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Management, Strategy, International business.

Undergraduate or Graduates.

This case is suitable for students of international business and strategy at the advanced undergraduate-level or introductory masters-level courses. It can be used for organizational design, brand management and business-to-business management classes. It may be of interest to practitioners in the Middle East and North African (MENA) markets looking at managing cross-functional teams.

On completion of utilizing the case study as an exercise, students should be able to develop the following. Case-specific skills: Critically examine the importance of the international business and strategy in the Middle East and demonstrate this by analyzing real-regional/-examples using complex theoretical frameworks; identify examples of best practice and explain the dynamics toward international business and strategy with reference to a range of theoretical models and apply these in a meaningful way to the MENA region. Discipline-specific skills: Synthesize and critically evaluate a corpus of academic literature and government reports on international business and strategy; link international business and strategy concepts and theories to real-regional/world examples. Personal and key skills: Reflect on the process of learning and undertake independent/self-directed learning (including time management) to achieve consistent, proficient and sustained attainment; work as a participant or leader of a group and contribute effectively to the achievement of objectives in the field of international business and strategy.

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

Entrepreneurship.

This case is suitable for MBA, EMBA and advanced undergraduate students.

Noah Wealth Management was founded by Ms Wang Jingbo, a lady in her mid 30s with a team of less than 20 members in 2005. Exploiting market opportunities offered by a lack of good wealth management products and services, Noah grew rapidly from one branch office in 2005 to 59 branch offices in 2011, reaching a staff size of 1,031. Noah listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange in November 2010. In 2011, Noah was ranked No. 38 among the 100 Top Potential Enterprises in China. Nonetheless, Noah faced several problems of internal management during the course of its fast expansion. In the first quarter financial report of 2012, Noah suffered a 52.6 percent decrease in net income over the corresponding period in 2011. Faced with a rapidly declining share price, Noah announced on May 22, 2012 a US $30 million share repurchase program.

The case supports a basic lesson on the entrepreneurial cycle, including assessing a business opportunity, resource mobilization, identifying a business model, growth of the venture, listing on the stock market, and subsequent growth challenges. Students can learn about some of the typical dilemmas faced by founders of entrepreneurial ventures, including how to maintain the corporate culture while growing fast and how to prevent members of the founding team from becoming bottlenecks to the development of the organization. The case can also provide management students with an overview of China's wealth management industry.

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

Corporate strategy and family business management.

The case is designed for usage in senior-level undergraduate courses of strategic management and managing family businesses.

This case study relates the story of the launch and development of Zayed Al Hussaini Group, a family business in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The business had been established a year after the unionization of the different Emirates by the founder, Zayed Al Hussaini, in partnership with his brother. Following a series of strategic moves, such as acquisitions and divestures, and adverse family-related events, the Group was led solely by the founder himself. Over the years, Zayed Al Hussaini Group has grown to become a successful family business in various industries of its operation, but following the death of the founder's son, the company activities have been struck with chaos. Zayed's nephew, Ahmed, who had left the family business to continue his studies and work at McKinsey & Company in London, has been called back home after eight years to take the lead of the entire Group. However, he is faced with several challenges, such as dealing with the family gap he has developed over time and balancing family and business priorities. Will Ahmed be able to make the right decisions in the role and responsibilities that have been bestowed upon him?

To analyse the process of launching a family business and making strategic decisions for managing its development over time.

To assess the potential difficulties and challenges which are associated with managing a family-run organization.

To evaluate the effectiveness of decisions with regards to the company's growth and succession management planning.

To apply relevant theoretical concepts to the analysis of complex situations in the specific context of family businesses.

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

Entrepreneurship, organizational behaviour, managerial decision making, strategic management, leadership and managing change.

Undergraduate business and management and MBA/Master's level management courses.

The case, “Vasili” examines the life, career, and leadership style of a successful entrepreneur like Mr Vasili Naci.The case illustrates the management challenges faced in moving from a very centralized economy to a free market one. It also raises issues having to do with the management of changes that are viewed as radical by those being affected. There were significant changes taking place in early years of the twenty-first century in Albania. Vasili was determined to make the necessary changes to confront and respond better the challenges opposed to him by the new environment. In addition this case examines the importance of a right balance between education and experience in successful leadership.

