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Management, business studies, entrepreneurship, public relations or communications.

This case study is suitable for certificate, diploma and degree programmes in management, business studies, entrepreneurship, public relations or communications.

In this case study, there are three issues related to the halal controversy with the Sarawak layered cake that aimed at business competitiveness, namely, business perseverance during turbulent times; creativity and innovation for business growth; and expansion strategy. The halal controversy of an imported butter affected Di Wannie's business to a great extent. The “Imported X” butter was then declared to be halal after further investigation by the Islamic Advisory Committee, but the business impacts from the controversy took longer to vanish.

By the end of the discussion, students should have a clear concept of the various elements that constituted Di Wannie's business strategies, as well as the elements that constituted a Sarawak layered-cake industry strategy. Students should realize that the business model for a cake and pastry company is more complex because it not only involves building competency in cake production and marketing but also involves continuous innovation in recipe and baking process development, experimentation, sensitivity and ethical consumerism.

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

After completion of the case study, students are expected to demonstrate understanding of the process of strategy formulation (which include conducting situational analysis) and strategy implementation.

Perusahaan Azan, which trades under the brand name Roti Azan for its fresh bread and Azan for its dry bread or rusks, was established as a family business in 1968 by Haji Abu Bakar bin Ali in his hometown in Kuala Pilah, in the state of Negeri Sembilan in Malaysia. In the mid-1980s, the management of the business was passed on by Haji Abu Bakar to one of his sons, Haji Mohd Ghazali bin Haji Abu Bakar. Haji Ghazali was named managing director in 1985 and officially inherited his father’s company in 1987. By 2004, Perusahaan Azan breads had started to penetrate major grocery stores nationwide, and later the business began to expand internationally in 2010, with Oman and Iraq among the first countries it ventured into. The company sold both its fresh and dry bread in local stores; however, in the international market, only dry bread types were sold, specifically wholemeal rusks and long rusks, which had longer shelf lives. Post-pandemic, by 2022, the company had exited the retail fresh bread market and had focused only on its contractual fresh bread and retail dry bread markets. He thought about the main strategic choices he had of going forward, either to revive its retail fresh bread segment or venture into a coffee shop business. The former was the bread and butter of the company in the last 50 years. However, he knew that re-entering this market was getting more difficult, as it requires competing head-to-head with the giant breadmakers. There were also issues of rising costs and high wastage. For the latter coffee shop project, the company did not have experience in directly “serving” the customers, with its businesses so far had been mainly in production. He pondered on the best decision to undertake to sustain the company’s profitability into the next generation. Few family businesses can pass this crucial stage. He knew he had to act fast to ensure that the company’s plans for the future could be successfully implemented. The case study is suitable for use in teaching courses in strategic management, organisational management and integrated case study for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates in the programmes of business administration, Muamalat administration and accounting.

The case study is suitable for use in advanced undergraduate students in management, business administration, Muamalat administration and postgraduate students in MBA, Master in Muamalat Administration or other related master’s programmes with a course in strategic management, organisational management and integrated case study.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

This case can be used in marketing management as well as consumer behaviour courses.

This case is suitable to use in advanced undergraduate levels, MBA and MSc in marketing courses that cover topics related to market segmentation and marketing mix strategies.

This case highlights the dilemma of an entrepreneur and a manager of a restaurant who were to take a decision about the sustainability of their restaurant business. Balqis Restaurant was owned by Danny who was a retiree from Telekom Malaysia. He wanted to open a restaurant business after he came back from his long holiday trip. He conducted market research to find a suitable place to open his Arabic restaurant. He assigned Waleed Masood Abdullah as the manager of Balqis Restaurant. Finally, in June 2010, he opened his long awaited restaurant at Gombak, Kuala Lumpur. The restaurant was known as Qasar before the name was changed to Balqis in 2015 because of copyright issues related to Saba’ restaurant at Cyberjaya. The restaurant was well managed under Danny’s supervision for 4 years and successfully won customers’ hearts and loyalty before he decided to give full responsibility to Waleed in March 2014. Danny trusted Waleed because he taught and trained him. However, under Waleed’s management, Balqis started to lose its customers. Waleed also started to branch out the restaurant to different places in different states; one in Ipoh, and the other in Perak. He invested much money on renovation for all three branches, but one of the restaurants closed down in September 2014. This is because of the fact that they could no longer bear the cost of operations for the restaurant. However, he failed to learn from the mistake; they set up another restaurant, which was in Kuantan, in the same month. The sales were not that encouraging but it did show gradual improvement; yet, they once again sold it to another Arab businessman. Waleed realized his failure in managing the restaurant business in August 2015. He again opted to open another new branch which was questioned by Danny. He was in a rush to open it by the end of December 2015 to ensure that the additional profits from the current restaurants could cover the variables costs if the new restaurants were launched. Based on that, the owner had to make a decision about whether a new branch should be opened or whether they should just retain their restaurant in Gombak.

