Search results

Business-to-business (B2B) marketing, microeconomics and strategic management.

Target audience can be MBA students who are taking B2B marketing, microeconomics and strategic management courses.

On 1 January 2015, Hamza joined Hisham Packaging, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) as the CEO. Hisham Packaging specialises in production of corrugated boxes of various sizes, both in plain and printed forms. Most of Hamza’s experiences have been in the automobile industry, where his focus was on Lean operations rather than marketing. After joining Hisham Packaging, he learnt that in service industry like printing and packaging, the business focus is more customer-oriented than process-orientated. In the packaging industry, each customer’s requirement is unique and customised with variety and small volumes. What was shocking to him was that there is an informal cartel arrangement among major corrugated box suppliers in the country and without the consent of the cartel members, he cannot take any major decision like expanding the business or accepting or dropping a customer. Hamza discussed the scenario with his sales manager Ahmad to see what strategy to adopt for the growth of the company. He was trying to figure out what next? Like any other newly joined CEO, Hamza also had plans to increase the market share and make the operations Lean. He quickly found that it would be difficult for him to make any major impact on the existing business due to the constraints and he needed a different strategic move to grow the company.

The outcomes include understanding of market dynamics, cartelization of companies based on market structure and strategy building. Students learn that an organization’s performance is just not dependent on how the managers plan, organize and control but it also depends on the competitors and customer’s strategies. Students learn how to apply strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis, Porter’s Five Forces analysis and PESTEL analysis in developing business strategy.

Teaching note is attached.

CSS 8: Marketing

Learning outcomes are as follows: students will discover the importance of process orientation in management; students will determine the root cause of the problem by applying root cause analysis technique; students will identify the failure modes, analyze their effect, score them on a scale and prioritize the corrective action to prevent the failures; students will analyze the processes and propose error-proof system/s; and students will analyze organizational culture and ethical issues.

Purpose: This case study is intended as a class-exercise, for students to discover the importance of process-orientation in management, analyze the ethical dilemma in health care and to apply quality management techniques, such as five-why, root cause analysis, failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) and error-proofing, in the management of the health-care and service industry. Design/methodology/approach: A voluntary reporting of a case of “radiation overdose” in a hospital’s radio therapy treatment unit, which led to an ethical dilemma. Consequently, a study was conducted to establish the causes of the incident and to develop a fail-proof system, to avoid recurrence. Findings: After careful analysis of the process-flow and the root causes, 25 potential failure modes were detected and the team had assigned a risk priority number (RPN) for each potential incident, selected the top ten RPNs and developed an error-proofing system to prevent recurrence. Subsequently, the improvement process was carried out for all the 25 potential incidents and a new control mechanism was implemented. The question of ethical dilemma remained unresolved. Research limitations/implications: Ishikawa diagram, FMEA and Poka-Yoke techniques require a multi-disciplinary team with process knowledge in identifying the possible root causes for errors, potential risks and also the possible error-proofing method/s. Besides, these techniques need frank discussions and agreement among team members on the efforts for the development of action plan, implementation and control of the new processes. Practical implications: Students can take the case data to identify root cause analysis and the RPN (RPN = possibility of detection × probability of occurrence × severity), to redesign the protocols, through systematic identification of the deficiencies of the existing protocols. Further, they can recommend quality improvement projects. Faculty can navigate the case session orientation, emphasizing quality management or ethical practices, depending on the course for which the case is selected.

MBA or PG Diploma in Management – health-care management, hospital administration, operations management, services operations, total quality management (TQM) and ethics.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 9: Operations and Logistics.

To understand a firm’s service concept and process; to explain the service design that differentiates itself by making trade-offs in operations and service offering; to identify the importance of deliberately designed interrelated systems and resources to achieve growth in services and to evaluate the fit of new design elements in the service offering.

Ajay Takeaway Foods LLP (Ajay Foods) is a food venture founded by Mr Jaideep Solanki and Mr Ajay Solanki and operates as a chain of quick service restaurants with a simple mission to sell food that is good, affordable and accessible to all. Ajay Foods serves only pure vegetarian and limited variants of burger, pizza and cold coffee. Ajay Foods rolled out 75 stores in just 18 months during the COVID 19 pandemic. Ajay Foods’ founders were contemplating on expanding menu. There was growing demand for food items such as samosa, wraps, sandwiches and French fries. One of the founders got into dilemma: How many items? and Which item(s) to add to the menu?

This case can be used at post-graduate level to teach basic frameworks of service concept and design. The case covers a range of topics such as service processes, service elements and product offerings in a service setting. It can be used effectively with MBAs and Hospitality Management program in courses that focus on Service Management, Service Operations or Service Marketing Strategy.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 9: Operations and Logistics.

