Karabo Morule is the managing director of Old Mutual Ltd. Personal Finance in South Africa. In June 26, 2018, she is leading a team through the company's process of organizational change. The dilemma she faces is how to retain the heritage of a shared values-based culture, while also modernizing and strengthening it to express a new customer-led approach with the focal point in Africa. Old Mutual Ltd. is the largest financial services provider in Africa, and it is attempting to retain certain aspects of its culture, such as its core values of respect, integrity, and accountability, while changing other aspects of its culture to include being a champion of the customer, the power of diversity and inclusion, and trust, all amidst the major transition of its primary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange as a Pan-African organization. The case documents the organizational change process, demonstrating culture and women in leadership as critical levers of a successful change process.
In early October 2018, the executive director of Daya Counselling Centre had just learned that the Ontario Works program, one of the centre's major funded-referral programs, was planning a significant change. The executive director was concerned about the impact of this change on the centre's financial performance. The timing could not be worse. She and the board of directors had been discussing the feasibility of moving the centre from its downtown location in London, Ontario, Canada. Any negative impact on the counselling centre's financial performance could derail these plans. In addition, she had been planning to approach the board with a proposal to fund a new clinical administrative support position to help her manage the centre's growth. How could she ask the board to add a new position to the budget if the counselling centre continued to post a deficit?
Patrice Motsepe, the son of a small business owner, grew up in Apartheid era South Africa. He founded Ubuntu-Botho Investments (UBI) in an attempt to provide historically disadvantaged South Africans with access to the financial sector. In 2003, UBI entered into a partnership with Suid-Afrikaanse Nasionale Lewens Assuransie Maatskappij (Sanlam). Through the diversification of UBI's and Sanlam's business models and with a dual focus on economic and social value creation, the inclusion of a large base of black South Africans in the economy was facilitated. Now, in 2018, Motsepe was on the brink of sealing another historic deal with Sanlam. However, how should this second Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) deal be approached by both Motsepe's UBI and Sanlam, taking into account the extended shared value framework developed for BEE transactions?
PharmaCo was a large, multinational, integrated pharmaceutical company. Its board of directors was meeting to discuss a possible friendly merger with a complementary competitor and to review a quarterly cybersecurity report. However, before either of these discussions could begin, PharmaCo's chief financial officer interrupted with news that the company's customer database had been encrypted by hackers in a ransomware attack and a ransom of $25,000 in Bitcoin had been demanded. Unfortunately, this was the first in a series of cyber attacks affecting the organization. The board of directors must increasingly deal with a number of issues brought by management and make some critical decisions in overseeing this crisis.
In December 2017, Ali Asher, the second-eldest child of Aziz Asher, was conducting research for his father on the best way to restructure the family business to prepare for succession. Asher's parents and siblings all lived in Canada, while Ali had been running a start-up in India for nearly two years. The family had a real estate and construction business in Vancouver, British Columbia. Ali's older sister had special needs and lived with her parents, so any family estate plan would need to consider her ongoing care and well-being. His brother, who lived in a suite in the family residence, had a close bond with this sister, worked closely with their father, and had personally invested in one of the family's main real estate assets. The second sister lived in an apartment in Toronto, which the family had helped her purchase, and had little interest in the family business, though she wished to receive an equitable share of the overall estate. Ali believed that the family business and estate were highly vulnerable to both internal and external forces; he needed to recommend a suitable option for safeguarding the family's estate and transitioning the family business to the children in a manner that would satisfy both his father's conditions and the wishes of the other family members.
Hotstar was an online video streaming platform owned by Star India Private Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Corporation. Since its launch in 2015, the platform had grown to offer over 100,000 hours of TV content, movies in nine Indian languages and live coverage of popular sporting events to its 300 million viewers. Although most of Hotstar's content was offered as a free advertisement-based service, users could access exclusive movies and TV shows by paying for a monthly or annual subscription plan. Hotstar's appealing content and high-quality technology made it one of the most popular video streaming apps but it now faced increasing competition from both domestic and foreign players. The company also had to accelerate the conversion of customers who used the free advertising-based streaming service to a subscription based streaming service. At the same time, there was a need to create more unique content leveraging its digital platform, as opposed to repurposing the content created for broadcast TV for digital streaming. Given all these challenges, the company's CEO Uday Shankar wondered, how should Hotstar evolve in order for it to become a profitable and sustainable business in the next few years?
Avni Patel Thompson, founder and CEO of Poppy, an online marketplace for on-demand childcare, revisits the venture's final months, and discusses the steps she took in the wake of the shutdown. This case explores experiments the company conducted to refine its original business model, as well as how Patel Thompson rekindled her entrepreneurial ambitions. It is part two of an A and B case, the A case being: Poppy: A Modern Village for Childcare Case 818 075, November 2017.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has emerged as an important area of corporate attention in an informationally integrated world. Corporates are realizing that how they are perceived by the larger society, has a bearing on their capacity to function effectively and create shareholder value. The task of developing and implementing the CSR strategy for Torrent Group was entrusted to Markand Bhatt, a veteran executive in the group. Documenting the challenges faced by Bhatt and the decisions he was required to make the case details the context for an in-depth discussion on the process of design and execution of CSR strategy.
