The manager hit back by blaming the workforce for the productivity problem. He told the board that local employees lacked initiative. Even when simple problems cropped up which they were capable of fixing, they would wait until they were told what to do by the production manager or a supervisor.

The expatriate complained that none of the Egyptian staff had the ability to do managerial-type work. But a few weeks later a new chief executive was appointed, and one of his first acts was to replace the expatriate with an Egyptian engineer recruited from a food-processing company in Cairo.