Contemporary Strategic Management: Case Studies and Elevator Pitches

This online library for study material provides case studies and elevator pitches on contemporary strategic management. The content covers managing people, strategy, and more. The case studies explore challenges faced by the Sandbanks Hotel and the electronic retail sector of Australia. Elevator pitches suggest solutions for Netflix and Zappos.

Running head: Contemporary Strategic Management
Contemporary Strategic Management
Student’s Name
University Name
Author’s Name

2Contemporary Strategic Management
Table of Contents
Elevator Pitch for Topic 6..........................................................................................................3
My Response..............................................................................................................................3
Introduction............................................................................................................................3
Problem solutions and benefits...............................................................................................3
CTA........................................................................................................................................3
Elevator Pitch for Topic 8..........................................................................................................4
Introduction............................................................................................................................4
Problem Solution and Benefits...............................................................................................4
CTA........................................................................................................................................4
Case Study Activity for Topic 9.................................................................................................5
Case Name: Managing people [hands, hearts and minds].........................................................5
My response...............................................................................................................................5
Outcome of the Case study.....................................................................................................6
Conclusion..............................................................................................................................7
Case Study Activity for Topic 7.................................................................................................7
Case Name: Managing strategy [watch where you are going]..................................................7
My Response..............................................................................................................................7
Five Forces Analysis of the electronic Retail sector of Australia..............................................7
Bargaining power of the Suppliers.........................................................................................7
Bargaining power of buyers...................................................................................................7

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Threat of Substitute products..................................................................................................8
Rivalry in the industry............................................................................................................8
Threat of New Entrants..........................................................................................................8
Strengths of the Electronic Retail sector................................................................................9
Weaknesses of the Electronic Retail sector............................................................................9
Reference List..........................................................................................................................10

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Elevator Pitch for Topic 6
My Response
Introduction
Operating in the VUCA business model requires the management to deal straightforward
with propositions regarding hiring employees and observing how exponential models have
flourished in the VUCA context.
Problem solutions and benefits
The company should resort to the policy of Light Foot-printing. The company was itself born
of a VUCA model. In order to avoid payment of late fees to Blockbuster Reed Hastings
founded the company. Since the company deals with digitalisation and big data handling, I
suppose Netflix should focus on a model of extreme agility (Anitha & Begum, 2016). They
should respond to any business change and b able to orient them with any change in the
macro environment. Besides, I suggest openness of business operations is a complimentary
policy.
The business environment in a VUCA world is very conservative. As such, it is necessary to
foster strong relationships with various local companies or clients and public services
(Calhoun, O’Neill & Douglas, 2018).
CTA
The company should focus on context agility and stakeholder agility. Netflix should
incorporate content in their web series that speaks of the positives of the VUCA world. Local
distribution channels have to be given great value in order to generate value for them (Deery
& Jago, 2015).

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Elevator Pitch for Topic 8
My Response
The ten core values are key to the successful organizational culture at Zappos. The hiring
process and the job training facility and process is very essential for the success of the
organisation.
Introduction
The specific management strategies of Zappos make their workplace sensible and the work
regime filled with fun (Diefenbach & Deelmann, 2016). In my opinion, the team recognition
process during the hiring process is their first step towards employee management.
Problem Solution and Benefits
The arrangement fir meeting with employees of the company and the department meeting
makes the workplace interesting. The best thing about the organisation is that they put much
importance in the hiring process (Faloye, 2014). Other than that, the weird culture of offering
money for leaving the company is interesting. I suppose that receiving opinion from the
employees regarding how to develop the Zappos culture is an interesting part of their work
culture.
CTA
I appreciate the merger move of the company to team up with Amazon. This would further
enhance their business possibilities owing to their online sales strategy and viral marketing
process. However, I suppose that they keep expanding their IT infrastructure (Freeman,
2017). The adaptation of mobile is good move that the company have taken. However they
would have to find application of the mobile in more significant business operations.

