Choice of foreign markets entry mode J&M company

 

Introduction

Choice of foreign markets entry mode is a very important issue that most business organizations face and there are many factors that affect it. Opportunities need to be assessed before any business organization enters a new market, they have to be studied in order to apply certain management strategies for expanding the business effectively. For expanding a business it is necessary to set the objectives before entering any new market as the business organization has to examine the investment environment, analyze the market, study different influences and effects on the chosen market and any other related issues such as threats or opportunities and so on. The current report is advising J&M company as a medium sized company that is trying to expand in the Middle East market showing it how to choose the markets to start with and assessing its opportunities in the Middle East market region.  Because J& M is still a medium sized company, it should study the steps of expanding in Middle Eastern Regions well before entering the new markets. The company is suggested by the top management to enter three markets in the Middle East Region which are Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The current report will include a market opportunity assessment for the three markets to analyse the market opportunities in each of the three countries and examine their investment environments, effects of government interventionist policies, the market potential, the impact of regional integration initiatives and related issues with a clear identification of opportunities and threats in each of these markets. One country will be recommended for the company to enter first based on some reasons that will be explained. A market entry strategy will be suggested to be more appropriate with justifications.        

Discussion

According to Agrawal et al, (1991) any business organization that is trying to enter a new foreign market must be sure of its strategic decisions that are going to be taken regarding the entry mode that is going to be followed for that chosen market. There are four main common modes for entry of foreign market which are exporting, licensing, joint venture and sole venture. They all include the required needs for internationalization of a business. They referred to a number of factors that affect the entry mode choice for a specific market and affirmed that they can be three types of factors which are ownership advantages of a firm, location advantages of a market, and internalization advantages of integrating transactions within the firm as mentioned in the Dunning framework. They also added acquisition to subsidiaries and extent of foreign direct investment added to the other models and the inter-relationships between these factors.  Zhou et al, (2007) added that there is much interest in the managerial perceptions when it is to choose a market for internationalize and expand a business as they can give a good assessment of the country's location advantages. Managers' perceptions yet may differ and give more than answer such as the current case as there are three suggestions based on the managerial perceptions which are Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. There should be certain analysis and knowledge about the three markets and justifications for the chosen market for being an entry mode.  

According to Yan and Baldwing, (2012) to enter a foreign market, it is important to align the advantages of a firm and its shortcomings with the business conditions and resources of the market. The company should also decide the best types of local partnership to establish, the company should also make risk analysis in each country's and other different analysis that can enable it to measure the potential risks and opportunities in these countries and then to set protection against these risks and make full use of the available opportunities.      

Yan and Baldwing, (2012) confirmed that there are certain competencies in the country or the market that the firm is going to internationalize its business in and these competencies should be well studied and assessed in comparison to the country's and the company's resources. As to J&M, there are three main markets where the company should analyze their competencies and assess its opportunities there.  They added that there is a positive relationship between the market expansion and the productivity growth that depends on expanding the market in international markets that have to be chosen after making the needed economic analysis and understanding for the innovation variables in the suggested markets. Quelin and Guadillat, (2017) discussed how a firm can use market entry strategies such as strengthening the firm's competencies, adding technology variables and adapting change through innovative and creative ways.

J&M can enter one of the three markets in the Middle East based on the following research:

1.     Egypt

Egypt is one of the MENA countries that provide international retailers with competitive advantage that are represented in limited competition, a growing population, developing middle class, low market saturation and added opportunities for economies of scale. Yet it can represent a challenge to the firm to internationalize the business there. This can be clear when a SWOT analysis is made about internationalizing the business in Egypt as follows:

SWOT Analysis

Strengths 1.      The company has fashionable and high quality goods that make it in a strong position in the market and can attract many customers to it. 2.      The company can find different tastes in Egypt as there is a very big increasing number of population. 3.      There are some middle and high classes who prefer Britain goods than others in the Egyptian society.

Weaknesses 1.      Cultural distance may be a hinder that the company can't deal with as people's taste in Egypt may be different from that of people in London. 2.       The differences in cultural context such as language, working styles, religion and attitudes may reduce the chances of J&M in Egypt as people usually fear trying new things in such culture. 3.      The company is new in the international market and this makes it in a weak competitive position in the Egyptian market. 4.      Most people in Egypt prefer cheap local clothes than exported ones which may be expensive.

