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International Business Management, Global Business Strategy and Human Resource Management

This case is suitable for Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) program, specifically in human resources management, business strategy and international business management courses.

The learning outcomes are as follows: to figure out the appropriate staffing approaches for the foreign investment projects; to understand the challenges that companies face when they expand in the foreign market; to understand the different foreign markets entry modes.

The Nayel and Bin Harmal Investment Co. LCC. is an experienced company that owns a hotel chain with three properties in the UAE. In 2011, it decided to invest in Africa and build a new hotel – Ayla Djibouti Hotel – in Djibouti. The hotel’s construction is nearly complete. This has urged Bashar Al Tamimi to begin devising a staffing strategy for the hotel. Of particular concern is Djibouti’s lack of manpower with hospitality qualifications and expertise. Consequently, Al Tamimi must grapple with some difficult questions: Should he hire staff with the appropriate international hospitality experience? Or should NBHI invest in the human capital in Djibouti and train Djiboutian people to operate the hotel? Which strategy or approach will lead to the most successful and profit-making outcome for Ayla Djibouti

This case is suitable for Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) program, specifically in human resources management, business strategy and international business management courses.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 5: International Business.

After completing the case, students will be able to understand the reasons for the lack of successful strategy implementation in companies, especially engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) and general contractors in Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemical industry; understand the importance of alignment as an organization capital in successful strategy implementation and familiarize themselves with assessing the alignment readiness of companies; understand the importance of leadership as an organization capital in successful strategy implementation, comprehend one of the most essential theories of leadership in the world of management and familiarize themselves with assessing leadership readiness using this theory; and understand the importance of leadership as an organization capital in successful strategy implementation, comprehend one of the most essential models of organizational culture in the world of management and understand how to assess the readiness of organizational culture in companies.

This case discusses the reasons for strategy implementation failure at PetroSahand International Group, one of the most prominent EPC and general contractors in the oil, gas and petrochemical industry in Iran. This case also examines organization capitals such as alignment, leadership and organizational culture, the three most important factors for the successful implementation of strategies, at this company. PetroSahand is an international, project-oriented company that has been able to successfully complete more than 100 large domestic and international projects during its four decades of activity. However, the company is currently facing many difficulties such as overdue debts and projects.

The target audience of this case are graduates and undergraduates in the courses of Strategic Planning, Strategic Management, Strategy Implementation, Strategy in Action and Change Management. Additionally, this case study can be useful for senior managers of companies and can help in the successful implementation of strategies as well as improving their company’s alignment, leadership and organizational culture.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

PT. Bank Central Asia, Tbk. (BCA), the largest national private bank in Indonesia, won an award for the Best Bank at the Euromoney Awards for Excellence (Asia) 2014. During the same event, in several categories, haloBCA^TM and BCA employees also won several awards. Previously, a number of awards were received by BCA such as: Best Indonesia Local Private Bank in 2010, Contact Center World Champion in 2012 and 2013, and Best Mega Contact Center in Asia Pacific Region in 2014. BCA is currently facing a problem of an aging population. Since the economy crisis facing the country in 1998, BCA has recruited fewer employees. The company resumed recruiting in 2010. BCA’s human resource (HR) profile in 2013 showed that nearly half of BCA’s permanent employees were aged 45 years or older, 40 per cent of whom have been working for more than 20 years. At the time of their retirement, the Bank faces the potential of losing a significant number of employees from three different generations. BCA has raised its efforts to recruit new talent. However, recruitment is not easy, as BCA wants its new employees to continue maintaining BCA’s heritage, building the Bank to become an Indonesian company that they can be proud of. How have these values, which have been a common belief, a foundation to work passionately and the glue that bonds the Bank’s employees, executives and owners, been communicated outside of the BCA and have been used to attract the future successors of BCA in Indonesia?

Master Degree in Human Resources Management or MBA Program.

