Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Business Economics
Submitted to:
Prof. Heiko Fritz
Submitted by:
Ali Sabry Mohamed
Submission Date:
9-5-2010
Table of content
1. Introduction to private education
2. German University in Cairo
3. Information Technology resource and its business value
a. What is IT?
b. IT and the scarcity theory
4. Scarcity problem
a. GUC scarcity problem
b. IT and the scarcity problem
5. What determines demand in the short run and long run for GUC
services?
6. Market structure and pricing
how it is effective after graduating for their children to get hired in outstanding companies.
Based on this perception a lot of businesses have evolved to fulfill this need, they promised
with high practices and good theoretical.
Several universities have emerged in the Egyptian market to get benefit from serving those
people with the private universities perception for example GUC, American University in
Cairo, French University and British University etc... We notice from the style of these
universities that they have studied the Egyptian market and concluded that Egyptian
perception towards the European education is very good.
GUC have got its reputation among its competitors with high quality of education, and that
didnt come by luck, but by the hard work among the internal employees and the high
experienced educated staff. Adding to that the coordination team which relied a lot on the
IT department to create synergistic business process for that huge number of the students,
staff, and tutors have been achieved.
Offer non-traditional study programs in science and technology that are built
on modern curricula in collaboration with the German State Universities and
other international institutions.
Provide the chance for students from neighboring countries to pursue their
studies and obtain their academic degrees at international standards.
Develop scientific, cultural and business links with the national and
international institutions in Egypt, Germany and other countries.
Commit itself to the training and development of academic and nonacademic staff as key resources to the success of GUC.
3.1.
Information technology
Few researches have argued that the IT is not scarce resource it became ubiquity
commodity not strategic for any organization. As when the companies could have their
edge over their competitors by having or doing something others dont have or do, IT
resource has become affordable and accessible to everyone and it no longer offers strategic
value to anyone. This means that IT by itself couldnt be the competitive edge for any
organization by its own. These researches have stated a fact clearly reflected in companies
spending habits that when a resource becomes essential to competition but inconsequential
to strategy, the risks it creates become more important than the advantages it provides. So
from one side, IT can be considered as it is just an instrument but not a rare resource.
But on the other side a lot of researches have mentioned that IT's power and presence have
expanded, companies have come to view it as a resource ever more critical to their success.
And the strategic view of the IT coexists in the following, IT systems increase coordinating
efficiencies to provide economic value to the firm, therefore firms will have higher cost
structures if they do not adopt IT systems, also IT increase the knowledge sharing among
the firms employees which could achieve high internal performance.
4. Scarcity problem
4.1.
GUC is an evolving business in the field of private education, and although its huge success
which can be referenced by its huge reputation in the Egyptian market, still it faces a lot of
problems like, the lake of experiences among new comers to comply with this new internal
culture in educating jobs and administration jobs. Adding to that the huge amount of the
stakeholders (Staff, tutors and students) who should be managed efficiently in order to
achieve the university objective through a strong and discipline way of communication. So
apparently the internal coordination jobs must have superior candidates to conduct these
kinds of businesses. Here coexists the scarcity, the price of hiring high efficient and
experienced coordination employees in the education field with 2 foreign languages
(English and German) is very high and the demand on them is very high too. The lake of
superior internal coordination experiences to manage all that number of interacting people
inside the campus and in the same time innovate in the business process to shortening the
internal procedures, and if this superiority or required experience exists will it sustain or it
could be hunted from other firms.
4.2.
In order to explore the rule of the IT in allocating this scarce resource, it is simply can be
summarized in the following
-
Offering coordination systems that can help those employees in conducting their
So the scarcity her can be solved or approximately turned out to be un-scarce resource
5. What determines demand in the short run and long run for GUC
services?
Price, Substitutes price and Taste are the main determinants for the GUC demand in the
short term and the long term. GUC has a very well known taste which is the Egyptian
perception towards the German industry culture and education, adding to that the
intermediate price among the other competitors which give approximately the same
services. Its substitutes, which are the high institutes and other education centers, give
low reputation with nearly the same price.
But for the long run determines of GUC services demand, reputation and the amount of
researches conducted by GUC researches could add market value for the GUC which
lead to the huge increase in the demand but with fixed numbers of the students
determined by the ministry of high education which indicate to the increase of the price
of the education services.
no market failure discovered to offer this kind of services. The customer willingness to
pay more to this kind of services is high for a vast majority of Egyptian parents based
on the previously mentioned perception. And with this comparative price the supplier
(GUC) gain more than the cost of production which attains the producer surplus.
The group segmentation of the private universities contain the AUC, GUC, BUE, FUE
in the first segment and others come next, adding to that the low price for services that
GUC offers compared with the leader and the follower in this field, and finally the high
reputation it gained in the few last years, assuring to it a very good market even if it
increases its services prices.
References:
1- Kohli, R., and Grover, V. 2008. Business Value of IT: An Essay on Expanding Research
Directions to Keep Up with the Times, Journal of the AIS (9:1), pp. 23-37.
2- Nevo S. and Wade M. 2010. The formation and value of IT-enabled resources: antecedents
and consequences of synergistic relationships, MIS Quarterly Vol. 34
3- Bourlakis M., Bourlakis C. 2006. Integrating logistics and information technology
strategies for sustainable competitive advantage, Journal of Enterprise Information
Management, Vol. 19 No. 4
4- 7- Nicholas G. Carr. 2003. IT Doesn't Matter, Harvard Business Review, MAY
5- http://www.guc.edu.eg/