Guest editorial

Citation

Sardana, G.D. and Thatchenkery, T. (2010), "Guest editorial", Management Decision, Vol. 48 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/md.2010.00148caa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Management Decision, Volume 48, Issue 3

About the Guest Editors

G.D. SardanaProfessor Emeritus and Director. Institute of Management Education, Ghaziabad (India). He is a mechanical engineer and earned his PhD in areas of productivity measurement and management from Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. Dr Sardana has served industry for over 40 years both in the public and private sector, occupying senior managerial positions in ABB and Singer (India). He has authored two books on productivity measurement and management, and edited six books on business cases. His book Productivity Management (Narosa, 1998) is recognized as a reference book on the subject of productivity; it won Best Book Award of the year from Delhi Management Association and Indian Society for Training and Development. He has to his credit over 75 papers published in national and international journals and presented at conferences. Three of his papers have won Best Paper Awards from the Indian Institution of Industrial Engineering. His research interests are in two streams. The first stream incorporates ongoing research in areas of business and performance modeling, corporate performance and productivity. The second stream of research is in areas of collaborative comparative studies of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, in areas of small and medium scale enterprises and business environment. His teaching interests include supply chain management, service operations management, assessing business excellence, and productivity management.

Tojo ThatchenkeryProfessor and Director of the Masters in Science program in Organization Development and Knowledge Management at the School of Public Policy, George Mason Universirty, Virginia. He is also a member of the NTL Institute of Applied Behavioral Science and the Taos Institute. His recent books include Appreciative Inquiry and Knowledge Management: A Social Constructionist Perspective (2007), Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn, and Appreciative Sharing of Knowledge: Leveraging Knowledge Management for Strategic Change (2005). Dr Thatchenkery has to his credit more than 125 papers published in international journals and presented at conferences. Dr Thatchenkery has extensive consulting experience in change management, organization development, and knowledge management. Dr Thatchenkery has over 20 years of experience in teaching at various public policy, MBA, organization development, and executive programs in the US, Europe, Australia, and Asia. He founded the Masters in New Professional Studies program at George Mason University and has served as its Director since its inception in 1995 until 2001. He also founded the Organizational Learning Laboratory at the George W. Johnson Learning Center and served as its Director from 1995 to 2000.

Case study is one of the most effective pedagogies in imparting knowledge-in-use for management students as well as the busy practitioner. A business case is a description of an actual situation or an event involving issues, problems, and conflicts requiring a resolution or decision making. It is typically a record of business issues, and a historical and clinical study of a situation which gets evolved in an organization because of the change dynamics in the business environment. A case brings out the facts, information, opinions, mindsets, and prejudices which influence the decision making.

An International Conference on Business Cases was held on November 26-27, 2009 at the Institute of Management Education, Ghaziabad (India) with the objective of advancing the cause and methodology of case writing and to provide a platform for academicians, practitioners, managers, and scholars to present research and exchange academic and applied insights with a focus on strategic management. A solid number of submissions came from a global pool of scholars from India, the USA, France, Japan, Canada, Belgium, Australia, Poland, Thailand and the UK. Distinguished scholars such as Richard Lynch (Middlesex University, London), Iijima Masaki (Aichi Gakuin University, Japan), Gary Stockport (University of Western Australia), Paul Lapoule (Advancia Negocia, Paris), Manmohan Chaubey (Penn State University, Du Bois) John Walsh (Shinawatra University, Bangkok), Zorah Abu Kassim (Universiti Malaysia Sarawak), and the editors themselves presented cases and led interactive discussions in various concurrent sessions. This special issue of Management Decision is a selection from the cases while some other cases found their way to other leading management journals.

The cases depict real life issues and analyze them from multiple perspectives. Some focus on comparison of performance. Others refer to application of analytical tools in various situations confronted with choice of alternate options for decisions. Still others examine the aftermath of decisions taken. However, the common thread across all cases included in this special issue is the theme of enhancing organizational effectiveness through strategic initiatives.

The opening paper by Goel, Rana, and Rastogi offer an analysis of the extent, strategy and imperatives of knowledge management (KM) to achieve its strategic objectives at National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), a major public sector undertaking in India. Information technology has been accorded an important role in KM literature. The paper examines this perspective and the role it plays in creating a virtual organization for knowledge sharing purposes. The authors conclude that KM has helped the organization to manage and institutionalize knowledge management processes and to create organizational culture for managing and motivating knowledge workers.

