GROUP 1
The Emirates Group and Employee Diversity
The Emirates Group is an international aviation
holding company that is headquartered in Dubai in the
United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Emirates Group is
primarily made up of Dnata (one of the world’s largest
suppliers of air services such as flight catering and
aircraft ground handling, with a global footprint in 37
countries) and Emirates Airline (the largest airline in
the Middle East).
Emirates flies to more than 125 destinations across six
continents, operating a fleet of more than 180 wide-
bodied aircraft. The airline also has 170 aircraft on
order worth AED 213 billion (about $58 billion in U.S.
dollars; the dirham, AED, currency used in the UAE
has been pegged to the U.S. dollar at a rate of 3.6725
since 1997). Sales turnover for The Emirates Group is
AED 67.4 billion ($18.4 billion in U.S. dollars) and the
company employs more than 85,000 people who
represent more than 160 countries.
The Emirates Group views its employee diversity of
more than 160 nationalities as a unique strength given
its prominent role as a truly global organization.
Emirates’ opinion is that talent is not nationality
exclusive, and diversity of nationalities, cultures,
religious and ethnic backgrounds enrich the
workforce. These come in the form of a constant flow
of new ideas, innovations, and
thinking styles that are then implemented and lead to
business success. The company’s employee diversity
also complements Emirates’ headquarter city of Dubai
as a cosmopolitan multicultural population, where
about 85 percent of the 3 million residents are
expatriates.
Dubai is the most populous city in the UAE; it is the
capital of the Emirate of Dubai, one of seven emirates
that make up the country. In Dubai, the core ethic
groups living and working in the city are Indian (53
percent), Emirati (15 percent), Pakistani (13 percent),
and Bangladeshi (8 percent). The remaining
inhabitants, each with less than 3 percent, include
Filipinos, Sri Lankans, and Americans.
On average, the people in Dubai are young (27 years),
and they mainly come from a background of four
cultures: Arabian, Arabic, Emirati, and Islamic. The
official language is Arabic, but English is widely
spoken and has become both the preferred business
language as well as the choice in social settings. Islam
is the official state religion, although, as with the
myriad of people with different backgrounds, there are
varied religious beliefs among the population. Dubai
has large expatriate communities of Hindus,
Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, and others.
With “people” as one of The Emirates Group’s core
values, the company offers a range of generous
benefits to assist expatriate employees who are
recruited globally to live in Dubai. Through detailed
research and analysis, the remuneration policy focuses
on developing compensation and benefits policies that
are globally competitive. In fact, the main focus for the
company is to ensure that The Emirates Group remains
competitive within the market it operates. This, by
extension, will ensure that Emirates attract and retain
the right talent. Employment of high-quality people
who benefit from working and living in Dubai are
important. This places extra emphasis on work related
conditions and cultural integration in the community,
as best as expatriate employees from around the world
can be assimilated into the Dubai environment.
One of the ugly sides of expatriates in Dubai is the
army of migrant workers. These workers, who are
largely from South East Asia, are paid a minuscule
salary compared with developed-nation expatriates
and significantly below what they need to be able to
earn to afford products or services at Dubai’s
fashionable boutiques and glamorous world-leading
hotels. Technically, human rights in Dubai are
protected and equal based on the Constitution of the
United Arab Emirates. That includes the promise of
equitable treatment of all people, regardless of race,
nationality, or social status. The actual employment
practices, though, have been criticized by a number of
human rights organizations, albeit more recently the
country has made strides to improve.
Questions:
a. Is it sustainable to think that
Emiratis, which make up only
about 15 percent of the people in
Dubai, can be leading the city as
they have been for so long?
b. Integrating 160 different
nationalities into one corporation,
such as The Emirates Group, has
challenges and opportunities.
What challenges do you see? What
opportunities come from this
diverse workforce?
c. If you lived in a city with such
diversity of people as Dubai,
would you assimilate yourself
with the people who are like you,
or would you try to integrate into
the overall community of all
people?
d. Compared with 10 years ago,
expatriate employees stay twice as
long in Dubai, about five years,
before they return to their home
country or another foreign
location. Do you think more
expatriates will stay longer in
Dubai as the city continues to
develop into a world-class
location?
GROUP 2
China and Its Guanxi
By 2009, DMG had emerged as one of China’s fastest
growing advertising agencies with a client list that
includes Budweiser, Unilever, Sony, Nabisco, Audi,
Volkswagen, China Mobile, and dozens of other
Chinese brands. Dan Mintz, the company’s founder,
says that the success of DMG
was connected strongly to what the Chinese call
guanxi.
Guanxi literally means relationships, although in
business settings it can be better understood as
connections. Guanxi has its roots in the Confucian
philosophy of valuing social hierarchy and reciprocal
obligations. Confucian ideology has a 2,000-year-old
history in China. Confucianism stresses the
importance of relationships, both within the family and
between master and servant. Confucian ideology
teaches that people are not created equal. In Confucian
thought, loyalty and obligations to one’s superiors (or
to family) are regarded as a sacred duty, but at the
same time, this loyalty has its price. Social superiors
are obligated to reward the loyalty of their social
inferiors by bestowing “blessings” upon them; thus,
the obligations are reciprocal. Chinese will often
cultivate a guanxiwang, or “relationship network,” for
help. There is a tacit acknowledgment that if you have
the right guanxi, legal rules can be broken, or at least
bent.
Mintz, who is now fluent in Mandarin, cultivated his
guanxiwang by going into business with two young
Chinese who had connections, Bing Wu and Peter
Xiao. Wu, who works on the production side of the
business, was a former national gymnastics champion,
which translates into prestige and access to business
and government officials. Xiao comes from a military
family with major political connections. Together,
these three have been able to open doors that long-
established Western advertising agencies could not.
They have done it in large part by leveraging the
contacts of Wu and Xiao and by backing up their
connections with what the Chinese call Shi li, the
ability to do good work.
his contacts, Mintz persuaded the government to lift
the law for 24 hours.
As Mintz has noted, “We don’t stop when we come
across regulations. There are restrictions everywhere
you go. You have to know how get around them and
get things done.”*
Today, DMG Entertainment has expanded into being
a Chinese-based production and distribution company.
While it began as an advertising agency, the company
started distributing non-Chinese movies in the Chinese
market in the late 2000s (e.g., Iron Man 3, the sixth-
highest-grossing film of all time in China) as well as
producing Chinese films, the first being Founding of a
Republic in 2009. This is a movie that marked the 60th
anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. In these
activities, DMG is also enjoying guanxi in
the country. Variety reported that DMG benefited
from “strong connections” with Chinese government
officials and the state-run China Film Group
Corporation.
Questions:
a. Why do you think it is so important to
cultivate guanxi and guanxiwang in China?
b. What does the experience of DMG tell us
about the way things work in China? What
would likely happen to a business that
obeyed all the rules and regulations, rather
than trying to find a way around them as
Dan Mintz does?
c. What ethical issues might arise when
drawing on guanxiwang to get things done
in China? What does this suggest about the
limits of using guanxiwang for a Western
business committed to high ethical
standards?