The learning objectives of using this case are as follows. 1. Knowledge enhancement: to help students in understanding the problems faced by a restaurant in expanding its market; to make students aware that a properly blended marketing mix is the key to business success and to broaden students’ views and understanding in targeting the proper market segment in formulating an effective marketing strategy. 2. Skills building: to be able to identify the best marketing strategic decisions to manage the restaurant business for its survival and to develop students’ ability to analyse the existing situation to come up with a viable and effective solution. 3. Attitudinal: to help the students to have intellectual openness in accepting different ways of finding solutions for a particular problem and to assist students in making the right move at the right time.

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 8: Marketing.

Entrepreneurship, Strategic Management, Organizational Change Management.

Postgraduate and undergraduate students.

Restoran Minang Plus is a self-styled family-owned and managed restaurant featuring a gamut of Malaysian Negeri Sembilan and Indonesian Padang dishes. The eatery establishment has sailed the food industry waters successfully since 2004 and currently has five branches. However, there are certain imperatives they have to institute to integrate their entrepreneurial challenges with organizational change management. The nature of the forces in the competitive restaurant landscape requires a continuous rethinking of current strategic actions, organizational change, communication systems, motivation, asset deployment and strategic flexibility to respond quickly to changing conditions and thereby develop and maintain a competitive advantage. The question is how do they integrate this organizational change management to their entrepreneurial challenges with a view to achieve and maintain competitive advantage?

The expected learning outcomes are as follows: understanding managing diversity by looking at the different categories of diversity, that is, generic characteristics and learned characteristics that influence work attitudes; explaining how fostering learning and reinforcement can help in increasing job satisfaction; describing the basic motivational needs of the employees and how it can help in increasing job performance; understanding how an entrepreneurial firm can maximize its firm performance through effective change management; and understanding the importance of strategic management in an entrepreneurial firm.

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

Internationalization, entrepreneurship, franchising, international marketing.

First year undergraduate students of Management courses.

This case is about a newly established fast food company that expands very rapidly in Malaysia. Growing from merely a single pushcart, the company has evolved into one of the most successful purely-local food franchise businesses with almost 100 franchises throughout the country and abroad. The company keeps on looking at bigger expansion plans abroad and eyeing the Middle Eastern markets.

After carrying out this exercise, students are expected to be able: to understand how a new business start up grows; to provide a simple illustration on how internationalization of small firms can took place; to analyze the various factors of considerations prior to internationalization; to identify the basic issues of international franchising and how the system works.

Teaching note.

Subject area – Leadership and organizational change. Study level/applicability – Undergraduate and Master's degrees in Business and Management. Managers and executives undergoing training in leadership-related issues will also benefit from the case study through development of analytical and decision-making skills. Case overview – The case study highlights a successful retail business leader who has been directly involved in the transformation of his family business from a mere merchandiser to hypermarket owner. For more than five decades of developing and cultivating his leadership skills, business competencies and continuous learning, he successfully competes with foreign giant retailers. To comprehend the transformation process undergone by his business, the case study captures the development phases of the organizational changes and the leader's leadership and decision-making styles from the early establishment of the company until becoming a local giant retailer, that is chosen as a ”value for money” merchandiser by the customers. Expected learning outcomes – The target users of the case study are expected to:

Identify the critical success factors of successful leader.

Examine the leadership and decision-making styles employed by the leader.

Develop the competencies or capabilities of a retail business leader.

Determine programmes or initiatives and strategies used by the leader in transforming the business organization.

Apply the lesson learnt of a successful leader to their organization.

Islamic Accounting, Auditing, Strategic Management and Accounting Theory.

The case is suitable for graduate and postgraduate business students, particularly those on courses such as Islamic Accounting, Auditing, Strategic Management and Accounting Theory. The case is based on secondary data collection and all the facts are real.

In the early 2000s, the Tabung Haji (TH) faced financial difficulty, particularly regarding its returns from investments and, with the intention of helping to improve this situation, the General Manager (GM) of Finance and the GM of Investment decided to accept an investment proposal presented by an investment company. The proposal involved initial and subsequent investment portfolios of RM50 million and RM150 million, respectively. The proposal was presented in a board meeting and was approved by the board. Indeed, the two GMs were delighted to receive a return of RM12.5 million from their RM50 million initial investment – i.e. 25 per cent return. In the process of approving the subsequent investment of RM150 million, the two GMs were informed that their investments were partly for the FOREX market (Foreign Exchange Market/Currency Market). At that time, there was no conclusive decision on the status of investment in the FOREX market regarding whether it complied with Sharia principles. The two GMs contemplated whether they should accept this second investment proposal. The issue was whether they should reveal in the board meeting that this investment was partly in FOREX. What if the board failed to accept the idea of investing in FOREX and rejected the proposal? Indeed, they were dropping an opportunity for lucrative returns. Should the GMs seek technical advice on the status of FOREX investment in Islam and present it to the board?