PT Bank Central Asia Tbk (BCA), which was established on February 1957, is Indonesia’s largest lender by market value and the second largest bank by assets. The bank has experienced a remarkable recovery from the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s when the Indonesian banking system became almost bankrupt. It provides both commercial and personal banking services through its 1,000-plus branches across the country. As the largest national private bank, BCA is a well-known bank in Indonesia. BCA is managing more than 12 million customer accounts, processing hundreds of millions of financial transactions and fulfilling the needs of individual and corporate customers through various products and services. BCA Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) are located virtually and BCA’s Electronic Data Capture (EDC) machines are available at many merchants both in big cities or small towns across Indonesia’s archipelago. However, for a nation with a population of more than 240 million spread out over 34 provinces, the presence of BCA is still deemed unevenly distributed. In the next 10 years, BCA has no plan yet of expanding outside of Indonesia. BCA put its attention on developing its market in Eastern Indonesia. Funding sources, which usually becomes an issue for expanding companies, are not a source of concern for BCA. BCA is currently facing a problem of an aging population. Since the economy crisis facing the country in 1998, BCA has recruited fewer new employees. The company had recently resumed recruiting in 2010. BCA’s HR profile in 2013 showed that nearly half of BCA’s permanent employees were 45 years of age or older, 40 percent of whom have been working for more than 20 years. At the time of their retirement, the Bank faces the potential of losing a significant number of employees from three different generations. Currently, BCA has raised its efforts to recruit new talent and its future leaders through various programs, such as: BCA Development Program (BDP), one of the most acknowledged management trainee programs in the Indonesian banking industry, provides intensive and rigorous training to selected new recruits to ensure development of BCA key talents and future leaders. HR business partners that actively visit campuses in the eastern region of Indonesia. Socialization programs in state and private universities. Job fairs, Web recruitment, internships and employee referrals, job opportunity advertisements posted at BCA branch offices located near universities and in the leading mass media. Utilization of recruitment consultant services, especially to find candidates with specific qualifications. Utilization of communication media printed (poster, flyer, booklet, banners) and electronically. Provision of scholarships to high school graduates with excellent academic records but facing financial difficulties. However, recruitment is not easy for BCA because – like other well-known companies in Indonesia – the Bank only recruits the best people based on the prospective employees’ hard and soft competencies. BCA’s aim to project a positive perception toward its employees as “a fun workplace with family-oriented atmosphere, and commitment about employees’ development” has yet to strongly resonate in Indonesia’s labor market. BCA wants its new employees to continue maintaining BCA’s heritage, building the Bank to become an Indonesian company that they can be proud of. How have these values, which have been a common belief, a foundation to work passionately and the glue that bonds the Bank’s employees, executives and owners, been communicated outside of BCA and have been used to attract the future successors of BCA in Indonesia? How should BCA obtain a large number of qualified talent pools through an effective Employer Branding strategy?

By the end of discussing the case, the learner will be: conceptually: able to explain what is meant by employer branding, internal and external approach and able to explain the relationship of employer branding with business strategy, talent management strategies and HR management functions as a whole; practically: able to identify and analyze BCA Recent Condition – able to explain the BCA brand image in the eyes of public/external/job seekers in Indonesia and internal/current employees of BCA – able to identify strategies that BCA does to recruit potential job seekers – and able to explain the influence of innovative products and services that BCA has currently on BCA employer branding; able to identify BCA goals/needs; able to identify the characteristics, needs and preferences of BCA target group of workers, concerning to the latest issues arise such as: Gen Y and AEC (ASEAN Economic Community); able to evaluate the effectiveness of BCA employer branding strategy and communications and to identify the problems faced by BCA related to employer branding; able to generate ideas related to the improvement of BCA employer branding strategy and programs – what message to be branded (company unique employee value propositions – tangibles and intangibles) – what program to be implemented (internal and external) – and how is the integrated marketing communication strategy (segmenting-targeting-positioning, channels).

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CSS:6: Human Resource Management.

HRM; recruitment; managing cultural expectations in business; leadership.

Undergraduate management courses; MBA and MSc.

