Riverside District Memorial Hospital (RDMH) is a small rural hospital that must work within an operational budget that is determined by the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care in a Canadian province. This case identifies the emergence of concerns for patient safety related to medication administration, and the challenges of ensuring professional services are maintained by the pharmacy department to serve patients admitted to hospital. The chief nursing executive (CNE) must decide what steps should be taken to reduce this exposure in the context of the complex relationships in which RDMH exists.
The case describes Aviva Investors' engagement strategy with companies and stock exchanges to improve its sustainability performance and the flow of sustainability related information to markets. Aviva Investors, a GBP 259 billion fund, is the investment arm of the large British insurance company, Aviva plc. Aviva Investors is committed to sustainability under the leadership of its CEO, Paul Abberley, and head of sustainability research and engagement, Steve Waygood. The case describes Aviva Investors' policies on materiality, engagement, and its corporate responsibility voting policy. It then explores how the company is implementing these policies in the case of a particular company, the FTSE 100 diversified mining company Vendanta, and the Sustainable Stock Exchange Initiative under the sponsorship of the UN Principles for Responsible Investment.
Yoga, an ancient discipline, has become popular worldwide. The marketing of yoga and dispute over its origins have led to debate as to whether yoga should be branded at all. Some yoga instructors have gone so far as to copyright their varieties of yoga; others in the yoga community say it is a religious and/or spiritual practice and as such should not be claimed as intellectual property.
Details Nike Football's marketing efforts in the lead up to and during the World Cup in South Africa (2010). Allows students to reflect on the implementation of the strategy and to think about the implications for Nike as it begins preparing for the World Cup in 2014.
TAEQ was a new branding concept in the Brazilian retail market. The name represented a combination of two concepts associated with modern wellness: tao, representing balance and naturalness, and eki, representing vital energy. TAEQ was developed to become one of the leading private brands in the Grupo Pao de Acucar (GPA) portfolio. As the largest Brazilian retailing conglomerate, GPA wanted to extend its marketing reach into the evolving wellness market with the new brand concept.
Provides background information for a negotiations exercise in which students will represent either Keurig, a startup that has developed an innovative "portion pack" coffee brewing solution, or Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR), a fast-growing premium coffee roaster interested in licensing Keurig's technology. The negotiation will determine the royalty to be paid to Keurig by GMCR, who will bear capital expenditures, and whether GMCR secures exclusive distribution rights to Keurig's system.
Case provides confidential information for students assuming the role of senior executives of Keurig, a startup that has developed an innovative "portion pack" coffee brewing solution, in a negotiation to license technology to Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR). The negotiation will determine the royalty to be paid to Keurig by GMCR, who will bear capital expenditures, and determine whether GMCR secures exclusive distribution rights to Keurig's system.
Case provides confidential information for students assuming the role of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) senior executives in a negotiation to license technology from Keurig, a startup that has developed an innovative "portion pack" coffee brewing solution. The negotiation will determine the royalty to be paid to Keurig by GMCR, who will bear capital expenditures, and determine whether GMCR secures exclusive distribution rights to Keurig's system.
A final-year student at a business school estimated the net present value (NPV) of his proposed business plan — a tourism and transport business in India — using three different methods and encountered different valuation results. He approached the professor who had taught him valuation concepts in a finance course and wanted to know the reasons for the difference.
Environmental stewardship was part of REI's culture since the company was founded, and integral to its corporate purpose. In 2005, REI began carefully measuring its environmental impact, establishing aggressive sustainability goals, and implementing programs to achieve these goals. The corporate social responsibility group, which oversaw the environmental sustainability program, took the approach that social and financial objectives should not be viewed as tradeoffs. For instance, growth objectives (increasing the number of stores and sales per store) should not come at the expense of energy consumption objectives for flat or decreasing corporate energy usage. Insisting that both objectives be met would lead to creating thinking and innovative solutions. The case describes the environmental stewardship program at REI, its objectives, and philosophy of implementation.
