Strategic Recommendation

I have been working in an oil corporation in Saudi Arabia. It supplies oil to many parts of

Saudi Arabia as well as many countries across the world. It is a well established organization.

Now, let’s discuss about the organization types. Basically, there are three types of organization.

They are characterized on the basis of the investment or share structures. These types of business

organizations are; sole proprietorship, partnership, and corporation. Sole proprietorship is the

smallest business that has a single function and can run as a business. A single individual is

responsible for all the investments as well as the profits of the organization. Sole proprietorship

organization is also referred to as the private organization. Likewise, partnership organization is

that type of organization where different parties or business partners runs the organization for

their common interests. These types of organization has huge capital and can run the business at

a higher level than the sole proprietorship organization. These organizations can be business or

individual organization, and schools. Similarly, corporation refers to a large company or an

organization that is run by the many groups of companies or organizations that acts as a single

unit and performs the organizational or business functions of that corporation. The corporation is

a business operation or organization that has different levels of hierarchies of management such

as the board of directors, CEO, managers, and employees. These types of companies have huge

investment or source of capital. The board of directors or the shareholders have limited

liabilities.

The organization that I have been working in is Desert Oil Corporation. Desert Oil

Corporation was established in the 2010 A.D. It is the largest oil corporation in the Saudi Arabia.

The capital to these corporations are provided by various companies of the country. The Desert
Oil Corporation follows strict rules, procedures that are implemented by the chairman of the

corporation in order to meet the demands or needs of the stakeholders. This corporation conduct

yearly research in order to be able to verify the land or soil that is rich in mineral or oil resources.

These resources are extracted by using various scientific methods in order to reduce the wastage

or loss of the oil resources. Desert Oil Corporation covers almost most of the oil demands in the

Saudi Arabia. The main objectives of the corporation is to serve the interests in oil and other

sectors with the accordance of the country’s rules and regulations at national and international

level. Similarly, the oil supplies should be continued smoothly through the crude oil refining

process. This corporation should also conduct strong research in the refinery process of the oil in

order to obtain the best quality oil. Desert Oil Corporation also expects to minimise oil

consumption or loss in the refinery process. Energy must be properly preserved is the main motto

of this corporation.

In the past, this corporation has been just able to satisfy the demands or needs of the oil

resources of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a very rich country in mineral, petroleum, and oil

resources. Despite the plentiful availability of such resources, the corporation has only been able

to operate at national level. Desert Oil Corporation had not been able to reach international level

in its past. The main reason behind this is lack of skillful manpower. Most employees that used

to work in this corporation were illiterate and lacked proper skills and techniques. Likewise

another factor that hindered the growth of Desert Oil Corporation was the lack of proper

scientific tools and methods to extract the oil resources minimizing the loss during the extraction

process. Similarly, lack of modern tools and techniques for refining also influenced or caused
significant loss during the refining process. Due to these factors, Desert Oil Corporation had not

been able to operate at an international level in the past.

Desert Oil corporation is an organization based on the KSA principles. The KSA

principles refer to the Knowledge, Skill, and Abilities principles. The Desert Oil Corporation

gives a lot of importance to the knowledge, skills, and abilities of human resources or manpower.

The human resource department of this corporation uses this principle in recruiting of manpower

or individuals. Due to this principle, the Desert Oil Corporation had been operating effectively at

national level. This corporation provides various training and assistance to its employees in order

to develop their knowledge, skills, and abilities.

The Desert Oil Corporation has various departments; Human Resource Department,

Account or Finance Department, Operational Department, Evaluation Department, Statistical

Department, Strategic Planning Department, and several other departments. Each department is

assigned with a specific role that it has to fulfill for the betterment or success of the corporation.

The strategic planning department is mainly responsible for the success of the department. The

strategic planning department prepares the missions, objectives, goals of the corporation based

on different findings of the past and present market trends. The strategic planning is also

responsible for bringing an effective change to the organization structure or function that will

uplift the organization. As a strategy planning manager, I have assigned a specific role to

evaluate the market trend, the technology development, the findings based on past data or

records, and the crucial need of the people.

Organizational values are the set of beliefs that guide the organization in a proper way of

the society and the country. The employees inside the corporation share a set of core values.
These core values are honesty, integrity, and respect for others. The organizational should focus

on the importance of trust, openness, professionalism and pride in their duty inside the

workplace. The corporation should provide the freedom to the employees to exercise their rights

inside the organization. Organizational principles are the statements of vision and mission that

describes the organizational purposes.

Being in the strategic planning team, our team has to consider the organizational core

values, ethics, principles properly during the strategic planning process. Our team has to identify

the reasons for the lack of development of the Desert Oil Corporation. Our team had identified

the above factors that caused the hindrance to proper functioning of the corporation. Human

Resource department had not been using the KSA principle for recruitment in the past. The

human resource department had not been evaluating the performance of the employees of the

Desert Oil Corporation. Similarly, the corporation had not conducted any awareness or

motivation programs in the past to motivate the employees to give their best effort for the

corporation. The employees were unsatisfied with their jobs as they had to work monotonously

like donkeys but were not paid proper wages. The job was too risky as they could die at the

workplace. The employees that died in the past due to the accident in the workplace were not

given proper gratitude or condolences. The corporation did not take proper care of such families.

