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This case study can be taught in the core courses on marketing management and strategic management at the postgraduate level management programmes. This case would facilitate students’ to appreciate the context of a business-level strategy in congruence with the firm’s corporate goals in an emerging market. This case study discussion will enable students to: understand and appreciate the opportunities and the nature of the emerging market, explain the strategic decisions that can impact the survival of the global brands in new markets, explain different types of business-level strategy and their appropriate application, synthesise various industry and market-related information into the selection and justification of any particular business-level strategy and learn the technique of perceptual mapping.

Hero MotoCorp Limited of India; the world’s number one motorcycle company by volume, established its second global manufacturing facility in Bangladesh in 2018 with the Nitol-Niloy Group. A sister concern, Niloy Motors Limited (NML), had been in charge of the marketing, distribution and sales of the brand “Hero”. Abu Aslam, as the Chief Marketing Officer of NML soon had to confront this fast-paced and highly competitive motorcycle market of Bangladesh. He needed to meet the corporate goal of becoming the market leader by the year 2025. On the one hand, Hero was comparatively a late entrant; on the other hand, the market accommodated almost all popular global brands such as Bajaj, TVS and Honda. The high growth economy with a rising middle class and a favourable government policy had made the Bangladeshi motorcycle industry quite lucrative for the global manufacturers. Upon its entrance, Hero found a price-sensitive market where it soon became number two by adopting the cost-leadership strategy. However, the incessant price-cutting by the players led to the price war, and every company was losing profit. The resulting situation had created a strong challenge for Aslam as achieving the market leadership through cost-leadership seemed to be an impractical strategy. Towards the end of the 2019–2020 sales-year, Aslam introduced a new variant of Splendor Plus to the entry cc segment with some new features and a slightly higher price. Receiving a significant positive customer response, Aslam was seriously considering sailing away from cost-leadership. Now, Aslam was in a dilemma as he needed to choose from the three alternatives of adopting the differentiation strategy, namely, differentiation, focussed differentiation and broad differentiation.

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Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

This case study discussion will enable students to: • Understand and evaluate the steel industry’s nature, opportunities, threats and challenges in an emerging market such as Bangladesh.• Review the techniques used to analyse competition and attractiveness of an industry using Porter’s five forces model. • Identify the corporate-level strategic decisions that can impact the survival and growth of a single business/product company in a highly competitive market. • Evaluate amongst different types of corporate-level growth strategies and their appropriate applications. • Synthesise various internal, industry and market-related information into the selection and justification of any particular corporate-level growth strategy.

BSRM group established Bangladesh’s first-ever steel mill in 1952. For around 70 years, BSRM had been leading the steel industry of Bangladesh with a single product – long steel. Over the recent decade (2010–2020), Bangladesh had been one of the world’'s fastest-growing economies. As the economic development was closely tied with the consumption of steel products, per capita steel consumption in Bangladesh became more than double. Moving from 24 kg in 2010, per capita steel consumption became 55 kg in 2021. Industry experts predicted the per capita steel consumption to be 75 kg by 2024, indicating an enormous scope for the steel industry to grow. Moreover, the industry’s growth momentum was predicted to continue until the nation became a developed one in 2041. This growth momentum kept attracting new competitors to this business. Nevertheless, BSRM maintained the market leadership by dint of its first mover’s advantage, superior quality, branding, innovation and large-scale operations and ultimately accumulated substantial free cash flow over the years. Now, Aameir Alihussain, the Managing Director and CEO of BSRM, was concerned about managing the growth of his business. Would BSRM continue to concentrate on producing steel and building forte by the backward and forward integration of the value chain? Or should the firm opt for some related diversification? Alternatively, was it the right time for BSRM to consider opportunities for unrelated diversification? While opportunities were many, the amount for investment was limited. Thus, Alihussain was in a dilemma pursuing the right corporate-level growth strategy for the overall sustainability of his business in the long run.

This case can be taught in the corporate-level strategy chapter of a core course on strategic management at the undergraduate programs. This case would facilitate students to comprehend the context of corporate-level strategies in managing the growth of a business in an emerging market.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of human resource management (HRM) practices on the market performance of manufacturing industries in Bangladesh. As one of the pioneer studies, it is hoped that this research will convince organizations that by adopting systematic and efficient HRM practices, they will achieve competitive advantages.

A quantitative survey was used to gather data from publicly listed, large manufacturing companies in Bangladesh. Modified questionnaires were used to measure the adoption of HRM practices and the perceived market performance of the organizations. The statistical programme, SPSS, was used to analyse and interpret the results.

