title: An Exploration of Small Business Profit Strategies: A Qualitative Case Study of a Small Training Business in the UAE
Creators: name: Tabah, Karim
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2021

description: This research focused on a small training company located in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The company reported a work-based problem related to a decline in its profitability, which challenged the ability of this company to remain operational. The problem of declining profitability of small businesses in the UAE was common, as many other small businesses struggled to remain operational. As a result, the research question of the study was: “What are the strategies that a small, UAE-based training company may follow to become profitable and remain in business?”. This research aimed to adapt ideas from the practices of other small, training companies located in the UAE. A qualitative case study was chosen as the research design to address the research question. The participants were four business owners of other UAE-based small training businesses that are similar to the company’s size and training specializations. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews and documents. This study’s primary conceptual framework was Grant’s (1991) practical approach to resource-based strategy analysis. This approach was integrated with insights from the neo-institutional theory to capture the institutional context affecting strategy formulation in XYZ. The study findings identified five themes related to the strategies that small training businesses in the UAE may follow to become profitable and remain in business. The first theme was that small training businesses might respond to external threats by developing a diversification strategy. The second theme was that companies may follow a cost-cutting strategy to respond to the increasing threats in the external environment. The third theme was that small training businesses might develop customer-oriented strategies to define new opportunities in the market. The fourth theme was that small training companies might follow entrepreneurially oriented strategies to identify new opportunities. The fifth theme was that companies might pursue a customer-acquisition strategy to respond to external threats. The study also concluded that the defined strategic themes are not mutually exclusive, as the research participants followed more than one strategy simultaneously. To derive actionable knowledge from the research findings, the study assessed the applicability of the five defined strategic themes to the context of the company. Specifically, the study evaluated the current resources and capabilities of the company and identified a hybrid strategy that the company can follow to become profitable and remain in business. An action plan was then developed to implement this derived strategy. A detailed list of the taken actions as an outcome of the findings was then presented. The study findings contributed to the lack of research on what makes training companies in the UAE successful. It also contributed to the limited research about what makes training companies, regardless of their location, successful and profitable. The study may also have helped in addressing the problem of the fragmentation of research on what makes small companies successful. This was achieved by identifying the factors that were found to be significant to the success of small UAE-based training companies.