Strategic planning in the united arab emirates

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on the nature and practice of strategic planning in organizations working in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Design/methodology/approach – Given the nature of the data, questionnaires are collected from managers only. Personal delivery and pick-up system is used to collect the questionnaire. Sampled organizations are divided into 47 percent from the public sector and 53 percent from the private sector. Findings – A high percentage of organizations in the sample have moved beyond daily managing and are strategically planning for the future. Surprisingly, the findings indicate that there are relatively few significant differences among the four groups included in the paper, public versus private organizations and small versus large organizations. The paper also shows that the resources required for adopting a strategic planning approach do not form a significant obstacle; and the higher the position, the more likely is participation in the strategic planning process. Originality/value – This paper, which can be considered as among the first studies to report on the practice of strategic planning in the Arab region, provides us with a profile of organizations working in the UAE regarding the practice of strategic planning within them.