This led to the dissatisfaction of the employees. No incentive programs or offers were made

available in the past. These were the most reasons for the poor functioning of the corporation

compared to the availability of the capital or resources.

The strategic planning team has identified all these causes. The team also proposed some

changes that are must for the corporation in order to take the corporation to the highest level.
First and foremost, manpower should be given proper training, education related to the oil

extraction and refining process. This will eventually lead to skillful manpower within the

organization. Likewise, the team had also found the deficiency of the employees within the

organizational boundaries. The human resource department should recruit 10 new employees in 3

months. The recruitment process should be according to the KSA principle. KSA principle refers

to the Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities principle. Human Resource department should not be

biased according to different factors such as an employee’s relative, corruption, etc. Instead the

department should hire or recruit deserving candidate based on the knowledge, skills and abilities

of the candidates. The employees should be evaluated on 3 months basis. Likewise proper

market research should also be conducted by the executive team in order to set the goals of the

corporation accordingly. Moreover, proper awareness, incentive programs must also be

conducted yearly.

In order to prepare an effective strategy, the team has to conduct a cycle of process. This

cycle is strategic planning cycle. It comprises of several steps. First of all the corporate

guidelines must be properly considered as it governs the corporation. Moreover, the team has to

forecast all possible future worst case scenarios and their solutions too. The team has to ensure

that all the assumptions are taken precisely. The business plans of the organization along with

their goals and missions must be given proper importance in order to plan an effective strategy.

The budget estimates, the annual targets after the strategy implementation must be estimated

clearly during the planning cycle. After the feasibility of all these tests, the strategy can be

passed to the stakeholder’s committee and will be implemented if the stakeholder endorsed the

plan.
 In order to uplift the corporation to an international level, the senior executive team must

be able to implement strategy effectively. The senior executive committee of a corporation has

the challenge of conducting day-to-day activities inside the corporation parallel to the strategy

proposed or endorsed by the stakeholders. They should understand the strategy vividly. The

establishment of successful strategy comprises of many steps. First and foremost, the

organization should establish simple, consistent, long-term goals. Moreover, the strategy

planning manager should be able to understand the competitive environment profoundly. The

data or information of the market environment must be provided by the executive team to the

strategic planning team. Likewise, the available resources of the organization must be accessed

efficiently. After all these steps are considered properly, the planned or established strategy

should be implemented. It will lead the organization towards success. A suitable strategy always

keeps the balance between the organization and its environment. The strategy planning manager

should have clear vision of the organization goals, values, resources, capabilities, structure,

organizational culture. The strategy planning manager should also understand the market of the

organization such as the competitors, their suppliers and the customers. The team should be able

to link these two components in an effective way so that the demands and wishes of stakeholders

are met. The strategic team should perform a thorough analysis of the different aspects related to

the corporation such as international or national economy, technology, government and politics,

natural environment, social structure, customers. Information related to these aspects should be

provided by the executive team and the information should be up-to-date. The senior executive

team should realise that the strategic planning team is incomplete without their help and should

cooperate with the strategic team on a regular basis. The factors that determines the usefulness of
the strategy are profit and extension of the market area. The determinants of profit are demand

and competition. The executive team should propose how to reduce the competition of the

corporation on outside world. To reduce the competition, the corporation should be able to

produce quality products than others. The executive team should take proper supervision of the

manufacturing process as they can contribute a lot for the quality of the products. Michael Porter

has proposed a technique to analyse the competition of an organization. This technique is known

as the Porter’s Five Forces of Competition Framework. He has stated that the forces of

competition are competition from substitutes, competition from entrants, competition from

established rivals, power of suppliers and power of buyers. To understand the competition, the

senior executive team should conduct proper investigation of these forces of competition. The

power of supplier or buyer are determined by the cost of product, product variation, size of

buyers or suppliers. If the suppliers are in more number, the buyer’s will have greater power and

vice versa.

Moreover for profit analysis, the senior executive team should present the annual reports

of the corporation to the strategic planning team as they should analyse the present reports during

the strategic planning process. Moreover, the past reports can help them to foresee which aspects

have been a hindrance to them in financial aspects. After foreseeing the aspects, proper changes

should be implemented to that aspect immediately by the senior executive team as intended by

the strategic planning team to minimize loss. Likewise the strategic planning team should

perform a SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis refers to Strength Weakness Opportunities and

Threats analysis. In this method, all the competitions, opportunities, weaknesses, strengths of the

corporation is determined. After the SWOT analysis, the strategic team should propose a plan to
the executive team to increase their chance of success. The executive team should focus more on

their weaknesses and try to remove it from the organization. Moreover, they should also focus on

the organizational day-to-day activities more on the opportunities that are present in the outside

world. Likewise, their threats should be minimised by the executive team. The executive team

should align the corporation work with the strategy.

