arab peninsula before Islam,
and the very first command in the Qura’an is strictly about knowledge. Furthermore, the tribal
system, which constitutes the foundation of the rural economy in many countries, still has its
roots in the Arab states and is a rich culture that can be exploited for reaping benefits of the
knowledge society instead of haphazardly sparking ‘‘cultural collisions’’. For instance, the
tribal system is more effective in sharing and synthesizing knowledge than is a systematic
modern corporate system, which is demonstrated by cross-functional teams, CoPs,
communities of interest and even flat organizational settings. CoPs can be considered the
neoclassical version of tribal communication and relationships. This is one indication that
building a knowledge society can be effectively supported by the core value of the society

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 itself. Mohamed (2007) reports that the tribal system, which characterizes most of the
developing world, does not only form a mere community of practice, but is a connected
community of kinship. Hence, tribal knowledge by definition is an eternal knowledge that can
be transferred from generation to generation through traditional, socially facilitational means
such as storytelling, but to some extent also exists in inertia and is rarely tapped for
transformative capacities. The tribal system is a controlled ‘‘cognosphere’’ in which the chief
of the tribe is the natural endogenous knowledge broker or ‘‘knowledge gatekeeper’’ and the
inter-generational distance is bridged by the living tribal memory, not by the robust yet more
inert storage area network (SAN) system. The former represents tacit knowledge, while the
latter symbolizes explicit knowledge of the knowledge society. Most of the knowledge
required for developmental purposes exists as tacit knowledge (Nonaka and Nishiguchi,
2000; Analoui, 1998).
The diversified workforce. The Arab world is characterized by a dynamic shift in the
workforce due to seasonal migration of foreign labor. The intense dynamism in regional
knowledge makes it unique and in need of special strategies. This mobilization of the
workforce in the region introduces a wealth of knowledge that originates from different
cultures with dissimilar modes of thinking that are directly reflected in knowledge production,
synthesis and mobilization. Hitherto foreign workers enter the Arab world with new
knowledge, absorb existing knowledge from the environment, and leverage it to achieve
higher levels of productivity. Yet inevitably they leave the region with their knowledge
untapped. There is, then, a necessity for developing new holistic KM models and global
knowledge governance strategies to amend, capture and/or transfer such knowledge
permanently for the benefits of the region.
Nevertheless, as it is potentially possible for the region to gain knowledge, it is unfortunate
that the region is losing knowledge in different ways. One of the acute crises in the Arab
world is the brain drain. The United Nations Development Programme (2003) reports that the
brain drain reflects a deep crisis in the role of knowledge in the present day. The Arab brain
drain constitutes a form of reverse development aid. The report quotes Zahlan, stating that
‘‘roughly 25% of 300,000 first degree graduates from Arab universities in 1995/96 emigrated.
Between 1998 and 2000 more than 15,000 Arab doctors migrated.’’ Thus, the ‘‘brain drain’’
deprived the region of significant sources of technological knowledge, intellectual assets
and historical experiential assets (Dejflat, 2002; United Nations Development Programme,
2001, 2003). Dejflat (2002) reports that up to 80 percent of the scientific workforce in some
Arab countries has migrated to industrialized countries. Furthermore, over the last two
decades Arab universities have permanently lost 50 percent of their professors as a result of
low pay and/or poor R&D funding. This will have a direct, negative impact on the foundation
of the knowledge society itself, i.e. in education. A priority on the agenda of the new
knowledge society should be the development of a ‘‘brain gain’’ strategy, i.e. to counteract
the ‘‘brain drain’’ by attracting emigrated experts to return to the region.

KM processes
It is not the intention of this section of the article to describe the KM processes. There are
many frameworks that detail KM processes and can be consulted to offer background such
as the KM conceptual framework developed by Stankosky and Baldanza (2000), which
consists of four pillars, namely:
1. organization;
2. learning;
3. technology; and
4. leadership.
These four pillars form the ‘‘foundation’’ of any KM system. Without all of them in some kind of
harmony, a knowledge management system (KMS) cannot be successful in the long term.
Processes at lower levels are presented in the global knowledge-based enterprise (GKBE),
the butterfly framework proposed by Mohamed (2007) to reap the benefits of the synergy of