Opportunities 1.      The company has weak opportuntiies in its retail business in Egypt because many areas of Egypt are countryside and people are not very interested in exported products. 2.      The company yet can open many branches in different cities in Egypt  such as Cairo, Alexandria and Port Said.

Threats 1.      The market in Egypt is full with international brands and famous names from UK. 2.      Taxation system in Egypt is not supportive for exporting and puts high fare on export from Europe and USA. 3.      There are many differences in retail formats from Egypt to UK. 4.      Egypt doesn't have a high GDP. 5.      Low personal incomes.

 

The analysis shows that there is a big influence of the host country's culture on the opportunities of a firm to internationalize there, retailers have to realize the cultural differences in the target foreign markets in order to find good suppliers and reach the right consumers. (Flag, 2014)

PESTLE Analysis

Political factors	Egypt political conditions have changed in the last five years from problems and revolutions to some levels of stability and people became more aware of the political rights. They have elected their president yet there are many political issues that are under many conflicts in courts and need solutions to make the country more stable.
Economic Factors	Egypt suffers different economic problems as people always complain prices, individual incomes compared to high taxations and high prices of different local and exported goods. The country is trying to face such problems by different economic projects the government is making but people still suffer high prices on all social classes. High debts are still there on the country to pay for other countries and for international Funds organizations. Egyptian currency faces different obstacles with Dollar prices and other financial issues and this affects the Egyptian market too much.
Social Factors	The country has different social classes that have different shopping behaviors. The people prefer family life and shopping in groups. They go shopping at all times especially before feasts and special events. There is high rate of unemployment in the country and it is increasing along with crime rate. Industries face different difficulties such as lack of enough equipment in hospitals and shortage of enough oil for running vehicles and machines. Women are still in need for their rights and are still need much protection. Most people live there are Egyptians from different origins and there are some foreigners from different countries around the world.
Technological Factors	The country is trying to cope with the international technological advances by applying different updates on all fields but the education system suffers lack of applying technology and many other areas of business as well.
Environmental Factors	The general environment of Egypt is desert added to the valley of the River Nile. There is some pollution in the Nile and the country is almost hot. There are nice historical places in the country and nice landscapes.
Legal Factors	The country has strong legal system that offers different opportunities for making international business there but the taxation system is very strong especially on exported goods from Europe.  (Egypt country profile, 2015)

 

2.      Turkey

 Turkey is a developed country that has a very vivid business and trade movement, it is a famous tourist destination and it is considered a European city of culture. It boosts Europe's sixth largest economy and is candidate for different EU memberships. The country has big numbers of population under the age of 28 who are preferring European taste especially the British one. It is regarded in Europe as an emerging market. With its youthful population who seeks development and taste in diverse sectors from education to finance, the British good is seen as a valuable commodity. The country has a specific privatization system that encourages businessmen from different countries of the world to internationalize their business in Turkey. For J&M it can analyze the different aspects of life in Turkey and the opportunities available there versus threats as follows:

SWOT Analysis

Strengths 1.      The company produces high quality goods and clothes that are of English taste that is highly preferable in Turkey and by Turkish youth. 2.      The company can meet the needed European quality measurements set in Turkey. 3.      The company can open many branches in the different modern cities of Turkey.

Weaknesses 1.      The company is new and Turkish people prefer famous international brands. 2.      The Turkish production of clothes is cheaper and of high quality and is exported to many areas of the world especially the Middle East. 3.      The company may find it difficult to boost other international different brands in Turkey.

Opportunities 1.      There is a great opportunity to sell many good for the number of population is high especially among young people. 2.      There is a presence of many British business in Turkey which make it good for J&M to internationalize there and be welcomed by Turkish people. 3.      Turkish shipping is a very big industry with different availabilities from and to England which facilitates the business there. 4.      There are different educated people who can work with the company and the Turkish people will be friendly clients. 5.      The country is considered European and this encourages the company to invest its money there with many facilities from the EU.