This case focuses on recruitment problems in Europe with an Asian dimension. A young Dutch and a young Chinese graduate are considering a career with postal, courier and logistics firm TNT – what are their concerns as graduating students in looking for a job? From the opposite perspective, the case considers how employers attract graduate recruits. The case encourages students of a wide range of cultural backgrounds to question if they are following their cultural norms, or their own personal needs, regardless of their culture. It introduces students to the concept of perceptions of employer value propositions (EVPs) and how employers can “market” themselves to employees. The case is appropriate for courses in leadership, human resource management, corporate social responsibility (CSR), managing culture, also job hunting and career workshops.

This case is aimed at projecting the importance of career choice criteria from both graduate and employer perspectives. The case examines issues of national culture and associated differences in employee and organizational expectations. The case also examines the role of CSR in attracting employees; and the particular concerns of Generation Y employees.

Teaching note.

Resource-based view (RBV) theory (Barney, 1991; Barney and Mackey, 2016; Nagano, 2020) states that a firm’s tangible and intangible resources can represent a sustainable competitive advantage (SCA), a long-term competitive advantage that is extremely difficult to duplicate by another firm, when it meets four criteria (i.e. not imitable, are rare, valuable and not substitutable). In the context of this case, we believe there are three sources of SCA to be discussed using RBV – the major league soccer (MLS) team player roster, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to exploit this roster and the league’s single-entity structure: • MLS players: it has been widely acknowledged that a firm’s human resource talent, which includes professional soccer players (Omondi-Ochieng, 2019), can be a source of SCA. For example, from an RBV perspective, a player on the Los Angeles Galaxy roster: > cannot play for any other team in any other league at the same time (not imitable and are rare), > would already be a competitive player, as he is acquired to play in the highest professional league in the country (valuable) and > it would be almost impossible to find a clone player matching his exact talent characteristic (not substitutable) anywhere else. Of course, the roster mix of players must be managed by a capable coach who is able to exploit these resources and win championships (Szymanski et al., 2019). Therefore, it is the strategic human resource or talent management strategies of the professional soccer team roster that will enable a team to have the potential for an SCA (Maqueira et al., 2019). • Technology: technology can also be considered a source of SCA. However, this has been a source of contention. The argument is that technology is accessible to any firm that can afford to purchase it. Logically, any MLS team (or for that matter any professional soccer team) can acquire or build an AI system. For many observers, the only obvious constraint is financial resources. As we discuss in other parts of the case study, there is a fan-based assumption that what transpired in major league baseball (MLB) may repeat in the MLS. The movie Moneyball promoted the use of sabermetrics in baseball when making talent selection (as opposed to relying exclusively on scouts), which has now evolved into the norm of using technology-centered sports analytics across all MLB teams. In short, where is the advantage when every team uses technology for talent management? However, if that is the case, why are the MLB teams continuing to use AI and now the National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL) and National Hockey League are following suit? We believe RBV theorists have already provided early insights: > “the exploitation of physical technology in a firm often involves the use of socially complex firm resources. Several firms may all possess the same physical technology, but only one of these firms may possess the social relations, cultural traditions, etc., to fully exploit this technology to implementing strategies…. and obtain a sustained competitive advantage from exploiting their physical technology more completely than other firms” (Barney, 1991, p. 110). • MLS League Single-Entity Structure: In contrast to other professional soccer leagues, the MLS has one distinct in-built edge – its ownership structure as a single entity, that is as one legal organization. All of the MLS teams are owned by the MLS, but with franchise operators. The centralization of operations provides the MLS with formidable economies of scale such as when investing in AI technologies for teams. Additionally, this ownership structure accords it leverage in negotiations for its inputs such as for player contracts. The MLS is the single employer of all its players, fully paying all salaries except those of the three marquees “designated players.” Collectively, this edge offers the MLS unparalleled fluidity and speed as a league when implementing changes, securing stakeholder buy-ins and adjusting for tailwinds. The “socially complex firm resources” is the unique talent composition of the professional soccer team and most critically its single entity structure. While every team can theoretically purchase an AI technology talent management system, its application entails use across 30 teams with a very different, complex and unique set of player talents. The MLS single-entity structure though is the resource that supplies the stability required for this human-machine (technology) symbioses to be fully accepted by stakeholders such as players and implemented with precision and speed across the entire league. So, there exists the potential for each MLS team (and the MLS as a league) to acquire SCA even when using “generic” AI technology, as long as other complex firm factors come into play.

