個案總覽

Spreadsheet Supplement for Case HK1351

This case focuses on the experience of a newly hired procurement manager who wanted to turn around the inventory management system at an oil and gas drilling contractor company-a step that seemed imminent. The case walks students through the inventory management process of a typical oil and gas drilling contractor to eliminate inefficiencies. By studying this case, students will realize the importance of efficient inventory management for the profitability of the company, identify inefficiencies in the existing inventory management process, learn the complexities involved in the inventory management process, and come up with their own optimum solutions.

FunctionFox Systems Inc. (FunctionFox) was a small company headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, specializing in project management and timesheet tracking software. Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing restrictions, FunctionFox decided to move to 100 per cent remote work in late 2020 and sold the building where its office had been located. In early 2022, when the pandemic appeared to be subsiding, the president of FunctionFox was considering whether the company should continue with fully remote work, return to in-person work, or find a hybrid mode. She had to consider the pros and cons of each alternative and prepare a recommendation for her colleagues.

As co-founders of home nursing company Buurtzorg, Jos de Blok and Gonnie Kronenberg prized both self-management and organizational learning. Buurtzorg's 10,000 nurses across 950 neighborhood nursing teams in the Netherlands were empowered to manage themselves, both in terms of client care and team management. In its 16 years of existence, that had made Buurtzorg highly successful and had made its model attractive both for other Dutch companies and internationally. Yet because neighborhood teams managed themselves, so much of what they learned remained in the team. While nurses would sometimes try to spread such solutions to peer nursing teams, such as through calls/texts or the compan's internal social network BuurtzorgWeb, there was no holistic, top-down process for reviewing and disseminating best practices across all nursing teams-in part because Buurtzorg had been designed to avoid such hierarchical, top-down management in favor of a more flat, nimble, and minimally bureaucratic organization. They attributed much of the company's success (in terms of high client satisfaction and low employee turnover) to that model. But as the Dutch population aged and the country faced an increasingly dire nursing shortage, nurses would need to work more efficiently than ever, and elevating local, variegated learning to company-wide best practices would be one way to do so. How could Buurtzorg break the tradeoff between prizing self-management and effective sharing of best practices for organizational learning?

Chris-Tia Donaldson was the CEO and founder of Thank God It's Natural (tgin), a specialty hair care line for women with naturally curly, kinky, or wavy hair types. By early 2019, Donaldson had built tgin into a national brand in the United States, with its products widely available at large retailers such as Walmart and Target, as well as in specialty beauty retail stores like Sally Beauty. One important beauty retailer still did not carry the brand, however: Ulta Beauty, a US chain of 1,196 brick-and-mortar beauty stores located predominantly in high-traffic shopping centers around the country. Ulta also had a robust online storefront in ulta.com and had cultivated a vibrant social media presence. On Donaldson's desk was an offer from Ulta Beauty to stock tgin for the first time. Should she commit to this deal, knowing she was setting aside other opportunities, such as e commerce, direct-to-consumer (DTC), and the pursuit of additional distribution channels? All things considered: Was this distribution agreement with Ulta really the best path forward for tgin?

Chris Pew, an expert backcountry skier, was a founder and the CEO of 12-year-old TREW Gear, a premium niche brand for technical backcountry ski apparel. TREW Gear's products--snow bibs, jackets, pants, and accessories--were selling well through independent and specialty retailers and direct to consumers on trewgear.com. Heavy on Pew's mind, however, was how to continue growing the business, particularly the question of whether he should start selling TREW products on Amazon.com. Would TREW's presence on the behemoth US-based e-commerce platform help the company grow, long-term? Shorter-term, would selling on Amazon deliver the 20% increase in revenues his investors wanted to see by the end of the year? And if Amazon wasn't the best choice, what distribution strategy should he embrace?

In 2013, Jonathan Martin, a starting lineman for the Miami Dolphins, left the team. He cited the negative effects of the team's culture-specifically, bullying and mistreatment by several of his teammates-on his well-being, saying it had contributed to depression and thoughts of self-harm. The news of Martin's departure exploded across media channels in the following days. At the behest of the Dolphins' ownership, the US National Football League (NFL) hired a law firm to investigate. On February 14, 2014, the law firm's findings (called the Wells Report) were released to the public, and they were damning. There was clear evidence of harassment targeting Martin as well as others on the Dolphins team. But while some within the NFL reacted to the findings with dismay, others said that playing football was ""a man's job,"" and indicated that the behavior called bullying and harassment was simply part of the high-testosterone culture. This public-sourced case and its follow-up, ""A Dolphin Bullied: Jonathan Martin's NFL Experience in Miami (B)"" (UVA-E-0481) use the context of the NFL to expand student understanding of gender binaries as shaped by racial and socioeconomic factors, and to discuss possible interventions to diminish turnover and promote inclusion. They promote a discussion of how underrepresented individuals navigate a work environment where they are not prototypical. This case also allows for a discussion of mental health as part of a broader focus on wellness at work.

This case should be used after students have read "A Dolphin Bullied: Jonathan Martin's NFL Experience in Miami (A) (UVA-E-0477). It provides a brief update on actions taken by different stakeholders following the release of the Wells Report in 2014. The case also directly addresses issues of sexuality in the NFL.