The learning outcomes of the case are as follows:

1. Students will understand the interdependency of functional areas, such as operations, marketing, human resources (HR) and finance, in a manufacturing firm.

2. Students will analyze the conventional factory to focus on factory frameworks (Skinner, 1974).

3. Students will learn to analyze (associate) a company's performance reports (key performance indicators and profit and loss reports) with operations, marketing and sales functions.

4. Students will relate the concept of strategic resonance (Brown and Fai, 2006) to functional strategies.

Tariq Khattabi, a mechanical engineer with an MBA, joined Flexi Pack Dubai, UAE, as a general manager on 1 April 2019. During the recruitment interview, he learned that the company was struggling to maintain its breakeven point, and his first responsibility was to develop a strategy to ensure the growth of the organization. From the initial meetings with the production, finance and senior marketing managers, he identified problems related to the plant’s operations and sales. Although Flexi Pack enjoyed a good market reputation and profits, of late, the company needed help to make it profitable. Tariq's dilemma was to develop a strategy to put the organization back on the growth path.

He wondered whether the operations and marketing problems could be solved simultaneously. He had to present his strategic approach to the board within two weeks. Through this case study, management students can understand the interdependency of functional areas, such as operations, marketing, HR and finance. Students will learn the focused factory concept and a plant within a plant. They will be able to identify and appreciate dissonance and resonance between functional strategies and the importance of aligning functional strategies. Moreover, students will learn about consumer packaging types, material and their converting processes, which are the essential aspects of the fast-moving consumer goods business.

The target audience can be an Executive Program in Operations Management, BBA and Postgraduate Diploma in Management students who have opted for Operations Management or Operations Strategy as their major/minor specialization.

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 11: Strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated conceptual trust building model for supply chain partners’ relationships. It is based on the literature on trust building models from various disciplines.

Various trust building concepts and models were reviewed and five widely referred trust building models were selected from the literature to analyze and integrate the views to develop an integrated conceptual model from supply chain partners’ relationships point of view.

The conceptual frame work suggests that trust is a sum of risk‐worthy characteristics, risk‐worthy rationale and risk‐worthy institutional systems of supply chain members. Though the model represents the trust building process at dyadic level, the concept can simply be extended to any number of levels and perspectives.

The model has considered the trust building perspectives from supply chain partners’ relationships point of view. The discussions of the model lead to empirically testable issues.

The study results suggest that the supply chain members should strive to reduce the risk levels to build trust rather than striving to build trust to reduce the risk. As long as members’ risk levels are within their bearable limits trust can be considered as a risk coping mechanism and when the risk levels exceed their bearable limits the subject of trust turns into risk management/security management.

The trust building concepts developed through this model can be used by both practitioners and researchers on the subject of trust. However the model's application is not limited to supply chain management; it can be easily adapted to any discipline of management.

The purpose of this paper is to understand what breaks trust in a customer supplier relationship and how to repair it.

The approach takes a single case study to test the established theories on trust. It captures the circumstances and conditions of everyday situation in business and it is a longitudinal study covering three years' experience of two organisations in business.

The important findings of this case study are that knowledge, level of risk and level of risk tolerance of customers/suppliers are the main causes of trust break down. Though the research on trust focus on partner's characteristics such as benevolence, honesty, reliability, credibility, integrity, contracts, agreements etc., in the context of B2B relationship these perspectives can only help the partners in evaluating the other partner as trust worthy. Once the partners engage in the relationship the orientation will change towards perspectives of rational risk. If the risk level exceeds their bearable limits, trust will break. Trust repair depends on the convincing power of the trustees, and how and why the trustor should bear the uncertainty or risk involved in the relationship.

With its focus on two business partners this case cannot be generalised to all business settings. However, the in‐depth analysis stimulates further research on how trust may break between partners and how and who (trustor/trustee) should initiate trust repair process.

Practicing managers and research scholars can use this case in trust building process in customer supplier relationship.

The paper presents a case that is original.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a context dependent, multi perspective multilevel trust measurement instrument to measure supply chain members' trust.

Since trust is a context dependent phenomenon and the level of trust between partners cannot be measured easily, a conceptual framework is developed to measure supply chain partners' trust from risk perspective (i.e. risk related to characteristics, rational and institutions/security) considering the relationship as “Risky”, “Risk‐worthy” and “Not risky” and translated them in terms of trust perspectives as “No trust”, “Trust worthy” and “Trust”.

Although the research on trust emphasizes to focus on a member's characteristics such as benevolence, integrity, ability, reliability, credibility, etc, decision to trust require multiple judgments therefore trust should be measured from various context dependent perspectives at multiple levels in relationship from trustor's perceptions and calculations. The key perspectives of trust in supply chain relationship are; characteristics trust, rational trust (cost and benefit, dynamic capabilities, technology) and institutional trust/security system. An important argument of this concept is that trust can only be dyadic.

