個案總覽

Singapore Airlines Ltd (SIA) is an aviation company headquartered in Singapore. It is majority-owned by Temasek Holdings, a Singapore government investment and holding company. SIA adopts various strategies to sustain and grow its business operations, even in the midst of the Covid 19-pandemic, while devising plans to propel it toward a bright future. The evolving key issues and challenges SIA faces include: (a) Covid-19 pandemic travel restrictions that have impaired SIA's business operations; (b) the lack of sustainable alternative revenue generating options outside of commercial and cargo flight services; (c) its inability to cover expenses and recurring payments that affected the optimization of its commercial flights operations that eventually led to its underutilization; (d) damage to its corporate reputation stemming from backlash from environmental activism groups in Singapore and other eco-conscious customers; (e) developing viable business strategies to bounce back while navigating the post-Covid-19 pandemic era. Aside from these, when examined from the decarbonization and environmental sustainability across its operations front, there are strategic systematic issues in SIA's usage of its new-generation aircrafts, adoption and implementation of low-carbon technology. The case is intended to help participants to better appreciate how an airline operates to sustain its business operations and growth.

Alibaba Group Holding Limited is an operator of online mobile marketplaces in retail and wholesale trade. They are a multinational technology conglomerate that has a total of 115 subsidiaries with 785 companies. Some notable platforms owned by Alibaba include Taobao, Tmall, Aliexpress and Lazada. The company is involved in logistics, retail and wholesale, local consumer businesses, cloud services including network virtualization services, large scale computing, security and big data analytics. They also partake in innovation initiatives and digital media and entertainment. Their headquarters is located in China. They also have offices located in several countries around the world including Singapore, India, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US). Over the past decade, Alibaba has seen exponential revenue growth. Understanding Jack Ma's (co-founder and former executive chairman of Alibaba Group) leadership behaviours and Alibaba's organizational culture enabled us to appreciate how the group managed complex and intertwined issues during his tenure. Now that the baton has been passed to succeeding Chairman and Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang, the world's eyes have turned to Zhang to witness how he leverages on Alibaba's current position and sustains its business operations and rapid growth.

The case analysis facilitates deeper understanding, critical thinking and application of concepts pertaining to organizational environment and strategic planning using the example of Starbucks, an American multinational chain that positions itself as a premier roaster, marketer and retailer of specialty coffee. The case illustrates how the macro and competitive environments impact the Starbucks' strategies and performance, focusing in particular on macro elements such as Economy, Technology, Laws and Regulations, Demographics, Social and Natural Environment/Ecology. The competitive environment analysis explores the five key elements of Industry Rivalry, New Entrants, Customers, Substitutes and Complements and Suppliers. Students are encouraged to investigate the implementation of appropriate effective strategies after gaining a thorough comprehension of the external and internal environmental factors.