Threats 1.      The Turkish goods of clothes are of high quality and may represent great competition to J&M in Turkey. 2.      There are different international and British clothes companies in Turkey and this raises the competition levels in that country. 3.      The people of Turkey prefer travelling to buy their clothes. 4.      Rules and regulations in Turkey may change quickly and this means it is important to have a local partner who can deal with these issues effectively. 5.      Development in Turkey is fast in everything and this means high competition on the company in updating its technology and products. (Turkey country profile, 2016)

 

The company can also analyze the different conditions of Turkey based on this PESTLE Analysis

PESTLE Analysis

Political factors	Turkey has strong political system that depends on liberalization policies and this supports many international businesses to open there. Turkey supports liberal trade and open trade between different countries in the EU. Turkey formed a custom union agreement in 1996 to allow many Turkish companies to get bigger and more successful in the global economy. Yet there are currently a series of terrorist attacks in the country that makes it threatening to new businesses as they are related to Al Qaeada and this is very dangerous.
Economic Factors	Turkey has a strong economy that is characterized with high flow of foreign investment from different countries in the world. The national and individual incomes in Turkey are high and the country attracts many businesses to be done there. The privatization program in the country supports many businesses that can be local or international. Currently there is an economic challenges in Turkey which is the current account deficit for Turkey. The declining current account delayed the economic stability.
Social Factors	The country's social system depends on the family and youth gatherings and it is a society that includes different types of people and accepts foreigners. There are high employment rates as the country tries to increase the labor forces of youth there and this makes it a good chance to make business there. Yet there are some social challenges in Turkey for a new business such as J&M, among these challenges are the high unemployment levels as Turkey unemployment level rose by 38,000 in that year to 2.3 million in 2007 but then in 2008 it rose again by 737,000 from the previous year so this shows that there was a substantial increase, another thing is the desire of travelling to London and other European cities to buy clothes by Turkish people.
Technological Factors	Turkey is a country that is very strong in the technology as the country is developing greatly in the ICT sector and it is highly expanding. In 2007, Turkey's ICT market reached $24 billion and in the previous year it reached $21 billion and this shows great advance in technology. The country has also strong telecommunication system, effective shipping technologies and effective manufacturing techniques. This can be an advantage for J&M and a disadvantage at the same time as the country's clothes' industry has been developed greatly to boost other European clothes businesses. There is another challenge which is the lack of interest in research and development in the country.
Environmental Factors	The country has fair environment that is a European one. It has wide diversity in the national resources.
Legal Factors	The legal system in Turkey is strong and supports exporting and international business. It has a robust framework for different types of business entities and the registration system is quite easy and free. There are some legal challenges that are represented in the judicial inefficiencies as there are some delays in the Turkish judicial system which can cause some serious issues. (Turkey country profile, 2016)

 

3.      Saudi Arabia

 Saudi Arabia is one of the Middle East countries that attracts many businesses to internationalize there as the country has strong economy based on its resources of oil and related industries and other industries. The government is powerful and taxation system is fair and good for many exported goods as sometimes shipping is free which encourages many firms to internationalize their business there. J&M can investigate its chances in Saudi Arabia based on the following SWOT Analysis

Strengths 1.      The company is new and Saudi Arabian people like to try new ideas and new brands especially in clothes and fashion. 2.      The company produces goods of the finest preferred by people of Saudi Arabia. 3.      The country has diversity of people from different countries of the world. 4.      The country has high population. 5.      The legal and taxation systems are supportive for international business. 6.      Saudi Arabia doesn't produce clothes that can boost those made in UK.

Weaknesses 1.      The company is new with low experience in Arabic.

Opportunities 1.      The company can attract the youth of Saudi Arabia as British goods are preferred in the country. 2.      The company can make good business by exporting goods without fares and taxations due to Saudi laws. 3.      The company can open many branches in the different modern cities of Saudi Arabia and in its big malls.

Threats 1.      There are many international companies with international brands in Saudi Arabia.

The company can also analyze the following PESTLE analysis about Saudi Arabia:

PESTLE Analysis

Political factors	Saudi Arabia enjoys stable political environment and the country is considered the main Muslim country and one of the most important countries in the Middle East. There are no terrorism there and no fights inside the country. This makes it good to invest business and internationalize it there.
Economic Factors	People in Saudi Arabia enjoys high salaries compared to other countries in the Middle East and the government has high GDP and national income. This makes it good to invest there and expect good purchasing levels.
Social Factors	The Saudi society depends on families as main component of the society. There are no cinemas or theatres there which makes shopping the main entertainment way for people there. People are lovers for new brands, new experiences and they like fashion too much especially women and young people. The Saudi society includes high diversity of cultures and many people there are to choose from international brands,
Technological Factors	The country is interested in adding new technology to the different sectors of business, industries and education but there should be more interest.
Environmental Factors	The country's environment is that of dry deserts but the country is developed and people prefer modern life and modern clothes.
Legal Factors	The legislations and laws of KSA are good and supportive for international businesses and taxations system is very easy and flexible. This raises the opportunities of J&M to internationalize the clothes business there as the country is trying to develop and people are preferring laws following. (the report KSA, 2016)

