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One fall afternoon in 2018, Bertin Nadeau, chair of the board and owner of Casavant Frères, was wondering how to ensure the sustainability of his company. Since its 1879 founding in Saint-Hyacinthe (Quebec, Canada), this world leader in the manufacture, delivery, and installation of new pipe organs had built more than 3,900 organs for churches, concert halls, music schools, and private homes on all five continents. The firm was also active in the restoration, renovation, maintenance, tuning, and moving of organs. Despite this international success, Casavant Frères could not rest on its laurels. Its national and international business environment had changed dramatically over the years, requiring strategic positioning to ensure its survival. Several opportunities had already been exploited, explored, or studied. Students will be asked to consider Nadeau's various possible options based on the company's current situation, its history, its objectives, and the international organ market. They will have to understand the key success factors for an SME facing sustainability challenges in a cutting-edge sector with a strong artisanal component.

In January 2018, the second-generation scion and director of Natural, an Indian ice cream family business, was preparing for a meeting with the general manager of the company's retail operations. The company was founded by the director's father in 1984 under the name Kamath Ourtimes Ice Cream Private Ltd. and was known for its handmade artisanal ice cream brand-Natural Ice Cream. Several years after his entry into the family business in 2009, the son insisted on professionalizing the company as a means of achieving a vision of growth, despite an increasingly competitive market. In 2014, almost 30 years after the company was established, the general manager was the first professional to be hired by the company. Although professionalization brought about an increase in sales of two and a half times during 2012-2018, the director was sensing a change in the culture of the company, which he found troubling. He wondered if he had grown the company too big, too fast in his haste to transform it into a high-growth enterprise.

Teach For Lebanon (TFL) was a non-profit organization (NFP) founded in response to the national problem of low quality public education. The case examines the sustainability challenges that TFL faced in a developing country, covering the financial, legal, and social dilemmas that NFPs struggled with. The case tracks TFL's innovative solutions to enhance the organization's financial sustainability and considers scaling-up and initiating a new business to generate additional income. Using benchmarking, students can invent and list their own suggestions for enhancing NFPs' financial sustainability.

In September 2017, the chairman and the president of Shanghai Shine-Link International Logistics Co. Ltd. were considering their company's future. The company was established in May 2001. After more than 16 years of rapid development, it became a leading information technology empowered logistics provider, offering high value-added services, with the lean management and innovation capabilities of modern logistics enterprises. In September 2017, it was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange main board. The management team had to reconsider the company's next steps for growth. The two men realized it was time to convene the board of directors to consider the company's future. With so many opportunities and risks in front of them, good decision-making was essential to their prospects.

Organic Wellness Products Private Limited (Organic Wellness) was founded in 2015 with the aim to create a sustainable venture for organic products that would boost agricultural entrepreneurship and benefit society by generating rural employment and value creation. By May 2018, Organic Wellness's market had grown considerably, and the company was exporting to 27 countries around the world and had a pan-Indian presence. While its innovative marketing strategy-free of big spending-had worked well for the organization, the founder needed to decide if he would continue with the same style of cause-related marketing, or whether it was time to invest in marketing channels to create better consumer outreach.

In early 2018, Modena, Italy's Pagani Automobili S.p.A (Pagani Automobili), a boutique designer and manufacturer of high-performance internal combustion engine powered supercars, was struggling to develop a response to the emergence of electric vehicle technology. This technology appeared to be interesting and potentially useful. It outperformed internal combustion technology in terms of speed and power. In 2018, relatively inexpensive electric cars could already accelerate faster than most supercars over a quarter-mile distance. However, the electric car driving experience seemed very different from the experience of driving a supercar powered by an internal combustion engine, due largely to fundamental differences between the technologies. Could Pagani Automobili build an electric vehicle that its customers would perceive as a true Pagani Automobili creation?

Family businesses are unique and complex; they have aspects and layers to them that are unlike any other organizations because at the root of family businesses' identities are the aspirations of both the business and the family's members, which could be at odds with one another. This note-a meta-analysis drawn from many authors' work-explores an approach that identifies ways to unify family and business, examining new possibilities and building a strong resiliency in the process. This analysis of various characteristics within family businesses provides opportunities to learn about how families are unique, offers examples of family businesses (when possible), and, most importantly, leads to clear recommendations.

