The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) is Malaysia’s national private-sector pension program. It has grown into one of the largest pension funds in the world. The success of the EPF and Malaysia as a whole have brought new challenges. As life expectancy increases and the population ages, how can the EPF ensure adequate pension coverage and take care of Malaysians’ increasing retirement needs? As technology replaces the need for branches and customer-facing staff, how and where should the EPF channel its valuable human resources? How should the EPF optimally invest its ever-increasing funds? These are the questions the EPF’s chief strategy officer has to answer as he charts a way forward in the 21st century.

Captain Fresh, a tech-enabled business-to-business (B2B) seafood marketplace based out of Bengaluru, India, had been enjoying phenomenal success. Founder Utham Gowda set out to simplify the seafood supply chain in a fragmented, unstructured, and complex market. He was sure that going forward, technology would play a major role in building high-quality distribution infrastructure that would take fish from sea to plate. In January 2022, having achieved revenue growth of more than 700 per cent from September 2020 to September 2021, Gowda was faced with three equally compelling options for growth. In January 2022, he was faced with three equally compelling options for growth. The first was to set up Captain Fresh's own business-to-consumer brand; the second was to add mutton and chicken to his product offerings; and the third option was a bold proposal to go international by expanding to the United States. Another exciting strategy was expanding Fishgram, the unique proprietary marine supply-chain technology platform Gowda had built to help fishers connect directly to buyers across various geographies. There was an opportunity to monetize the platform by offering it to non-competing fishers as a software as a service. Which of three options should he choose while maintaining his original goal of easing problems in the country's fish and seafood supply chain? Should he offer Fishgram to fishers and other businesses?

The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) is Malaysia's national private-sector pension program. It has grown into one of the largest pension funds in the world. The success of the EPF and Malaysia as a whole have brought new challenges. As life expectancy increases and the population ages, how can the EPF ensure adequate pension coverage and take care of Malaysians' increasing retirement needs? As technology replaces the need for branches and customer-facing staff, how and where should the EPF channel its valuable human resources? How should the EPF optimally invest its ever-increasing funds? These are the questions the EPF's chief strategy officer has to answer as he charts a way forward in the 21st century.

Global furniture giant Inter IKEA Systems B.V. (IKEA) announced its intent to become a circular and climate-positive business by 2030. In order to achieve these goals, the company had to find ways for consumers to cycle end-of-life products back to its facilities. IKEA was implementing this process-known as reverse logistics-via international sell-back and leasing programs. It was unclear, however, if the company's efforts would be enough to make its operations sustainable. Additionally, the question remained as to whether IKEA was truly focused on sustainability and responsibility or if it was simply attempting to maximize customer lifetime value.

Strategic corporate philanthropy voluntary giving that builds on a company's core competencies to both effect social impact and improve its competitive position can be difficult for leaders to navigate. Based on their research, the authors have developed a framework to help business leaders determine whether a philanthropic project is a good fit for their organization. By asking the right questions, leaders can best decide what, how, and where to engage in corporate philanthropy.

Recent disruptive events like the pandemic and war in Europe have exposed businesses weakened by short-sighted leadership decisions, and many companies risk being unprepared for the new challenges that will inevitably emerge. The authors analyzed Southwest Airlines, Boeing, and GE to understand how and why successful companies sacrifice the business excellence they spent years building for near-term financial gains that ultimately harm investors, employees, and customers.

Many factors influence corporate governance in a family firm, the most prevalent form of business entity in Latin America. National culture affects a family firm's societal values, as well as economic, political, and legal systems of governance. Normative behaviour and expectations are also key factors that affect both individual and organizational norms. The firm's characteristics are another major source of influence. In addition to these major factors, various other variables play a role on shaping the firm's corporate governance, including family unity, patriarchal expectations, and inclusivity of the family definition. All of these factors can influence the numerous decisions that family businesses make in regard to their corporate governance, which makes it impossible to apply one approach for all family firms in Latin America. Each organization's board of directors may have specific characteristics that require different mechanisms to make effective governance decisions. This technical note discusses an evolutionary pattern of corporate governance, rather than a single approach, that could be effectively applied to the decision-making board of a family firm in Latin America.