This case relied on information that was widely reported within media, press interviews by MLS officials, announcements by various organizations, journal articles and publicly available information on MLS. All of the names and positions, in this case, are actual persons.

MLS started as a story of dreaming large and of quixotic adventure. Back in 1990, the founders of the MLS “sold” the league in exchange for the biggest prize in world soccer – the rights to host the 1994 Fédération Internationale de Football Association World Cup before they even wrote up the business plan. Today, the MLS is the highest-level professional men’s soccer league competition in the USA. That is a major achievement in just over 25-years, as the US hosts a large professional sports market. However, MLS has been unable to attract higher broadcasting value for its matches and break into the highest tier of international professional soccer. The key reason is that MLS matches are not deemed high quality content by broadcasters. To achieve higher quality matches requires many inputs such as soccer specific stadiums, growing the fan base, attracting key investors, league integrity and strong governance, all of which MLS has successfully achieved since its inception. However, attracting high quality playing talent is a critical input the MLS does not have because the league has repeatedly cautioned that it cannot afford them yet to ensure long-term financial sustainability. In fact, to guarantee this trade-off, the MLS is one of the only professional soccer leagues with an annual salary cap. So, the question is: how does MLS increase the quality of its matches (content) using relatively low cost (low quality) talent and still be able to demand higher broadcast revenues? One strategy is for the MLS to use AI playing technology to extract higher quality playing performance from its existing talent like other sports leagues have demonstrated, such as the NFL and NBA. To implement such a radical technology-centric strategy with its players requires the MLS to navigate associated issues such as human-machine symbioses, risking fan acceptance and even altering brand valuation.

The case is written and designed for a graduate-level (MBA) class or an upper-level undergraduate class in areas such as contemporary issues in management, human resource management, talent management, strategic management, sports management and sports marketing. The case is suitable for courses that discuss strategy, talent management, human resource management and brand strategy.

The theoretical basis of the teaching note is grounded in theory associated with macroeconomics and foreign direct investment (FDI); in particular why FDI is important to a developing country.

A secondary research methodology was used for the research and writing of this case study. Data (news articles and relevant readings) was obtained via the internet.

The case highlights the interrelated factors (civil society infrastructure, local and political unrest and community instability) that led to global mining company Rio Tinto announcing the halt of its operations and force majeure at its only South African business, Richards Bay Minerals (RBM). RBM was the largest business and employer in the province. Following the destruction of some of its equipment, civil unrest such as blocking of roads and intimidation of staff and the murder of one of their executives, Nico Swart, RBM management consequently announced all supplier contracts and operations would be halted until it was safe for work to be resumed.The case allows students to consider the interrelated factors that multinationals operating in developing countries are subject to in terms of different sub-national institutions and the potential impact of a large multinational ceasing operations in a local economy, both directly and indirectly. It concludes with considerations of what needs to be in place for RBM to continue operations.

This case can be used in undergraduate- and graduate-level courses, in management development programs or in short executive education courses focusing on the environment of business, macroeconomics and FDI.

Management: human resources management.

Undergraduate and postgraduate.

This case gives critical insights in the complex issues surrounding the management of employment relationship in Africa, specifically focusing on Botswana. It is set in the context of explosive industrial relations involving Debswana Diamond Mining Company and the Botswana Mine Workers Union over the contentious issues of pay bonus and collective bargaining. Failure to reach an amicable compromise by both parties' results in a debilitating strike which costs the company millions of funds and affected it's the corporate image contrary to its well crafted social responsibility. More painfully, the end game is a loss of employment and dreams shattered for 461 dismissed workers who depended solely on this work as their only source of income.

