The influence of United Arab Emirates national culture on leadership styles in higher education institutions

الملخص EN

Academic institutions and universities are complicated organizations led by professionals and academics who owe their knowledge and skills to their experience in education and leadership.

In a country like the United Arab Emirates (UAE), education leaders who come from different cultural backgrounds practice their daily duties within a context where the local national culture imposes certain assumptions, beliefs, norms, and attitudes on them, thereby controlling their understanding of leadership and shaping their behavior.

There has been little academic research into what constitutes the national culture of the UAE, a young, cosmopolitan amalgamation of seven Emirates, viewed internationally as an Arab, Islamic state with a patriarchal socio-economic and political structure.

Methodology By taking the epistemological interpretivism position this research is conducted with an aim to identify the impacts of cultural dimensions of Hofstede on shaping the practices of leadership in UAE higher education institutions.

For that, twenty-one leaders from different academic institutions operating in the UAE were interviewed.