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Case Study Activity for Topic 9
Case Name: Managing people [hands, hearts and minds]
My response
The high rise in labour turnover rate and difficulties in retaining employees are an issue faced
by many exponents of the hotel sector. The case study deals with the challenges that the
manager of the Sandbanks Hotel faced in context of staff retention and customer satisfaction
in the hotel (Guchait, Paşamehmetoğlu, & Dawson, 2014).
Famous hospitality groups use the strategy of inner stakeholder dialogue to enhance
their target market and also introduce new product and renewed services in the company.
This project has the potential to facilitate exchange of knowledge among tourist related
businesses, policy makers along with tourism focused academics. The project was named
Destination Feel-good.
Under the implementation process of this project, cafes were opened and a network in order
to share ideas of best and innovative practices had been established. This is aimed to foster a
co-creation of destination as well as wellbeing products. Besides, the case study also
implement an understanding of the characteristics of wellbeing of tourism employees (Kalia,
Kaur & Singh, 2018). This is being done by debating the ideas of the pioneers of the tourism
businesses.
The Hotel, Sandbanks, is a hospitality group owned by the FJB hotels. The hotel situated in
the Poole Dorset, primarily provides a seaside destination to the families. It incorporates
facilities like water sports, within and outside on the beach (Killett et al. 2016). The Hotel
also provides for conference bookings and wedding ceremonies, all throughout the year.

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One of the best prospects of the Ideas cafes has been the ability of the University along with
other stakeholders, for instance local authorities to interconnect with business communities in
order to create and inspire some innovative ideas that might ensure wellbeing of both the
employees and the guests of the hotel. One of the discussions that took place in association
with the HR manager of the hotel (Kochukalam & Joseph, 2015). The manager organised an
informal conversation between the various participants of the Destination Feel Good team.
The discussion centred on evaluation of the success of the measure that the hotel authorities
had implemented in lieu of the employees’ perspective.
Outcome of the Case study
The staff members highlighted particular areas which might prove to be useful in
encouraging the employees and ensure their retention. The first issue that was identified was
the necessity to make the work shifts and working patterns flexible for the employees.
Besides the management also needed to be more pro-active regarding the personal issue that
the employees faced inside the workplace (Kurnia et al. 2015). In case of international
employees the need to grant longer periods of holidays required to be granted. Besides the
employees discussed that they appreciated the mangers’ positive approach in considering
emergency situations like medical appointments and granting leaves for the same.
The employees also required to work as an integrated unit for ensuring a smoother workflow
within the organisational context (Lukic, 2016). This is why the employees asked for granting
leave for them to communicate and socialise among themselves so that they could know each
other properly.
The employees also acknowledged the policy of internal promotions and appreciated
the step taken by the hotel authorities in this regard. Lastly, the discussion also incorporated
the context of employee appraisal. The staff acknowledged that the appraisal process fostered

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their confidence and encouraged them to serve better (Price, 2016). It is essential to mention
in this regard that employees’ empowerment and happiness is directly linked to
organisational performance in the hospitality business.
Conclusion
Analysing the course of progress and outcome of the project, it can be commented that it
provided the opportunity of bringing along stakeholders of various contexts associating the
business like local authorities and business communities. Moreover, this project also makes it
evident that a positive strategy regarding evaluating the employees’ wellbeing have great
influence in fostering employees’ engagement. Moreover, it can also be concluded that
collaboration of academic and commercial platforms can help to bring about additional value
to the business and also create a new business model based on employee engagement.
Case Study Activity for Topic 7
Case Name: Managing strategy [watch where you are going]
My Response
Five Forces Analysis of the electronic Retail sector of Australia
Bargaining power of the Suppliers
The bargaining power that the suppliers have in the ecommerce industry of Australia is low
to moderate standard. The customer market in this case is maintained by the ecommerce
brands entirely (Robinson et al. 2014). Hence the suppliers have to compulsorily abide by the
business rules set by them. In spite of having more than one players in the supplier market in
the electronic retail sector of Australia, they are bound by the rules of the marketers. One
reason is that the suppliers are getting a huge target market which would have incurred a huge
cost to acquire.

