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This case describes a complicated employee decision experienced by entrepreneur, Sana Remekie, in mid-2019 after she opted to mix business and friendship. Sana was the CEO of Conscia Corporation, a tech company focused on knowledge management software solutions (i.e., the integration of disparate content from throughout an organization into a single, useable information hub). Sana recruited Caesar Martinez away from his previous employer to work as one of her Solution Architects. Sana hired Martinez in part because of their previous working relationship and subsequent friendship. Unfortunately, Martinez's performance did not meet Sana's expectations. Consequently, Sana was torn between her need for strong employee performance at her startup firm, and her longstanding friendship and feelings of personal responsibility for Martinez's career and well-being. To resolve this dilemma, students are put into Sana's shoes as they formulate and defend a course of action for deciding how to manage Martinez.

By fourth quarter, 2019, Lisa Sedlar, CEO of Green Zebra turned her attention to revenue and margin growth for the Oregon-based, healthy convenience-store (c-store) chain she founded six years earlier. Feedback from investors convinced her to push her startup closer toward profitability, before expanding her three-store Portland operation. To help with her planning, Sedlar brought on a veteran of the local tech sector, Lenka Jelinek, to evaluate Green Zebra's operational readiness to scale. Jelinek's first assignment involved an evaluation of Zebra Cash, the customer loyalty program launched in 2013. As Sedlar explained, "Frankly, I haven't designed our loyalty card program well. My guess is there's more we could do there." Although LPs had become a growing trend among c-store competitors, Sedlar had nagging concerns about their cost effectiveness. She needed an objective analysis of the Zebra Cash revenue and margin potential, an assessment made more urgent by the fact that she had cash in the bank to fund operations only through Q1, 2020. Although Sedlar realized that an optimized LP wouldn't solve all her cash flow challenges, the question was whether it could relieve some of the short-term financial pressure. Beyond the cash flow impact, there was also the question of whether the Zebra Cash program had strategic value given future expansion plans.

Spreadsheet supplement for case NA0643.

Jingdong (JD), the leading innovation-driven e-commerce company and retail infrastructure service provider in China, had rapidly expanded its enterprise procurement market. In the process, however, it faced major issues related to poor customer experience, the high cost of risk control for the value-added tax (VAT), and inefficient invoice management. In early 2018, JD (the supplier of invoices) collaborated with the China Pacific Insurance (Group) Company Ltd. (the receiver of invoices) to launch China's first electronic VAT special invoice, using blockchain technology to resolve traditional issues associated with paper invoices in the reconciliation of accounts and payments. In the process of developing the electronic VAT special invoice, the president of JD's enterprise business department, considered how to meet the demands of companies and taxation agencies in a safe, confidential, convenient, easy-to-use, and low-cost manner. What potential challenges might JD face in promoting of its electronic VAT special invoices?

Launched in 2009, Australian-based Shoes of Prey allowed potential customers to design every detail of a pair of shoes. The co-creation strategy offered customers a sense of ownership and increased their perceived value of the shoes. The company initially focused on niche customers; however, as a result of increased business investment, it decided to scale its business to the mass market. This mass customization and co-creation strategy brought numerous challenges. The company's inability to succeed in the mass market led to the co-founder suspending business operations in August 2018. Should she reboot the business with substantial changes, or was it time sell out?

In late 2016, the owner of RW Citrus & Juice, a business-to-business fresh juice company in Michigan, asked a management consultant to fill in as the company's interim general manager. The owner initially brushed aside the management consultant's early concerns about equipment maintenance, and it soon became apparent that the company lacked a basic structure for operations. In a company lacking operational organization, how could the management consultant make sense of the changes that the company required? How should he separate the "must-haves" in operations management from the "nice-to-haves" and communicate the needed changes to a reluctant owner?

In mid-2019, the managing director of Switz Foods Pvt. Ltd. (SFPL), which owned the Mio Amore bakery brand, faced the dilemma of how to tackle its competition. Under a franchise agreement from 1989-2014, the company had manufactured and sold cakes and other food products in Eastern India under the Monginis brand name. Due to the managing director's innovative and emotion-centric market positioning, Monginis quickly became the number one bakery brand in Eastern India. In 2015, however, the franchise licence was discontinued with a condition that, for a period of three years, Monginis would not enter the territories where SFPL had held the Monginis franchise. In 2015, SFPL created the new bakery brand, Mio Amore. In 2019, the Monginis brand re-entered the East Indian market. The managing director's dilemma was how to sustain Mio Amore's leadership position, while countering the competition from a former brand.

Founded in 2008, Indiahikes provided professionally managed treks to individuals, groups, schools, colleges, and corporations across India. Indiahikes began with the objective to popularize trekking in India by promoting treks and providing essential information. Before long, the organization began organizing treks and developing a community of trekkers. By 2018, Indiahikes had the largest online trekking community and was India's biggest trekking organization. Having reached a crucial point in its growth, the company needed a strategy to reach its full potential as the top community-led organization. However, it needed to earn adequate profits for continued investment into trek documentation and to develop trekking communities across India. Indiahikes also needed to address capacity constraints, market saturation, the retention of trained staff members, and conflicts with regional trek operators. Its growth path required exploring opportunities and making important decisions.

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?

Supplement to case W20203

Blacbiblio.com, Inc., an educational materials start-up in Montreal, Canada, launched its first and only product, the ABCs of Canadian Black History Kit, in 2016. The product received strong positive reviews at the time of its launch, but its initial price of CA$2,500 per kit left it out of reach for most of its intended customers. The company founder, a historian and educational content creator, shifted to a flexible pricing strategy, offering the kits for as little as $400-$1,500 each, depending on the status of the buyer. By late 2018, she had sold fewer than 40 kits and held an excess inventory of over 100 unsold kits. Now she needed to decide whether and how to adapt her current approach to become successful in the current market. Should she consider other potential markets instead? Should she perhaps rethink the product design itself?

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.

Top Cloud-Agri Technology Co., Ltd. (TPYN) was a Chinese high-tech company serving the agricultural industry. By implementing a digital business model, TPYN transformed from a traditional business model to a digital leader in the industry. To achieve further growth and develop an innovative digital business model, the chairman of the company put forward the new concept of "open, share, integrate, and win-win." This concept presented not only a rare opportunity for enterprise development but also a considerable challenge, as the required cross-industry, cross-domain integration meant an increased consumption of resources. Should the company look for collaborators within the government or with other larger platforms, or could TPYN continue implementing the new model alone?

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.

Supplement to case W20218

Supplement to case W20218