The strategic planning team should also prepare a balanced scorecard during the strategy

establishment process. The balanced scorecard includes four different perspectives of the

organization. These are financial perspective, customer perspective, internal process perspective,

and learning and growth perspective. In the financial perspective, the balanced scorecard should

contain financial performance information of the organization. Likewise, in the customer

perspective, the scorecard should contain customer satisfaction information, market share goals

information, etc. Similarly, in the internal process perspective, the balanced scorecard should

include internal operational goals of the organization to meet customer requirements. At last, in

the learning and growth perspective, the balanced scorecard should include all factors for future

success such as human capital, informational systems, training, organizational capital, etc. Based

on all these information included in the balanced scorecard, the strategic planning team should

establish the best strategy for the organization. They should also foresee the darker side of the

strategy as the strategy implementation tampers with different aspects of organization. The

negative change during the implementation should be minimised as possible.

From different data or findings, the strategy planning team had found out increasing trend

of human towards motorcycle, cars, and other transportation systems. The demand of oil is

increasing globally day by day. Many countries do not have the oil resources that can even
supply their own citizens transportation needs. These countries become poor and poorer day by

day. Our team has analyzed that the Desert Oil Corporation has to fulfill the needs of citizens of

such deficient oil resources country in order to take the corporation to an international level.

Likewise the corporation has not been using proper scientific tools and techniques to extract oil

resources from under the soil. The oil resources are wasted daily during the extraction team.

Changes must be brought to the extraction team and their techniques in order to decrease the

wastage of oil resources. These changes can bring changes to the whole organizational structure

and there is a slight chance that the manpower of the corporation might oppose the change and

protest against the strategy planning team. Our team must be able to clear all the doubts of the

employees of the corporation in order to make sure the changes are brought into action

effectively or are implemented effectively. Likewise, the strategy team have also came up with

the conclusion that the employees had been lacking the interest or dedication to their work or

duties for the corporation. The employees must be properly motivated in order to take the

corporation to an international level. Various refreshment or recreational services must be

provided to the employees so that they don’t find their responsibilities or work monotonous.

Incentives programs and awareness programs must be made available to the manpower of the

corporation as the corporation foundation strongly relies upon the human resources or the

manpower. Strong manpower are the foundations of successful corporation.

In Saudi Arabia, most people are religious and they strongly obey the religious norms and

principles. They believe that the organization can reach its peak level if the gods will it. Most

people are the followers of the religion. Any changes to the religious norms or beliefs of the

country are strongly opposed by almost all citizens of the Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabia
society believes that its members must be strongly bound by friendship, love and religion. The

rich or successful person should take care of the poor. Our corporation, Desert Oil Corporation

should build various mosques across the country to gain god's will or impress the gods. The

organization should not hamper the religious beliefs or norms of the Saudi Arabia societies. In

Saudi Arabia, all citizens should follow Islam religion. Public worship by other religions

followers is banned in Saudi Arabia. Our organization should consider this rule of Saudi Arabia

and employees of Desert Oil Corporation who follow religions other than Islam should not be

allowed to worship their Gods in the organization compound. If this rule is not set out strictly,

many citizens of Saudi Arabia will protest that will eventually lead to closing of the organization.

Organization must provide holiday to all its employees during Ramadan as it is the most

important festival to the Saudi Arabia citizens. These norms and practices of the Saudi Arabia

society should be strictly followed by the corporation. Likewise the organization should also pay

tax to the Saudi Arabia government in time for legalization of the corporation. In Saudi Arabia,

men and women are not allowed to display affection in public which must be given proper

importance by the corporation. All male staff should be provided separate workspace from the

female workspace. Proper legal practices and rules should also be set within the organizational

territories. The employees should be informed to wear clothes covering their shoulders and knees

in the organizational compound. Their rights should not be tampered by the organization.

Practicing homosexual or external marital affairs should not be allowed or motivated by the

organization. Alcohol, drugs should be banned within the organizational boundaries. All

products such as scandal, palace photos should not be allowed in the organization as it tampers

with the customs and traditions of the Saudi Arabia community. These cultural and ethical
factors or norms must be considered by the Desert Oil Corporation before bringing the change in

the organization or for proper functioning of the organization.

In our context, the Desert Oil Corporation supplies most of the parts of Saudi Arabia with

oil resources. But in an international context, there are many Oil Corporation that have been

providing oil supplies to countries with limited availability of oil resources. In order to be able to

exercise power over such established international corporation, the strategic planning team has

proposed to produce 100% pure oil supplies which can lead to customer satisfaction. All of us

know that the impure oil supplies damages the vehicle after their regular use upto a limited time,

this has been causing dissatisfaction of the vehicle users of other countries. So, our product

should be pure oil resources which will eventually lead to customer’s satisfaction. Moreover, in

order to attract customers in the starting phase, the Desert Oil Corporation should provide oil

supplies to other countries at a cheaper price than the other existing corporation. This will help

us to get a lot of customers, although we might be in loss at a starting phase. But later after

gaining a lot of customers, we will increase the price because at that time, the customers would

have realised that the oil supplies they are provided with are of the best quality. This will

guarantee the place of our old customers as well as help us to attract new customers. In this way,

the corporation can be taken to an international level.