A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Majukwa, Donnemore; Haddud, Abubaker Article Operations management impact on achieving strategic fit: A case from the retail sector in Zimbabwe Cogent Business & Management Provided in Cooperation with: Taylor & Francis Group Suggested Citation: Majukwa, Donnemore; Haddud, Abubaker (2016) : Operations management impact on achieving strategic fit: A case from the retail sector in Zimbabwe, Cogent Business & Management, ISSN 2331-1975, Taylor & Francis, Abingdon, Vol. 3, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2016.1189478 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/205877 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. 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Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.econstor.eu Majukwa & Haddud, Cogent Business & Management (2016), 3: 1189478 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2016.1189478 OPERATIONS, INFORMATION & TECHNOLOGY | RESEARCH ARTICLE Operations management impact on achieving strategic fit: A case from the retail sector in Zimbabwe 1 1 Received: 15 March 2016 Donnemore Majukwa * and Abubaker Haddud Accepted: 06 May 2016 Published: 30 May 2016 Abstract: For a long time, Zimbabwe’s retail industry has been operating in a very *Corresponding author: Donnemore “hostile business environment”, due to the country’s economic instability and uncer- Majukwa, School of Management, tainty associated with it. The adoption of the green back has attracted foreign investors Liverpool University, Liverpool, UK E-mails: donnemore.majukwa@online. mainly from Nigeria, South Africa and China who have since opened their retail outlets liverpool.ac.uk; donney.more@gmail. com in the country and fuelled more competition in the sector which resulted in some local operators closing their businesses but XYZ Zimbabwe has survived. This study makes Reviewing editor: Shaofeng Liu, University of Plymouth, an assessment of achievements and obstacles in using operations management to UK achieve strategic fit by the selected case study. The main objectives of the study are; to Additional information is available at explore competitive strategies, examine supply chain strategies and provide solution- the end of the article based strategies that helped the case study achieve strategic fit. Through an empirical approach, the study finds that XYZ Zimbabwe differentiated itself in the market by branding, positioning its stores conveniently to customers, offering variety of products at low prices to the customers and the company’s supply chain management hinges on the demand and supply integration to gain competitive advantage. Subjects: Economics, Finance, Business & Industry; Information Science; Social Sciences Keywords: operations management; African operations management; retail operations; supply chain management; strategic fit; African management; operations strategy ABOUT THE AUTHORS PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT Donnemore Majukwa is an operations and A business organization may fail because of supply chain manager with more than 16 years lack of strategic fit or because its processes and experience in managing complex supply chains in resources do not provide the capabilities to execute diversified sectors in Africa and the Middle East. the desired strategy. This study guides firms to He holds an MSc in Operations and Supply Chain build a dynamic strategy of using operations Management from the University of Liverpool, and management to achieve strategic fit in the retail currently studying towards the Doctor of Business sector with particular focus at XYZ Zimbabwe. The Administration (DBA) degree in Global Supply data were collected from a retail services company Chain Management at Walden University in USA. operating in Zimbabwe. The findings showed Abubaker Haddud is a visiting scholar at Eastern that quality of research and development (R&D) Michigan University in the United States. He activities as well as the involvement of operations serves as an honorary lecturer, research advisor managers in activities which create and sustain and lead faculty on the MSc in operations and the business’s competitive advantages were critical Donnemore Majukwa supply chain management online programmes factors to gain strategic fit. In fact, the results at the University of Liverpool in England. He has implied that retail firms cannot succeed without a PhD in engineering management from Eastern operations management involvement and proper Michigan University, where he was a Fulbright investment in research and development. In sum, scholar, and an MBA from Coventry University in retail practices require continuous learning and the UK. His teaching and research interests focus development. The findings could help policy- on technology management, lean manufacturing, makers and strategists in retail sector to develop strategic operations management. sound policies to better compete in marketplaces. © 2016 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license. Page 1 of 16 Majukwa & Haddud, Cogent Business & Management (2016), 3: 1189478 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2016.1189478 1. Introduction Several related researsch studies were done on the theory of creating strategic fit and how strategic alignment can help achieve competitive advantage (Barney, 1991; Chorn, 1991; Das & Teng, 2000; Elmuti, Abou-Zaid, & Jia, 2012). These studies were outside the context of an economically con- strained economy like Zimbabwe’s economy. Positive impact was established in these previous stud- ies; however, the question was whether this also applies to Zimbabwe’s retail sector which is affected by stiff competition and hostile operating environment. The retail industry in Zimbabwe was com- posed of operators that include XYZ Zimbabwe, Clicks, Spar, TM, Meikles, Town and County super- markets and others. Before and after the period from 2000 to 2008 when the country experienced hard economic downfall, some retail industry operators posted stable profits. XYZ Zimbabwe domi- nated the sector with a market share of 35%. However, after the government introduced the US Dollar as the main legal tender in 2009, new retail players such as Pick & Pay and other small, me- dium and large retail players joined the sector in search of cash liquidity, and some retail shops such as: Clicks, Meikles, TM and Town and County were faced with decreased turnover and closed their retail businesses. However, inspired by the continued expansion and growth of XYZ Zimbabwe, the interest of this study is to establish the role of operations management in achieving strategic fit in retail industry. The retailer serves thousands of customers every month and has continued to grow and attract more business opportunities despite the political and economic challenges faced by the country. Many people prefer to buy at XYZ Zimbabwe shops mainly because they are conveniently located to the customers and their prices are low as compared to other retailers. XYZ Zimbabwe has successfully distinguished itself through its remarkable consistency across all grocery, hardware and kitchen utensil products. The business strongly promotes fast services, con- venience of buying more goods under one roof and low prices and the company’s business motto reads “shop at [XYZ] where the nation shops and saves”. The interest of the research is to establish the company’s secret of success by carrying out this study. The study is going to benefit retail opera- tors in refining and developing business processes in their journeys towards the route for achieving strategic fit. The study is designed to open doors of opportunity for more empirical studies to be carried out in establishing the role of operations management in achieving strategic fit in retail sec- tor. The organization under the case study is also going to benefit immensely from new discoveries of ideas and business insights which are going to be gathered and created during the research pro- cess. The research is further going to explore on how the company managed to successfully main- tain its competitive strategy, its supply chain strategy and all the functions within the value chain which support the competitive advantage. The study contributes in the development of theory of using operations management in activities that create value for customers. 1.1. The problem The retail industry in Zimbabwe was faced with stiff competition and a hostile economic operating