Introduction
Dubai is a city in the Middle East that serves as the capital of the territories of Dubai, one of the seven zones constituting the United Arabs Emirates federation. As a modern setting, Dubai exhibits significantly unique features, including being the land of skyscrapers and unlike the other Middle East zones, it hardly depends on oil. The city flourishes in harboring international offices belonging to multinational agencies, which makes the area one of the most highly populated regions in the world. The location acquires excessive wealth from its numerous dealings with financially stable multinationals. Many people view Dubai as a critical investment destination, making the region investor-controlled. The situation even silences the government’s intervention and control over serious issues affecting humanity. One such highly affected matter is the administration’s ability to regulate housing prices, which jeopardizes Dubai’s capacity to realize its full potential. The speculators’ dominated housing sector in Dubai discourages many expatriates from working in the area, thus limiting the city’s likelihood to realize full underlying strength as an off-oil thriving region.
Issues Being Studied in the Article
Dubai is on the verge of losing its bright future due to a lack of focus and immediate response to the region’s critical issues. The city is in a dry area with a few beaches available to the west (Alam, 2021). Before 1971, Dubai mainly depended on oil exploration and extraction like the other gulf federations (El Burai, 2019). However, the desire to diversify led the area’s administration to open up the region to the world, making it similar to Hong Kong and China. According to El Burai (2019), numerous international agencies have offices in Dubai, making the city’s population 96% expatriates. Foreigners working in Dubai earn substantially high salaries that they can use to develop the region further. The housing sector is one of the many industries that stand to benefit significantly from the expatriates’ hefty earnings. Nonetheless, as El Burai (2019) describes, this hardly happens due to the multiple issues affecting the city. Examples of such challenges and concerns are covered below.
Lack of Affordable Housing
Affordable housing is a major challenge in Dubai due to the facilities’ high prices. According to El Burai (2019), acquiring a house in the UAE’s luxurious city (Dubai), among the foreign workers earning impressive pay, takes up to about 49% of one’s earnings. The matter makes houses only affordable to roughly 26% of the expatriates, with the rest surviving on rented households. El Burai (2019) notes that even the rents are not affordable in Dubai as some expatriates spend over 40% of their salaries on rent alone. Consequently, many foreign workers in the city now live away from it, exposing them to additional transportation expenses that they incur almost daily. El Burai (2019) insists on the need for a balanced life for nations and established economic hubs to thrive. An economic setting where individuals can hardly afford basic needs such as housing due to price ballooning exhibits noteworthy extinction threats. That is particularly true in the present-day globalized world, where new hubs emerge almost daily. Therefore, the lack of affordable housing is slowly robbing Dubai of its magnificent future and requires immediate and effective strategic intervention.
Overtaking of the Government by Speculators
The real estate sector is significantly essential in the world economy. The industry is worth trillions of dollars and can affect the flow of cash and wealth across the globe, as with the 2008-2009 global economic crises (Li et al., 2021). Land and commercial buildings are the most important elements of the real estate segment. The two exhibit a unique trend where they hardly depreciate, unlike other properties such as vehicles and equipment. The understanding that this particular sector is crucial for wealth growth pushes many people to invest in it. Most investors are speculators who buy land at lower rates, develop it with luxurious or modern property, such as commercial offices or rentals, and then sell them at a profit. The business involves substantial risk as individuals developing properties often use bank loans that they repay through the hefty profits they make from the property sales. Accordingly, real estate values often become inflated as investors (speculators) uncontrollably change prices based on speculated value growth of an area or region (El Burai, 2019). Such a case happens in Dubai, where private investors overpower the government’s initiatives to normalize the market.
