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.
Tackling the big, systemic challenges confronting many organizational business leaders will increasingly require strategizing across organizational boundaries, but doing so is more complex than making strategy within a single organization. The authors developed a new approach to collaborative strategy in working with a global public health organization. Lessons learned can help leaders in individual organizations work with others to achieve both shared and individual strategic priorities.
This case focuses on the use of modern data analytics to alleviate crowding at the branches of United Overseas Bank, a full-service bank headquartered in Singapore. The case is set in 2020 against the backdrop of the COVID-19 global pandemic when vaccines were not yet available and social distancing was a key tool in the fight against the spread of the disease. How should the bank develop and deploy predictive analytics to accurately anticipate future branch crowds? How should the bank trade off key design considerations?
Origo Commodities Indian Pvt. Ltd. (Origo) had grown to achieve revenue of US$40 million in just a decade, making it one of the leading players in India's agricultural commodity sector. The co-founders had explored various avenues to accelerate growth but had repeatedly encountered employees' discomfort with implementing technology. By 2020, with emerging competition, growing investor interest, and the movement of government processes to online platforms, they needed to take tough decisions now to grow further. Would restructuring the organization and hiring technology-proficient replacements be their only option? Since the employees had been with Origo since its inception, replacing them would be an agonizing decision. The founders had to decide what to do and how to do it before their investors' meeting in four weeks.
The owner of Primes and Zooms, a retail still photography rental organization based in Pune, India, was facing a hard choice in the spring of 2022. After ten years in the business, he saw that the market was changing in some unexpected ways. These changes, coupled with the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic had brought, meant that Primes and Zooms needed to determine a new growth strategy. There had been fast-paced growth in the video photography space, compared to the still photography space. The options were as follows: should Primes and Zooms enter new geographies with its existing still photography business, or should it expand its current locations to include video rental services?
Lululemon Athletica Inc. was a Canadian multinational athletic apparel company for women and men. Founded Vancouver in 1998, the company ended fiscal year 2020 with a strong performance, bringing in over US$4.4 billion in annual sales. However, with only 14 per cent of its sales coming from international markets outside North America, the company’s priorities for 2021 and beyond included global expansion. As of February 2021, the new executive vice-president international was a month into his role and faced the challenge of quadrupling 2018 international sales of US$360 million to US$1.44 billion by the end of 2023. How many new stores should Lululemon Athletica Inc. plan to open in each of the company’s three major international markets of China, Asia-Pacific, and Europe? Which geographic regions or countries should it focus on to grow the Vancouver-based company internationally?
The case is set in January of 2023; the protagonist is Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber Technologies, Inc. Uber operates a diversified ride-hailing and transportation platform in over 70 countries, some 10,000 cities, and has 120 million active monthly users. The Uber online network lets users connect with drivers through a smartphone app to request rides and food or grocery deliveries. In 2022, although Uber had revenues of $32 billion, it lost more than $9 billion, bringing the total company net losses since 2016 to almost $30 billion. CEO Khosrowshahi recognizes several issues he needs to address: 1) how to achieve consistent profitability, 2) how to attain scale and scope economies within its widely-diversified technology platform, and 3) the risk of Uber experiencing a diversification discount.
By the time Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy in 2019, OxyContin had accumulated $35 billion in sales. In a few short years before the bankruptcy filing, the Sackler family siphoned off $13 billion in profits, making them one of the world's wealthiest billionaires. The case discusses the ethically questionable tactics that the Sackler family employed to turbocharge the supply-induced demand for OxyContin, including creating a national pain movement, obtaining FDA approval, downplaying the risks of addiction, ignoring symptoms of addiction, ambitious sales representatives, targeting high prescribers, pampering physicians, addressing regulatory changes, and hiring McKinsey. Purdue Pharma coopted regulators, medical accreditation boards, hospitals, and doctors to do their bidding. As a result, over one million Americans have died from drug overdoses since 2000.
Agility comprises three processes, each of which contains a pitfall that can subvert its outcomes: Alertness harbors the pitfall of hubris, decision-making harbors the pitfall of impulsiveness, and mobilization harbors the pitfall of resource fatigue. The authors offer advice to help leaders identify and then avoid these often ignored risks in implementing organizational agility.
On the morning of May 7, 2021, Colonial Pipeline Company became aware that the company had been the victim of a malicious ransomware attack that had stolen and locked up company data. The extortionists demanded 75 bitcoins (worth about $4.4 million at the time) in exchange for the decryption tool needed to unlock the data. To contain the system infection, the control room promptly shut down all company pipelines that transported nearly half of all refined oil products consumed in the East Coast of the United States. Within hours, external experts and governmental authorities were assembled to help but information was still limited on how to manage the cyberattack. As the passing of every minute threatened the oil supply to 13 states and the nation's capital, CEO of Colonial Pipeline, Joseph Blount had to make one crucial decision: whether to pay the ransom or not. The case discusses Colonial Pipeline's cybersecurity practices, ransomware trends, detail of the ransomware attack at Colonial, impact of the attack, Colonial's response to the attack, and post-attack repercussion. Overall, the case prompts readers to contemplate how organizations should prevent and respond to the ever-increasing threat of cyber breaches.
The owner of Primes and Zooms, a retail still photography rental organization based in Pune, India, was facing a hard choice in the spring of 2022. After ten years in the business, he saw that the market was changing in some unexpected ways. These changes, coupled with the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic had brought, meant that Primes and Zooms needed to determine a new growth strategy. There had been fast-paced growth in the video photography space, compared to the still photography space. The options were as follows: should Primes and Zooms enter new geographies with its existing still photography business, or should it expand its current locations to include video rental services?
Lululemon Athletica Inc. was a Canadian multinational athletic apparel company for women and men. Founded Vancouver in 1998, the company ended fiscal year 2020 with a strong performance, bringing in over US$4.4 billion in annual sales. However, with only 14 per cent of its sales coming from international markets outside North America, the company's priorities for 2021 and beyond included global expansion. As of February 2021, the new executive vice-president international was a month into his role and faced the challenge of quadrupling 2018 international sales of US$360 million to US$1.44 billion by the end of 2023. How many new stores should Lululemon Athletica Inc. plan to open in each of the company's three major international markets of China, Asia-Pacific, and Europe? Which geographic regions or countries should it focus on to grow the Vancouver-based company internationally?
A financial consultancy analyst received an assignment to assess the long-term performance of Reliance Industries Ltd., a multinational conglomerate based in India. The assignment had resulted from a share price rise for Reliance Industries. On April 27, 2022, the company’s share price reached its peak of ₹2,776. Consequently, a few of the financial consultancy’s clients had requested information regarding the long-term performance of Reliance Industries. The analyst was therefore tasked with calculating the economic value added in order to evaluate the company’s performance.
Tire-building machinery producer Safe-Run Group (Safe-Run) was a second-tier supplier in the automotive industry. Responding to “green supply chain” initiatives in the industry, including by Safe-Run’s major clients, the company started working on a new environmentally friendly meridian machine. The results of a pilot test led by Zhijun Li, vice-president and head of research and development at Safe-Run, proved very promising both in terms of energy consumption and productivity, yet senior management remained skeptical. In a meeting with Li, senior executives expressed concerns about the higher production costs and the reaction of Safe-Run’s main customers. Li needed to build a better business case for the new machine.