Central to a firm's long-term success, is allocating capital so that it generates economic value. The two most common decision rules based on economic value are to (i) accept proposals that have a positive net present value (NPV) when discounted at the appropriate hurdle rate or (ii) to accept proposals whose internal rate of return (IRR) exceeds the appropriate hurdle rate. Key to both rules, in economic terms, the hurdle rate reflects the appropriate opportunity cost of devoting capital to the given proposal rather than an equally risky alternative. The weighted average cost of capital (WACC) is the most commonly used hurdle rate, and this note explains why it is useful as a hurdle rate, discusses how it is calculated, and explores some issues related to its use. A one-page summary of implementation best practices is also provided.

The Piramal Foundation was launched by diversfied Indian conglomerate, the Piramal Group, to improve the healthcare services and quality of education of India's economically and socially disadvantaged. The foundation operates under three verticals-'Piramal Foundation for Education Leadership' (PFEL) for improvements in student learning outcomes; 'Swasthya' for healthcare; and 'Sarvajal' for safe drinking water. Over the years, the Foundation has directly and indirectly benefitted nearly 90 million lives, yet its management team find themselves in a quandary. With finite resources, mostly provided by the Piramal Group, they wonder if they ought to only grow existing programs that show the most promise. They also wonder how to attract more external funding and how to further embed their programs into government platforms in order to create impact at scale.

On January 20, 2017, Moody's Investors Service, an American credit rating agency, downgraded the Corporate Family Rating for Sears Holdings Corporation from Caa1 to Caa2, stating that the company did not have enough money to stay in business and was relying on outside funding or sale of assets to sustain operations. The leading US retail chain had a revenue turnover of US$22.14 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2016-17. However, beginning in FY 2011-12, it had suffered losses year after year. Its stock had fallen 38 per cent between April 2016 and April 2017. The retail chain's majority shareholder, chair, and chief executive officer was making some changes, but critics questioned his motives and retail acumen. With falling share prices, continuous losses, decreasing assets, and a decided shift in the industry away from traditional retail, it seemed that it would be only a matter of time before Sears Holdings Corporation reached its end. In light of its poor financial performance and consecutive losses on a yearly basis, a new Master of Business Administration graduate and junior analyst was assigned the task of analyzing the retail chain's financial status and assessing the possibility of its bankruptcy.

Student spreadsheet to case W19331

Quess Corp Limited acquired Magna Infotech, an IT contract staffing company in 2009 to go beyond general staffing and get into professional staffing. Magna, founded in 1997 by Pradeep Mittal had achieved the status of being the market leader in IT staffing in India by being highly entrepreneurial, consistently focused on business development, delivery and automation of core staffing processes. Quess carried out a thorough diagnosis of Magna after acquisition. The diagnosis helped identify specific areas where potential for performance improvement existed. Priorities were worked out and systematic efforts were taken up to focus on those areas. Planning and execution of action steps created effective alignment of thought processes among key stakeholders and high levels of engagement and employee motivation. The various interventions resulted in Magna tripling its revenues; the operating profits grew six-fold. But by 2017, the business context had changed for Magna and there were totally new set of challenges that confronted the organization. The case presents a story of an acquisition where despite taking over a successful high-performing company with high levels of motivation, the new leadership team still managed to substantially improve both the topline and bottom line performance through effective execution of a carefully planned change agenda. In the following 8 years, the company retained its market leadership and become much larger. But it now confronted far-reaching changes in business context. How should the leaders reignite the entrepreneurial zeal in a much bigger, more stable and more successful organization?

While financial reporting standards under U.S. GAAP and IFRS are fundamentally similar, differences do exist that may affect our analysis of company financial statements. This is particularly true when comparing a U.S. company following U.S. GAAP to a firm that uses IFRS. To illustrate, we compare research and development (R&D) accounting methods under both sets of standards and illustrate how they affect the analysis of financial results of firms in a specific industry-automotive manufacturers. Our results provide insight into settings in which differences in R&D accounting may have the greatest impact on financial analysis.

Public entrepreneurship is much like its private sector counterpart; however, public entrepreneurs face additional challenges due to weaker competitive forces in the public as compared to private sector, with objectives that often are poorly defined and performance that is difficult to measure. Despite the impact on public good, how to enact changes successfully in public sector organizations to be more entrepreneurial is poorly understood. This article summarizes current research on public entrepreneurship and presents a detailed case study of a successful entrepreneurial change in a public sector organization. A five-step change process used to enhance entrepreneurial behaviors was implemented in a public sector organization and the qualitative and quantitative results demonstrated substantial performance improvements over 4 years (i.e., quantitative performance in some areas was more than 10 times greater). We explain key steps that produced successful outcomes and how to avoid common challenges in the implementation of ongoing entrepreneurial behaviors in public sector contexts.