The study revealed that HRM practices have a positive impact on organizations’ market performance. However, among different HRM practices, the performance appraisal seems to have the highest impact. Among the others, employee training and development, and the compensation practices were shown to have higher positive impacts than recruitment and selection practices.

The paper concludes that in order to improve their competitiveness and gain competitive advantages, business organizations in Bangladesh need to adopt systematic HRM practices. The paper's findings will encourage the next generation of business entrepreneurs to develop systematic HRM practices and corporate management culture in Bangladesh.

The paper validates the effectiveness of the US and European developed HRM practices in an Eastern developing country context. This is one of the pioneer studies which followed methodological rigor to validate the much discussed HRM‐performance relationship in Bangladesh.

The chicken sandwich is familiar fast food, not only in Bangladesh but also all over the world. The purpose of this paper is to make a comparative analysis of nutrient composition of this bakery product.

For the study, four well reputed food industries of Chittagong city are selected: Well food (sample 1), Sizzle (sample 2), Food fair (sample 3), and Bonoful (sample 4). Among the parameters, the following were analyzed: ash, total protein, total lipid, water soluble protein, total sugar, reducing sugar, non‐reducing sugar and some mineral content. The nutrient composition was measured by using standard procedure and minerals were measured by using atomic absorption spectroscopy.

Proximate analysis indicated total protein content in the range of 11.73 to 16.18 gm/100 gm, while water soluble protein content varied from 0.006 to 0.029 gm/100 gm in the samples. Total sugar ranged between 3.5 and 6.46 gm/100 gm and lipid was high in sample no 4 (34.83 gm/100 gm). The sample no 2 is considered to be superior as it contained the highest amount of minerals such as potassium (76.58 mg/100 gm), calcium (234.83 mg/100 gm), manganese (70.50 ppm) and zinc (106.33 ppm).

The results of this research can be utilized to improve the nutritive value of foods and might be helpful in creating public awareness.

The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of the psychosocial work environment on the turnover of civil service cadre officers in rural areas in Bangladesh.

Physical intimidation, mental health and well-being, organisational impediments, decision latitude, psychological job demands and social interaction were developed as variables to examine in relation to job satisfaction and turnover. This study gathers 406 responses from Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) cadre officers in rural areas to test the hypotheses.

The findings indicate that physical intimidation increases employee turnover, whereas psychosocial job demand decreases it. Physical intimidation reduces job satisfaction, whereas decision flexibility and social interaction enhance job satisfaction, hence reducing the turnover of civil service cadre officers in rural Bangladesh.

This research contributes to the creation of context-specific and targeted public sector support, particularly the interventions and policies addressing the work environment in rural areas.

The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) sustainable compact is evident for many labor-intensive industries in emerging economies. This study aims to develop a sustainable human resource (HR) practice model for a labor-intensive industry from the evidence of the Bangladeshi ready-made garments (RMG) sector.

The study tests the factors identified from the literature for model validation. A total of 22 HR function items were used in a survey of 800 randomly selected respondents from the RMG sector in Bangladesh. The factor analysis (both exploratory and confirmatory) techniques were applied to explore and validate the model.

The study findings reveal that the factory management and policymakers should focus on sustainable HR practices for the betterment of a labor-intensive industry. In detail, the staffing function involves strategic HR planning, recruitment and selection and perfect employee placement; training and development functions entail proper organizational orientation, various training and development programs and employees’ career management and growth; the motivation function necessitates job design, fairness in the appraisal, practicing good organizational citizenship behavior with sound rewarding system and compensation packages; and finally, the maintenance function entails healthy and safe working environment, good communication and relationship management.

The study is original in developing a sustainable HR practice model with the alignment of ILO’s three inter-linked sustainability compact for a labor-intensive industry from an emerging economy perspective. The study’s outcomes will be a torchbearer for any labor-intensive industry’s sustainable HR practice from an emerging economy across the globe.

This study aims to examine the relationship between human resource management (HRM) practices and informal workplace learning.

Data were collected from a sample of 381 employees working as heads of the department of branches in private commercial banks of Bangladesh. Hypotheses were tested by using structural equation modelling-partial least square.

Findings of the study revealed that HRM practices such as selective hiring, extensive training, performance appraisal, compensation practices, empowerment and information-sharing, significantly positively related with informal workplace learning.

Based on the situated learning and organizational support theory, this study is empirically testing how HRM practices influence informal workplace learning.