Introduction
Corporate management plays a rather important role within the framework of the current business environments because it is closely linked to the day-to-day operations that have to be performed. Corporate management principles are also necessary to create consistency between strategic plans, company budgets, and business plans so that these three could be approved by the Board. It is also directly connected to corporate policy and strategies because there will always have to be recommendations that are aimed at improving the existing state of affairs. The Board is responsible for making these decisions in the most appropriate form. The execution of these decisions is supervised and reviewed by the Board as well. On a bigger scale, the jurisdiction of the Board allows it to make sure that the policies and legislations are applicable and realistic. Another important point for any organization is to function on the basis of a custom-designed Code of Business Conduct and Ethics. Corporate management plays a rather important role in the life of any organization because it is closely connected with the organizational committees as well.
The latter also takes part in the prior review of all the issues experienced by the organization. Corporate management responsibilities are always delegated to all the participating parties. Here, the idea is that the Board is in charge of all the tasks that do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Committee and corporate management practices. Within the framework of the current research, the author is going to address the most important points regarding the strategic and corporate management and conduct a literature review of the approaches that are characteristic of Dubai Aviation Engineering Projects (DAEP). By means of this research project, the author expects to identify the weakest sides of the organization’s strategic approach and come up with a series of recommendations that could hypothetically improve the existing state of affairs at the company. In order to be able to evaluate the environment at DAEP, the researcher will conduct a detailed review of corporate management principles first to gain more insight into the most common drawbacks that are recurrently experienced by the majority of businesses.
Review of Strategic and Corporate Management
The concept of strategic management revolves around the idea of formulating and employing specific initiatives that are developed by the top management of an organization. These decisions are commonly based on a considerate assessment of both external and internal business environments that form the field of competition for the organization (Keupp, Palmie & Gassmann 2012). The notion of strategy can be defined as a willingness to define long-term goals that can be achieved by means of adopting specific methodologies and allocating the available resources properly. In other words, strategic management is rather important when it comes to setting the direction for the organization and developing a consistent response to the complexity of environments in which the organization functions. Strategic management can also be seen as an amalgamation of strategic thinking and planning. The latter has to be influenced by in-depth analytics and produce the foundation for strategic thinking that is, in turn, responsible for a thoughtful synthesis of the available data (Priem, Li & Carr 2012). The notion of strategic planning can also be associated with specific control mechanisms that can be useful when an organization tries to implement a strategy. Therefore, strategic planning cannot be performed without strategy-making activities and proper strategic thinking. On the other hand, there is a possibility to describe strategic management as a complex process that includes two minor procedures – strategy formulation and strategy implementation. They are interconnected and may have a serious impact on the state of affairs within any organization.
Corporate management is another important business concept. It largely depends on the size of the organization, the number of managers, and the leadership style that is applied to achieve organizational objectives (Molina-Azorin 2012). As it has been mentioned in the introduction, the Board can be seen as the most influential party when it comes to corporate management because they are in charge of guiding the majority of corporate operations. Nonetheless, the Board of Directors, for example, can only serve as a set of business advisers because a daily interference with the decisions made by top managers can adversely impact the organizational style of the corporation. One of the most important points about corporate management is the presence of major divisions that dissect the corporate functions of each organizational team in an effective manner (Simon, Fischbach & Schoder 2014).
This task becomes rather easy in larger corporations because it requires them to include specific management staff teams that only deal with particular tasks. Corporate management can be used to make sure that the managerial structure of the organization is followed. The notion of corporate management can also be divided into two main styles in terms of decision-making – decentralized and centralized. The latter can be characterized as a process where low-level employees transfer the information to the management and top-level representatives are responsible for making the decision. While this kind of corporate management is rather time-consuming, it may lead to positive outcomes because only experienced and properly educated individuals have access to the decision-making procedure (Pamfilie, Petcu & Draghici 2012). Conversely, decentralized corporate management delegates the authority among each organizational division and department level. Another concept that has to be reviewed here is the impact of management styles on the corporate management process. This can be explained by the idea that a single person cannot make all the necessary decisions promptly. It becomes understandable that both decentralized and centralized management schemes increase the smoothness of organizational operations and eliminate the ambiguity (Cadez & Guilding 2012). Corporate and strategic management are recurrently developed to improve employee productivity.