The case should help students to: understand the concept of Sharia and Sharia financial principles; understand the process involved in TH investment decisions; analyze the issues involved in decision-making and apply the relevant theories to describe the actions; and recommend various alternative course of actions in a given situation.

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

This case study can help the reader to understand how to build an effective board for family business, and why evolving board structure can help family firm to sustain for a longer period in Market. Reader can also learn about role of independent director, CEO's Succession process and ways to deal with duality issue that family owned enterprise may face during a transition from generation X to Y.

This teaching case study describes various decision-making situations using example of a Pakistani family firm and entrepreneurs who started the business few decades back in France. This partially disguised case is based on actual events. The data are collected based on discussions with family business owners and minutes of meetings. The objective of study is to make sense of the family business theories e.g. socio emotional wealth stakeholder and agency. Case readers can also learn about the family’s business governance practices using diverse scenarios presented in this case.

This study is suitable for graduate and undergraduate studies.

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 7: Management science.

The area of focus is on internationalization strategies, specifically on developing suitable strategies to support an internationalization initiative of a new medical device company.

This case is designed for final year undergraduate and MBA students. It is suitable for courses of organizational management, organization theory and design, strategic management, and international business as well as international marketing.

GranuLab, a medical device company that produced the synthetic bone graft substitute GranuMaS, aspired to be a high-growth company. To achieve this aspiration the company had made plans for internationalization, which include penetrating the ASEAN, Middle East, Latin American, and African markets within the next five years. By December 2010, GranuLab had completed the construction of its new manufacturing facility in Shah Alam, about 30km from Malaysia's capital city of Kuala Lumpur. This manufacturing facility had the capability to produce high volumes to support the company's high growth plan. However, the company's internationalization processes had taken longer than expected and this has led to a low business volume. By mid-2012, the company was forced to make a quick decision as it had suffered a year and a half of operations losses. GranuLab had to formulate a strategy as to how to position GranuMaS and penetrate the targeted markets. Failure to internationalize would incur even greater losses and might hinder the achievement of its high growth aspiration by 2015.

This case is designed to stimulate case analysts' thinking into providing recommendations for the appropriate internationalization strategies to be adopted by the management team to ensure that the company could succeed in achieving its goals. The case will expose students to the concepts and theories of strategic management, international business, international entrepreneurship; and facilitate the development of students' abilities to apply those concepts in managerial situations.

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

This is a field-researched case about a nonprofit organization, the Accelerated Cure Project (ACP), dedicated to accelerating advances toward a cure for multiple sclerosis (MS). Inspired by the successful open source software development platform, ACP brings the strengths of that platform into the medical research and development environment. At the opening of the case, Robert McBurney, an Australian scientist with extensive experience in the biotech world, has been named CEO. McBurney and his team want to use ACP's bio-sample and data Repository to drive innovation in the search for the cure for MS by fostering collaborative research and development across research institutions, pharmaceutical and bio-tech companies. To encourage such collaboration ACP waives its rights to potentially lucrative Intellectual Property. This decision to foster collaboration at the expense of revenue sources appears problematic, since ACP does not have the staff or resources to undertake fundraising at the scale needed to fund current projects. ACP chooses to serve instead as an open access research accelerator making an impact on the field by functioning as an innovation driver rather than a profit maker. Is this an innovative recipe for success in finding a cure for MS or a recipe for financial disaster for ACP?

Interviews provided the primary source of data for this case. Four semi-structured interviews were conducted with the CEO of ACP, the Vice President of Scientific Operations, and a member of the organization's Board of Trustees, a collaborating university researcher, and the President of a bio-tech company working with ACP. Interview data was supplemented with additional information from ACP's web site, news reports, McBurney's comments at Suffolk University's Global Leadership in Innovation and Collaboration Award event, and follow-up conversations.

This case is intended for use in an undergraduate course examining strategic management issues midway through the term. The case discussion can center on issues relating to: first, the development of the business model; second, revenue resources and fundraising. Students are expected to spend two to three hours of outside preparation reviewing concepts of change leadership and the collaborative enterprise business model. They should read the case materials and brainstorm options for improved change leadership. The case can be taught in one two-hour class period.

The purpose of this case is to introduce students to the strategic management and funding challenges faced by an organization that is using a non-traditional business model in an increasingly complex environment. As a result of discussing this case, students should be able to: first, examine strategic organizational strengths, analyze opportunities created by business, market and environmental factors, and strategize to minimize weaknesses and to address threats identify an organization's strategic focus; recognize and recommend options at crucial decision making junctures in a business situation; second, assess an organization's revenue model; analyze how this model can be improved; third, analyze the functionality and sustainability of an organization's business model.