The second paper by Losenth, Maheshwari and Jagoda focuses on key Issues in managing technology transfer projects in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The paper introduces a systematic approach to managing technology transfer in SMEs. The authors have studied a leading packaging firm in Western Canada and illustrate the problems, missed opportunities, and the challenges faced in managing technology transfer. The stage-gate model and key issues presented in the paper will significantly help managers in SMEs in approaching technology transfer systematically.

Lapoule in the paper that follows takes up issues confronting Carrefour and its competitors in India. Lapoule draws from his extensive research and points out that in response to maturity in their home markets, grocery super market global giants such as Wal-Mart, Carrefour, Tesco, and Metro are involved in a headlong rush into the liberalizing economics of Asia as they battle for market share. The world’s projected fastest-growing economy for the next 30 years appears to be a more complicated country than China or Brazil and Carrefour has many times delayed its retail and cash and carry plans in India. The case helps readers improve their skills to analyze an international retailing strategy, carry internal and external diagnostics on a specific market, and use appropriate market analysis tools.

The case from Gautam and Agarwal showcases the experience of Prime Technology in arriving at decisions related to the brand positioning and logistics involved in the import of a perishable commodity. The paper provides insights about the strategic decisions on diversification adopted by the company to increase its profits and the outcome that followed. The case explicates some of the essential imperatives related to the logistics and brand positioning while importing a product which is not popular in the domestic market and especially if it happens to be a perishable commodity.

Vijayvargiya and Dey’s case focus on Caparo India Ltd., which wanted to select one common logistics provider for all their units in Northern India for export-import logistics, warehousing, packaging and value added services in order to minimize impact of problems related to negotiation power, service commitments, customer satisfaction, higher transportation costs, and time delays due to multiple points of contact. The case study provides a structured decision-making model for selection of the most suitable logistics provider using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP).

The next case by Mital pertains to the application of queuing theory for congestion analysis, resource planning of medical staff (outpatient services) and estimation of number of beds (inpatient services) in a medium-sized hospital. The study adopts an analytical approach based on real life data in accordance with the service level prescribed by the hospital administration. The study challenges taken for granted assumptions and aims to replace thumb-rule approaches and relies on queuing analysis providing valuable insights to a hospital system.

Laeequddin and Sardana’s case study captures the circumstances and conditions of everyday business situations in a longitudinal study covering three years experience of two organizations in business operations. It is an extensive study of Express Flexi Pack, a flexible packaging material converting company based in Dubai (UAE). The study tests the established theories on trust to understand what breaks trust in customer supplier relationship and how to repair it. The authors stress that in the context of business-to-business relationships, a partner’s characteristics such as benevolence, honesty, reliability, credibility, and integrity can only help the partners in evaluating the other partner as trust worthy. Once the partners engage in the relationship building the orientation will change towards perspectives of rational risk and if the risk level exceeds their bearable limits, trust will break.

Saxena and Khandelwal’s case study, the final one in the issue analyzes the strategic moves and success story of a company which started its operations as a small manufacturer of casual clothing in 1970s and is currently one of the most recognized apparels retail brands in the world. The authors explore the relationship between Giordano’s mission and its supporting pillars built on corporate and brand values. They also show how these values can help a company develop its core competencies and differential advantages. Above all, the study provides helpful hints in understanding the business model of the company and evaluating its performance.

Despite the real-life nature of the case and its immediate applicability to business situations, many management educators have been slow to recognize its potential to become a core teaching methodology. Though some of the most prestigious business schools are known for demonstrating the viability and relevance of the case method, many others have gone in the direction of over emphasizing abstract quantitative analysis often removed from real life scenarios. We hope that the papers presented in this special issue will encourage management educators and practitioners to appreciate the case method for its teaching and knowledge creating value and encourage a productive dialogue. We also invite our readers to submit cases and participate in the next International Conference on Business Cases scheduled for end November/early December 2010 at Ghaziabad, India.

As special issue editors we thank Emerald Group Publishing, the journal editor John Peters, and executive editor Kate Snowden for inviting us to put together this volume. We appreciate Emerald’s interest in the case method and promoting the scholarly contributions in this issue.

G.D. SardanaInstitute of Management Education, Ghaziabad, India

Tojo ThatchenkerySchool of Public Policy, George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia, USA