The narrative on the Company
The company that will be reviewed within the framework of the current report is DAEP. This company was chosen because it puts their clients at the forefront of their practice. The company is aimed at providing world-class services that are related to aviation engineering. At all times, DAEP is willing to exceed investors’ expectations and do everything to develop, implement, maintain, and secure the employment of a comprehensive, integrated management system. There are several fundamental areas of recognition that are critically approached by DAEP so as to improve the corporate procedures and ensure that the commitment to meeting or exceeding the pre-set standards is also in place. For DAEP, this is one of the most relevant ideas and the fundamental areas mentioned above include (but are not limited to) security, environment, occupational health and safety, and risk management systems (Davis, Younis & Garrod 2016). The core focus of DAEP is the process of managing various airport construction projects all over the territory of the Emirati of Dubai.
So as to make sure that the company’s contractors and sub-contractors perform adequately, DAEP introduced a consultant whose task is to monitor their activities daily. This approach is expected to help DAEP manage their projects better at all times. Another area of focus is health because DAEP is willing to maintain the safety of its workers and minimize the impact of their actions on the environment. At all the organizational levels, each member of DAEP is committed to achieving organizational objectives and reaching the highest levels of performance in terms of environmental safety and employee health. This approach requires the management of DAEP to implement a number of specific requirements. First of all, the company always looks to meet the expectations of each investor in terms of the quality of the services or products that are delivered to the latter. Another responsibility of DAEP revolves around the development and implementation of an all-inclusive management system that would protect the environment (including the prevention of pollution and continuous improvement).
Another key objective at DAEP is to maintain the culture of occupational health and safety and keep the standards of performance at the highest level possible. All the objectives presented above are based on an efficient energy management practice that is designed to reduce energy consumption and revise the concept of energy usage (Derudder, Bassens & Witlox 2013). Also, the management at DAEP developed a risk management framework that they recurrently use across the whole organization in order to ensure that a coherent way to approach risks is in place. This helps DAEP to mitigate even the most significant risks. The company always makes sure that both contractors and consultants adhere to the principles outlined by the organizational policy. Overall, DAEP successfully complies with the industrial regulations and legal requirements that are relevant to their area of practice. As can be seen from the company’s profile, DAEP strives to ensure that all of its staff recognizes their role in the organization and a number of essential responsibilities that have to be complied with in order to meet the ultimate objectives of the company. This significantly impacts all the policies and procedures at DAEP because they recurrently review the management strategy and go all-out to improve the quality and safety of their services.
Difficulties Associated with the Strategy of the Company
The foremost issue associated with the strategy of DAEP revolved around the development of a decent infrastructure at one of the newest airports in Dubai – Al Maktoum. In other words, DAEP was not able to create a proper business alliance that would contribute to the successful construction project. This led to a serious misalignment among the organization’s stakeholders as the latter could not manage the situation appropriately. As a result, even though the company was given the green light from the chiefs, they struggled to align their work with the SP2020-plus initiative that was established by the International Airport of Dubai. The project was aimed at improving the passenger experience and improving the competitiveness of Dubai-based airports, but the organization lacked the ability to bring excellent services at that time. This did not allow them to tackle the issue appropriately. Overall, DAEP was aimed at awarding a contract on a new passenger terminal that would lead to an increase in airport capacity. This initiative would allow Al Maktoum airport to handle 27 million passengers (before, it could only handle approximately 5 million).
The contract was awarded to the contractors from Alec who have already teamed up with DAEP on several other projects (including the Concourse D located in Dubai International). The problem consisted in the fact that the contractor was not completely ready to do the specified job (Kovjanic 2014). Additionally, DAEP hired a project manager from another company (Turner & Townsend) so as to manage the expansion of the terminal. This led to the advent of a conflict that was based on a public-private partnership and the lack of potential of the work that had to be done by both sides. Even though they were open to all kinds of partnerships, they encountered the problem of receiving nothing but certain fund schemes from their partners. Instead of focusing on partnership (that is eventually the core of one of Dubai’s laws), both parties concentrated on loans and financing.
The issue here consists in the fact that any potential that is generated by the relationship between private and public sectors has to be utilized to demonstrate that there is an opportunity to improve the efficiency of corporate actions and increase productivity. This led to a situation where DAEP was put in a stressful situation that required them to consider their partnerships more thoroughly because not every new partner could be able to provide additional knowledge and demonstrate outstanding professional capabilities (Albeshr et al. 2015). Even though the expansion of Al Maktoum airport allowed DAEP to improve the state of affairs, they were still limited in terms of effective partnerships. This means that the approach of DAEP to its practices may not allow them to achieve their organizational goals in the future if they concentrate on funding initiatives instead of effective partnerships. If they decide to overlook the importance of strong managerial decisions, they will be exposed to the issues that would go beyond the organization’s local influence. Even the fact of being located in Dubai and facing a number of privileges may not facilitate the complexity of corporate decisions that have to be made at DAEP.
