In early 2019, the senior executive partners of Mosaic Home Services Ltd. (Mosaic), a home improvement and commercial property management company in Edmonton, Alberta, needed to choose from among several potential new partnership deals. When the senior executive partners had exited a family-owned commercial construction business in 2015 to start Mosaic, their major objective had been to help improve the living spaces of homeowners and the work spaces of property managers. The new business involved partnering with entrepreneurs who were keen to develop and grow their businesses beyond the initial founders. Now, Mosaic needed to develop ongoing strategies for attracting and selecting small business owners based on the personal attributes and proposed partnership deals of the entrepreneurs. They needed to determine how to assess potential partners' strategic and organizational fit with Mosaic and to decide what marketing methods would effectively attract local entrepreneurs with potentially saleable businesses.
This case considers a $10 million investment in an outpatient surgery center by a not-for-profit community hospital in rural South Carolina. A member of the purchasing department, R. D. Scott, is invited to complete a discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis of the investment opportunity to help quantify the financial costs and benefits of the project in this not-for profit context. The analysis maintains substantial uncertainty regarding a number of key parameters.
The case follows the design and creation of a software innovation lab at Volkswagen. Particular issues explored include the role and structure of internal innovation groups, establishing culture and defining business models for innovation, and developing strategy for innovation in an established enterprise environment.
Fifty years ago Milton Friedman famously argued that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits, which today are at record highs. And, as public institutions falter, business is now offering to step into the void. We must resist this (further) intrusion of business into the public sphere, as it will further depreciate civic institutions. The business of business is business, and so it should be. Business' track record in public politics has been to engineer the rules of the game to its own advantage.
Sara Hughes, the CFO at Sports Equipment, Inc. (SEI), is striving to make financial analysis more easily and uniformly done by the company's investment center managers. As such, she has presented her boss COO George Noland with a pair of tabular tools for deconstructing profit variances into three component parts. Those three parts pertain to the variance amounts due to: (1) utilizing more net assets (NA), (2) achieving higher margins on those NAs, and (3) the interaction effect of these first two factors. Hughes has walked Noland through an example of using the tools, and he is now taking some time to verify his own understanding of the tools by working through four additional examples. Hughes is hopeful that Noland will find the tools conveniently useful, and thus will give Hughes permission to distribute and explain the tools to the operations investment center managers. In addition, Noland has envisioned some additional, typical two-factor variance analysis situations where the tools might also be applicable-he wants to think a bit more about those possibilities.
Before 2013, Shandong Four Seasons Minghu Hotel Co. Ltd. was a high-end restaurant and food service company. In December 2012, the Chinese government implemented the Eight-Point Regulation that prohibited government officials from indulging in luxury banquets and high-end meals. The new government policy had a negative effect on many companies across the high-end food service industry, whose customer base consisted mainly of government officials. In response to the new government policy, Shandong Four Seasons Minghu Hotel Co. Ltd. made some strategic changes that eventually led the company to recover and survive. However, fierce competition created many challenges. The company had to determine whether to explore other markets and how to better satisfy the needs of consumers.
CLS Landscape Supply was an established firm facing flat sales growth and declining profitability. Founded as a student-run business by a young couple in 2009 in Cochrane, Alberta, the company had grown to 33 seasonal employees, with sales exceeding $4 million annually. It operated two locations that supplied landscape products and materials to both retail and commercial customers, as well as a landscape construction division that provided both landscape design and installation services. The local economy was highly reliant on the oil and gas sector and had been struggling for several years. Price cutting was also common in the company’s highly competitive industry. How could the co-founders address the issues of flat sales growth, declining profit margins, and the competing time commitments of running the business while starting a family? They wanted to best position the company for long-term success. How could they focus on developing a more formal human resource plan for staffing and scheduling work in addition to developing budgets and policies for managing expenses?
Before 2013, Shandong Four Seasons Minghu Hotel Co. Ltd. was a high-end restaurant and food service company. In December 2012, the Chinese government implemented the Eight-Point Regulation that prohibited government officials from indulging in luxury banquets and high-end meals. The new government policy had a negative effect on many companies across the high-end food service industry, whose customer base consisted mainly of government officials. In response to the new government policy, Shandong Four Seasons Minghu Hotel Co. Ltd. made some strategic changes that eventually led the company to recover and survive. However, fierce competition created many challenges. The company had to determine whether to explore other markets and how to better satisfy the needs of consumers.
This case describes Uber's global market entry strategy and responses by regulators and local competitors. It details Uber's entry into New York City (New York), Bogotá (Colombia), Delhi (India), Shanghai (China), Accra (Ghana), and London (United Kingdom). In each instance, the case includes information about Uber's strategy in that market, existing regulations on taxis and transportation in each market, the reactions of competitors and regulators, and regional information. The case allows for instruction related to competitive strategy, global expansion, nonmarket strategy, regulation, market economics, supply restrictions, and related topics.
Tiffany Pham taught herself to code and created a technology platform, Mogul, with the goal of providing girls and women around the world with information and opportunities. After several years Mogul had reached more than 146 million women around the world and had measurable outcomes in increasing the diversity of talent pipelines for major Fortune 500 companies that served as its clients. The case explores Pham's journey in building Mogul and the idea of moving into other business lines, such as media or venture capital, making Mogul not just a place for people to connect but also a global brand.
