Strategic Leadership and Cultural Dynamics in Project Execution: Evidence from UAE Construction Firms

The construction sector in the United Arab Emirates faces persistent execution challenges despite widespread adoption of established project management frameworks and digital tools. This article presents a concentrated, practitioner-led analysis drawn from a doctoral interview corpus to identify the human and organisational dynamics that materially influence execution outcomes. Twenty senior construction professionals from leading private sector firms in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Sharjah were interviewed. Thematic analysis reveals three interlocking domains that determine execution success: leader competencies and behaviours, cross-cultural communication mechanisms and failures, and organisational practices that enable or constrain leadership effectiveness. Each domain is unpacked into operational subthemes and supported by anonymised interview evidence. The analysis demonstrates that execution failures are rarely caused by a single technical deficit. Rather, recurring failure modes emerge from interactions between leadership limitations, communication breakdowns, and institutional practices that reward technical output while neglecting relational competencies. Building on these findings, the article proposes a set of practical recommendations designed to enhance execution capacity: competency-based leader selection and continuous development; standardised, culturally sensitive communication protocols; standing risk cells and scenario rehearsals integrated into daily execution routines; and performance frameworks that recognise leadership and cultural competencies alongside technical metrics. The article contributes to execution theory by repositioning leadership and communication systems as core execution controls, and it offers an empirically grounded roadmap for industry, government and academic stakeholders seeking to improve predictability and reduce rework in UAE construction projects. The manuscript reuses the thesis interview corpus and offers a focused analytical lens suitable for publication and policy uptake [1,2].