Potential Loss of Dubai’s Bright Future
Healthy markets operate under the demand and supply forces to keep product prices reasonable. However, things frequently turn unsustainable whenever any of these forces become dominant. Dubai’s emergence in 1971 involved the government’s desire to establish a typical economic hub with realistic systems (Alam, 2021). The city’s pioneers wanted to shift the region from the chaos-infiltrated oil economy to something with a future. Thus, the location acquired new property ownership policies, giving room to independent individuals to buy, own, and develop a private property for personal income. The objective was an eventual private sector partnering with the government to create a unique zone featuring an ultra-modern urban center. Such accounts for Dubai’s special nature, with skyscrapers dominating the space and over 90% foreigners serving in global agencies’ offices as expatriates (Alam, 2021). The city almost lives its bright dream but risks losing it. At the current inflated housing prices, locals and foreigners no longer afford households, while the wealthy private investors continue to raise the values out of speculations. Consequently, people slowly shift from the urban establishment to other affordable areas, exposing the municipality to a potentially painful future.
Government’s Potential to Correct the Mess through Appropriate Strategies
Dubai’s government still exhibits the power to put things under control. The emirate’s administration owns vast tracks of land in the undeveloped zones of the city. Nonetheless, many investors find the areas hard to access due to the inflated land cost. Private real estate investors intentionally apply various tactics to ensure that the commodity’s value never drops to safeguard their existing housing properties. Maintaining the status quo exposes the government and the city’s future to significant threats. Thus, the government should utilize its authority to re-establish sanity and market order. The state can apply land ownership incentives and tax-free land donations to investors to establish affordable houses. The move promises to bring back the fleeing ability necessary to keep Dubai a major player in the future global economy. Protecting the city before its threatening downfall will defend the entire UAE and preserve the world’s ultra-modernization dream. Equally, interventions by the government promise to ease the budding international human resources management issues that similarly threaten Dubai’s prospects as a global economic hub.
Importance of Addressing the Issues under Study
Several aspects make the challenges facing Dubai due to the worsening housing affordability issue worthwhile. Crucial among such issues concerns the point of international human resources management (IHRM). Ererdi et al. (2020) refer to human resource management (HRM) as one of the most difficult things to take care of in international organizations. Based on its labor-dependent nature, Dubai operates as a mega corporation with multiple independent departments. The region’s 96% expatriate population requires a safe working area where essential needs such as housing are affordable. However, the present scenario makes renting a house within the city, leave alone owning one, a headache. Alsharari (2019) points out that most workers in the UAE’s urban establishment earn lucrative remunerations that would make house ownership easy. Such never happens because of the high prices and inflated property valuation that allow wealthy families from around the globe, mostly the initial groups of property acquirers in the area, to realize a monopoly. Consequently, supporting and retaining international employees in Dubai-based multinationals is no longer manageable. The compensation issue particularly remains critical under the present condition, and many organizations risk dying, killing Dubai’s original dream.
Innovative IHRM Policy to Get Past National and Local HRM
Dubai’s reliance on expatriates makes the city synonymous with Apple Inc., Microsoft, and Netflix. All these firms, and several others, operate in the highly innovative and competitive sector that relies on the scarce fine talents to thrive. Almost all the other emirates in UAE offer stiff competition for the fine talents working in Dubai and promoting its international agenda. Other emergent global economic hubs, such as China, Hong Kong, Brazil, and Mexico, equally pose adequate competitiveness for Dubai’s talents and massive workforce that grows the city’s value through excessive property demand. Therefore, the city must move with speed to safeguard its wealth and heritage before such is lost. Making housing affordable to expats is a sure way to realize this goal. Property price regulation belongs to speculators, so organizations must develop innovative and operational strategies to counter that. Consequently, the following discussion focuses on the suggested ‘Putting People over Property Value’ IHRM policy that combines remote working with an organization-enabled property ownership plan.
Putting People over Property Value
Putting individuals over property value is the new human resources management strategy organizations can use to save Dubai from encroaching danger. The policy reiterates businesses’ need to consider employees’ plights and use innovative technology-based interventions to help. Consequently, this scheme combines two initiatives; remote working and rent-to-own affordable houses.
