This case reveals Google's response to a list of employee demands aiming to combat sexual misconduct in the workplace. This case should accompany the (A) and (B) cases, "Gender and Free Speech at Google" (318085) and (319085).

The case opens in September 2015, when IKEA is about to open its first store in Morocco. It then chronicles the efforts of KITEA CEO Amine Benkirane and his son Othman between 2013 and 2015 to prepare KITEA for IKEA's entry. After incurring losses for the first time in 2013, KITEA had bounced back and recorded profits and growth in 2014 and 2015. The improvements in supply chain management, product range, and relationships with stakeholders that the duo had been working on tirelessly seemed to be paying off. After an intense preparation period, was KITEA ready to face off against IKEA in Morocco?

The case opens in 2016 as Amine Benkirane, CEO of the furniture retailer KITEA, observes KITEA's dormant sales on the day IKEA opens its first store in Morocco. It then provides information on IKEA's Morocco store, as well as a detailed pricing comparison between IKEA products in Morocco and elsewhere and similar products sold by KITEA. The case then asks whether KITEA had any chance to compete with IKEA under the current circumstances, taking into account its extensive preparation for the competition.

The case opens in 2018 after KITEA has recorded two years of double-digit sales growth following IKEA's entry into the Moroccan market. It then traces the factors that contributed to KITEA' success and that led Tana Africa Capital Limited to acquire a minority stake in the company. In February 2018, following the acquisition, the partners announced plans to create a presence in North and West African countries through KITEA's stores. The case asks whether, after a number of frightening years, KITEA was ready to expand internationally to Sub-Saharan Africa, and if so, what the optimal structure and pace for this expansion should be.

On December 5, 2018, Waymo LLC, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., launched the United States' first commercial driverless-car ride-hailing service (Waymo One), based in Phoenix, Arizona. As with other ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft, Waymo One riders downloaded an app onto their smartphones that allowed them to request pick-up and drop-off points. At launch, Waymo One was limited to an area of roughly 100 square miles, but few doubted that the service would soon be extended to more geographies. When asked where it would be launched next, CEO John Krafcik commented, "We're going to grow and be paced by the level of safety that the technology provides in each of the environments that we serve." Just how fast that pace would be was driven by a whole host of regulatory, technological, and competitive uncertainties. There was also the question of the ultimate role Waymo might play in the autonomous vehicle world. What should Waymo be aiming for?

This case describes the delay of IKEA's store opening in Morocco in 2015. After Sweden ordered an internal review of its position on the independence of Western Sahara, a territory Morocco regarded as part of its own, the Moroccan government declared that IKEA did not have proper licensing to open its store in Morocco. The opening of its Zenata store was delayed by at least several months. What additional changes should Amine and Othman Benkirane implement at KITEA in the extra time?

The case opens in February 2016, when the official date of IKEA's store opening (March 16, 2016) is announced after a five month delay. It reviews the changes that Amine and Othman Benkirane had made to KITEA's workforce in the extra five months afforded by the delay, and asks if KITEA is now ready to compete successfully against IKEA.

By mid-2016, five years of aggressive growth had transformed Fetchr from a small logistics startup to a 1,000-employee, full-fledged last-mile delivery company operating across four countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Already beneficiaries of the largest Series A round to the Middle East from an American firm, CEO Idriss Al Rifai and the Fetchr team had ambitions of raising another $40 million in Series B and deliberated continuing international expansion. But first, Al Rifai and his team needed to address the operational efficiency and profitability issues that led their investors to threaten the discontinuation of funding, and put the company's future at stake. The case provides background information on the logistics sphere in the Middle East and the challenges companies face in the region. The case then takes the reader through Al Rifai's journey of founding and growing Fetchr, backed with innovations like their patented GPS-based delivery technology. Finally, the case zooms in on Fetchr's management team as they race against time to perform evaluations of their operational efficiency, weigh cost-cutting options, and explore strategies to improve profitability.

