This is a strategic management case study. It forces the students to do a complete written strategic case and its related analysis as in the comprehensive report based on the following requirement:
The project assignment is about:
Developing A Case Study: Comprehensive Strategic Management Case of UAE-based or Regional-based (GCC) Company
A Case Study
A case study is a description of an actual administrative situation involving a decision to be made or a problem to be solved. It can be a real situation that actually happened just as described, or portions have been disguised for reasons of privacy. Most case studies are written in such a way that the reader takes the place of the manager whose responsibility is to make decisions to help solve the problem. In almost all case studies, a decision must be made, although that decision might be to leave the situation as it is and do nothing.
Proposed Assignment Strategy:
Phase I: Choose ONE case company
Identify one company that is operating in the industry you have studied. The company MUST be UAE- based or Regional-based (GCC) company. Each team should identify the current issues faced and strategy employed by the firm and appraises its internal resources and capabilities. Identify strategy applied to the company. How is the current strategy incorporating these competencies and helping the firm compete within the industry?
Evaluate the current performance of the firm. How successful has the strategy been in generating an above average financial performance for the firm over time and relation to the industry and competitors?
Phase II: Defining the Issue(s)/Problem Statement
The problem statement or issues highlights should be a clear, concise statement of exactly what needs to be addressed. This is not easy to write! The work that you did in the short cycle process answered the basic questions. Now it is time to decide what the main issues to be addressed are going to be in much more detail. Asking your team the following questions may help:
What appears to be the problem(s) here?
How do I know that this is a problem? Note that by asking this question, you will be helping to differentiate the symptoms of the problem from the problem itself. Example: while declining sales or unhappy employees are a problem to most companies, they are in fact, symptoms of underlying problems which need to address.
What are the immediate issues that need to be addressed? This helps to differentiate between issues that can be resolved within the context of the case, and those that are bigger issues that needed to addressed at a another time (preferably by someone else!).
Differentiate between importance and urgency for the issues identified. Some issues may appear to be urgent, but upon closer examination are relatively unimportant, while others may be far more important (relative to solving our problem) than urgent. You want to deal with important issues in order of urgency to keep focused on your objective. Important issues are those that have a significant effect on:
profitability,
strategic direction of the company,
source of competitive advantage,
morale of the company’s employees, and/or
customer satisfaction.
The problem statement may be framed as a question, e.g.: What should Mr. Adel do? or How can Mr. Kamal improve market share? Usually the problem statement has to be re-written several times during the analysis of a case, as you peel back the layers of symptoms or causation.
Phase III: Analysing Information
In analyzing the case data, you are trying to answer the following:
Why or how did these issues arise? You are trying to determine cause and effect for the problems identified. You cannot solve a problem that you cannot determine the cause of! It may be helpful to think of the organization in question as consisting of the following components:
resources, such as materials, equipment, or supplies, and
people who transform these resources using
processes, which creates something of greater value.
Now, where are the problems being caused within this framework, and why?
Who is affected most by this issues? You are trying to identify who are the relevant stakeholders to the situation, and who will be affected by the decisions to be made.
What are the constraints and opportunities implicit to this situation? It is very rare that resources are not a constraint, and allocations must be made on the assumption that not enough will be available to please everyone.
What do the numbers tell you? You need to take a look at the numbers given in the case study and make a judgment as to their relevance to the problem identified. Not all numbers will be immediately useful or relevant, but you need to be careful not to overlook anything. When deciding to analyze numbers, keep in mind why you are doing it, and what you intend to do with the result. Use common sense and comparisons to industry standards when making judgments as to the meaning of your answers to avoid jumping to conclusions.
Phase IV: Generating Alternatives
This section deals with different ways in which the problem can be resolved. Typically, there are many (the joke is at least three), and being creative at this stage helps. Things to remember at this stage are:
Be realistic! While you might be able to find a dozen alternatives, keep in mind that they should be realistic and fit within the constraints of the situation.
The alternatives should be mutually exclusive, that is, they cannot happen at the same time.
Not making a decision pending further investigation is not an acceptable decision for any case study that you will analyze. A manager can always delay making a decision to gather more information, which is not managing at all! The whole point to this exercise is to learn how to make good decisions, and having imperfect information is normal for most business decisions, not the exception.
Doing nothing as in not changing your strategy can be a viable alternative, provided it is being recommended for the correct reasons, as will be discussed below.
Avoid the meat sandwich method of providing only two other clearly undesirable alternatives to make one reasonable alternative look better by comparison. This will be painfully obvious to the reader, and just shows laziness on your part in not being able to come up with more than one decent alternative.
Keep in mind that any alternative chosen will need to be implemented at some point, and if serious obstacles exist to successfully doing this, then you are the one who will look bad for suggesting it.
Once the alternatives have been identified, a method of evaluating them and selecting the most appropriate one needs to be used to arrive at a decision.
Phase V: Key Decision Criteria
A very important concept to understand, they answer the question of how you are going to decide which alternative is the best one to choose. Other than choosing randomly, we will always employ some criteria in making any decision.
Phase VI: Recommendations and Conclusion
What are your recommendations for these firms? How would you change their strategies? What recommendations do you have for implementation?
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