This case introduces the challenges and decision criteria for businesses seeking to sponsor student athletes in the advent of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA's) landmark decision to authorize collegiate student athletes to monetize their name, image, and likeness (NIL), just as professional athletes and other celebrities have always done. The case follows Jonathan Cotten, president of Easy Step Enterprises (Easy Step), a franchisee for the Good Feet Store based in Richmond, Virginia, as he explores the possibility of using college athletes from the University of Virginia (UVA) as social media influencers to stimulate demand for the Good Feet Store locations his company operates. The primary focus of this case is not on franchisee-franchisor relations, but rather on the strategic decision processes a business must consider when exploring the emerging opportunity to engage college student athletes as social media influencers. Because of their youth and relative inexperience, college student athletes pose different challenges and issues compared to the longer-established engagement of professional athletes and celebrities in similar roles. This case highlights these differences and encourages careful integration of criteria for executing these decisions.

Dr Amin Shokrollahi, a mathematician who loves research, becomes an entrepreneur by accident. He discovers a software solution to decelerate Moore's Law, and his friend, entrepreneur Steve Papa, pushes him to create a company and bring the solution to market. For five years they "wander in the woods" building the team, raising money, developing the technology, fruitlessly talking with potential customers and working with some of the world's most important technology companies... but without commercial success.

Dr Amin Shokrollahi, a mathematician who loves research, becomes an entrepreneur by accident. He discovers a software solution to decelerate Moore's Law, and his friend, entrepreneur Steve Papa, pushes him to create a company and bring the solution to market. For five years they "wander in the woods" building the team, raising money, developing the technology, fruitlessly talking with potential customers and working with some of the world's most important technology companies... but without commercial success.

Having developed a blockchain product to track the end-to-end movement of goods being transported along the pharmaceutical supply chain, Zuellig Pharma also has tested it in real life situation involving distribution during the critical Covid-19 phase. The company's Vice President and Head of Digital and Data Solutions is now seeking ways to scale up product for multiple markets, multiple users, and multiple applications even while blockchain, as a bourgeoning technology, is itself facing scaling limitations.

The turnaround coordinator at Chem-ARC Industries (Chem-ARC) had to solve a dispute involving multiple stakeholders within the Turnaround Scheduling and Planning Department. Chem-ARC had been only two days into a company-wide shutdown when a delay on the plant floor sent the outage schedule into disarray. Members of the department started to blame one another for the issues Chem-ARC was facing. With a group of disgruntled employees, a costly problem that urgently needed fixing, and a senior management team pressing for answers, the coordinator had to find a way to improve teamwork within her department while conveying to upper management that she was capable of her position as leader.

In June of 2022, Jada Abimbola, chief executive officer and owner of Workplace Safety Trainers (WST), needed to develop a strategy for the business after experiencing stagnating profits during the coronavirus pandemic. WST was one of Ontario’s foremost private occupational health and safety companies, providing training for businesses that needed to comply with the standards of the Ontario Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training, and Skills Development. Abimbola was considering several alternatives to revive the business while remaining committed to its new employee-centred focus: maintain the status quo, offer first aid training, or develop and sell a new line of physical goods. Abimbola was also considering cashing in on her investment by selling the business and moving on. This case will also serve as a talking point for the importance of occupational health and safety in various industries.

Implicitly or explicitly, product-development teams in digital spaces will go through a process of gathering and employing data to help them create and iterate upon a user experience that invites high engagement. An important part of gathering this data is having actual users test the product, but in order to learn what testable criteria constitute successful user behaviors, managers and teams can employ user stories, testable micronarratives about user experience. User stories give managers and teams important tools they can use to focus their observations, bring actionable ideas, and facilitate productive work on development-ready designs. In particular, they can give general managers a focal point for their work on continuous design and a way to prioritize with purpose as they decide on a backlog for development, iteration to iteration. This technical note takes readers on a deep dive into user stories as they apply to continuous design, prototyping, usability testing, and analytics. It explores how managers and teams can create, refine, and prioritize them to help create the best possible user experience within the products they are designing.

Public service union Local 892 was the union representing faculty at North City College (NCC) in Kingston, a mid-sized city in Canada's Ontario province. NCC had approached Local 892 to request a local agreement exempting the college from following the collective agreement's clause forcing it to hire someone permanently if they were on contract for over twelve months. The union had to decide whether to allow NCC to hire librarian Sharrod Alasa for an additional twelve-month contract or force the college to decide to either end Alasa's contract or hire him to a permanent position.