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 the key components of business globalization. The model consists of three sections, namely
the backbone, which represents a knowledge supply chain (KSC), and two wings, each
representing a set of activities for tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. In such case,
sound KM practices are needed, because the immediacy and the idiosyncrasy of
knowledge make it fluid and ephemeral; hence, the timing for delivering and utilizing
knowledge becomes critical. The speed and the intensity of knowledge transfer depends on
its gradient, i.e. the delta of knowledge between the knowledge source and the knowledge
seeker. The speed of capturing knowledge usually correlates with a foundation of prior
knowledge available in the knowledge seeker. Regional knowledge-mapping and
knowledge flow processes are vital for knowledge evaluation and dissemination.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs)

ICTs are strategically important in global reach, analytical process, accessibility, visibility,
collaboration and sustainable development (Thapisa, 1996; Al-Jaghoub and Westrup, 2003;
Jitsuzumi et al., 2001; Crowston et al., 2001; Mansell, 2002). Galán et al. (1999) consider
technology to be one of the elemental pillars of competitive advantage in the international
market, where intense competitive capabilities are required from companies. But, ICTs
cannot do it alone. Kyte (2001) reports that ‘‘while ICT has played a significant part in the
development of the forces of globalization, it is fundamentally wrong to assume that ICT is
the reason why globalization has become such a potent force.’’
Employing ICTs to harness KM for economical development involves more than just pulling
fiber optics or even deploying the best KM applications; it necessitates strengthening
human interactions and changing existing development practices. More specifically,
besides appropriate and robust ICT infrastructure, there is a need for dynamic national
policies, purposefully designed applications, quality services and eminence
capacity-building programs. The Arab world is still lagging behind, as the United Nations
Development Programme (2002b) has explicitly stated: ‘‘all Arab countries lack information
policies that delineate targets and priorities, coordinate the various sectors and formulate
strategic alternatives with regard to the creation of infrastructure, as well as the development
of human and information resources.’’ The discrepancy of Internet penetration in the Arab
world may have a drastic effect on development. Madar Research (2005) reports the
penetration rate of the internet is 33.30 percent in UAE, while it is only 1 percent in Yemen.
However, the United Nations Development Programme (2002a) forecasted that the
compound average growth rate in internet users in Yemen will be 58 percent by the year
2008. The annual compound average growth rate for internet distribution and growth for the
period 2005-2008 is led by Sudan (62 percent) and trailed by Bahrain (12 percent).
In the Arab world ICT tools may help in tapping into the knowledge of foreign workers by
developing new KMS repositories for the extraction, capture, assimilation and sharing of their
knowledge in a proper manner. In addition, investment by Arab multinational corporations in
ICTs is critical because it allows countries to tap knowledge that transcends national borders.
The synergy of globalization, ICT and knowledge depends on how the latter is leveraged for
the advantage of global business using ICT as a conduit. In the current knowledge economy,
human capital is the determining factor in the success of global, knowledge-intensive
business processes. This is particularly important, since the Arab region is facing constraints
of internal KM technology, as represented in ICTs’ physical infrastructure, a basic computer
literacy which has resulted in poor quality content. The spread of ICTs and their universal
usage for development require basic human resource development to support their efficacy.

‘‘ The establishment of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum

Foundation has come undisputedly at the right time and in an
ideal context. ’’

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 Human development and leadership
Egalitarianism in the Arab world should start at pedagogical levels, where teachers are in
charge of preparing the next generations to be active participants in the knowledge
society. The education system needs to equip successive generations with new
approaches to knowledge acquisition, synthesis, sharing, and utilization through rigorous
schooling. The quest for world class schools for learning leadership and organizational
skill, as concluded by Johnston and Caldwell (2001), calls for ‘‘all students in every
setting’’ to be ‘‘literate and numerate,’’ which is to say, to be in a position, therefore, to
‘‘acquire the capacity for life-long learning, leading to successful and satisfying work in
the knowledge society and a global economy. Nations that achieve these outcomes may
be said to have ‘world class schools’.’’
Murray and Greenes (2006) examined new leadership approaches for competing in a ‘‘flat’’
world and found that leaders in the twenty-first century must come up with new business
strategies, where the decision-making process usually originates from many complex
factors. The authors concluded that in such a ‘‘flattening world’’ and a dynamic market, both
strategy and execution need to be quickly adjusted as conditions change. This adjustment
in vision is especially necessary in the Arab world, where business leadership faces
challenges of an economically spurred environment, which necessitates a transformational
leadership to carry out inescapable changes and to sustain growth in the knowledge
economy.
Dramatic changes in technology, business, competitiveness, and globalization have
necessitated a change in how we work and interact as knowledge communities.
Consequently, these forces dictate the development of new leadership styles with new
competencies, potentialities and mental models. In fact, such transformations have
dramatically changed the criteria for leadership worldwide. Bennis (1992) states that ‘‘to
survive in the twenty-first century, a new generation of leaders is needed.’’ While charismatic
characteristics in a leader are especially necessary, it is also true that his or her intellectual
qualities and collaborative skills will be equally significant in the current interconnected
world, where the physical existence of the leader is often moot or even irrelevant. For
instance, an archetypal Bedouin tribal leader who is a natural leader, attuned to a
self-leading model based on traditional socio-cultural and ethical dimensions, may have
abundant charisma, but will not necessarily come up with innovative business solutions.
Hence, new leadership development programs are critically needed for local understanding
of regional development in a knowledge-based society.

