Rohit Gupta, the oldest third generation member of a family business, has to decide whether to continue working for the business, towards which he has a strong sense of loyalty and responsibility, or follow his dreams and venture out on his own. Both alternatives have strong positive and negative implications. Rohit jointly headed the Western India unit of his family business, Ketan Logistics Limited (KLL). His grandfather had set up KLL, a logistics provider, in 1986. Over the years, the company expanded its fleet, acquired a license to operate freight trains, and diversified into ocean freight services and the transportation of large industrial equipment and food products. By 2014, it had become an integrated, multimodal logistics provider to business customers. KLL's operations were divided into four geographic zones, each headed by one of the second generation family members, i.e., Rohit's father and uncles. KLL took several measures to professionalize operations, such as deploying enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, adopting a code of conduct and organizing employee training and workshops. After graduating from college, all the third generation members of the family, except one, joined KLL. Some of them, like Rohit, had high aspirations and wanted to make changes at KLL, but their attempts invariably met with strong resistance. This led to frustration among some next generation members who had considered venturing out on their own at different points in time. Rohit also had a business idea, which he shared with his old friend Amit Goyal who also belonged to a business family. Goyal liked the idea instantly and offered to invest in the new venture. Rohit was emotionally attached to his father and other family members and did not want KLL to suffer as a result of his exit. He also had to consider his own hopes and future. He would not easily get an opportunity again to launch his own venture. Rohit was facing a tough decision dilemma.
In March 2016, eEquity, a small firm providing online training and software to corporate human resource professionals, faced a dilemma. A year after new ownership and management took over, the channel sales strategy that was expected to support the growth of the promising Software as a Service division failed, and cash was running out. Management had devised a new sales and marketing strategy that it believed would be successful, but lacked the funds to implement the strategy. This same management team identified four options to acquire the necessary funds, each of which had inherent strengths and weaknesses. The firm’s success depended on making a good choice under conditions of incomplete information and a short time frame.
SmoothPay, a 14-people start-up in Canada that offered mobile payment and loyalty solutions, enjoyed initial achievements after its launch in 2014. In less than two years, through industry partnerships and community engagement, SmoothPay grew to have over 100 merchants in its system, with over 5,000 users. However, the future was full of risks and uncertainty: businesses and consumers in Canada were both slow in adopting mobile payments, and, as a small firm, SmoothPay had not yet established brand awareness. SmoothPay’s management needed to address several key challenges. How could SmoothPay differentiate itself from its many competitors? What strategic direction should the company take? What market should SmoothPay target to enable sustainable growth?
Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. (DMRC), a government-owned enterprise in India, was responsible for building, operating, and managing the metro rail network in the National Capital Region of India. Delhi’s reliable, punctual, clean, and green metro services began operation in 2002. By 2016, DMRC had transformed peoples’ lives and become an essential form of transit for an average of 2.5 million commuters per day. In terms of customer satisfaction, DMRC was ranked in a global online survey as the second-best metro system in the world. But management at DMRC knew that to maintain that level of customer satisfaction, it had to be conscious of the gap between performance and customer expectations, which were increasing with demands from DMRC's assertive and ambitious millennial commuters. In addition, the government was embarking on strategies to induce commuters to switch from private to public transit. DMRC needed to evaluate its strategic service priorities while continuing to deliver value to its stakeholders. Should DMRC focus on enhancing customer experience with augmented services or invest in measures to reduce operational costs? Was DMRC's culture of customer delight sustainable?
Bad leadership is clearly expensive. Fraud resulting from mismanagement at Wells Fargo, for example, has cost the bank about US$300 million in fines and pre-settlement investigative costs while wiping out around US$6 billion in shareholder value. Ex-employees, meanwhile, are seeking at least US$2.6 billion in a class action lawsuit related to the Well Fargo corporate culture that rewarded employees who created multiple accounts for customers without permission. And let’s not forget the extra millions lost from the hit to Wells Fargo’s brand value. <br><br> It has been less than a decade since banking-sector leadership and governance failures almost toppled the global financial system, but the lessons embedded in the 2008 financial crisis already appear forgotten as cases of appalling corporate behaviour continue to undermine capitalism. It is no secret that good leadership requires commitment to doing the hard work it takes to look out for all of an organization’s stakeholders, along with the intellect and competencies required to compete in today’s disruptive times. But as research into the financial crisis has made clear, good leadership also requires a balance of identifiable character dimensions. When recruiting leaders and directors, organizations have long invested time and money to ensure they are managed and governed by people with adequate experience and competencies. But all that time and money can be wasted when leadership character isn’t also given the attention it deserves. This is because costly failures in decision making are often rooted in character-based issues such as close-mindedness and impatience, as well as a lack of accountability, empathy, humility, and courage.