Recommendations
There are several recommendations that can help DAEP to overcome the backlash of their legal troubles and weak impact of strategic partnerships with local contractors and sub-contractors. First of all, there is a critical need to invest more in the research of the local market and collaborate more with local air carriers. For DAEP, it may be hard to manage worldwide operations because they tend to overlook local cultures and behaviors and focus on selling their products to overseas investors instead. This idea has nothing to do with either successful or unsuccessful marketing approaches because of the management team that disregards the core values of an effective global business. For instance, it may be rather significant to pay attention to the US-based clients because they differ diametrically from typical UAE or other local customers (Acuto 2014).
On a bigger scale, this means that the ways of interacting with the company’s products will also be different and the company will have to adjust to them and not merely sell seats in its airplanes. In the case where DAEP wants to apply a global model of functioning, they are subject to having an in-depth understanding of the local market before broadening their reach and establishing close relationships with marketing teams from all over the world. In other words, the days when it was possible to apply the same strategies worldwide are gone. It is recommended that DAEP’ global initiatives are tested for flexibility first so as to ensure that they can endure cultural differences in the market. Also, it is recommended to avoid using strategies that may be area-specific or person-specific (for example inviting local celebrities to take part in a global marketing campaign).
Another recommendation for DAEP is to make sure that all the markets where the company operates are fully researched, and the teams working on these reports are multi- and international. All the local customs should be thoroughly investigated. Only by means of increasing team knowledge the company will be able to implement global plans successfully and maintain partnerships that do not end with legal battles (Alkaabi, Debbage & Touq 2013). Another important point is to seek feedback before implementing a global marketing plan in any location. The management of DAEP will have to validate all the assumptions regarding the local/ global market and key relationships before implementing any changes. The company’s international team has to obtain as much feedback as possible so as to make sure that no legal issues may interfere with DAEP’s strategy and will work in any business environment. Therefore, a proactive approach to business may be one of the ways to stabilize the company’s state of affairs and revise the existing corporate strategy so that the latter would be in line with the needs and requirements of the client base. By doing this, DAEP will be able to engage local teams into action and make them responsible for all the critical steps throughout the process of implementation of a new strategy.
Another key recommendation for the management of DAEP is to allocate more time between planning and implementation. The company should always be on the lookout for the key elements that can positively contribute to the outcomes of a campaign or strategy. Project planning should be approached watchfully because it necessitates a high-level communication and coordination. After doing this locally, DAEP may approach its international managers and make sure that they understand the task correctly. If the Board fails to communicate the goals properly, the teams will be exposed to the issues of cross-communication and misunderstanding. Instead of trying to sell more products worldwide, DAEP should try to get clients involved in their practices and meet all the pre-specified deadlines. The company should devote more time to managing the launch of any programs and strategies because it is essential to confirm that all the parties and elements of the strategy function fittingly and all the steps on the way to an all-inclusive and globally-applicable strategy were completed. The team should pay more attention to reviewing the developed strategy and reiterating the process in order to come up with the most relevant version of the plan. All of this has to be done multiple times on all administrative levels of DAEP.
In order to solve the issue of weak partnerships with other international aviation services providers, it is proposed to train effective communication. The key idea behind this is the fact that not only campaigns and marketing, in general, are based on the operative use of language and its derivatives as instruments to achieve organizational goals. The international approach that is currently applied by DAEP can make the company’s employees feel disconnected. This will lead to a situation where the corporate strategy of the organization will get disconnected as well. Therefore, DAEP should seek ways to build trust and implement effective communication in its global marketing initiatives in order to reduce the chances of getting caught up in a situation similar to the one where DAEP had to confront sluggishness and indisposition to perform. By means of communication, the company will build trust and nurture positive relationships between themselves and their partners. Being consistent with the strategy is essential when there is a need to develop a success-oriented team that pays attention to both organizational objectives and customers’ needs.
Conclusion
The concepts of corporate and strategic management are rather extensive, but they can be addressed simultaneously. This positively affects the chances of organizations to develop inclusive corporate strategies that include the majority of perilous points. Within the framework of the current research paper, the author critically evaluated the current corporate strategy of DAEP and reviewed its biggest flaw in strategical terms. Overall, the corporate strategy of DAEP can be characterized as relatively successful, but there are several weak points that yet have to be addressed to improve the current state of affairs and get in line with the biggest and well-respected aviation services providers in the world. The organization may be interested in focusing on its international relations in the future so as to build effective partnerships from the perspective of multicultural values. Even though DAEP is expected to be financially prosperous, it will also have to address the concept of organizational communication. Knowing that it led to a serious misunderstanding between the company’s stakeholders in the past, this step is obligatory. Other than that, the future of DAEP looks bright as they seem to learn from their mistakes and improve their corporate strategy from time to time.
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