Senior Management Upside Down: Stupidity, Incompetence, Recklessness‌!! Published on July 1, 2019
Status is online Ali Mansouri Page 1 of 10
Writer, Researcher, Consultant
Introduction They come and go. They are supposed to manage and lead. We expect them to be intelligent, qualified, competent, careful, and merciful. But because of bad recruitment and corruption, you find them stupid, unqualified, incompetent, reckless, and merciless. They are called “senior managers”, but there is nothing “senior” about them except their wickedness and corruption. When we apply for a simple job like a teacher, we are made to go through a very tiring, lengthy process of recruitment. We fill many awkward application forms which require very detailed information about our qualifications, experiences, achievements, researches, and personal information. Most, if not all, of the personal information, is irrelevant to your eligibility to the job such as the name of your mother, the number of your passport, your nationality and your religion! This is required even by those who call themselves “equal opportunity” employers who, as they claim, are not “racist” and will consider your application on its academic and professional merits and not on any ethnicity, nationality or religion. They go on asking very “silly” questions about your family and whether you have committed “a crime” in the past or not though they know very well that in some regions in the world like the Middle East you do not need to commit a crime to be labeled a “criminal”; they will invent one for you! It is sufficient to write an article against corruption, or demand your “end-of-service” gratuity or write an internal memo to your boss or voice an opinion for your basic human rights to be given the label! Then, when you are lucky and qualified, you are given the job. After you start work, you gradually get to know those “senior managers’ who are supposed to manage and lead the company or your institution of higher education. They start giving and sending you instructions, directives, and emails most of which indicate to you that these “senior managers” have not really gone through the same rigorous process of vetting in you have gone through. They gradually reveal themselves to be stupid, unqualified, incompetent, reckless, and merciless. Then the film starts showing funny and tragic scenes—like an Indian film!
Abood Al-Sawafi or Sultan Qaboos or Donald Trump? One day, we received an email from Abood Al-Sawafi (former VC of A’Sharqiyah University in Oman) inviting us to a meeting to listen to his “Address to the Nation” speech! Abood Al-Sawafi mistakenly believed that “he was Sultan Qaboos bin Said, the Sultan of Oman” as only His Majesty, Sultan Qaboos, can deliver an address to the nation of Oman. If Abood Al-Sawafi wants to be another Sultan in Oman, I think this is illegal or, at least, he must go to another country to be a Sultan. Was he “drunk”? Or was his Assistant VC, Hamed Al-Hajri, drunk? This stupid Assistant is always in full control of all emails going from the VC’s office by virtue of his position. Was it a mistake? Maybe; or maybe they do not understand what the phrase “address to the nation” means! After almost two weeks, we received another email from Abood Al-Sawafi. This time he was inviting us to come to a meeting to listen to his “State of the Union” address! Now he went too Page 2 of 10
far: he thought he was Donald Trump of the United States. Again, I do not think Donald Trump would allow him to take his job! We continued receiving stupid emails like these for years. Sometimes the emails were so awkward, illogical, and unreasonable that you never expect them from even the most stupid and most naïve office worker, let alone a Vice-Chancellor or an Assistant Vice-Chancellor of a university, who occupy the highest positions in the administration of a higher education institution. The most bizarre email you may ever receive from a Vice-Chancellor or his Assistant in a university is the one we received from Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri some time ago. This email prohibits everybody (students, teachers, members of staff, and other employees) from contacting the Board of Directors or the Board of Trustees or any member of these two boards. If you do, then your memo or letter of complaint will be sent to the Public Prosecutor or the Police in Ibra to put you on trial for “disclosing confidential information” which is a totally fabricated accusation. This clearly sheds light on the mentality of Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri and their background. They act as if we were in a “mafia organization” or an organization of drug dealers and drug traffickers where the members of the gangs are strictly prohibited from seeking information about or contacting the bosses in the hierarchy of the organization. If you do, you will be eliminated immediately. This is what Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri have done at A’Sharqiyah University. This is also illegal. It violates the Basic Law of Oman whereby any national or expatriate is free to contact His Majesty Sultan Qaboos of Oman or any minister or official. The laws of Oman and the directives of the Ministry of Higher Education do not prohibit anyone from contacting His Majesty or any official in the government or the private sector. So from where do Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri bring their directives and put themselves above the law?
