Question

Company: Emirates Airlines

Your STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT FIELD REPORT should answer the following questions:

1.     Design an innovative ethical model which is fit to UAE organizations to handle Strategic changes.

2.     Formulate a practical strategy to develop a new value chain based on the competitive advantages.

3.     Determine the problems and challenges faced by the originations at the time of implementing their new strategy with your practical knowledge.

4. Judge the corporate formulation strategy and suggest your innovative plan based on the field study.   

Answer 1

1. Design an innovative ethical model which is fit to UAE organizations to handle Strategic changes.

In a complex global economy characterized by rapidly evolving standards for the production and management of information, services, and experiences, leaders must exhibit flexibility and a capacity for innovation. Academically rigorous and industry focused, the Global Executive Master’s is specially designed for working professionals, preparing them to confidently create, manage, and lead design process–driven organizations.

Over the course of about 18 months, you will join a select group of approximately 25 peers in a series of three-day seminars held at Parsons Paris, combined with online learning, hands-on studios, and global experiences in New York and Shanghai. Through this program, requiring only about 18 days away from the office, you will gain in-depth practical knowledge of

• Design thinking and its power to create positive change globally
• Sustainable business models
• Key principles of the evolving global economy
• Design innovation and leadership
• Management skills for creative projects and teams
• Governance, regulations, and how both are transforming today’s global economy

In addition, you will build lifelong professional and personal relationships with your classmates, program faculty, and industry leaders.

1. Formulate a practical strategy to develop a new value chain based on the competitive advantages.

Michael Porter argues that there are only two types of competitive advantage:

• competitive advantage that comes from differentiation – providing some kind of unique value to particular customers
  .
• competitive advantage that comes from having the cost leadership position

While it would be nice to have both, under normal conditions, the two forms of competitive advantage are mutually exclusive and, if businesses fail to choose, they get stuck in the middle.

Michael Porter believes that these competitive advantages derive from the activities the business does which are:

• done better than competitors;
  .
• done differently than competitors;
  .
• that create unique benefits; or
  .
• done at a lower cost than competitors.

To understand the source of competitive advantage then you need to perform a value chain analysis which identifies the separate value activities.

The Formal Elements of Value Chain Analysis

Porter built his value chain analysis model on a manufacturing business – back in 1985 there were many more around in the United States.

He split the value chain into two parts:

• Primary value activities
  .
• Support value activities

Primary value activities included:

• Inbound logistics
  .
• Operations
  .
• Outbound logistics
  .
• Marketing & sales
  .
• Customer service

Support value activities include:

• Procurement
  .
• Technology
  .
• Human resources
  .
• Firm infrastructure

This is a very general, helicopter view of a business and when you’re carrying out your value chain analysis you are supposed to go much more specific and detailed for your business.

You keep analysing activities which give a differentiation advantage (or have the potential to do so) or disadvantage and which have a cost advantage or disadvantage.

The idea of value chain analysis is that you understand how your business compares with competitors at a detailed level. You can go into a lot of detail for your own business but you’ll be surprised at what you can learn about your competitors by talking to ex-employees (who may already work for you), suppliers, customers and being the customer yourself.

The value chain has been criticised as too prescriptive because the value chain elements don’t fit all types of businesses. This is missing the point entirely.

You don’t have to follow Michael Porter’s categorisation – and I suspect that he’d be astonished if you did – but if you want to understand the sources of your competitive advantages in terms of differentiation and cost, you do need to perform a value chain analysis which fits your business/industry.

1. Determine the problems and challenges faced by the originations at the time of implementing their new strategy with your practical knowledge.

As a rising product-management executive prepares for an important presentation to her firm’s senior team, she notices that something looks off in the market share numbers. She immediately asks her assistant to verify the figures. He digs in and finds an error in the data supplied by the market research department, and the executive makes the necessary corrections. Disaster averted! The presentation goes very well, and the executive is so delighted that she makes an on-the-spot award to her assistant. She concludes, “You know, we should make it a policy to double-check these numbers every time.” No one thinks to inform the people in Market Research of the error, much less work with the group to make sure that the proper data is supplied the next time.

4. Judge the corporate formulation strategy and suggest your innovative plan based on the field study.   

Strategy is distinguished as a widely discussed issue inside the scientific world. Strategic Planning constitutes an appropriate and systematic method of strategy formulation and implementation. Characteristic models of Strategic Planning are initially presented in this paper in order to analyze the characteristics and differentiations in different levels. This paper presents an unconventional Strategic Spatial Planning model in the Municipal Unity of Thermi (Thessaloniki) for the strategic arrangement of the emerging development spatial issues. The main aim of the proposed model is the identification and formulation of Specific Actions Programs which are prioritized through a composite application of integrated multicriteria decision-making methods.