Changing the status quo

There is no doubt that the shortest way to embody new leadership requirements in the
business process is through systematic education and training. However, the Arab world is
lagging behind; UNESCO (2005) reports show that by the end of 2004 there were 41
countries that had attained four out of six international community education goals slated for
2015. None of the Arab states was close to achieving the goals. More importantly, the
situation is even worse when it comes to gender inequality in education. Harris and Moran
(1996) reported that emphasis on international and intercultural education during leadership
development is important to account for new demands and changes in multicultural
societies. Johnston and Caldwell (2001) suggested the implementation of five disciplines in
Senge’s model of a learning organization as a template for conceptualizing progress
towards a world-class education system. However, this contradicts the model if knowledge
is seen as the single sustainable competitive advantage an organization needs in order to be
redesigned based on the intellectual capacities of its members, rather than being a
commodity of merely materialistic profit. Furthermore, critical to integrated understanding is
the relevancy of the learning organization’s style in relation to the type and complexity of the
problems facing the region. This will not only shorten the cycle for building a valid holistic
knowledge model, but is also consistent with the reality of regional business values and a
global market realm.

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Successful vision in leadership originates from the style of the learning process and the
ability of the leader to reflect the larger context – the big picture, as it were. Additionally, the
leader will identify potentially crucial change. Leadership in any organization is not only the
agent of change, but in large effect it is a form of cross-breeding, a process of preparing the
stage for hybridization of the exotic and domestic knowledge that will ameliorate the
business ecosystem. Likewise, synergy may result from the coalescence of endogenous
tribal knowledge and contemporary Western knowledge. In some cases, tribal traditions
may be more effective than systematic modern schemes in sharing and synthesizing
knowledge. For example, ethnographical knowledge-sharing within the tribal system is more
effective than some forms of corporate knowledge-sharing within communities of practice or
communities of interest. The Arab world needs to extend the same ideas to build the sense of
a business system of ‘‘megatribe knowledge’’ that would blend all forms of business
pluralism, such as strategic alliances, competition fronts and ‘‘coopetition’’ considerations.
The readying of the new organizations’ architects, who can be equipped with conceptual
and technological knowledge, must go through continuous processes of improvement, as
explained by Deming (2000) as a ‘‘system of profound knowledge’’ which primarily focuses
on learning activities.
It would be disadvantageous to cultivate world-class leadership in the Arab world and
relinquish it by imposing the degradations of censorship, surveillance and tangled
bureaucratic environments. Political governance must acknowledge, respect, and support
the idea that there will be diverse opinion and incongruent ideas in rhetorical expressions. In
the end, this will stop the ‘‘brain drain’’ and stabilize the degradation of intellectual capital
that has occurred for centuries.