Recklessness: Cancellation of National Holidays When you join a college, a university, a company or any other employer in Oman, you have to sign a very detailed and lengthy work contract (Read my article about the Work Contract in Oman: “Take It or Leave It”: The Anatomy of the Work Contract for Expatriate Teachers in Higher Education Institutions, published on LinkedIn on July 13, 2017.) There may be some variations in wording, but the contract is basically the same. There are also some standard items and some very stupid and awkward items. You do not know about these items until after you arrive in Oman. Employers in Oman ask you to come to Oman first and then sign the contract. They never send you the contract while you are in your own country; so you have no idea about the work contract or its items and conditions. Because you have come from another country, and sometimes a very remote country, you do not care about these awkward items as long as they offer you a salary to keep you going for a while. One of the most emphasized items in the work contract is that you should respect all national, cultural and religious values of Oman, including all national and religious holidays. This is a very acceptable item in any work contract in the world and I do not have any objection to it. But I expect the Senior Management of any company or a higher education institution in Oman to Page 3 of 10
respect this item and honor the contract before they ask their employees to do so. Unfortunately, this is not the case with the Senior Managers of A’Sharqiyah University in Oman. They never honor or respect their work contract. Oddly enough, Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri have canceled all national holidays including the Renaissance Day Holiday which is a very important national holiday in Oman marking the anniversary of the accession to the throne by His Majesty, Sultan Qaboos of Oman and the start of awakening and renaissance in the country. They have also canceled almost all religious holidays, including Prophet Mohammed’s Birthday Holiday! This is absolute recklessness as these holidays are granted by the Basic Laws of Oman and are respected everywhere in the country except by A’Sharqiyah University. This cancellation used to spark students’ protests and objections. They were feeling very strongly about this cancellation. As the Director of the Language Center and Foundation Program, I used to pass their feelings to Abood Al-Sawafi, but he used to dismiss them saying, “I’m the VC of the University and I can do whatever I want.” Does this trivial person deserve to be the ViceChancellor of a university anywhere in the world?!
Stupidity: Recruitment of Housewives As a startup organization, A’Sharqiyah University started recruiting teachers for its Foundation Program in the Academic year 2011-2012. At that time, there was only one female member of staff in the HR department. She was sick most of the time and was “pregnant” for most of the year! I was one of five academics teaching English Communication 1 and English Communication 2 for one class of students and I was working on the design of the Foundation Program for the University which was being threatened with a closure by the Ministry of Higher Education if there was no Foundation Program and no teachers by September 2012. As I was the only teacher with good experience in recruitment, the University assigned me the task of recruiting the teachers for the Foundation Program. The most difficult part of the task was to recruit native English Language teachers. One condition for the English language teachers was that they should be native speakers of English from one of five countries (U.S.A., UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and Ireland). They should have at least a B.A.in English or Applied Linguistics or a relevant specialization with a CELTA or DELTA. All applicants should have at least two years’ experience in teaching English at the tertiary level. These are conditions imposed by the Ministry of Higher Education in Oman for the recruitment of teachers for the Foundation Programs in Omani higher education institutions. I had six months only to do the task (March-September 2012). The first thing I did was to post a number of recruitment advertisements for hiring English Language teachers, Mathematics Teachers, and IT teachers. The most useful website was Dave’s Cafe´. The cost then was $100 and the advertisement was kept running for a month. This was an enormous help for me and I used to receive a large number of applications every day. Within almost three weeks, I got more than three thousand CVs from all over the world.
