BUS 4403 Business Policy and Strategy
Written Assignment 7
DDD Case Study
Task
After reading the case study and other available information carefully, prepare a two-page (double-spaced) essay
addressing the followin
...
BUS 4403 Business Policy and Strategy
Written Assignment 7
DDD Case Study
Task
After reading the case study and other available information carefully, prepare a two-page (double-spaced) essay
addressing the following questions. When composing your essay, do not simply list the question and provide an answer,
but rather compose a narrative essay that responds to the questions.
• What are the current human resources (HR) challenges facing DDD?
• What is the business goal and strategic choices facing DDD?
• What skills does DDD require of its rank-and-file staff?
• What skills does DDD require of its management staff?
• What barriers prevent DDD from recruiting the management staff it needs?
• What HR-related advantage is there for entering into a joint venture with a partner organization?
Cite references to material that you use in preparing the essay.
-4403-Unit-7-Written-Assignment-DDDpdf/DDD Case Study
This week’s reading assignment is going to elaborate further on the Digital Divide Data (DDD) case study by
Mathew, Rod, Villalobos, and Yates in 2009, related to the business goals, strategic choices, and challenges
DDD management was facing. DDD was founded by Jeremy Hockenstein in 2001 as a small, non-profit
the company, with a focus on digital content outsourcing. It started with their first business opportunity with
the digitalization of Harvard University’s Harvard Crimson undergraduate newspaper from a small
office in Phnom Penh (Mathew, Rod, Villalobos & Yates, 2009). At the time of the case study, DDD has
entered its ninth year of operations and another ten years have passed since. It had been DDD’s main
goal to bring technical education to the underserved regions and communities in Asia (DDD, 2019), while
improving the quality of life of disadvantaged Cambodians who were forced into poverty and the lack of
opportunity (Mathew, Rod, Villalobos & Yates, 2009).
With regard to the HR challenges, it had been one of the strategic choices to use local resources, however,
for the management element this had been an issue, in particular, the offices in Cambodia and Laos. The
skilled managers were in high demand which allowed them to ask for higher salaries, which was something
DDD could not afford it at the time. In addition, infrastructure was not always sufficiently in place or
developed which caused another set of problems for connectivity, road, and internet. In line with the
issues at those new sites, staff would not agree to move there, which ties back to the human resources
issue that was listed earlier.
The goals and strategic choices have been defined at their beginning and foundation as a small social
entrepreneur company in 2001 when DDD’s management knew that they had the opportunity to become
an international provider of the workforce since most of their working field was independent of the actual
working location. Their first business opportunity was the digitalization of Harvard University’s Harvard
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