The case captures the dilemma of founders of an enterprise when they are faced with a hostile acquisition bid: whether to acquiesce - cede control and maximize their wealth - or to resist and run the risk of losing both. Set in 2019, the case provides a rich description of the takeover battle between the founders of the software services firm, Mindtree and the leadership of the bidder, L&T, a widely diversified conglomerate. It invites the students to review the choices of the founders Mindtree as they vehemently opposed the bid even as the leaders of L&T sought to present their takeover proposal as a "gentlemanly overture". The case is also significant because hostile acquisitions are rare in India and thus provides a singular opportunity to discuss the role of the board in such situations, particularly their role as mentors guiding strategic choices of firm leaderships.
This case describes the sourcing contract selection challenge faced by an electronics manufacturing company. The company must decide whether to continue the existing wholesale price contract, or should they switch to the quantity flexibility contract suggested by the supplier.
Shashi Jaligama, Managing Director (MD) of GUS Education India (GEI) and his colleague, Nikhil Patwardhan, Senior Director, Client Services held a review meeting with the core team at the end of the workday on April 17, 2020. After the meeting, they looked back with pride on the high level of growth that had been achieved and the high-performance organizational culture they had instilled. However, they reminded themselves that they needed to adopt some initiatives to sustain the rate of growth as well as introduce systems and processes to support the next stage of growth while maintaining the organizational culture. They were concerned that the culture could get diluted with increase in the number of new employees, and their own inability to spare as much time in engaging with employees as they had done in the early stages. Both acknowledged that there were some signs of strain in customer and employee experiences, which needed to be addressed at the earliest. They also wondered if there was something more than culture that needed to be articulated to sustain the high performance as the organization scaled.
This case describes the managerial challenge faced by a mid-size hardware and software services company in determining the course of action that needs to be taken to address certain productivity and quality concerns raised by their customer. As the managing director of the company investigates the cause of the poor quality and under-productivity of a project team, he receives a plethora of equally plausible causes along with supporting data. The challenge is to sift through the myriad problems and causes in a systematic manner to identify the best course of action. This case is rooted in a B2B service business setting and can be used to comprehensively demonstrate the application and utility of the various quality control tools for managerial decision making.
The case tracks the rapid evolution of Yes Bank from a new private sector bank in 2003, to being regarded as a highly successful mid-size bank a decade later, to finally going through significant governance challenges that eventually led to burgeoning non-performing assets (NPAs) and a potential collapse necessitating a rescue by the government. It also briefly discusses the details of the bailout plan to rescue the bank. The case is useful for a discussion on the choices made by the founder of the bank over the years which led to phenomenal growth but may have also led to its eventual collapse. This allows for a discussion on the role of various corporate governance mechanisms that operate in an organization (such as the board of directors, legal rights of shareholders, auditors, external observers, and regulators), and the extent to which each mechanism can satisfy the commonly expected governance objectives. The case also presents an opportunity to debate the justifications for a regulator, especially when they potentially limit the rights of shareholders in an organization.
On November 3, 2016, Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) launched a bid for Singapore-based food and beverage company Super Group Ltd. (Super). JDE had already acquired 60 per cent of the shares but needed another 30 per cent in order to delist the company and take it private. The minority shareholders of Super faced the task of evaluating whether the offer from JDE was reasonable and whether they should tender or hold on to their shares. Their decisions would depend on the valuation of Super’s shares, based on financial and other relevant and available market information.
In 2019, Ai Hua Ong, Group Chairperson, Asia Pacific of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), was ruminating over the choice of Singapore as the company's regional headquarters (RHQ). While political stability, ease of doing business, a start-up friendly and open innovation ecosystem and supportive government regulations had built an ideal climate for the city to function as a base for a RHQ, many other cities in Asia provided tough competition to the city country. Moreover, while co-location had been widely recognised as one of the drivers towards the effectiveness of the innovation ecosystem - emerging technologies like hologrammatic communication could make the need for the RHQ model outdated. In the R&D space, the need for a skilled workforce could be alleviated by employing technologies like Artificial Intelligence. For the purpose of collaboration, blockchain technology could be applied to enable firms to share data more securely over longer distances. The use of Internet of Things (IoT) in the biomedical sciences sector, could reduce the need for being close to the consumer for R&D and market research; while the increased use of 3D printing devices could make Singapore's advantage as a logistical hub in the region less salient, as designs could be shared virtually and printed locally. Amidst such tugging tensions, Ong wondered if Singapore would continue to remain an attractive destination as an RHQ? Would its innovation-ecosystem suffice as a sustained differentiating factor? Could the concept of Technology Hub be an alternative path?