   

From the analysis above, it becomes clear that Saudi Arabia is the most suitable country for J&M to internationalize their business there. The country is supportive by its people who are friendly preferring the British goods and who like trying new shopping experiences. Another factor is that the company can boost the market with its new products as people prefer new trends in fashion. The legal system of KSA is flexible and shipping may be free or with very little money. Taxation system is easy and supportive too and the company can meet the high diversity in the Saudi society with all tastes. (Yener et al, 2014)

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is important to refer to the necessity and need for internationalizing the business in order to enter new markets as this can increase the number of clients and can enhance the name of the brands. It is important to remind the firm J&M to make deep analysis in order to choose the best market to enter. A SWOT analysis is effective and can help the company understand and study the three suggested countries, Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and then to choose the most convenient referring to our analysis. PESTLE analysis too is effective and require deep studying for the countries and then to either accept the work or refuse it. J&M can begin its business in KSA as the country is very suitable for internationalization.

Recommendations

J&M is recommended to internationalize its business in Saudi Arabia because the country is supportive for different businesses and the legal system of the country is easy and supportive for exporter, the shipping may be free or costs very little money and the new projects are welcomed there. The company is recommended to make analysis as the existed here before opening the business as these analysis can help in deciding the right market to begin as an entry mode.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

1. Alliance Experts, (2017). 'International Business in Saudi Arabia.'  https://www.allianceexperts.com/en/knowledge/countries/africa/international-business-saudi-arabia/
2. Argawal, S. Ramaswami, S. (1991). 'CHOICE OF FOREIGN MARKET ENTRY MODE: IMPACT OF OWNERSHIP, LOCATION AND INTERNALIZATION FACTORS.' Journal of International Business Studies. First Quarter. http://www.rcmewhu.com/upload/file/20150525/20150525201726_6655.pdf
3. Baldwin, J. Yan, B. (2012). ' Market Expansion and Productivity Growth: Do New Domestic Markets Matter as Much as New International Markets?' http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11f0027m/11f0027m2012078-eng.pdf
4. Country Profile. (2015). 'Egypt.' https://www.uneca.org/sites/default/files/uploaded-documents/CoM/com2016/Country-Profiles/egypt2015_cp_eng_final.pdf
5. Gaudillat, C. Quelin, B. (2017). 'Innovation New Market and Governance Choices of Entry: The Internet Brokerage Market Case. ' Industry and Innovation Journal.
6. Flag, S. (2014). ' INTERNATIONALIZATION IN CULTURALLY DISSIMILAR MARKETS: ANALYSIS OF TRADITIONAL AND MODERN RETAILING FORMATS IN EGYPT.' https://library.ndsu.edu/ir/bitstream/handle/10365/24472/Internationalization%20in%20Culturally%20Dissimilar%20Markets%20-%20Analysis%20of%20Traditional%20and%20Modern%20Retailing%20Formats%20in%20Egypt.pdf?sequence=1
7. Saudi Arabia Country Report, (2016). 'Saudi Arabia Country Report.' https://www.bti-project.org/fileadmin/files/BTI/Downloads/Reports/2016/pdf/BTI_2016_Saudi_Arabia.pdf
8. Yener, M. Dogruoglu, B. Ergun, S. (2014). ' Challenges of Internationalization for SMEs and Overcoming these Challenges: A case study from Turkey.' https://ac.els-cdn.com/S1877042814050514/1-s2.0-S1877042814050514-main.pdf?_tid=f9aa62a4-aff2-11e7-b784-00000aab0f6b&acdnat=1507884556_d5385f9d012f976a52b0a94871b379d1
9. Zhou, K. Brown, J. Dev, C. (2007). 'Global Brand Expansion: How to Select a Market Entry Strategy.' http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1769&context=articles

 

 

 

operation management in Oman schools

 

Introduction

In any responsible community, education providers are entitled to prepare learners to reach a better place in the career market. The Sultanate of Oman is one of the Middle East countries that focuses their attention on enhancing education and provide students with the finest levels of education in order to prepare them for a better future. As for any other country, Oman may face some challenges that can affect the agenda that targets education enhancing. Training courses and similar programs availability is a key challenge that can act as a vital barrier, for instance, in front of education development. Thus, operations management strategies can target such challenges in order to act as vital tool implemented by education leaders in schools in order to enhance students and teachers performance in general.

