Why Oman Model would be more successful

The developmental model of the Sultanate of Oman if compared to that of Dubai or even the Emirates as a whole have more solidity. The recent Dubai crisis, nothwithstanding, the growth model adopted by the Sultanate under the wise leadership of His Majesty, Sultan Qaboos Bin Said, have understood the local needs and have precisely devised a model whereby the local Omani populace move up the hierarchial graph quite faster than many of its Middle Eastern peers. The results are there to be seen. While Omanisation have been successful in increasing the reliability of the country on the local manpower, emiratization is still in its infancy. It definitely has to do a lot with the vision of the respective leaders, the confidence of which in turn has percolated to the common citizens in both the countries. Emirate is still dependent on expatriates in most of the sectors, whereas Oman is gradually trying to shift the emphasis from expats to local talents, in a phase-wise planned manner.The other thing which need to be appreciated is the response of the Omani's to the call of His Majesty in contributing whole-heartedly towards the development of their country.Add to it its rich culture, tradition and heritage and one can safely say that the Omani model has more credence and this is precisely the reason why the economy in the Sultanate was comparatively immune to the global recession and even the impact from the Dubai world crisis was minimal or negligible.

Even an article in the reputed Economic Times (Source Link- http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/5315230.cms) cites that of all the gulf countries, Oman had the least job losses at 6 percent vis-a-vis that of UAE at 16 percent,in the present scenario, which is fearsome for all employees, notably the expatriates.

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Understanding the worldclass Dubai Model

I have tried to understand and analyze the unqiue Dubai model, which has catapulted the destination from nowhere into a famous shopping and tourism spot. All my last five visits including the latest one in November 08 made me realize the sincerity with which the administrators and citizens including the expatriates have contributed towards achieving this goal.Unlike many other GCC countries who sort of try to intertwin the business model around the petroleum sector, Dubai has hovered everything around travel and tourism by putting in place landmarks like the Dubai Mall(biggest mall in the world),Burj-Al-Arab(State-of-the art Worlds first seven star hotel),Burj tower(tallest tower in the planet) and a host of shopping malls, hotels and other places of entertainment, recreation which draw tourists and business travellers from all across.An event like the Dubai shopping festival is known to all shopping geeks all over the world.The concept of integrated management where everyone is having defined roles and responsibilities with a demarcated deadline and sincere work ethic looks to be the success formula.The credit goes to all the stakeholders, and emerging economies like India in particular can draw lot of lessons from their middle-east neighbour, who have created a hub out of sand.Hats off to you.......Dubai.Indeed a case study which can be discussed not only with the management students, but also with national administrators who are responsible for building models of their respective nations.