In November 2019, Tommy Leong, Zone President, East Asia & Japan (EAJ), of Schneider Electric, a French multinational corporation (MNC), hosted regional clients in the Singapore HQ building. He highlighted how the company would capitalise on digital transformation to help create a futuristic city. Despite the high operating costs, Singapore was an ideal location for a regional HQ because of its first-rate infrastructure, strategic location and business-friendly corporate ecosystem. Through the Economic Development Board, the government actively pitched to MNCs and provided concierge services when possible. Schneider Electric was the global leader in energy management and industrial automation with strong growth prospects due to increasing urbanisation and digitisation trends. Leong had identified ASEAN as the growth region for the company. How could he create customised solutions for the business requirements of clients?
The COVID-19 crisis has revealed a great deal how national leaders cope with rapid change and make decisions with far-reaching consequences at a time of uncertainty. Not only have they struggled with the unpredictability of the pandemic but with the intricacies of intra-national and international politics. This case series examines in depth the diverging approaches taken by the leadership in five countries - China, France, Singapore, Sweden and the US - with the goal of exposing the common missteps and hurdles encountered during the months when the coronavirus crisis first emerged, challenging students (via group work) to reflect on the lessons learned.
As a global leader in healthcare technology, Philips had an important role to play in the COVID-19 pandemic. The surge in demand for life-saving medical equipment by hospitals around the world presented high-stakes opportunities for the company. At the same time however, national governments in most countries were compelled to implement safety measures that greatly affected commercial activity. The production and flow of physical goods were heavily impacted, leading to widespread disruption of global supply chains, which pulled a great deal of media focus on the topic of supply chains generally. The lockdown in China alone caused a global supply shock that many companies were ill-prepared for. Philips' Healthcare business units, particularly in diagnostics and respiratory equipment, faced critical supply challenges during the Corona crisis which garnered media attention both at home and abroad. In order to capitalize on the high demand for medical equipment, CEO Frans van Houten knew that Philips needed to overcome several hurdles to produce and deliver enough inventory to meet that demand. Furthermore, subsequent pandemic waves and other forms of crises could well cause future supply chain disruptions of the same scale and severity within the healthcare sector and beyond. Aware of the many challenges ahead, van Houten had to decide whether to revise the company's global sourcing strategy to future-proof it in a post-COVID-19 world - and, if so, how.
The increased visibility of gender issues in society has inspired a trend among marketing companies: female empowerment. Marketers are working with clients and developing advertising that advocates equality for female consumers. Yet, despite this trend for femvertising, little progress has been made toward gender equality for the women working inside the creative advertising industry. This article looks at the inequality problem and considers whether it stems from women's thwarted attempts to establish a leadership identity within the strongly-gendered cultures in which they are subject to established practices. We interviewed 30 female creatives from the U.S., U.K., and mainland Europe, and, based on our findings, we present three overarching themes: vision, voice, and visibility. Together, they represent the challenges women experience in developing a leadership identity but also inspire opportunities for agencies to increase the influence of female creatives. If the advertising industry's claims to represent society are to be taken seriously, it must move beyond empowering female consumers to also empowering its female creatives.
Published in 26 languages across 68 countries, Forbes is one of the most-read business periodicals globally, and in 2019, its annual Top 50 World's Most Influential CMOs list highlighted 31 female CMOs and 19 male CMOs who demonstrate industry-shaping leadership. In this article, we analyze the language used to describe the male and female CMOs on the list to determine whether certain words are commonly seen as gendered characteristics, as leadership traits, or as compliments. Using this data, we find that Forbes presents female CMOs in a gendered way and argue for the importance of strategically choosing leadership words for female marketing leaders.
Technology is an engine for growth with great potential to transform women's self-efficacy and social capital. This article focuses on women in sales and sheds light on the intersection of technology, self-efficacy, and social capital in developing countries. The use of technology allows women to transform their social and economic lives by changing and reshaping processes that enable opportunities for growth and development-ultimately offering a bridge to close the many gaps in human socioeconomic development in developing countries. To this end, we offer several recommendations for saleswomen and organizations to expand their application of technological capabilities for product orders, market messaging, and training.