Individuals and organizations cannot learn perpetually. Managers should be aware that unlearning becomes necessary to discard obsolete and outdated mental models, assumptions, behaviors, or routines. We investigated new product development teams and interviewed change consultants to explore the phenomenon of unlearning in real-life contexts. We particularly focus on examples of cases in which these steps have been used and implemented successfully. In order to make room for new knowledge and foster innovations more efficiently, we identify and suggest four critical steps managers can introduce to help their employees unlearn: creating situational awareness, providing islands of temporal and spatial freedom, encouraging an error-forgiving and stop-doing culture, and reducing the influence of old knowledge over time. Fostering unlearning can prevent rigidity and stagnation while opening up room for innovation. This article adds an important practical dimension to the mainly theoretical ideas in the field of unlearning and provides strong implications for managers and other practitioners.

Managing meetings effectively is vital in the fast-paced, complex environment of the modern workplace. However, direct scholarly attention to work meetings is still limited, making an understanding of what makes meetings successful elusive. In this article, we examine the particulars of successful and unsuccessful meetings from a participant's perspective. Employing a conceptual mapping approach, we analyze open-ended statements collected from meeting participants to identify three broad themes associated with meeting success: (1) participant learning and development; (2) the coordination of performance, including the creation of links between meeting episodes; (3) and the development of common understanding and alignment among attendees. By more fully taking these themes into account, managers can be better equipped to design, organize, and manage their work meetings successfully.

It is not unusual for companies to generate substantial revenue through alliances. However, alliance failure rates are high, leaving much revenue at risk and value unrealized. The big challenge facing managers is to align company interests with alliance interests. Such alignment can only be achieved when executives pay considerable attention to building the right collaborative business model. In this article, we synthesize the insights of the existing literature to arrive at three collaborative business models-sharing, specialization, and allocation-that managers can use to address the specific requirements of their alliances. Because the literature provides limited insight into how to operationalize these models, we highlight what managers need to focus on when operationalizing each of these models. We find that the choice for an overall business model is relatively straightforward in most cases but that operationalization of business models requires more complex combinations of management techniques. Finally, we show how the three collaborative business models can be combined to build hybrid models

The video game industry has ignited a global controversy surrounding microtransactions in gaming, especially the use of loot boxes: randomized rewards with potential real-world value. Consumers and legislators are calling for the regulation of these revenue models on the grounds that they are unfair, predatory, or could be considered gambling. This article examines the controversy from a management perspective. First, I introduce current regulatory responses to the controversy and what they mean for business practices. Then, I explain ongoing industry-level and firm-level attempts to self-regulate as a way to placate consumers and governments. These tactics highlight a wide range of broader strategies that game developers and other stakeholders can pursue in order to improve customer relations and, more publicly, signal their commitment to self-regulation and avoiding consumer harm. These practices can be applied more broadly to firms that offer controversial products or services that do not yet fit within current regulatory frameworks.

New ventures are increasingly internationalizing from emerging economies, but the role of their home country and any associated within-country regional differences are not well understood. In this article, we look at a new venture in China and how its headquartered region promotes its internationalization. We present empirical evidence that shows the interrelatedness between a venture's region and internationalization: When institutional development in a region is strong, the impact of foreign firm presence on venture internationalization becomes even stronger. We discuss implications for managers of multinational enterprises and new ventures operating in emerging economies as well as policymakers in these economies.

While we understand well how social media channels sway consumers, there is little understanding of their influence on online trading behavior. We argue that social media are creating a new class of self-directed online traders by simultaneously encouraging and biasing trading decisions. Through an empirical study, we show that heavy social media users are more likely to engage in online trading but are largely affected by online herding behavior, and are four times more likely to blindly follow other traders. Bloggers, influencers, social network contacts, and social media news shape these users' online trading behaviors. As online traders influenced by social media are unlikely to receive adequate returns, companies face an ethical dilemma: They could leverage social media to efficiently access funds but they risk inappropriately exploiting the inexperience of online traders biased by social media. We offer a set of nine practical recommendations for organizations to respond to these new challenges.