It was 18 February 2016 and Loo Wee Ling, Practice Associate Professor of Law at Singapore Management University, had just received a communication about a case of cheating in the School of Law where she taught. GK, a 32-year-old Russian national, was mid-way through his final year of the Doctor of Jurisprudence (JD) programme at SMU, when he embarked on a course of action that resulted in his being convicted of two offences under the Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act and sentenced to two months' incarceration in a Singapore prison. Worried about not qualifying for legal practice in Singapore, he had tried to save his grades by hacking into the learning management system of a law module using his law professor's userid and password which he had obtained by stealth using a USB keylogger plugged into the common computer in the classroom. His fear of doing badly in the final examinations of the Law of Property module led him to delete the online answer scripts of all his course-mates in the hope of being able to retake the examination. This proved to be his undoing as discovery of the deleted scripts led to investigations that traced the hacking back to him. GK committed crimes which led to dire consequences for himself. Loo was interested to have her students analyse, from an ethical perspective, what exactly is wrong with GK's actions?
The president of Cloud Syzygy Technologies (CST) had recently returned from the Pacific Telecommunications Council conference, where he discussed ways in which cloud computing had transformed industries. He knew that in the future, the real opportunities lay in the cloud and not in traditional internal IT solutions. As the executive in charge of CST, he wished to develop a plan to grow the business, which would include a clear message to his customers about the merits of cloud computing. He recognized that cloud computing provided many opportunities and risks for corporations seeking to take advantage of new and innovative technologies. He was tasked with presenting a ranking and assessment of CST’s new products to the board at the next meeting.
On February 27, 2010, Chile was razed by a three-minute earthquake of 8.8 magnitude on the Richter scale. More than 500 people died and nearly 400,000 homes were destroyed. The overall cost was estimated at US$20 billion. Over 70 per cent of the people who had died in the earthquake were from the coastal town of Constitución. Celulosa Arauco y Constitución (Arauco), a Chilean-based forestry and timber company, was Constitución’s largest employer. Arauco’s pulp mill and major sawmill in Constitución was completely destroyed, and all but one of the 34 remaining manufacturing facilities were wiped out. The company’s executives moved rapidly to respond to the crisis and create a plan to rebuild Constitución. By the end of April 2010, Arauco’s pulp business in Chile was operating at 70 per cent capacity and in May, the company’s pulp mill in Constitución reopened. However, the disaster had left an indelible imprint on Arauco’s vision and values. <br>The company had been thinking about pursuing further innovation. The company’s values of efficiency and productivity had been tested with an environmental disaster in 2005, but innovation was still limited. Then in 2009, an opportunity provided Arauco with the ability to engage innovation on a larger scale. But the earthquake and rebuilding efforts now required the company’s full attention. Should Arauco proceed with its innovation, and if so how would Arauco balance these two different objectives?
Planning and Organizing Business Reports: Written, Oral, and Research-Based is a three-chapter book written by Dorinda Clippinger, a consultant, writer, and former lecturer in management at the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. Her book is intended for managers and MBA students and gives guidance on planning, writing, and delivering effective reports. In Chapter 1, Clippinger defines business reports as organized, objective presentations of observations, experiences, or facts and emphasizes that they are intended to provide information for effective decisions at all levels of an organization. She discusses how to go about preparing reports for people for whom English is a second language and provides guidelines for ethical reporting.
Planning and Organizing Business Reports: Written, Oral, and Research-Based is a three-chapter book written by Dorinda Clippinger, a consultant, writer, and former lecturer in management at the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. Her book is intended for managers and MBA students and gives guidance on planning, writing, and delivering effective reports. In Chapter 2, Clippinger explains how to best plan, organize, and outline reports. She provides a checklist that you can follow as you draft a report. Planning involves reviewing your purpose, audience, and context and making sure the structure of the report matches these factors. Clippinger also provides guidance on collaborating with a team to create a written or oral report.
