Organizational Resources and Performance: The Case of an Oil-Rich Country

Abstract

This study adopts the Resource-Based View (RBV) framework in investigating the relationships between the resources/capabilities of public organizations and their performance in an Arab oil-rich country, i.e. the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It concludes that the organizational financial and human resources and capabilities are found to influence organizational performance of the surveyed public organizations. An additional analysis shows that slack of resources, i.e. financial resources, is found to be the only significant organizational resource to influence corporate social performance. The findings of this study along with the interpretation of the RBV of organizational performance in the public sector reflect ‘practice variation’ and conclude that policy makers should deal with the fact that the current slack of resources in the UAE, as a major oil-producing country, may not last forever.

Keywords:

• participation
• resource-based view
• slack
• strategic performance measurement systems
• United Arab Emirates

Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Editor, Professor Marc Holzer; Associate Editor, Professor Steven Van de Walle; and four anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. The authors also acknowledge the helpful comments received from participants of SMS and APMAA annual conferences on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1 Information on the UAE obtained from government.ae (the official portal of UAE) and UAE interact on April 04, 2019.

2 Two prominent governmental excellence awards exist in the UAE since early 2000, namely: ‘Abu Dhabi Award for Excellence in Government Performance’ and ‘Mohamed Bin Rashid Government Excellence Award’ (Alsaqri, 2018).

3 The National Newspaper (2016, October, 30) UAE Cabinet approves five-year Dh248 billion federal budget. Available at: https://www.thenational.ae/business/uae-cabinet-approves-five-year-dh248-billion-federal-budget-1.161211

4 Organizational capabilities are processes by which firms maintain or develop their resources; they link the organization’s resources and permit their deployment (Day, 1994).

5 In identifying the organizational resources incorporated in our study, we consider only those relevant to the UAE context, evident by previous empirical research on UAE public organizations and governmental practices in use.

6 We build on this in deriving the SPMS components incorporated in this study (see Section 4.3).

7 EFQM Model 2013, accessible at: https://www.efqm.org/index.php/efqm-model-2013/.

8 A reviewer brought our attention to the importance of removing ‘rapid change’ from this definition in order to distinguish environmental uncertainty from environmental complexity. This should be taken into consideration in future research.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful for the two years research grant received from the National Research Foundation, United Arab Emirates [UAE-NRF#: RSA-1108-00788] which enabled this research study to be carried out.

Notes on contributors

Said Elbanna

Said Elbanna is a Professor of Strategic Management, College of Business and Economics, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar.

Ahmed Abdel-Maksoud

Ahmed Abdel-Maksoud is a Professor of Accounting, College of Business, Abu Dhabi University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.