The case recounts a significant attempt at social transformation through a simple mechanism of providing cooking gas to the marginalised in society. Targeting about 80 million BPL (below the poverty line) households in India that still used dung cakes, firewood, and coal as the primary fuel for cooking, the government conceived the Ujjwala scheme to replace these traditional fuels with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), a clean fuel. The scheme had the potential to achieve major social transformation through women empowerment. The women would have more time to engage in economic activities and improve the health of households. This scheme would particularly improve the health of women who were directly affected by the polluting fuels. Launched on May 1, 2016, the scheme was very successful in terms of the number of households covered, as the target group across the country enthusiastically embraced it. By January 2018, the scheme had already covered over 30 million families. While reviewing the scheme's progress, the Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas-responsible for its execution-realised that several key decisions regarding Ujjwala would require careful resolution to ensure that the social benefits from the scheme were sustained.
The case describes the structure of one of the earliest infrastructure investment trusts (InvITs) created and launched in Indian markets in 2017. IndiGrid was an InvIT created by Sterlite Power Grid Ventures Limited (SPGVL), the Sponsor. As a developer, SPGVL had been in the business of constructing and making available transmission links and assets to the grid operator on the basis of competitively bid annuity-like payments over 25 to 35 years. IndiGrid, an InvIT, acquired the transmission assets of the Sponsor to enable wider participation of investors. As the case illustrates, InvITs were allowed to act as pass-through vehicles for tax purposes in order to facilitate investors' direct participation in financing private-sector infrastructure investments. Historically, most investments made by private players in the infrastructure sectors in India relied on bank debt and risk capital brought by the developers or mobilised via equity markets.
On January 8, 2017, Ronald Huggins, plant manager at AEL Mining Services Limited (AEL), needed to come up with innovative ways to keep his employees motivated. This need was driven by the downward trend of the local mining market. In 2011 and 2012, AEL had rolled out a major retrenchment, leaving employees with low morale and motivation, which in turn had affected performance levels. It became apparent that plant performance needed to ramp up. This was particularly important given the company’s strategic plans to expand internationally and focus 80 per cent of its business, rather than the current 20 per cent, on the international mining market.
Karabo Morule is the managing director of Old Mutual Ltd. Personal Finance in South Africa. In June 26, 2018, she is leading a team through the company’s process of organizational change. The dilemma she faces is how to retain the heritage of a shared values-based culture, while also modernizing and strengthening it to express a new customer-led approach with the focal point in Africa. Old Mutual Ltd. is the largest financial services provider in Africa, and it is attempting to retain certain aspects of its culture, such as its core values of respect, integrity, and accountability, while changing other aspects of its culture to include being a champion of the customer, the power of diversity and inclusion, and trust, all amidst the major transition of its primary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange as a Pan-African organization. The case documents the organizational change process, demonstrating culture and women in leadership as critical levers of a successful change process.
In 2017, Dr. Gordon Morewood, chair of anesthesiology at Temple University Health System (Temple Health) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, faced a rapidly changing health care environment. Responsible for training anesthesiology residents and for all anesthesiology patient care across Temple Health’s system, Morewood faced rising expectations for improving patient outcomes, patient satisfaction, and financial performance. Communication in health care had long operated in silos, and Morewood knew that significant changes in medical education and a shift toward cross-functional communication in health care were needed. A digital real-time performance feedback application (app) could help with the change process by building a growth feedback culture. The app could also use people analytics to identify the skills, knowledge, and experience most critical to the institution and assess competency development across the organization. The tool could help Morewood achieve the changes needed to meet the expectations in health care. Should he launch the app across the health system? If so, how would he introduce the new feedback culture and its use?
In December 2017, Ali Asher, the second-eldest child of Aziz Asher, was conducting research for his father on the best way to restructure the family business to prepare for succession. Asher’s parents and siblings all lived in Canada, while Ali had been running a start-up in India for nearly two years. The family had a real estate and construction business in Vancouver, British Columbia. Ali’s older sister had special needs and lived with her parents, so any family estate plan would need to consider her ongoing care and well-being. His brother, who lived in a suite in the family residence, had a close bond with this sister, worked closely with their father, and had personally invested in one of the family’s main real estate assets. The second sister lived in an apartment in Toronto, which the family had helped her purchase, and had little interest in the family business, though she wished to receive an equitable share of the overall estate. Ali believed that the family business and estate were highly vulnerable to both internal and external forces; he needed to recommend a suitable option for safeguarding the family’s estate and transitioning the family business to the children in a manner that would satisfy both his father’s conditions and the wishes of the other family members.