A loop is used in Microsoft Excel to repeat a piece of code, while an array is a group of variables with the same data type and name. This note is an introduction to different types of loops and their use with arrays in Excel Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), with brief definitions and examples. Loops types included are for-next, for-each, do while (do until), do-loop (with while and until), and nested loops. For arrays, the note presents static and dynamic arrays with examples.
A sub, function, or event procedure is a set of commands to perform a task in a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code. One important reason for subs and functions is the reusability of VBA code. For example, if an Excel VBA application requires a calculation to be performed multiple times in its code, the user can enter a reference to a sub or function, rather than rewriting the same code for each calculation.<br><br>This note is an introduction to sub, functions, and event procedures in Excel VBA with brief definitions, examples, and screenshots. The note demonstrates how to use them in a variety of settings.
This case depicts China Merchants Bank's second strategic transformation. In the 90's, China Merchants bank creatively introduced an all-in-one-card and an all-in-one-net based on IT systems and network, enabling itself to expand nationwide. By successfully entering the emerging credit card industry, the bank confirmed its retail banking strategy in 2004, followed by its great success in occupying 1/3 credit card market share. The market share-driven strategy didn't last forever. Recognizing business environment changes, the company changed its strategy focus to profit-driven in 2009. It's the second time that information technology enables business success.
Jamie Bailey, owner and president of C.R. Plastics, has successfully grown his business every year since 1994 when he began producing recycled plastic outdoor furniture. This rapid growth has provided its own challenges in terms of constrained financing and by summer 2010, Bailey was desperate for a new source of cash. He subsequently auditioned to be on Dragon's Den, a television show where entrepreneurs can pitch their business to a group of venture capitalists, who may then choose to invest their own cash in exchange for a share of the business. With a week remaining before he has to present his final pitch, Bailey has to make a difficult prediction: How much money will he need to meet the growing demand into 2011? Complicating his analysis are competing proposals to fundamentally change how production is managed. In addition to reconfiguring labour allocation, one method requires significant investment in equipment while the other increases inventory during the off-season. Which alternative will allow the company to retain a greater share of the equity when he pitches his business to the Dragon's Den panel?
Unilever's Lipton Tea had been successful with the first phase of its certification partnership with Rainforest Alliance. Now the company faced challenges in how to push forward with the transformation of more difficult parts of the supply chain and how to market sustainable tea in developing markets like India.
Doug Rauch, the former president of grocery store chain Trader Joe's, had long been troubled by the amount of food, especially fresh and healthy produce, which was wasted in the food system. Simultaneously, he was frustrated by the paradox he saw in the U.S. food system: rising food insecurity, broadly defined as a lack of access to enough food to fully meet basic needs at all times, concurrent with an obesity epidemic, suggesting that low-income communities lacked access not just to food in general, but to healthy foods in particular. Rauch believed he could build a non-profit grocery store model that took advantage of grocery stores' built-in waste and channeled that wasted food to be resold at a significant discount. Rauch faced significant challenges in the implementation and execution of his plan, notably legal hurdles related to selling products past their expiration date, marketing challenges, and convincing grocers to partner with him to combat waste. He had to carefully select a partner from a number of interested parties. Finally, he would need to change shopping, eating, and cooking behaviors of a community. In doing so, he hoped to leave a lasting positive health impact and a scalable model for change across the United States.
This role-play case involves a series of sessions in which the student (and each member of his or her team) will play the role of Benjamin Cheung, the vice president of HCM Asia Private Limited, a financial services firm based in Hong Kong. Cheung has an open-door policy where any manager can drop by to see him, on their own initiative, to ask for ideas, guidance, or a decision on an issue. He has only six minutes to see each manager in this informal coaching session since he has to leave for another important meeting at head office. Cheung knows the key details of each manager’s background and development needs, but does not know in advance what the manager’s specific concerns are. It will be necessary for Cheung to explore the manager’s concerns through active listening, asking questions, and summarizing. Each of the manager roles is typical of those you might meet in an Asian organization, such as a highly skilled, technically focused leader who defaults to top-down management, an associate who lacks self-confidence and avoids confrontation at all cost, an ambitious associate who wants an international assignment but struggles with his current workload, and a detail-oriented leader who focuses on processes while losing sight of the big picture.