Research and innovation

R&D, as a source and a way of applied knowledge, can assist Arab countries to identify
gaps in strategically important and complex developmental issues. It promotes innovation
through the leveraging of new and relevant knowledge at specific targets. One of the main
obstacles of R&D is the availability of funds. R&D in the Arab world is faced with tremendous
challenges that have resulted in the widening of cognitive dimensions. In reference to the
World Bank study, Madar Research (2005) reported that R&D funding in the Arab states is
one of the world’s weakest streams relative to GDP, where even the developing nations’ R&D
spending tripled that of the Arab states. The compound innovation index for the Arab states
is led by Jordan (6.09) and tailed by Yemen (0.28), while it is above 9.00 in Japan, the USA,
and Finland. ‘‘The Arab has a great scientific past and pioneered many of the methods now
regarded as the root of Western science,’’ states Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
It is undeniable that currently applied and developmental research policies in the Arab world
are inadequate or even inappropriate. Hence, for R&D, alternative restructuring strategies
and the reallocation of resources are both urgently needed.
One objective of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation is to encourage
serendipitous discoveries through the funding of collaborative research programs that foster
knowledge equitableness, knowledge consciousness, and knowledge discoveries. R&D
should follow the concept of the KM lifecycle in generating and leveraging knowledge to
offer competitive advantage. Liyanage et al. (1999) argued that R&D management is leaning
towards KM rather than generating knowledge. However, properly targeted research may
also facilitate the assimilation of knowledge. Blados et al. (2001) report that the identification,
acquisition, and utilization of technical scientific information are vital to the effectiveness of
R&D.
The hybridization of internal and external ideas is critical in building synergy for innovation.
This can be supported by the translation of international research results and the synthesis
of extracted complementary knowledge. It is important to establish collaborative research
support programs and/or strategic alliances, bilateral or multilateral cooperation between
local and global universities, multinational companies, science and technology parks,
research centers and international organizations. This could be augmented by an integrated

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 R&D network of collaboration between researchers in the region to gain thereby the benefits
of ‘‘network externalities.’’
At the governance level, it is well known that hegemonic autocracy is an outmoded
approach that does not cohere with a research agenda. Arab governments’ research
policy-making must encourage free collaborative research between countries, universities
and research centers for knowledge creation and diffusion. Governments need not only
provide research grants, but should also foster policies that transform knowledge into
actions through decision-making processes. This requires the convergence of research
results and recommendations with the action of political leaders and industry
decision-makers. In addition, it requires networking within and between research
communities, as well as between these communities and policy-makers. Andriesse (1994)
reports that the time between R&D investment and its return is shrinking, and the countries
that promote life-long learning for their citizens by investing in R&D are well positioned in the
current global markets.
At the organizational level, there is a necessity for research organizations to transform from
the structure of rigid hierarchical silos to organic de-layered, knowledge-intensive
organizations. Research organizations in the newly ‘‘flat’’ world must proactively undergo
the process of ‘‘de-siloing’’ in order to be equipped with appropriate ethical and moral
standards for research. Carrying out directed research and building comprehensive
knowledge-intensive systems must be aligned with national programs. New coherent
models are needed for the convergence of societal requirements and the research goals to
remedy knowledge deficiencies that will support the development process.

Sustainability and continuous improvement

There is growing public and political awareness that the Arab region’s economic prosperity
and growth is ostensibly unsustainable. Hence, it needs to be shielded by resilient layers of
sustainability built on the current system’s elasticity to endure sharp market variability and to
adapt to the faster global rate of change.

The complexity of sustainability calls for organizations to provide the intellectual capital at
the centre of the development process and turn themselves into learning organizations (Kay
and Bawden, 1996; Hall, 2001; Ellerman, 1999). This is one of the factors that promote the
importation of exotic knowledge to the region with proper bidirectional exteriorization and
internalization communications.
The only way to sustain innovation is through competent learning organizations. In fact,
sustainability is the sine qua non of sound institutional development and an effective learning
process. Senge (1990) argued that enduring sustainable competitive advantage resulted
from learning organizations where people learn faster than their competitors do; this is
achieved when the resulting competitiveness is more effective than the sum of its parts. In
the Arab world all five of Senge’s disciplines are disrupted by non-economic parameters. For
instance, the conflicts in the region cause periods of crises, ambiguity, turbulence, and
acute, potentially irreversible, changes. The turbulent economy, which is highly affected by
the conflicts in the region, is counterbalanced to some degree by the hike in oil prices and
production. However, in the current ‘‘knowledge economy’’, any solution that comes from a
tangible commodity is considered local anesthesia and not an eternal panacea on which to
devolve.

The bottom line

Globalization has transformed the business sphere into worldwide interconnected
knowledge societies, and the Arab region is no exception. This evolution in the business
ecosystem requires the region to systemically construct the projected ‘‘knowledge society’’
infrastructure, and to gradually and strategically practice sound knowledge management at
all levels.