Remote Working
Expatriates form the majority of workers in the AUE region, including Dubai. The individuals come from various points, including nations serving as parents to the multinationals operating in Dubai, people from third nations, and those from the host country (De et al., 2019). About 50% of the personnel (in Dubai) cannot afford houses in the urban establishment. Some travel long distances to the other emirates after closing their job for shelter. The condition puts more cost on the expats, making their stay in Dubai difficult. The remote working strategy allows employees to work from home at most four days a week. The move aims to help the workforce save adequate money to afford houses close to their workplaces in Dubai. The plan promises to save the city from falling due to the international workforce’s migration to other more affordable urban centers, leaving Dubai’s skyscrapers unoccupied.
Rent-To-Own Housing Plan
A primary cause of HR issues in Dubai under the current situation is organizations’ lack of care towards their employees. Nadkarni (2019) reports that many private businesses in the area hold established housing units or undeveloped areas that they use for financial gains through inflated sales to wealthy families or other private investors. The aspect reveals a substantially carefree situation, where multinationals use expats to create wealth, then use earnings to acquire housing properties, only to sell them to wealthy investors while workers continue suffering. ‘Putting people over property value’ strategy appreciates workers’ central role to the business and the region. Under this plan, organizations will establish modest, affordable housing units for employees to use under the rent-to-own initiative. Companies will collaborate with the government to identify incentivized city sections for the housing structures to be affordable. The strategy helps corporations to show employees that they care and appreciate the rarity of their expertise. Equally, the policy empowers staff members by treating them as the primary customers, allowing them to last and promote the organization and Dubai to the next level.
The Critical Perspective on Implications and Relation to IHRM Strategies and Process
Putting individuals over property value strategy significantly answers Dubai’s various issues and the international human resources management dilemma. For example, the scheme promises to bridge the ever-widening wealth gap in the city while boosting workers’ morale and reinventing Dubai’s bright future. Correspondingly, the strategy complies with IHRM’s principle on taking care of international employees’ basic needs for their optimum productivity. IHRM maintains that many expats live with their families in foreign nations, thus the unaffordable cost of living affects their lives significantly (Dang & Rammal, 2020). Lu et al. (2020) insist that workers are the primary clients of all healthy organizations. The scholars argue that only employees receiving good treatment from their organizations can replicate such to the patrons. By helping the workforce to resolve housing issues, companies in Dubai will extend their corporate social responsibility to employees, thus resolving the retention Challenge.
Moreover, the collaboration between the government and investors to incentivize real estate property to workers will put more idle land and houses, due to unaffordability, into use and promote the income generated. Alternatively, remote working will unravel issues related to costly transportation to work daily. El Burai (2019) reports that housing unaffordability in Dubai forces many expats to reside away from the city, pushing the lot to pay for transport, meaning that money leaves Dubai against the original plan.
Implications Impact of Cultural Factors on Essential IHRM Functions Relevant to the UAE’s Labor Market, Policy, and Strategies
The proposed new IHRM strategy that allows companies to strike affordable property ownership deals and use their money to facilitate employees’ acquisition of such will affect Dubai significantly. The policy promises to revive the city’s labor market’s competitiveness by increasing the number of global citizens seeking employment there. Augmented social diversification is expected in the urban establishment, courtesy of the rising numbers of expatriates seeking jobs there (Alshahrani, 2022). Equally, introducing a new labor policy will transform the emirate’s labor strategies by triggering firms’ establishment of other diverse strategies to protect expats socioeconomic plights (Dionisio & de Vargas, 2020). Lastly, the rekindled humanization of Dubai’s corporate society will see more companies introduce effective repatriation procedures that will encourage previous expats to return home well.
Conclusion
The housing unaffordability in Dubai due to property prices’ inflation adversely affects the city’s future. Most houses and developmental land belong to private investors due to previous impulse buying and dominance by prospectors. Accordingly, about half of the expats in Dubai cannot afford houses, with many foreign workers spending most of their income on rent. The matter gradually makes Dubai unsustainable and requires effective IHRM policies. The ‘putting individuals over property value’ strategy is a multi-effect policy that promises to re-install order in the city and UAE.
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