By definition, operations management concerns the process of designing specific operations used to control different items of any given system. It involves being responsible of the efficiency of proper predesigned operations used to control and manage the different available resources. In schools operations management is interested in achieving certain objectives, such as:

·        Developing and distributing school budget

·        Control logistics and handling purchasing needs of supplies and equipment

·        Dealing with emerging ethical and social problems of students and teachers

·        Oversee insurance issues and handling different relevant risks

·        Encourage students to participate in school events and activities

Among others, achieving the above mentioned objectives can be a main challenge that school management faces. Operation management, though, acts as a strategy to identify the proper management framework that has to be student-centered and focuses mainly on quality assurance.

Education in Oman

In Oman, education in schools is distributed through three levels having the first 6 years similar to western schools in the same level. In the recent years, education experts in Oman are attempting to improve the quality of education in Oman by increasing the budget dedicated for the ministry of education and school support. Due to language and cultural barriers, students’ parents sometimes choose to send their kids to international schools instead of public schools. In Oman, public schools are greater than international schools in numbers, in public schools the students are distributed based on single sex, with males and females are attending classrooms in separate schools. The ministry of education in Oman seeks to adopt a development strategy that targets education policies used to perform major reforms in schools and enhance education development.

The ministry of education using this strategy is attempting to reduce illiteracy rate among school children dramatically. Education is diversified among school learning and leisure activities classroom. The ministry seeks to combine both activities during the school day so that students feel engaged in school education while enhancing communication skills by supporting collaborative activities among students under the supervision of teachers and school management. Education in Oman schools in the third level, high school, encourages students to acquire scholarships in international well-known universities, either in neighboring countries, such as UAE, Jordan, Egypt, or Kuwait. Students also can have the chance to pursue their education in internationally recognized universities in UK and USA based on their abilities and the field of study they wish to pursue that can prepare them for better future.

Schools Management in Oman

As being one of the accountable Middle East country, the authorities in Oman orient greater efforts to schools and education thanks to government support and local community help. Education in Oman schools goes through three stages: primary, preparatory and secondary. In order to ensure students get the proper education in different stages, Oman government provide teachers with training through its different training institutes. In addition to public schools, Oman government has encouraged the private sector to open private schools in order to encourage it to contribute in the education system in Oman which can, in turns, enriches Oman culture and diversify it.

The schools management in Oman, especially in the public sector, emphasis shifts in the centralization system. Educational leaders in Oman believe that in order to accomplish serious school reforms they must devote greater responsibility to school principals in the decision making process by moving from centralized to decentralized management system in order to  boosting parental and community involvement in schools. Therefore, the more managers of schools are engaged in decision making the higher the opportunity will be for them to perform better operation management for the available resources. Human resources management, fro instance, can be better organized by school manager than by centralized authorities. Teacher training, hiring and rewards are better to be oriented from inside the school for instance. This can extends beyond human resources to reach the management of different kinds of resources and operations, such as funding, budget distribution, and other operations that are found to be better managed internally by school managers.

Managing Schools Resources and Operations

The main objective that any decent school management seeks after is to ensure that students and teachers interact in a caring, safe and effective learning environment. This can be achieved by doing the following actions:

·        Provide students the chance to exploit technological tools in a safe and fruitful manner

·        Properly distribute school budget to afford a safe learning environment to support creative initiatives of both students and teachers

·        Effectively invest educational software and similar applications that can facilitate the learning process while ensuring not violating software authors’ copyrights

·          Ensure that every student have full access to school laboratories in order to perform practical learning experiments

·        Design effective plans that are capable of exploiting the available human, physical and financial resources

·        Guarantee the alignment of school operations with the legal frameworks of laws and regulations set by the ministry of education

·        Ensure that decision making process is guided by the supervision and guidance of different stakeholders, such as students’ parents and teachers and allow them to propose different possible solution to current and potential educational problems

·        Encourage flexible collaboration with staff in order to invest the available school resources to meet students needs

·        Periodically review and maintain the schools assets, such as office equipment, hardware, LAN installation and network operability in order to eliminate any delay or idle time

Among others, the school management needs to focus on achieving these objectives in order to enhance its operations and provide better management tools to control current resources and, though, enhance students and teacher performance while seeking high quality education for students in order to prepare them for a better future for the sake of themselves and their country.

