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Ellerines was a leading South African furniture retailer, with more than 1,270 stores; it was a household name in the country for 45 years and the main target market was the bottom of the pyramid, which was mainly driven by credit sales. In January 2008, African Bank Investments Limited (ABIL), a holding company of African Bank Limited (ABL), bought the Ellerines business with the aim of exploiting its credit customer base of a million names. ABL was one of the leading micro-financing banks in South Africa. The ABIL offer was the perfect opportunity for Ellerines to address the growing burden of regulatory compliance required under the new National Credit Act (NCA) and to possibly source capital at a lower cost, passing this on in part to customers through lower credit costs. ABIL set about implementing new strategic initiatives, mostly around centralizing the credit business with ABL credit unit and consolidating the brands across market segments. But these strategic initiatives proved disastrous for investors, employees and customers, with Ellerines and ABIL quickly showing abysmal results. On 7 August 2014, the iconic furniture retailer shocked the market by filing a business rescue process with the South African Regulator. On 10 August, ABIL itself was placed under curatorship by the South African Reserve Bank. How could these two reputable and profitable companies have failed so dramatically? Was this really a case of customers buying the credit terms more than the product?

After a challenging start to the Liberian Energy Network, Richard Fahey and Robert Saudek, together with their Liberian counterpart Abu Sherif, set out to realign the company business plan, grow LEN, and bring light to even more Liberians. They formed new partnerships, identified new business opportunities, and persevered through a series of hurdles.

The case contains a discussion on Lesso Group, a leading construction material and home decor manufacturer in China, and its market entrance strategy to establish footprint in the retail space in the United States.

An organization's culture can be a significant source of sustainable competitive advantage. For the organization, it can attract job candidates who fit and align employees working in different teams around common goals. For employees, a strong culture can generate pride, satisfaction, and purpose. However, a strong organizational culture can easily decay with a company's growth as new employees join the firm and business units develop cultures of their own. This technical note proposes that the growth a company can sustain while preserving its culture is governed by its ability to attract employees who fit with its purpose and values and to preserve and foster this alignment over time. To achieve this, an effective leader must formally articulate the purpose and values of the company and rely on four management systems that can be collectively thought of as a "North STAR" orienting managers' and employees' attention in the intended direction. This note details these organizational capabilities and management systems and describes the steps that successful companies take in order to preserve a strong culture through periods of growth.

DHAN was a non-government organization (NGO) with a difference. It was neither a philanthropic institution nor a service organization but a development organization focused on grassroots development aided by professional management. At the same time, it had a clear vision of being only an enabling institution rather than a directing agency. Dedicated to the mission of poverty eradication through grassroots development action, DHAN had made a significant impact on the Indian scene by 2017. It had touched the lives of 1.5 million households during the course of its nearly 20-year journey and was poised to reach out to another one million households over the next five years. While DHAN initially drove two major thematic interventions to combat poverty, namely, community banking and water management, it made forays into several other domains such as healthcare, education and livelihood generation over a period of time in response to the dynamic requirements of the community of beneficiaries. This case focuses on the story of DHAN's foray into education; more specifically, its pioneering initiative to create an innovative model of management education, which was distinctly oriented to the needs of the development sector. It traces the genesis and evolution of Tata-DHAN Academy (TDA), the process of institution building and the steady and gradual unfolding of its educational model. Finally, the case homes in on the strategic dilemma TDA faces after an eventful 17-year journey, as it stands on the threshold of a new phase, and captures the complexity of the challenges it could encounter going forward.

Job-search site iimjobs.com had evolved in the Indian recruitment landscape as one of the major players for premium jobs, spanning across mid-management and leadership roles, and across multiple industries. In January 2018, leveraging the database of job posts and resumes on its site, the company launched Calculus, a platform built using advanced talent analytics, to provide holistic and integrated talent management solutions. At the same time, market trends led the company to consider diversification into non-premium domains. The industry continued to grapple with the challenges of identifying critical talent to sustain growth plans, and talent management strategists were unable to base decisions on live, dynamic data points. However, the founder and chief executive officer of iimjobs.com faced several core concerns-the strategic implications of diversification into a non-premium job market and the expectations of the industry from a talent analytics platform. He looked at the talent analytics solutions provided by Calculus and considered: How far can the analytic solutions offered by Calculus meet modern human resources holistic requirements?