Rabobank had become one of the agile frontrunners in Europe's banking industry. As the company entered the next phase of its transformation, known as Simplify@Scale, it needed to take stock, not only of its success in implementing agile processes but also of the quality of the leadership that had emerged across the organization. With agile structures largely in place across the bank's global operations, the company began to focus on developing a new organizational culture and an agile brand of leadership. Beyond delivering speed and flexibility in a disrupted and increasingly digital landscape, agile at Rabobank had been a vehicle for strengthening the values of accountability, transparency and craftsmanship in its workforce. Importantly, the agile organizational redesign had flattened the hierarchy and shifted decision making towards the frontline. This resulted in a management landscape in which - rather than dictating - leaders were expected to empower and enable teams to make their own decisions and come up with their own solutions. For most, this required a continuous process of developing awareness of and proficiency in several new modes and styles of leadership. At the same time, leaders had to dispel the notion that agile was about working in a free-flowing, wholly spontaneous fashion. Their task was to enforce a disciplined set of team rituals and coordination mechanisms - the Rabobank "heartbeat." Meanwhile, continuous scaling of agile structures and processes within the bank produced some unforeseen challenges, particularly in the areas of setting priorities and allocating resources. These underscored the competing dynamics of leadership agility: Leaders as subjects as well as objects of power and influence, who both initiate and absorb change while concurrently thinking and doing.

"NFT"is a unique type of asset in the art as well as technology world. In 2021, a digital art collection of 101 cartoon apes was sold for USD24.4 million, setting a record high at Sotheby's online auction. This case first briefly introduces the auction industry and Sotheby's, including both its online and offline contemporary art sales. Students will gain an appreciation of how NFT can disrupt and challenge traditional markets. It also exhibits the projects Sotheby's undertook to bridge the gap between the burgeoning market of NFTs and the physical collectible market. Then it describes how an NFT was sold, as well as the costs and risks involved. Finally, it brings about the "what's next" question for auction houses like Sotheby's, marketers, art collectors and all stakeholders at the intersection of art and technology.

Under the leadership of Larry Miller, chairman and former president of Nike's Air Jordan brand, annual revenues for the Jordan brand soared from $150 million to over $4 billion. But for over 40 years, Miller guarded a secret. When he was younger, he spent nearly a decade in and out of prison for homicide and armed robberies. While incarcerated, he focused on his education, and graduated with honors from college. After a potential employer rescinded their offer when he disclosed his crimes, Miller decided to remain silent about his past for the next four decades. Miller hopes that sharing his story will affect positive change, serving as a source of inspiration for troubled youth and encouraging leaders to promote fair chance hiring of formerly incarcerated people.

This case presents the Walt Disney Company's (Disney's) involvement in Florida House Bill 1557, the Parental Rights in Education Act, known by opponents as the "Don't Say Gay" bill. It can be used to help students consider activism from a multi-stakeholder perspective and the potential consequences of engagement to a company's brand image (i.e., reputation) and business. The case presents a chronology of the events and company statements as the firm responded to consumer and organizational actions, enabling students to explore the challenges associated with: (1) aligning activism with brand purpose, (2) engaging in activism in a way that strengthens the consumer-brand relationship, (3) managing activism that may create conflict between two or more stakeholders (e.g., employees and consumers), and (4) aligning activism efforts with business growth. Consequently, the case offers opportunities to dive deeply into brand activism, corporate responses to activism, and marketing's role in advocating for consumers and protecting the brand.

This technical note provides a compiled 2021 annual report for the United States of America, consolidated for the public and private sectors. It includes financial statements, accompanying notes, discussion and analysis, and a summary of risk factors. An introductory section specifies the report's overarching purpose, as well as describing the role of accounting more generally for any defined entity. This annual report is designed to enable access to objective and transparent financial information about the United States within a single document. It can serve as a bridge to a candid and complete conversation about the nation's economic and financial condition. The summary is a descriptive work, not theoretical. To increase accessibility, effort was made where possible to present and describe information in layman's terms and language.

Founded in California in 2012, Ravel Law Inc. (Ravel) was a legal tech start-up that developed groundbreaking legal analytics products. In 2017, Ravel's co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) was deciding between two very different paths to take the company-a decision that would shape Ravel's future and ultimately determine how the CEO would exit the company. One path would lead Ravel to an acquisition or sale, and the other would allow the company to further develop its technology and eventually lead to an initial public offering (IPO). Should the CEO sell Ravel now and harvest its existing value, or should he hold on to the company and raise money to build internal capital for a future IPO? As the leader of Ravel, the CEO had to weigh the benefits and costs of fundraising for a third round of investor money against the benefits and costs of selling Ravel. While doing so, he also had to consider what would bring the most value to Ravel's stakeholders as well as satisfy his personal interests in the venture and in an exit.

Maya Fonseca, the marketing analyst for video streaming service FilmCast, and her colleague Rupert Cruz had to interpret the results of a conjoint analysis conducted by their company. FilmCast was a large company, competing against Videosource and Webflickstream. The marketing analysts were debating whether it made sense to lower the price of their services and if the conjoint analysis results supported this idea.