Operation Management in Education

By definition, operation management is a field of study that is much more relevant to manufacturing sector, where managers perform greater effort to manage the available scarce resources in production, such as workers, cycle time, materials, inventory, and similar resources that when managed will reduce costs dramatically. Recently, researchers found it is possible to make use of operations management techniques and strategies in managing and controlling operations in the service sector, and it was found to be successful. One of the important service sector fields is the education field where resources are oriented towards one main objective, which is to enhance students performance and raise their educational level so this can better prepare them for a better future and lead them to the right career.

In education, professionals who are entitled to the operation management responsibilities design and oversee functions related to the better exploiting of available resources; in schools resources can be mainly human resources, teachers and students affair employees. Resources can extend to comprehend budget, assets, such as equipment and tools used inside and outside classroom. One of the main tasks that operation managers seek to perfect is managing classrooms schedule. Classrooms scheduling is a hard task that requires collecting information about available number of empty classrooms, number of teachers, number of students per activity classroom and the amount of needed tools in each classroom; the person entitled to this task must make some mathematical modeling so that he can make sure conflicts will not happen and each teacher will have only one class at a time, the same scenario will be for classrooms and courses. Some computer applications can be used for this purpose depending on quantitative techniques of operations research, such as linear programming.

Hence, operations management in case of scheduling can play a major role in organizing the available scarce resources the school have while achieving better results out of it. Another task that operation managers are entitled to is quality control. In education, quality control can encompasses quality of different processes that take place inside the school, such as learning classrooms of different courses, leisure activities, and outside school, such as events performed in different national occasions. In order for operation management to succeed, different elements incorporated in the education process must be managed in a manner that can devise a strategy to make prediction of emerging problems and seek to find potential solutions to them.

Managers Role in Choosing the Best Operations Management Strategy

After its successful in the goods sector, operation management now ensures how profitable it will be in the service sector, especially in the education sector. As being an effective field of study that focuses on effective planning, scheduling and controlling available resources of the organization, operation management in the education filed seems to have a great importance that needs researchers to pay their attention to when they study schools in general, and Oman schools management system in particular. At schools, the process of operation management, in general, is derived from designing school system, manage current information system, ensure quality assurance, and other similar functions.

In schools, managers are entitled to take decisions about students performance, both behaviorally and educationally; other decisions such as designing the learning process with all the relevant resources it implies can be more tricky for them in most cases. For instance, managers can take longer time in preparing classes schedule in a manner that is satisfactory for both students and teachers while considering the tools, classrooms, labs, and other educational tools availability in advance. On the other hand, operation management of schools addresses other issues concerning the planning and control level. This can be better achieved with the help of professional subordinates who can participate in the decision making process regarding scheduling and roles shaping of different stakeholders in the learning process.

For any successful school manager, the best strategy he can pick will be the one that can put his feet on the right path towards achieving the school objectives. The ideal strategy must consider the following areas in order to success:

·        Students numbers in different levels of school education

·        Students number in the learning classroom

·        Proper students number in activities classroom

·        Tools availability to be used in different activities by students

·        Tools availability to be used in different activities by teachers

·        Number of teachers in different learning courses

·        Number of working hours

·        Number of classrooms in the school

·        Availability of school budget

·        Degree of decentralization and decisions that manager can take

·        Periodic maintenance of the available assets

Operations management strategy in school must include, but not limited to, the mentioned above factors which can help school principal make a good use of the available scarce resources he has in the school while achieving the school objectives eventually.

Key Responsibilities of Operation Managers in Schools

Like any job, operation managers in any sectors are entitled of specific functions to perform as part of their job; in the education field, and especially in schools, operations managers are responsible of providing administrative support for staff inside school, and act as team leader for all teachers in the school to ensure all key tasks are performed in a manner that can meet the expectations of different stakeholders, such as students' parents, for quality and timeliness; this can be best delivered through reporting, plans, schedules, and arrangement of regular meetings with them.

Therefore, the operations manager needs to satisfy the needs of everyone involved in the education process to learn about the new and operational management policies, this can be achieved by the arrangement of a transformation program dedicated for dealing with emerging issues in educational technologies and ensure to have the maximum profit out of it for the sake of students future in the first place.