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I went through all the CVs and was in correspondence with a large number of applicants. I used to work from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. and sometimes more than that. This hard work often extended to weekends and official holidays when I used to work from home. The difference in the Time Zone between Oman and that of some of the countries or cities was 11 or 12 hours and I had to conduct the job interviews with some applicants very late at night or very early in the morning in Oman. Against all the odds, I was able to single-handedly recruit more than 52 English Language teachers the majority of whom were native speakers of English. I was also able to recruit a sufficient number of Math and IT teachers to teach Math and IT components of the Foundation Program. It was a great achievement in light of the fact that A’Sharqiyah University was a startup organization and few people had ever heard of it. Many applicants were writing to me with their suspicions that the whole thing was really a “scam”. When September 2012 came, we were fully ready to start and we did. The teaching and management of the Foundation Program went very smoothly and I continued with the task of recruiting teachers for the Foundation Program until Abood Al-Sawafi was appointed the ViceChancellor of A’Sharqiyah University and then he picked up Hamed Al-Hajri to be his Assistant for Administration and Finance. The first thing they did was to conspire against our rigorous process of recruiting teachers for the Foundation Program. I narrated to them our recruitment story and I thought they would learn something from it. They did not. They are too stupid to learn anything useful. What they did was really shocking to me. It cannot be described other than stupidity and disloyalty to the University. Instead of posting recruitment ads on Dave’s Cafe´ as I used to do, Hamed Al-Hajri posted an advertisement on a local Arabic newspaper inviting native English language teachers to apply to the Foundation Program! He could not get one single CV. When I told him that native English language teachers do not read a newspaper in Arabic, he replied, “Somebody will read it and tell them.” Is there stupidity more than this? The ad posted by Hamed Al-Hajri for his stupid recruitment cost the University RO290 (290 Omani rials) which was then equal to about $700! Look at the difference between our very effective ad on Davis’ Cafe´, which cost $100 and Hamed Al-Hajri’s very useless advertisement which cost about $700, that is, about sevenfold. As we were running out of time, he started recruiting “housewives” (usually, the University teachers’ wives) to teach in the Foundation Program. He did away with all the recruitment requirements and conditions imposed by the Ministry of Higher Education thinking that the Ministry would not know about him as he always used to say. Of course, he could not get a sufficient number of “housewives” as most of the teachers would not allow their wives to work too long for too little. They also know the inhumane style of management being followed by Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri who treat their employees like slaves and robots!
HR Director: Experience in Bakery and Raising Chickens The HR Department is regarded as one of the most important departments in any higher education institution or organization. They have all the information about the teachers, members of staff, and other employees.
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We take it for granted that the HR Director is a qualified, skilled, and experienced professional who is prepared to work in accordance with the laws, bylaws, regulations, and the Code of Work Ethics. He puts the genuine interests of the organization and the employees above any directive that may require him to ignore these interests. The HR officers are also expected to be qualified, skilled and experienced. They should behave in a friendly, polite way and cooperate with all employees and protect any professional or personal information. Regrettably, Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri have turned the HR Department at A’Sharqiyah University into a “wastebasket’ stuffed with people who have nothing to do with HR or the academic world. The HR Director always has communication problems. He is unable to produce one good directive or email to tell the employees what is required of them to do. He is always confused and looks at you in bewilderment like a lost fool when you visit him in his office. The HR officers are unqualified, incompetent, unprofessional and very unfriendly like their boss. One contributing factor for this bitter fact is that the HR departments in higher education in Oman have officially been “Omanized” meaning that only Omani nationals should be employed by HR departments. At A’Sharqiyah University in Oman, it has become a common practice to stuff the HR department with the most unqualified, incompetent and stupid people you may ever find in any higher education institution anywhere in the world. They are very disorganized and repeatedly ask you for the same information. This is very tiring and irritating for anyone whose job requires him to deal with them. They always lose information and data. It is sufficient to wear a dishdasha on your body, a turban on your head, and a dagger on your belt to be an HR director or an HR officer at A’Sharqiyah University. The experience of the HR Director is restricted to a few years in a bakery or raising chickens on a private farm. The HR officers are no better than him; many of them with only some experience as taxi drivers or shop assistants selling automobile spare parts. This has always been a deliberate policy of Abood A-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri: to appoint unqualified, incompetent and stupid people in the sensitive departments of the University in order to fully control them and suppress any form of objection to their fraudulent practices and corruption. Hamed Al-Hajri has also controlled the HR Department at A’Sharqiyah University and has turned the HR officers into slaves and robots who blindly follow his orders even if they are in violation of the laws, bylaws, and regulations of the University. They indulge in a very unprofessional behavior of deception, cheating, and lying. They never give correct and accurate information and often fabricate reports against the teachers and employees at the request of Hamed Al-Hajri who is very wicked and a real villain seeking to eliminate anyone who has the courage to stand on his way of deception, thievery, and corruption. When Abood Al-Sawafi made his notorious blunders of destroying the Foundation Program and refusing to renew the work contract of the Director of the Language Center and Foundation Program at A’Sharqiyah University, Hamed Al-Hajri exploited these blunders and ordered the HR to leak insulting information to the Language Center teachers to spread rumors about the Director; though the Director was a senior officer at the University. This wicked policy of Page 6 of 10
leaking information with the aim of humiliating anyone who disagrees with Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri is one of the scandalous practices that you will never find in any other higher education institution in the world. This has greatly tarnished the reputation of the University and is a real stain on its image. The HR qualities of honesty, fairness, justice, and the commitment to serve the genuine interests of the University do not mean anything for the HR department of A’Sharqiyah University. They are there to serve Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed AlHajri who act like “mafia bosses” rather than honest senior managers in a university. I will take up these points in another article.
