BUS4403 Business Policy and Strategy Unit 7 Written Assignment

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Running head: DIGITAL DIVIDE DATA CASE STUDY

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Digital Divide Data Case Study University of the People BUS4403 Business Policy and Strategy Unit 7 Written Assignment 20 March 2019

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DIGITAL DIVIDE DATA CASE STUDY

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Digital Divide Data Case Study Jeremy Hockenstein, who was a McKinsey consultant staff at that time, visited Cambodia in November 2000 for his holiday. The holiday profoundly stuck out in his mind how terrible the poverty level was, and it had lost opportunities for many young people for their educations and careers in Cambodia. His conclusion of the best possible solution to change these circumstances was to establish a sustainable business via providing data entry and digitization services of IT outsourcing business in Phnom Penh. As a co-founder, he opened a non-profit social entrepreneurship company Digital Divide Data (DDD) in 2001 in Phnom Penh. In 2003, DDD opened additional offices in Battambang, Cambodia and Vientiane, Laos. Albeit DDD had faced various and many challenges and difficulties in order to operate and maintain their three offices’ businesses, DDD delivered a significant result of annual revenues. “Around US$2 million, and it had trained and provided scholarships to over 1,300 disadvantaged youth” in nine years of the business operation (Mathew & Rod & Villalobos & Yates, 2009, p.1), and became an internationally recognized non-profit social entrepreneurship company.

The primary goal of the DDD mission is to provide “sustainable sources of employment and education to disadvantaged youth” (Mathew & Rod & Villalobos & Yates, 2009, p.9).

Moreover, DDD intended to expand and apply this model initiative to the needed places globally.

Therefore, DDD was seeking the best strategic options to do so; however, DDD was facing various human resources (HR) challenges.

The main HR challenge DDD faced was to manage the expansion operation with the limited U. S. managerial position staff in order to save the expenses cost. Nonetheless, DDD had to be “relied on a small U. S.-based management team” (Mathew & Rod & Villalobos & Yates,

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2009, p.1) with sending the short-term expatriate volunteers and temporarily assigned management staffs to Cambodia and Laos.

DDD expected the skills for the U.S. based on management staff to appeal the DDD social responsibility and mission in order to raise donation and sponsorship as well as to win the Western business contract. Also, DDD expected the skills for the expatriate staff to manage the projects and operations. The project management skill was required to accomplish standardization of the operation process and training curriculum among the three offices in operation.

While DDD expected skills for its rank-and-file staff were the basic level of computer literacy, business skills and manners, and English comprehension, in order to operate and run its business as an operator. Thus DDD developed the six months training curriculum to provide its local hired new staff to bring up the work-ready practical operators.

Since DDD is a non-profit social entrepreneurship company, the financial resources were limited. Thus it made it hard for DDD to appeal and attract high quality, international-trained and experienced skilled managerial employees and talents externally. Additionally, because DDD had to expect its staff to share the same goal of the company’s social mission, it would be even harder to secure sufficient recruitment. Moreover, DDD lost some internal trained highperforming operators due to the other companies could offer a higher salary than DDD. There were four potential strategic expansion approach options, which were “Organic growth, a partnership with a local entrepreneur with an existing business, social franchising, and partnership with an international NGO or outsourcing firm” (Mathew & Rod & Villalobos & Yates, 2009, p.7).

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If DDD had a partnership with a local company - as long as the partnership could share and secure with the DDD mission standard and values, DDD could take a benefit of the local HR policy, procedure, and operation setting support based on the local company’s know-how and local business familiarities. If DDD had a partnership with a large international NGO, who desired to take advantages of the DDD’s business model case, the NGO would provide the human resources for the business operation. Those HR advantages would contribute to saving time and money for the DDD business expansion strategy.

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Mathew, A. & Rod, G. & Villalobos, J. & Yates, D. (2009). Digital Divide Data. Retrieved from: https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/387341/mod_page/content/7/DigitalDivideData.pdf