At the end of reading the case students are expected to: understand the limits of managerial prerogative and the right to manage; appreciate the inherent conflict of interests between labour and capital; consider more equitable compensation schemes in dealing with collective bargaining; and discuss the concept of social responsibility in the context internal customers-employees.

Teaching note.

The subject areas are strategic management, international marketing business-to-business marketing.

The study is applicable to undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

Dalmec Industries Manipulators India Pvt. Ltd. was incorporated in 2011 as a private limited company under the Companies Act, 1956. The company was formed to carry on importing machinery and distributing it to the clients. This case focuses on the dilemma faced by the company: whether it should establish a manufacturing unit in India or continue with the current operation procedures. Dalmec has faced various problems in India regarding local players, low-cost material handling equipment and the nascent stage of material handling industry. In Europe and the Middle East, the industries are more focused on safety standards and provide high quality material handling products to their workers, compared to the Indian industries. As local players in material handling sectors price their product very low, to compete with them with quality products is a major challenge for foreign companies. The company needed to build a strong and unique brand for non-European markets. In India, the material handling equipment market is crowded with local players. So, Dalmec needs to establish its reputation as a reliable partner and create a distinct identity. It has to create brand awareness among Indian companies and influence the decision makers of the corporates. The case discusses the impact of Make in India campaign on Dalmec and examines whether the Make in India initiative will prove helpful to Dalmec.

This study enables to familiarize students with the expansion strategy of a company; help students understand the international market entry strategies frequently used by multinationals to expand their business.; examine the feasibility of entering into emerging markets like India; and make students understand the relevance of the Make in India campaign for foreign corporate players.

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CSS 11: Strategy.

Strategy.

Undergraduate final year or MBA.

This teaching case describes the journey undertaken by Yoma Strategic Holdings (YSH) Ltd, a Singapore-listed company that operates predominately in Myanmar, to become a successful and highly profitable conglomerate business empire in Myanmar. The case provides a rich contextual description of how YSH leveraged upon its partnerships and capabilities, especially with its parent and sister companies, to pursue its conglomerate business model. To facilitate the discussion that this teaching case aims to generate among lecturers and students, we have provided a summary of the latest developments in Myanmar since the 2010 general election. This helps to give students an appreciation of the challenges involved in creating a successful business in Myanmar.

The learning outcomes that this teaching case hopes to achieve in students are as follows: Understand the concept of “economies of scope” in corporate strategy; identify and explain the various corporate strategies (i.e. diversification and vertical integration) that can be implemented to develop a conglomerate business model; recognize the organizational and managerial issues arising from implementing these corporate strategies and understand the circumstances that influence its success; and assess the relative advantages of managing a business in a conglomerate business model and advise a company on whether a particular activity should be undertaken internally or outsourced.

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International Business, Ethics, International Legal Issues/Law, Environmental Management.

Upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. The case is appropriate for courses in International Law, Ethics, International Business and Strategy.

This case is inspired by current ethical, legal, social and environmental issues that have plagued the multinational mining industry in frontier markets. The case focuses on a multitude of legal, ethical and strategic issues involving the multinational mining industry. This case describes a hypothetical assignment facing an operations manager at the fictional Minera, Inc. The assignment revolves around several dilemmas a manager must confront as he attempts to secure valuable mining licenses from the Mongolian Government while simultaneously attempting to harmonize seemingly detrimental operating practices with the organizations' stated beliefs. The case provides detailed background information on the social, economic and political climate in Mongolia, as well as the applicable laws, ethical frameworks and competitive market considerations facing multinational mining organizations.

This case will help students understand the complexity of international business in frontier markets; identify key international legal issues such as the foreign corrupt practices act; and recognize ethical issues and formulate economically, strategically, ethically and legally sound courses of action in complex environments.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.