ABSTRACT
The developing countries of the Arab world have, in the last couple of years, attracted unprecedented attention from developed-country scholars and practitioners alike. This is due in part to the ongoing Arab uprisings that seem to have succeeded in toppling some deeply entrenched authoritarian regimes, ushering in a new era marked by political, social and business landscapes in flux. Having, for decades, held near absolute control of the economy, the ongoing efforts to remove some key authoritarian regimes is slowly reshaping the Arab world’s business landscape into a level playing field. This is evidenced, for example, by the enhanced level of transparency that businesses in Tunisia have recently been experiencing (West, 2011). Further galvanizing practitioners and scholars’ attention is the high growth potential of Arab markets, given their youth-majority populations, particularly when these markets are juxtaposed against the currently crisis-ridden, mature markets of developed countries in Europe and North America and the slowing economies of the BRIC emerging countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China.