Nevertheless, operations manager in school will be entitled to perform certain tasks and duties that include, but are not limited to, the following duties:

·        Ensure the development of quality management assurance and financial documents are developed, maintained, and delivered to different stakeholders

·        Making sure of delivering mechanisms for contracting and hiring new teachers based on current school requirements

·        Prepare and review operational guidelines needed for efficient management program

·        Administer and control systems and processes implementation daily, weekly and monthly

·        Ensure the school have the proper sufficient amount of assets at the beginning of every semester

·        Making sure that all the stakeholders are communicated with the requirements of different decisions made

·        Coordinate and prepare annual plans and reports

·        Distribute current budget on different procurements paths

·        Facilitate the release of funds to accomplish the annual budgeting strategy

·        Prepare updated financial records that incorporate expenses and liabilities of the school regarding different logistics and assets maintenance

·        Managing potential risks that may negatively hinder the implementation of strategies

·        Guide other stakeholders and provide them with needed assistance to set the different priorities of working schedules

·        Create a culture of teamwork surrounded with learning and understanding among team members

·        Manage cash inflows and outflows of different projects that school operates during the semester

·        Prepare an action plan for the summer semester that incorporates both learning classrooms and communication activities for students and teachers to participate in

·        Arrange for learning competitions among students in different levels and on the same level

Among others, the mentioned above duties are to be performed by the operations manager in a school with the help of other managers and teachers.

Recommendations for a Better Operations Management Strategy in Oman Schools

After discussing the current situation in Oman schools and the duties needed to be performed by operations manager in schools, the following are recommendations dedicated for tracing a good operations management strategy to be applied in Oman schools:

·        Give school principals more space for decentralized decision making

·        Communicate school events to students parents regularly

·        Allow teachers to participate in the decision making process

·        Dedicate greater budget for public schools and dedicate most of it to students activities

·        Manage and review human resources moral regularly in schools

·        Allow students to provide their feedback in schools operations

Conclusion

Education in Oman schools goes through three levels either in public or private schools, where students attend learning and leisure activities classrooms. The ministry of education in Oman does great efforts to enhance students performance and teachers moral through financing and training strategies. Operations management can be applied in the education field in order to adjust and control school issues and scheduling problems. Operations management can also be used to control quality in schools and making teachers' schedules. In order to apply operations management in Oman schools, managers should take care of certain factors and elements, such as current budget of school, number of students in class, number of teachers in schools, and other similar factors.

Schools managers have certain duties if they wish to apply operations management in schools, such as preparing an action plan for the summer semester and review and control school budget. Based on this, recommendations proposed for a good operations management strategy in Oman will target communication of information to different stakeholders and other related budgeting and decision making issues.

Supportive Supervision

Introduction

Supportive supervision is a necessary tool for determining the service quality and it helps in developing performance. Supervisors are needed to help support behavioral change through strengthen the human resources management systems and it can also promote HRM policies that can enable the business environment that can rise effectiveness of employees' performance, raise their retention and improve employees' morale. (Ampofo et al, 2019) The current paper is reviewing a peer reviewed article that discusses the Impact of supportive supervision on the implementation of HRM processes as a mixed-methods study in Tanzania. The paper is presenting a STEM project for increasing the managers' capacity in supporting and supervising the staff in Tanzania. The current paper is a critical review for the article referring to the different HRM relevant techniques applied and presented in the paper. 

Literature Review

Supervision is related to quality service delivery and this is related to the role of management. Supervisors need many things in order to be able to support the workforce such as training and working according to different approaches of supervision. Liu and Batt, (2010) discussed the impact of supervisors on the performance referring to the different strategies and approaches supervisors can combine to improve performance such as individualized coaching and managing the working relationships by means of communication and improving the work environment in addition to the effective implementation of the workplace technology that can enable different practices and interventions. Cintrón and Flaniken, (2020) discussed how performance appraisal can be supported through supervision through supportive supervision as they discussed performance appraisal methods and systems for data collecting and good record keeping, they explained how supervision can support performance appraisal when certain measures and frameworks are used such as subjective methods that can cope with the changing nature of the workplace and objective methods that can measure job performance and referred to the challenges that may exist in the work environment and can delay the job of supervision such as the workload, conflicts in the work environment and shortage of employees that may delay the work of supervisions. Plosser et al, (2020) discussed supervision impact on many factors in the work environment such as profitability, growth and riskiness and they related supervision to regulation and how they can play effective roles within the organization to mentor human resources and reduce risks that may appear within the activities of the organization, they explained how they can develop a new identification strategy that can go beyond correlation to realize the impact of supervision on the service quality and the human resources performance.