Registrar: Master of Forgery It was not a great shock to me to find out that Abood Al-Sawafi had forged his son’s (Salim AlSawafi’s) grades and placed him on the Advanced level of the Foundation Program instead of the Intermediate level because I knew that Abood Al-Sawafi has always been, and will always be, a rogue and corrupt person. He has always forged students’ grades and documents wherever he takes up a senior position that enables him to do so in any college or a university in Oman. As soon as I found out about Abood Al-Sawafi’s forgery, I went to the Registrar and asked him why he “forged the grades”. He replied, “Abood Al-Sawafi ordered me to do it”! Because Abood Al-Sawafi ordered him to forge the grades, the Registrar did the forgery. Does this dishonest person deserve to be the Registrar at A’Sharqiyah University or any university? How much forgery has he been doing at the request of this official or that or just for cash?! It is a great pity that the Registrar whom we had trusted before proved himself a very dishonest person, a puppet and a corrupt registrar. One morning, I received an email from the Registrar barring 36 students from entering the final exams. As the Director of the Language Center and Foundation Program, I refused to implement it because such a directive was outside of the official capacity of the Registrar. He has never been authorized by anyone to bar any student from taking the final exams for any reason. Any such directive or order should come from the VC and with justifications and explanations based on the regulations. Such a directive cannot be arbitrary; based on personal considerations or just to put pressures on students in order to make them pay bribes to the Registrar or the VC. I wrote to the VC an email explaining the unofficial and dangerous nature of the Registrar’s email which came at a very critical time as the University was struggling to attract students and retain students who had been leaving the University at an alarming rate because of the incompetence and corruption of Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri. The VC did not answer my first email so I wrote another email giving more explanations and telling him that I would never implement such a directive. I also asked for a meeting. We met after two days and I explained everything to him hoping he would understand this time. But he did not. Again, he was too stupid to understand anything. He told me he would consult with the Chief Internal Auditor who is more stupid than him. The students concerned made an uproar. We also found out that all the students had legitimate excuses for their absences which the Registrar did not take into account. Under the pressure of the students, the VC was made to cancel the Registrar’s directive. This is only one case of too many cases that we used to face every day at A’Sharqiyah
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University. Just imagine yourself working with, and being surrounded by, such stupid, corrupt senior managers.
Destruction and Chaos After five dark barren years, Abood Al-Sawafi (former VC) left A’Sharqiyah University. He was sacked or made to resign leaving a trail of destruction and chaos everywhere. Everything was going upside down. He completely destroyed the Foundation Program making it a pile of garbage. The students come and go gaining nothing from a program far below even the level of English they had already studied in schools. He destroyed the academic programs of the colleges and reduced them to rubbles. Imagine a university program which consists of just useless presentations and tiny handouts illegally photocopied from some chapters of books and paid for by the students though most of these students are very poor and cannot afford to pay for these handouts. Together with his stupid and corrupt Assistant VC, Hamed Al-Hajri, they have spread a culture of fear, intimidation, and conspiracies unprecedented before in any higher education institution in Oman. They have confiscated the dignity and self-respect of the teachers and employees reducing them to a collection of hypocrites, puppets, robots, and slaves, incompatible with the academic conventions and work ethics of higher education. The complexities of a global and dynamic business world, where non-economic and economic concerns coexist, give ethics a vital role in guiding human action, always with the potential for human excellence in mind. This is the humanistic view of management which is always ignored by stupid, incompetent and vulgar senior managers in businesses and organizations. This naturally costs the organization a great deal of its reputation, image, and human resources as it has been happening with A’Sharqiyah University. After very useful services and crucial contributions, the Foundation Program director and teachers got “fired” in an arbitrary and vulgar fashion without being told the reasons for the termination of their work contracts. They were replaced by inefficient and “cheap” inexperienced teachers and housewives who are really “cheap” in everything; not only in their wages or salaries! Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri have created a very unhealthy work environment at A’Sharqiyah University because of their stupidity, narrow-mindedness, and vulgarity. Most of the qualified, experienced and hard-working people left, or made to leave, the University the reputation of which has been damaged beyond repairs. At the end of each academic year, a number of teachers and employees in many higher education institutions all over the world get fired or hired. This is a normal process to refresh the Page 8 of 10