The case is written to serve a number of purposes: Understanding the entrepreneurial mindset and what it takes to start an enterprise (especially in a post communist emerging economy like Albania). The transition/changes that all entrepreneurs have to go through as they grow and develop their business. Examining ways to foster leadership skills through organization and training the next generation of leaders.

Teaching note.

In this case students must ascertain what financial ratios they recommend the company focus on and they must also decide how best to communicate, explain, and bring to life those metrics so that the company's cadre of non-financial middle managers can most easily understand the significance of, and internalize the insights from, those ratios. Embedded in this task, students must: (1) understand the nature of the company insights afforded by each of the potential financial metrics presented; (2) make a judgment as to which subset of financial metrics is (a) most applicable to a group of non- financial middle managers and (b) most representative of bankers' and shareholders' interests; and (3) develop a plan for communicating to a group of non-financial, middle managers the subset of financial metrics they have selected.

After completion of the case study, the students will be able to understand the importance of being culturally savvy when working in a culturally diverse environment and managing people from different cultures; critically reflect on the risks resulting from the absence of a clear direction from the company’s top management regarding unifying corporate values and a diversity policy for cooperation across cultures; be aware of best practices in implementing diversity management (DM) initiatives in the company; and learn that changes in the strategic orientation (i.e. focus on automation projects) must be cascaded down to hard elements of structures, processes and systems, as well as to soft elements of skills, staff and management style.

The Kuwaiti branch of a Japanese corporation specialising in control systems and instruments, Rising Sun IT, hired a German professional, Alex, to handle the increasing demand for automation from customers. This recruitment followed several unsuccessful attempts by the company to deliver more advanced automation solutions. Recognising the need to adapt to Kuwaiti customer requirements or risk losing market share, Japanese management understood the importance of transforming their engineering staff. Failure to achieve this next automation step would result in a steady decline in market share and ultimately impact the company’s survival. However, Alex, who was supposed to lead automation projects, was confronted with opposition from the Indian engineering staff and managers. He was not able to find common ground with the staff and perceived issues such as lack of communication, delays in work schedules, missed deadlines and high levels of absenteeism, as a sign of low work morale. Although he tried to increase the awareness of his supervisor and other managers by informing them repeatedly about the problems regarding employee behaviours, his interventions went unheard. He felt ousted by his fellow colleagues and the other employees. Besides, from Alex’s point of view, the Japanese top management did not provide clear directions to the staff and explicit support to Alex in his efforts. This case study highlights three dimensions of Alex’s problem with establishing and maintaining working relationships with other people in the company:▪ Alex’s cultural “blindness” and ignorance of differences in work behaviours that ultimately led to his inability to build solid and trustful relationships with other employees. The case study demonstrates Germany’s performance-oriented and individual-centric culture versus India’s family- and community-oriented culture and the Japanese employees’ strongly hierarchical and company loyalty-oriented culture.▪ Lack of support from the Japanese top management to Alex, which is connected with a wider problem of the lack of a systematic strategic approach to managing a culturally diverse workforce. The case study pinpoints the rhetoric–reality gap in DM in the company, where the diversity, equity and inclusion programme and corporate values were applied only formally and had little attention from the leaders as well as non-managerial employees.▪ Employee resistance to change: The lack of positive communication from the top management level in the company regarding automation projects and the lack of support for Alex’s mission in the company resulted in steady resistance to executing projects, which endangered the company’s survival in the market. Also, one part of Alex’s problem with building a working relationship with the Indian engineering staff was based on the fact that others perceived him as the automation “change agent” – an advocate and catalyst of an undesirable change connected with adverse consequences on employment in the Indian community.

This case is intended for discussion in undergraduate management and business study programmes.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human resource management.

Integrated Case Study, Advanced Management Accounting, Environmental Management Accounting (EMA), Human Resource Management.

This case is designed for undergraduate students in accounting, business or human resource management programmes.