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Bargaining power of buyers
The bargaining strength of the buyers is quite high in the electronic retail market. The major
reason is that many entrants are operating in the business sector. The customers do not need
to pay for switching from one brand to another. However, all the electronic rertail brands are
trying to retain their customers. This is an ideal position of market entry, since brand loyalty
has not yet been achieved by the peers (Saini & Khurana, 2015). This is why customer
acquisition would be easy.
Threat of Substitute products
The risk from the substitute products are in two terms. One is that, many of the physical retail
brands are opening new electronic store under their own banner. Another is the share of same
customer market that the physical market holds. The product sold in electronic market do not
have market monopoly. They share their customer with the physical markets. However, this
would not create problem for the new entrants. Any participant of the electronic market have
to go through this situation.
Rivalry in the industry
The primary reason for rivalry in the industry is due to the maximum number of players in
the sector. There is dominance of both local as well as international ecommerce brands in the
business. Other than Amazon, Alibaba and EBay other smaller entrants like Coles, Harvey
Norman also exist. However, the electronic retail business is in vogue and is still expanding.
The market is still far from being saturated. Hence the chances for the new market entrants is
still high. Since 2016, major international peers like Costco, Walmart and so on have entered
the business context (Zhu, 2015).
Threat of New Entrants

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The chances of new entrants’ coming to this business sector is low in the country. The major
reason behind this are the huge investment that is required behind human resource, marketing
and electronic portal set up. However, this is a favourable condition for the entrepreneurs
who are ready to enter this business domain. As an outcome, they would enjoy the benefits of
limited potential peers.
Strengths of the Electronic Retail sector
The major strength of the Australian retail sector is the continuous rise of the consumer
spending, which implies that the online retailers have high chance to develop their business
within this sector. Other than that, the current position of the Australian Dollar is another
factor that attracts various technology vendors to Australia. This would attract entrepreneurs.
Weaknesses of the Electronic Retail sector
The greatest weaknesses in the E-commerce retail sector is the security issues in the web
transactions. Since, this is B2B business, thus risk is prevalent in the business. Another
potential weakness is the paucity of serious investment form the major investors. The
investor’s generally prefer to invest with the potential companies only.

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Reference List
Anitha, J., & Begum, F. N. (2016). Role of organisational culture and employee commitment
in employee retention. ASBM Journal of Management, 9(1), 17.
Calhoun, J. R., O’Neill, M., & Douglas, A. C. (2018). An Examination of Second Language
Education Provision among US and European Hospitality and Tourism Management
Schools. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Education, 1-10.
Deery, M., & Jago, L. (2015). Revisiting talent management, work-life balance and retention
strategies. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 27(3),
453-472.
Diefenbach, S., & Deelmann, T. (2016). Organizational Approaches to Answer a VUCA
World. In Managing in a VUCA World (pp. 197-208). Springer, Cham.
Faloye, D. O. (2014). The adoption of e-commerce in small businesses: an empirical
evidence from retail sector in Nigeria. Journal of Business and Retail Management
Research, 8(2).
Freeman, B. (2017). An introduction to India's skills system to facilitate increased Australia-
India bilateral engagement.
Guchait, P., Paşamehmetoğlu, A., & Dawson, M. (2014). Perceived supervisor and co-worker
support for error management: Impact on perceived psychological safety and service
recovery performance. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 41, 28-37.
Kalia, P., Kaur, N., & Singh, T. (2018). E-Commerce in India: evolution and revolution of
online retail. In Mobile Commerce: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and
Applications (pp. 736-758). IGI Global.

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Killett, A., Burns, D., Kelly, F., Brooker, D., Bowes, A., La Fontaine, J., ... & O'NEILL, M.
A. R. T. I. N. (2016). Digging deep: how organisational culture affects care home
residents' experiences. Ageing & Society, 36(1), 160-188.
Kochukalam, C., & Joseph, J. (2015). Integrated Self Help Group (I-SHG)-The Potential
Maximized Through a Sustainable Social Business Model.
Kurnia, S., Choudrie, J., Mahbubur, R. M., & Alzougool, B. (2015). E-commerce technology
adoption: A Malaysian grocery SME retail sector study. Journal of Business
Research, 68(9), 1906-1918.
Lukic, R. (2016). Energy efficiency in the food retail. Business Excellence and
Management, 6(1), 16-35.
Price, R. (2016). Controlling routine front line service workers: an Australian retail
supermarket case. Work, employment and society, 30(6), 915-931.
Robinson, R. N., Kralj, A., Solnet, D. J., Goh, E., & Callan, V. (2014). Thinking job
embeddedness not turnover: Towards a better understanding of frontline hotel worker
retention. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 36, 101-109.
Saini, A. K., & Khurana, V. K. (2015). Managing Organizational Transformation in the Era
of VUCA. SANJAY DIXIT, 69.
Zhu, C. (2015). Organisational culture and technology-enhanced innovation in higher
education. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 24(1), 65-79.