Planning and Organizing Business Reports: Written, Oral, and Research-Based is a three-chapter book written by Dorinda Clippinger, a consultant, writer, and former lecturer in management at the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. Her book is intended for managers and MBA students and gives guidance on planning, writing, and delivering effective reports. In Chapter 3, Clippinger outlines how to plan and guide research. She provides a checklist for a research plan and then outlines how to draft a research or project proposal, which is intended to indicate your understanding of a problem and your ability to look into it in the way you propose.
The eHomemakers project was founded in 1998 to provide skills and employment for disadvantaged women in Malaysia. The women worked from home, weaving baskets out of recycled magazines from which they could generate income. This means of self-support was particularly beneficial to stay-at-home mothers and disabled women who were unable to work. By 2011, the enterprise was struggling for viability in Malaysia, which led the founder to consider crossing the border to Singapore to explore opportunities in that country to avoid having to give up on her social enterprise altogether.
Over its 30-year history, Onex Corporation, a Canadian investment firm, had derived much of its success from the private equity sector. It did so by acquiring attractive portfolio companies, adding value to them by improving their financial and operational performance, and then selling them several years later at an attractive return. However, given the market conditions in 2015, Onex Corporation faced difficulty in successfully acquiring target companies, which was further exacerbated by the large amounts of cash on its balance sheet. As a result, the firm was forced to actively seek growth in other sectors, primarily credit-oriented investment strategies. Given Onex Corporation's growth targets, the chief executive officer and his management team needed to reconsider the lines of business their company should be involved in. How could they effectively position the company's corporate structure, internal processes, and expertise to take advantage of credit-oriented investment strategies?
In 2014, the food and grocery industry in India experienced a surge in the online grocery market. Before that time, existing e-business players had largely avoided the online grocery market because of its complex logistics requirements and issues related to last-mile delivery, or reaching customers in remote areas. The rise of online grocery businesses raised concerns for brick-and-mortar stores, especially local kirana stores (corner stores), about becoming redundant in the future. With limited or no technology adoption, these kirana stores had no way of going online. Grofers came to the rescue of these local stores with a mobile commerce (m-commerce) model for groceries that promised on-demand delivery within 90 minutes. However, with very low margins in the grocery business compared to lifestyle products, in addition to last-mile delivery and returns complexities, it remained to be seen whether Grofers would be able to carve out a niche in the grocery industry with its innovative model. Considering the low entry barriers and the easily replicable business model, how viable and sustainable was an m-commerce business like Grofers?
EMMICO has just acquired one of its suppliers and is rapidly shedding employees as it goes about trying to integrate the companies and the supplier's legacy system. The organization has asked a Tauber Institute for Global Operations intern team to seek solutions to the operations problems facing the newly organized company. The team is tasked with increasing the company's economic value index by increasing inventory turns and eliminating an external warehouse. They have a tough road ahead.
Yoyo Wallet, a technology start-up headquartered in London, United Kingdom, developed a mobile application for smartphones to facilitate in-store payments and loyalty data collection. Inspired by the success of Starbucks' loyalty-integrated mobile application, Yoyo Wallet strove to become the ultimate tool for retailers in enhancing customer experience. The company planned to enter the mobile payment industry in the United States; however, Yoyo had to compete with existing wallets (like Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Android Pay), navigate through the uncertainty of the industry's future, and adapt their strategy to the competitive environment in the United States.
On February 29, 2016, an investor, who was a business school graduate, purchased one share of Tesla Motors, Inc. stock for $191.93. In doing so, the investor wondered what trading strategy should be followed over the next six months to maximize returns while minimizing risk. In choosing a strategy, he wanted to make good use of the knowledge gained from his financial analytics classes. To that end, he did not know if he should choose a buy and hold, or a stop-loss strategy with an optimal stop-loss threshold. The investor wondered how he would make this decision. Would a six month comparison of the stop-loss strategy with thresholds from 1 per cent to 99 per cent versus the buy and hold strategy resolve his dilemma?
The net neutrality debate had implications for Internet service providers, content providers, and end users. This note aims to inform the reader of the various sides of the debate where open issues remain, and what aspects an entrepreneur, investor, or content provider-either an existing player, or a new entrant-should be aware of. From a management perspective, net neutrality rules could have major consequences on the business models of content providers, ISPs, and other businesses that depend on the transfer of data across the Internet.