Shanghai Jiujia Information Technology Co., Ltd. (CaiHong) was founded in April 2015 by entrepreneur Junyuan Huang. The company has transitioned from an e-commerce platform to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform to better compete in China's Legal Service Plus Internet (LSPI) industry. While exploring some key concepts about CaiHong, such as market positioning, business model innovation, SaaS, and growth strategies, several questions are raised about the company's growth in the LSPI industry and the company's application of SaaS. First, what factors facilitated CaiHong's transition from the business-to-consumer (B2C) market to the business-to-business (B2B) market? Second, what is CaiHong's approach to business model innovation based on the SaaS platform? Third, how can it build on the success of the SaaS model through continuous innovation and further disruption of the LSPI industry?
The director of diversity and inclusion at a community agency is trying to decide whether to update her business email signature to express her gender identity by providing preferred pronouns. The director must decide whether the benefits of adding the information exceed the potential costs. Subsequently, in a second and third situation-each situation presented as a separate addition to the main case-the director must decide the extent to which she will formally influence her workers to update their email signatures with gender pronoun, and then whether to update her LinkedIn profile. Much of her decision rests on the cultural operating norms of the organization and the director's role in the organization.
On June 21, 2019, the human resources director at Renaissance Packaging and Manufacturing Ltd., in Nagpur, India, was feeling a considerable amount of stress. As the presiding officer of the company's internal complaints committee, she was tasked with handling a sexual harassment complaint filed by the company's chief engineer at the plant. In her complaint, the chief engineer accused the production manager, her superior, of sexual harassment. The internal complaints committee had to make an unbiased decision based on the specific details provided in the complaint. However, the human resources director worried that the situation raised underlying cultural issues at the plant, including a lack of awareness and sensitivity regarding interactions among male and female employees. How could the internal complaints committee resolve the complaint without creating hostility between the two co-workers and other employees? What kinds of organizational changes could help the company address sexual harassment in the workplace? What could the human resources director do to promote a positive and welcoming attitude toward female employees at the plant, especially women in leadership positions?
In 2019, the co-founders of Praxis-a toothpaste that aimed to improve the health and wellness of its users by incorporating vitamins, minerals, and supplements into the toothpaste-were contemplating whether to launch their business. The mission of Praxis was to facilitate a health-conscious lifestyle and empower individuals to improve their productivity and well-being. The duo wanted to assess the business environment, evaluate their product and marketing strategy, project the venture's financial performance for the first three years of operations, and ultimately determine whether they should pursue the idea. They had specific goals in mind since they had won a case competition at their university, been approached by many investors, and been shortlisted to star on Dragons' Den. Could they successfully launch Praxis, differentiate Praxis from other industry players, and continue managing their existing workload in their studies at Western University?
The chief executive officer of Ambhar Global Spirits LLC joined the company in 2003, when its Tequila Ambhar brand was immersed in financial and image problems. He dedicated himself to reconfiguring the positioning of Tequila Ambhar, establishing it as a product of high quality and sophistication for knowledgeable consumers. With this conviction, he worked closely with a tequila industry consultant to modify product and marketing components and perfect the production process, to create a fully Mexican, 100 per cent agave, handmade tequila with a high-end premium positioning. By 2017, the chief executive officer believed the time was right to raise the bar on Ambhar's positioning and distribution in the US market. With great expectations for the product, and with the support of the board of directors, he intended to develop a commercial plan to increase market share by 30 per cent. However, he and the expert consultant were at odds on the next logical step for the brand: strengthen strategic alliances to reinforce the distribution network and increase points-of-sale in the United States, or improve branding to make the tequila more authentic and bring it closer to the consumer?
CLS Landscape Supply was an established firm facing flat sales growth and declining profitability. Founded as a student-run business by a young couple in 2009 in Cochrane, Alberta, the company had grown to 33 seasonal employees, with sales exceeding $4 million annually. It operated two locations that supplied landscape products and materials to both retail and commercial customers, as well as a landscape construction division that provided both landscape design and installation services. The local economy was highly reliant on the oil and gas sector and had been struggling for several years. Price cutting was also common in the company's highly competitive industry. How could the co-founders address the issues of flat sales growth, declining profit margins, and the competing time commitments of running the business while starting a family? They wanted to best position the company for long-term success. How could they focus on developing a more formal human resource plan for staffing and scheduling work in addition to developing budgets and policies for managing expenses?
On June 21, 2019, the human resources director at Renaissance Packaging and Manufacturing Ltd., in Nagpur, India, was feeling a considerable amount of stress. As the presiding officer of the company’s internal complaints committee, she was tasked with handling a sexual harassment complaint filed by the company’s chief engineer at the plant. In her complaint, the chief engineer accused the production manager, her superior, of sexual harassment. The internal complaints committee had to make an unbiased decision based on the specific details provided in the complaint. However, the human resources director worried that the situation raised underlying cultural issues at the plant, including a lack of awareness and sensitivity regarding interactions among male and female employees. How could the internal complaints committee resolve the complaint without creating hostility between the two co-workers and other employees? What kinds of organizational changes could help the company address sexual harassment in the workplace? What could the human resources director do to promote a positive and welcoming attitude toward female employees at the plant, especially women in leadership positions?