The case is about Irfan, a former Production Manager in Omicron, a small and medium-sized enterprise in Selangor, Malaysia, manufacturing automotive metal parts. Irfan is truly enthusiastic for environmental and cost-reduction tools and wishes to pursue it further to his best possible. The case presents Irfan facing the dilemma of how to align his passion for these tools to his future career choice. He is faced with three options – to remain in Omicron, to accept a job offer in another company or to establish his own consultancy firm. The case highlights the heavy involvement of Irfan in the implementation of a new environmental tool, Material Flow Cost Accounting (MFCA) in Omicron, and all the tasks, activities, benefits and challenges encountered. Being at the ground with the implementation and outputs achieved, Irfan is excited about MFCA and wants to continue with it, due to the rich and valuable experience gained from its implementation and its potential for future savings. However, he does not seem to observe a similar excitement among the higher management. The case details an example of the implementation of MFCA for one of Omicron’s products and other relevant information that could serve as a guidance to any future implementation either in Omicron, the new company or even his own company. The case also provides details about Omicron and how Irfan regard Omicron as his second family to hint a strong pulling factor for Irfan to remain in Omicron, hence providing the extra weight on the dilemma he faces.

In the process of assessing a career choice dilemma for a middle-level manager, students are expected to analyse the three career options available to this middle manager, whose dilemma also relates to his passion of pursuing environment-related and cost-reduction tools. Where the environment is concerned, some parties need extra persuasion to pursue it and this also triggers the middle-manager’s dilemma. This case is intended to provide a tool to enable students to review and discuss matters, such as overcoming obstacles of pursuing environmental-related initiatives and progressing a mid-life career that provides self-fulfilment financially, emotionally and mentally. Among the theories and concepts referred include diffusion of innovations theory, EMA concepts and Hofstede’s cultural dimensions.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 1: Accounting and Finance.

Kevin McRider, the COO of a fledging research facility, needed to foster an environment where scientists explored the boundaries of the metals, chemicals, polymers and tools used to create innovating medical devices. The freshly-minted PhDs he hired were enthusiastic to design and conduct research projects that bridged their scientific disciplines, in a collaborative workplace, with time allocated to individual projects as well. Effectively managed, their research would help the parent corporation leapfrog over existing or near-future technology.

The problem for McRider was how to get Lintell to realize his vision of a collaborative organizational culture that promoted revolutionary scientific discoveries. His challenges included managerial behaviors that prohibited critical interaction and information sharing, as well as disruptive organizational dynamics he himself had set in motion including pressures to focus only on certain research goals and projects at the expense of creative exploration, and the violation of the psychological contracts McRider himself had created with the scientists during recruitment.

This case describes a newly promoted middle manager in a global, multi-cultural organization who is challenged by a number of factors in the workplace which are impacting her and her team's ability to perform to the expectations of her regional manager. While it would be easy to blame the new manager, deeper analysis in fact reveals that many forces are at work here in addition to her inexperience including communication of strategy and performance objectives, mismanaged team members, cultural inconsistencies, and a lack of leadership direction and/or skill from the very top to her supervising manager.

After reading and analyzing the case, students should be able to 1) analyze and diagnose unmet expectations for performance at work, 2) apply motivation theories and constructs to common behavioral and attitudinal challenges in a team setting, and 3) learn to avoid the fundamental attribution error described in the social psychological literature on judgment in decision-making.

Describes the winning formula at Neiman Marcus that has made it the No. 1 luxury retailer in the United States in terms of sales per square foot and profitability. Highlights Neiman Marcus' efforts to define who its customers are and are not and to achieve superior focus on its customers by aligning location, price, service, and merchandise to fulfill these customers' every need. Describes ways in which Neiman Marcus prevents typical silo behavior between merchandising and selling and how it ensures that the right merchandise gets to the right customer, despite the challenge of doing this in 36 micromarkets.

To show how a company integrates two strong high-performance functions—merchandising and sales—to get the right merchandise to each customer in more than 30 diverse selling locations while consistently providing exceptional customer service.