Critical Review

The article discusses supervision as a main task in health systems management and explains how it can change the quality service delivery. The article is also representing different forms of supervision that relates to how to manage problems that may appear in service delivery such as supportive supervision that encourages communication between supervisors and supervised human resources. The article refers to literature in reasoning for its hypothesis as it refers to literature that discusses how management can be effective in healthcare organizations and literature that discusses measurement of supervision in the work environment. The article is mainly a study in Tanzania as it investigates the situation there and how healthcare organizations in Tanzania manage supervision and support it with training and different frameworks. Methodology of the paper depends on addressing the gap between the HRM policy and practice The study used a special design that is mixed-method collecting data from health facilities for assessing the change in practice and it also employs discussions that are based on groups in order to find out the supervisors' perceptions for a period of twelve months following STEM implementation in three regions in Tanzania. The focus of the study is on supervisors' perceptions on supportive HRM processes implementation and its impact on the supervision practice. 

The study was applied based on a mixed-methods approach that was applied within a bigger STEM project that include different supervisors who presented many interventions that can help improve the role of supervision within the organization such as human resources management processes and policies that supervisors can learn through training such as effective team management, communication and strategies for managing the challenges within the work environment and solve problems supervisors may face when they are trying to raise the quality of the service delivery. The study objective is assessing the strategy of supportive supervision on HRM implementation that is followed by a group of trial intervention such as supporting, training and empowering policies for managers who can work according to two means of supervision. The study could assess the managers' role in retaining staff and motivating them through certain interventions that can improve the working environment. This was also discussed in literature that proved the effectiveness of such intervention as Uduma et al, (2017) referred to supporting the capacity of supervisors to support their staff and guide them at health facility level, they suggest that the interventions related to these practices proved to be effective as supportive supervision is rather different from coaching and that workers who are motivated by supervisors are better retained than others who received coaching without intensive training for supervisors to support workers and enable communication with them. The author of the article focused on reasoning and evidence that support the hypotheses of the research as the author discussed different measures that may be either qualitative or quantitative to discuss some processes that can improve the supervision process such as the staff job description, guidelines for supervision, absenteeism registers, personnel files and other different practices that can improve the process of supervision. Yang and Lew, (2020) discussed the importance of implementing sustainable human resources practices that are related to leadership style as a means for supervision within the organization that is connected to better work performance and retained workers. This issue of having sustainable effective leadership as a part of sustainable supervision is lacked in the current article of Henry et al, (2016) as the authors focused on the different practices supervisors can develop such as recording keeping systems without referring to the way of making this sustainable and focused on the importance of training without referring to sustainable training practices and how to maintain such sustainability.  The article investigated how STEM intervention can improve the work environment through training managers and helping them change the approaches of HRM they use and referred to management support as one of the most important components of the work environment and focused on certain elements to investigate by the participants in the interview such as personnel files, workers' retention, job description and other elements, the research was applied on certain intervention groups and there was the control group and changes were measured, results showed that there was a positive impact for the supervision facilities within the STEM project as training in particular provided better results on workers' satisfaction levels and retention. The STEM intervention that is multifaceted that focused on including training within supervision, the study facility records showed that active HR policies improved performances in the districts where the interventions took place in the three regions in Tanzania and results also showed that inadequate supervision that is associated with poor regulation and practices of poor monitoring can reduce the quality of the care service provided and there should be innovative and new processes for the supervision interventions. This can also be supported in authors' researches such as in (Straub et al, 2018) as they confirmed that there can be great impact for supervisors' support for practices that can provide better perceptions for the work environment and lead employees to realize the organizational environment as being supportive to the better performance.       

Limitation of the study

The article may have some other limitations such as assessing some elements needs much information that is lacked in the article such as absenteeism records were not existed in the paper in a systematic way that can declare how health facilities can deal with them. There are other limitations such as presenting effective means that can be used to face the challenges supervisors face during assessing performance, motivating employees and working in a work environment that may include certain resistances such as change resistances that some employees may have against innovative supervision strategies and policies.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is necessary to refer to the importance of supervision as a main HRM factor when it is implemented in a way that can encourage better performance and that new approaches for training supervisors can encourage communications with the supervised workers as this is effective in providing better outcomes and higher working performance. The article provided information about how supervision is different from coaching and that supervision practices and tools can be new and different when supervisors receive enough training and support. The article needs more information that can help supervisors face challenges that they may face within the work place and information about keeping sustainable effective supervision to release better results.