Set in December 2017, the case discusses Bellamy's Australia Limited (BAL)'s debacle in China, and its subsequent turnaround. BAL was the leading supplier of infant milk formula and baby food products in China, its largest export market. In mid-2016, the Chinese government, in a bid to control the growing proliferation of sub-quality products in the industry and boost consumer confidence, introduced new import regulations. These regulations restricted all companies, domestic and foreign, to selling a maximum of three product lines, and mandated their pre-approval and registration with the Certification and Accreditation Administration of the People's Republic of China (CNCA) and China Food & Drug Administration (CFDA). BAL's top management's subsequent liquidation of part of their shares in the market, coupled with an attempt to mislead the shareholders regarding the impact of the new regulations on the company's sales in the country, triggered a strong negative investor sentiment. BAL's stock prices plummeted by more than 40% overnight, leading to the company requesting for a voluntary trading suspension of its shares at the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). In January 2017, the board of directors undertook a series of corrective steps including the appointment of Andrew Cohen as the new CEO. By December 2017, the market situation had improved with BAL reporting reduced inventory, positive operating cash-flow, renewed momentum in sales and a significant improvement in investor outlook. BAL's share price picked up by 60%. Yet, there were many concerns going forward. Would BAL be able to sustain and build upon the positive results, given the highly sensitive nature of the infant milk formula and baby foods industry in addition to the complex legal structure and bureaucracy of the Chinese market? What would be a prudent financial accounting and reporting strategy for BAL management to pursue in order to rebuild its market credibility?

In an age of digital distractions, mindfulness has become a billion-dollar industry that extends well beyond training to include products, services, and experiences. Attitudes on mindfulness vary from the cautious to the starry-eyed. However, one thing is certain: mindfulness is here and it is here to stay, as the conditions that gave rise to its popularity are only likely to intensify. Thus, it is incumbent upon managers to understand the phenomenon of mindfulness and this presents difficulties. The marketplace meaning of mindfulness has become so diffuse as to be almost meaningless, while the mainstream psychological definition is at best partial and at worst potentially myopic. In this installation of Marketing & Technology, we first explore the conditions that gave rise to the surge in interest in mindfulness. Second, by drawing on original source materials, we guide managers and marketing executives through the dimensions/types of mindfulness and integrate the various perspectives into two models. We conclude with an exploration of the opportunities and challenges that mindfulness poses to managers and marketing.

As the business world continues to expand globally, the U.S. and Canada remain great allies and trade partners. The Canadian market is an obvious avenue for expansion of U.S. companies, providing opportunities for U.S. executives to find themselves living north of the border. While culturally quite similar, there are some significant differences between the two countries of which potential U.S. expatriates should be aware. This article introduces the reader to personal income tax in Canada, highlighting some basic differences between the U.S. and Canadian tax systems. It also discusses the impact of those differences on tax planning. In addition, it will cover some requirements of individuals who are considered taxpayers of both countries. Finally, it will briefly discuss some tax and nontax consequences of giving up U.S. citizenship.

Motivation is one of the most studied facets of the management of employees and team members. Countless scholarly papers, articles in magazines, and best-selling books have been written on the subject. The role of coaches in motivating successful sports teams is also a much-loved topic of popular conversation and receives considerable attention in broadcast media and the press. However, almost all of the advice on motivation is prescriptive rather than proscriptive. As far as sport is concerned, the games that get most of the attention in North America are baseball, basketball, football, and hockey, and the rest of the world seems to be soccer mad. Many nations are oblivious to the world's second-most popular sport: cricket. We take an opposing perspective on motivation in this article: rather than instructing how to motivate employees and team members, we suggest four ways to demotivate them. Based on a series of in-depth interviews with some of the world's best professional cricketers, we identify coaching behavior that frustrates and angers them. We use the insights gained to suggest ways in which coaches of all kinds can demotivate. Hopefully, by understanding these behaviors, coaches and managers can strive to avoid them.

The rise of emerging-market MNEs (EMNEs) often is characterized as a process by which they catch up with the superior resources and capabilities of incumbent, developed-country MNEs (DMNEs). We argue that this characterization needs to be rethought as the requirements for competitive success in global markets are changing. Emerging markets are becoming more important, the value-for-money segment in developed countries is expanding, global retailers are gaining leverage, and the flexibility to deal with economic and political volatility is becoming a key organizational capability. Typically, EMNEs are stronger in these areas than DMNEs. This leads us to frame the competition between EMNEs and DMNEs as a race to the future in which each type of firm has capability holes that it needs to fill in order to thrive in the global economy of the future. We then discuss the strategies that EMNEs and DMNEs have been using to plug their respective capability holes. We hope future studies can apply this framework to analyze rivalry between EMNEs and DMNE in specific industries.