organization and place it on the right track to achieve its strategic goals. The society and the educational authorities expect the process to be consistent with higher education standards of objectivity, fairness, and the genuine interests of the public and the organization itself. Regrettably, Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri, stupid, incompetent and corrupt as they are, have always exploited this process to settle scores with their colleagues and take revenge upon those who disagree with them for academic reasons or hinder their thievery and corruption. Hamed Al-Hajri is a real villain and a very wicked master of conspiracies. He constantly conspires against the teachers and employees and even against his closest colleagues and bosses. In fact, he is prepared to conspire against his own father! He conspired against the first VC of the University after he was caught red-handed stealing books and money from the University and taking dangerous and damaging decisions without consulting with the VC. So the first VC lost his job. Then he conspired against those talented and hard-working senior officers in different departments of the University: The Dean of the College of Engineering, the Dean of the College of Commerce and Administration, the Dean of the College of Applied Sciences, the Director of the Language Center and Foundation Program, and some of the best engineering professors of the University. Then he conspired even against his closest boss and friend, Abood Al-Sawafi, who was inexperienced, naïve and a great idiot. He has a very weak personality which Hamed Al-Hajri exploited in a very wicked way. This led Abood Al-Sawafi to make many blunders that turned his life into hell. So he was sacked because of Hamed Al-Hajri. The next target of his conspiracies would be the recently appointed VC who would not last long. Hamed Al-Hajri does not like anyone to watch him or hinder his thievery and corruption. The reputation of A’Sharqiyah University has been going down the drain and the students, their families, the teachers and the community at large have come to know a great deal about what has been happening and what sort of damage being inflicted by Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed AlHajri on the University. It makes you feel very sad to come to know that everyone associated with the University is paying a very heavy price for the incompetence, bad management, and corruption of Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri. Who is to blame? First of all, the teachers and members of staff are the first to blame for agreeing to be “slaves” working under very harsh conditions for low pay and without their basic human rights of academic freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of movement. Some of the teachers, metaphorically called “academics”, volunteer to be slaves, hypocrites, and spies— they volunteer to pass and fabricate anything that pleases the Dean, VC, the Assistant VC or other senior managers. They tell you, to your face, they do not care about their dignity or selfrespect or anything else as long as they stay on the payroll for the sake of their children! They should be ashamed of themselves. The second party to blame is the Ministry of Higher Education and education authorities who do not do their job in ensuring that students, teachers, and other employees are not subjected to deception, servitude, and submissiveness by some academically and morally bankrupt senior managers.
Conclusions There are too many episodes and documents certifying that Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed AlHajri and some other senior managers at A’Sharqiyah University are stupid, incompetent, Page 9 of 10
reckless, ruthless, and corrupt. They are unbelievably selfish and have inflicted heavy damages on the University. The Board of Directors and Board of Trustees bear the official, academic and moral responsibility in appointing such idiots as senior managers. A’Sharqiyah University certainly deserves better than these idiots to be its senior managers. These idiots do not fit to manage and lead a higher, or lower, educational institution. They are fit to manage a farm for camels, cattle or chickens or, at best, fit to be “garbage collectors�! When you talk to them, you feel they are very superficial people who do not have any deep knowledge about academic programs or academic issues. They are ignorant, vulgar, and rotten in mentality and uncivilized in behavior. When employees are unfairly treated or their rights are taken away, they would do a great deal of harm to the company or institution. They can damage the reputation and spoil the image of the organization in different ways; sometimes beyond repairs. This may even lead to the disappearance of the organization itself. The best approach for managing people in businesses and organizations is, therefore, to be fair, objective and consistent following the codes of work ethics, moral values and international standards of management practice. Only bad, stupid, incompetent, reckless senior managers like Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri who care only about themselves and their own interests do not recognize this fact.
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