Researchers on trust have repeatedly confirmed that trust is a multifaceted and context dependent concept. However the business context may not remain the same in the dynamic business environment, therefore this conceptual framework can be used as generalized trust measurement tool.

This paper has attempted to develop a simple and practical multi level trust measurement tool for the complex multi‐dimensional construct of supply chain partners' relationship trust.

This study may be one of the first to develop a multi level trust measurement concept from risk perspectives.

This paper seeks to identify the up‐stream supply chain member's (manufacturers, suppliers, supplier's service providers) characteristics, economics, dynamic capabilities, technology and institutional perspectives of risk in relationship to develop a trust building model through risk evaluation and to address the issue: should a supply chain member strive to build the trust or strive to reduce the risk with its members and from which perspectives?

A conceptual framework was developed considering five key perspectives (characteristics, economics, dynamic capabilities, technology and institutions) to evaluate the member's risk in relationship and derived the hypothesis from the framework. A survey was conducted in UAE packaged food industry upstream supply chain covering senior managers of 102 companies. Data were analysed using multiple regression analyses through SPSS. The selected supply chain members of this industry include packaged food products companies as manufacturers, packaging material converters as suppliers of packaging material to manufacturers and packaging raw material suppliers as supplier's suppliers of manufacturer.

From the survey results it is found that characteristic and institutional risk perspectives influence significantly to initiate a trustworthy relationship. Economics, dynamic capabilities and technology risk perspectives play a significant role to maintain trust in relationship. No perspective of members is found to be significantly risk‐free.

This study has identified the perspectives of risk that can initiate and build trust between supply chain members in the context of a global business environment with a strong institutional system. Further research is required to identify the supply chain member's risk‐worthy characteristics, threshold levels of risk bearing capacity and the extent to which the institutions can reduce the membership risk to build trust.

The study results suggest that the supply chain members should strive to reduce the membership risk levels to build trust rather than striving to build trust to reduce the risk. As long as a member's risk levels are within their bearable limits trust can be considered as a risk coping mechanism and when the risk levels exceed their bearable limits the subject of trust turns into risk management/security management.

This study may be one of the first to develop a trust building model through a risk evaluation process and also one of the first to study the trust in supply chain member's relationship in UAE. Findings from this research should prove useful to management researchers and practitioners.

This paper seeks to empirically identify the major factors that influence physician loyalty behavior in prescribing certain brands of drugs.

Testable hypotheses were developed with respect to physician loyalty behavior regarding drug prescription practices, and a survey questionnaire was designed to capture the data from 71 physicians, as a convenience sample. The hypotheses were tested by PLS path modeling.

The major finding is that tangible rewards to physicians by the pharmaceutical companies lead to prescription loyalty. The second major finding is that the professional values of pharmaceutical sales representatives (PSR) impact significantly on physician prescription loyalty. The hypotheses related to the impact of PSR personality, drug quality, corporate reputation and professional influence on prescription loyalty were not supported in the study.

The results should prove useful to pharmaceutical companies in developing physician loyalty to particular brands as well as enhancing the understanding of drug control authorities and governmental health policy makers, in controlling unethical medical practices by physicians.

This paper reports an original empirical study on physician loyalty behavior in the context of drug prescription.

Trust and commitment (T&C) among the supply chain partners in the context of supply chain management (SCM) are of interest for both researchers and practitioners. This paper analyses literature on T&C and identifies gaps for further research.

The current literature review paper provides a comprehensive perspective on the topic using bibliometric analysis followed by a systematic review of literature. In all, 207 relevant articles were extracted from the Scopus database using the relevant key word searches. For the purpose of the systematic review, another 48 relevant papers were identified through an iterative process. Hence, 255 papers published between the years 1990–2019 were analysed for the sake of this study.

A total of 15 definitions of trust, nine definitions of commitment, 13 classifications of trust, 40 antecedents of trust, six classifications of commitments, 39 consequences of trust, 11 antecedents of commitment and 15 consequences of commitment were identified and analysed. Future research directions were presented.

The study is limited to identifying the antecedents and consequences of T&C. A detailed framework could be developed in future research. The antecedent and consequences for T&C could be discussed in greater detail.

Important implications for managers emerge from this study for building and implementing T&C, as SCM requires a thorough understanding of relationship-building skills. The discussion on the definitions of T&C, types of trust and the antecedents and consequences provides important insights for practitioners for strategy formulation. Results provide important insights and bring about greater clarity for researchers and practitioners on T&C in SCM.

Through rigorous analysis of the prevailing research, this paper extensively reviews literature on T&C in SCM till 2019. It summarises the current status and proposes future research directions.