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‘‘ An exemplary strategy for the region is to narrow the
knowledge gap by espousing a systematic-learning
approach. ’’

The emerging Arab institutes, such as the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation
and the Qatar Foundation, are serious attempts to exercise the effectiveness of the emerging
‘‘knowledge society’’ for the advancement of humanity in the region. These institutes form a
quantum leap that may rejuvenate the preeminence of the collective effect of the Arab
civilization in the period between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries. One of these
efforts may lead to Beit Elhikma II or may hatch distinguished geniuses such as Averroes
(ibn-Rushd) (1126-1198), who created the first domestic and exotic knowledge hybridization
model that is not only admired, but also accepted, by Western societies. Averroes published
his commentaries on Aristotle based on the epistemic fundament that ‘‘knowledge is the
conformity of the object and the intellect.’’ The return of Averroism needs investments in
people’s intellect, their culture, religion, and the foreign workforce. The comeback of the
Arab mind in a systematic ‘‘brain gain’’ program is needed as happened in India, where
global opportunities of outsourcing/offshoring from within India offered returning
professionals viable work locally that contributed expansively to their society.
To align the intellectual capacities with new business requirements, the region must work on
different fronts to invest in expatriates, to leverage its strategies to reverse the ‘‘brain drain’’
and to fill the knowledge gap at both intra- and inter-regional levels. To keep the momentum
of the ‘‘knowledge’’ society paradigm, the new initiatives for knowledge institutes in the Arab
region must expand and be sustained. Otherwise, these initiatives will transform into new
knowledge constraints that will take the region back to its pathological inertia. The
sustainability of this momentum needs uninterrupted diffusion and infusion of innovations
and perpetually relevant knowledge, which may need restructuring at the organizational
level.
The chimera of ‘‘epistemic sovereignty’’ is an outmoded self-centeredness that is not
acceptable in the current globalized marketplace. The region has started to open its doors to
different ideas. The gathering of erudite thinkers of the world recently in Dubai, many of
whom are Nobel Prize winners, is a serious indication of the humility that is needed to reach a
common threshold of global knowledge. More pointedly, epistemological pluralism is
required for success in the realm of the ‘‘knowledge society’’. Hence, the relationship with
the West should neither be contentious, nor submissive. A ‘‘coopetitive’’ relationship is good
enough to build the ‘‘knowledge society’’. The Arab world can revert from the status of
‘‘knowledge entropy’’ to the former ‘‘golden age’’ of Islam – if the principles of modern
knowledge are effectively leveraged and crossbred with traditions to result in a lucrative
‘‘knowmadism’’.

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About the authors

Mirghani Mohamed is an Assistant Professor at the School of Management, New York
Institute of Technology (NYIT), Bahrain Campus, teaching information systems technology
and knowledge management principles. Before joining NYIT, Dr Mohamed was the
Associate Director for Technology Operations and Engineering at The George Washington
University in Washington, DC. He also serves as the Director of the Knowledge Management
(KM) Technology Center at the same University. Dr Mohamed holds an MSc and a PhD in
Agronomy/Statistics, an MSc in Computer Science and a DSc. in Systems Engineering and
Engineering Management with emphasis on knowledge management. Furthermore, Dr
Mohamed is an Oracle and ITIL Certified Professional. He worked as a technical lead for the
deployment of complex ERP and many other critical enterprise systems. Mirghani Mohamed
is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: mirghani@gmail.com
Kevin J. O’Sullivan is an Associate Professor of Management and Department Chair for
Management and Marketing at New York Institute of Technology. He has over 16 years of IT
experience in multinational firms and consulting in both the private and public sectors in
American, Middle Eastern, European and Far Eastern cultures. Dr O’Sullivan has delivered
professional seminars to global Fortune 100 organizations on subjects such as global
collaboration, knowledge management, information security and multinational information
systems. His research interests include knowledge management, intellectual capital,
security and information visualization. He has been published in journals such as Journal of
Knowledge Management, Journal of Information and Knowledge Management and
International Journal of Knowledge Management among others. He is also the author of
the recently published book Strategic Knowledge Management in Multinational
Organizations (IDG Publishing).

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 Vincent Ribière has taught for the past ten years at American University (Washington, DC),
the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) in New York, and in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Dr
Ribière is now an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Bangkok University. He is the
Managing Director of the South Asian branch of the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation
(IKI) of Thailand, hosted by Bangkok University (see http://iki.bu.ac.th), and the Director for
Asian activities at the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation at the George Washington
University, in Washington, DC (see www.gwu.edu/, iki). Dr Ribière received his Doctorate of
Science in Knowledge Management from the George Washington University, and a PhD in
Management Sciences from the Paul Cézanne University in Aix-en-Provence, France. Dr
Ribière teaches, conducts research and consults in the area of knowledge management and
information systems. He has presented various research papers at different international
conferences on knowledge management, organizational culture, information systems and
quality, as well as publishing in various refereed journals and books.

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