A case in point was DMG’s campaign for

Volkswagen, which helped the German company
become ubiquitous in China. The ads used traditional
Chinese characters, which had been banned by
Chairman Mao during the cultural
revolution in favor of simplified versions. To get
permission to use the characters in film and print ads—
a first in modern China—the trio had to draw on high-
level government contacts in Beijing. They won over
officials by arguing that the old characters should be
thought of not as “characters”
but as art. Later, they shot TV spots for the ad on
Shanghai’s famous Bund, a congested boulevard that
runs along the waterfront of the old city. Drawing
again on government contacts, they were able to shut
down the Bund to make the shoot. Steven Spielberg
had been able to close down only
a portion of the street when he filmed Empire of the
Sun. DMG has also filmed inside Beijing’s Forbidden
City, even though it is against the law to do so. Using
GROUP 3
Secularism in Turkey Questions:
For years now, Turkey has been lobbying the a. Can you see anything in the values and
European Union to allow it to join the free trade bloc norms of Islam that is hostile to
as a member state. If the EU says yes, it will be the
first Muslim state in the union. But this is unlikely to
business? Explain.
happen any time soon; after all, it has been half a
century in the making! b. What does the experience of the region
around Kayseri teach about the
Many critics in the EU worry that Islam and Western relationship between Islam and
style capitalism do not mix well and that, as a business?
consequence, allowing Turkey into the EU would be a
mistake. However, a close look at what is going on in c. What are the implications of Islamic
Turkey suggests this view may be misplaced. Consider values toward business for the
the area around the city of Kayseri in central Turkey.
Many dismiss this poor, largely agricultural region of
participation of a country such as
Turkey as a non- European backwater, far removed Turkey in the global economy or
from the secular bustle of Istanbul. It is a region where becoming a member of the European
traditional Islamic values hold sway. And yet it is a Union?
region that has produced so many thriving Muslim
enterprises that it is sometimes called the “Anatolian
Tiger.” Businesses based here include large food
manufacturers, textile companies, furniture
manufacturers, and engineering enterprises, many of
which export a substantial percentage of their
production.

Local business leaders attribute the success of

companies in the region to an entrepreneurial spirit
that they say is part of Islam. They point out that the
Prophet Muhammad, who was himself a trader,
preached merchant honor and commanded that 90
percent of a Muslim’s life be devoted to work in order
to put food on the table. Outside observers have gone
further, arguing that what is occurring around Kayseri
is an example of Islamic Calvinism, a fusion of
traditional Islamic values and the work ethic often
associated with Protestantism in general and
Calvinism in
particular.

However, not everyone agrees that Islam is the driving

force behind the region’s success. Saffet Arslan, the
managing director of Ipek, the largest furniture
producer in the region (which exports to more than 30
countries), says another force is at work: globalization!
According to Arslan, over the past three decades, local
Muslims who once eschewed making money in favor
of focusing on religion are now making business a
priority. They see the Western world, and Western
capitalism, as a model, not Islam, and because of
globalization and the opportunities associated with it,
they want to become successful.

If there is a weakness in the Islamic model of business

that is emerging in places such as Kayseri, some say it
can be found in traditional attitudes toward the role of
women in the workplace and the low level of female
employment in the region. According to a report by
the European Stability Initiative, the same group that
holds up the Kayseri region as an example of Islamic
Calvinism, the low participation of women in the local
workforce is the Achilles’ heel of the economy and
may stymie the attempts of the region to catch up with
the countries of the European Union.