In late 2020, Lynn Wilson, a social entrepreneur and chief executive officer of SparqU, Inc., gave himself one year to turn his company around. SparqU, which offered digital literacy training to underserved and underrepresented communities, had been funded by a workforce grant. But when the grant expired, Wilson left his academic teaching position to focus full-time on SparqU and fulfill his passion for helping Colorado's people of colour, low income, and underserved to become digitally literate and improve their job opportunities. Wilson was all in. But he wondered, would his current promotional strategy targeted towards those needing to build digital literacy skills eventually be profitable ? Or should he consider other segments?

In 2020, Banco del Barrio (BB) celebrated its12th anniversary since its establishment as a non-bank correspondent. BB had successfully reduced the traditional barriers to accessing financial services for its users at the base of the pyramid. However, the financial services offered had a low utilization rate, so BB was not making significant progress in promoting financial inclusion. In the midst of this scenario, the Vice President of Personal Banking responsible for managing BB's operations, had to develop the 2020 plan. The dilemma involves evaluating the options of expanding services in women's banking or transitioning towards a platform of services for micro-businesses.

Gram Oorja's mission was to make energy available to people in remote areas in India where the government power supply grid had not reached. They installed solar microgrids and biogas plants in locations where these technologies were found to be viable. The microgrid projects were funded primarily through corporate social responsibility spending by interested corporates approached by Gram Oorja. The community of households receiving electricity was made responsible and accountable for maintaining the grid and replacing batteries by charging users on consumption measured with meters. The case discusses the inception of Gram Oorja and the evolution of their unique community-based business model. It describes the process of project implementation and the post-implementation activities. The case also presents the perspective of the consumers and highlights the potential for long term development of remote rural locations through energy access. New domains of energy access including irrigation and biogas, along with future plans are also discussed. The financial performance of Gram Oorja over the years gives an indication of its journey of learning and growth. Lastly, the case highlights the challenges being faced by the organization in an evolving environment. It challenges students to find new pathways for Gram Oorja to grow towards its mission.

The case discusses the dilemma faced by Archit Shah, a practicing Chartered Accountant (CA) and portfolio manager based in Ahmedabad, India, for investment in foreign stocks to diversify the existing portfolio of his clients. The decision to invest was pertinent and urgent as few of his clients were reducing their funds due to stagnant growth of existing securities in the portfolio. He had heard about the benefits of investing in foreign markets from experts in different financial conferences as well as from his fellow friends in the field. To start safe, he decided to invest in FANMAG stock and do a detailed financial analysis. It was his first endeavour in a foreign stock, and he did not want to risk his clients' money. He did not restrict his analysis to P/L and balance sheet ratios and decided to first analyse the past free cash flows (FCFs) to understand the actual performance of the companies. While past performance cannot be the decision factor, he also decided to refer valuation as per discounted cash flow (DCF) model to put an end to his confusion. Portfolio or fund managers use FCF as one of the most important indicators for valuation as per DCF model to evaluate the true performance of a company. Market ratios like P/E ratio help to track the earnings and investor's perception while FCFs help to understand the actual cash available for shareholders. So, to get a true picture of FANMAG stock's performance, Shah decided to analyse it through various parameters like quality of earnings ratio, FCFs, and valuation ratios for a period of 5 years from 2016 to 2020. Additionally, the intrinsic value as per DCF model (valuation approach) was referred to finalize the investment decision. Thus, the case deals with the challenges faced by CA Shah for investment decisions by assessing the earnings quality and the cash flow-based valuation ratios.

'Betting on Green Steel' traces the innovative journey embarked upon by a group of MBA students who have set out to conceive a novel steelmaker that pioneers the production of green steel. The ensemble is confronted with a series of critical choices that will shape the venture: Should the operation base be in India or Oman? What would be the best method for green steel production - carbon capture and storage, or green hydrogen? Who should they aim to cater to with their green steel - the automotive sector or the wind turbine manufacturing industry? And lastly, which business model would drive sustainable profit - green premium pricing or carbon credits? One of the team members is set to return to his family's steelmaking enterprise post-graduation, escalating the stakes to a personal level. This dynamic case study offers a thorough exploration of these key decision-making factors in the context of environmental sustainability and business strategy, providing fertile ground for engaging classroom discussions.