Managers of startups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) tend to view subsidiaries as the preferred international export mode. Yet this type of organization is associated with a high failure rate. Our in-depth interviews with more than 40 managers show that their bias in favor of foreign sales subsidiaries is rooted in unsubstantiated beliefs about control and the superiority of subsidiaries over other export modes. This article details the faulty reasoning that supports these prejudices and proposes a simple method for selecting more profitable and less risky export strategies.

An economic recession is a type of crisis originated from external factors that may imperil an organization's survival depending on the intensity and duration of the crisis. In peripheral European countries, such as Portugal, the recent financial crisis had devastating effects on various business activities. As a result, Portugal represents an important case study in examining how some corporate leaders have handled the economic recession successfully. I interviewed 20 corporate managers to capture their perceptions of the leadership traits and behaviors exhibited by their CEOs in guiding their companies through the recession. In economic recessions, negative constraints do not affect the most effective leaders, who instead erect barriers against the high-pressure conditions to create a supportive, positive work environment. In order to achieve maximum effectiveness, leaders must act as blocking agents against the negative social impacts of the economic crisis, including the fragility of trust in organizational life (i.e., a barrier against distrust), uncertainty of the future (i.e., a barrier against uncertainty), and toxic emotions (i.e., a barrier against toxic emotions).

Although international joint ventures (IJVs) provide many benefits to multinational enterprises (MNEs), IJVs continue experiencing high dissolution rates; there is a pressing need to re-evaluate the partner selection process for IJVs. In this article, I utilize constrained systematic search (CSS) as the proposed process by which to improve the partner selection process and reduce IJV dissolution rates. CSS is a process MNEs can utilize to gain private information about potential IJV partners. The implementation of CSS can improve the success rates for an MNE entering an IJV in two ways: MNEs can more effectively identify (1) information withholding/misleading behavior of potential partners and (2) complementary resources in potential partners.

For industries with low switching costs, customer loyalty programs (LPs) have potential to drive differentiation and sustain a competitive advantage. However, incentives provided through LPs also have a potential to escalate into costly price wars. In this article, we discuss how to design successful customer loyalty reward programs that bring value to participants and that cannot be emulated by competitors easily. We focus on three distinct aspects of improvement: personalization, reward types, and additional services. Through personalization, companies can leverage the knowledge they already have on their customers to tailor offers that they find relevant and appealing. For the reward structure, we argue in favor of a certain degree of opacity. We also encourage loyalty programs to consider giveaways that are unique and difficult to imitate and to use all the information they have available to provide rewards that fit with each customers'idiosyncratic situation or preference. Finally, competitive LPs should look beyond offers and rewards. In addition to purchases, LPs can reward participants for other desirable behaviors; they can also provide additional services that impose minimal costs on firms, but bring value to customers.

Most of the firms currently in the S&P 500 probably will not make the list in 15 years. In times of great uncertainty, managers are called upon to make the right strategic choices, preserve core businesses, and prepare their organizations for the future. How can managers make these choices when the industry is under transformation? In this article, we explore how the popular VUCA framework can help to make sense of turbulent contexts and drive the decision making of managers. We study the case of the energy industry, in which traditional business models eroded quickly and dominant players lost their positions. Based on personal interviews with the CEOs of RWE (Germany) and NRG Energy (U.S.), we analyze how these executives led transformation of their organizations. We get immersed in their decision-making processes and depict how the VUCA framework helps them to identify, map, and prepare their organizations to respond to the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity in their industry. We propose a guide for executive managers to navigate through VUCA contexts, taking into account the necessity to introduce short-and long-term responses that prepare organizations and stakeholders for an uncertain future.

The internet has empowered consumers and changed the way they search and shop for products and services by increasing the availability and transparency of pricing and other comparative information. However, what is less clear from a managerial perspective is just how transparent pricing information should be. While it might seem that increasing price transparency would reduce consumer search, we find that it may actually increase search and delay. In this article, we review the use of firms'application of price transparency in practice and propose that specific types of information can influence how transparent prices are to consumers, and how such transparency can influence consumer decisions in a way that is beneficial for the firm. We focus on a specific form of transparency: whether or not the consumer knows the range of pricing. We also discuss whether a high variability pricing approach versus a low variability pricing approach influences consumer decision making-and whether this influence is moderated by transparency.