In July 2015, Tassal Group Limited (Tassal) announced the acquisition of De Costi Seafoods Company (De Costi) in a combination deal of cash and shares. The acquisition would allow Tassal to address a A$4.3 billion Australian seafood market that was much larger than the previously addressable salmon market of $700 million. Tassal had previous experience in species diversification. However, the environmental impacts of its major operations in Macquarie Harbour had been under the scrutiny of the Australian authority. Given the critical harbour issues, should Tassal continue to expand overseas? What were the motives to acquire De Costi? Did Tassal have sufficient capabilities and resources to cope with the high demand for Tasmanian salmon, particularly in the Asian market?

On April 14, 2014, CapitaLand Limited, a Singapore-based real estate company, launched a voluntary conditional cash offer of SG$2.22 for each share (SG$3.06 billion in total) of its subsidiary commercial property development and management company, CapitaMalls Asia Limited (CMA). CMA's principal business strategy was to invest in, develop, and manage a diversified portfolio of real estate used primarily for retail purposes in Asia. CapitaLand's offer represented a 22.3 per cent premium over CMA's closing price of SG$1.815 on April 11, 2014. The intention was to delist CMA and fully integrate it into CapitaLand. As an investor in CMA, you are seeking a reasonable valuation of CMA based on its past financial performance and other relevant market information. You also need to compute the premium, net present value (NPV), and synergy of the acquisition.

In August 2016, Foxconn Technology Group (Foxconn) acquired a majority stake for US$3.8 billion in Sharp Corporation (Sharp), which was on the verge of bankruptcy. In addition to gaining more liquid crystal display (LCD) capacity, Foxconn was combining Sharp's advanced technology and marketing resources with its own to expand and move up the value chain in both research and development and brand building. However, the post-acquisition integration to realize such value-creation potentials faced several challenges, including the probability that Sharp's Japanese style of management might not assimilate well within Foxconn's organization. Now in 2018, what should Foxconn do to seamlessly integrate the two entities? How could Foxconn achieve its efficiency, cost, and innovation goals while moving toward becoming the technology leader and successfully creating its own global brand?

In late 2012, Shanghai Euclid Printing Machine Co. (Shanghai Euclid), a joint venture between a Chinese state-owned enterprise and an American multinational enterprise, was in the process of closing down. Established in December 1993, the joint venture had experienced successive rounds of downsizing over the past 18 years, dropping from an original high of 1,800 employees to a workforce size of 668 in 2012. In its place, a 100-per-cent state-owned enterprise would now be founded, and any employees and business activities that would be retained needed to be moved to this new enterprise, Shanghai Gutenberg Printing Machine Co. (Shanghai Gutenberg). The general manager at Shanghai Euclid had to make some difficult decisions about the strategic orientation of Shanghai Gutenberg. He also needed to come up with a plan regarding the remaining 668 employees, deciding whom he could retain and who would need to be laid off. Considering the importance of social harmony in the Chinese context, he also needed to determine how to conduct the workforce change process in order to cause the least possible disruption to employees and other stakeholders.

In June 2018, the president of Hongxuan Agriculture Group (Hongxuan), which operated in the Chinese egg industry, was aware that an ongoing trade dispute between China and the United States might affect both his industry and future financing for his company. The company he had founded in 2008 had grown dramatically over the past decade; it received high prices for the three billion eggs it produced each year, largely due to its branded marketing, its innovative product development, and its incorporation of new technologies into both farming and sales. The company's goal was to integrate its entire value chain and to meet an annual production target of five billion eggs. However, the industry was asset heavy and had not traditionally been attractive to investors. In order to raise funds for future development, Hongxuan's president needed to determine how to lower the industry price to reduce the company's revenue uncertainty and how to persuade investors and financial institutions to provide the financing he needed for stable future development. Were there innovative supply chain financial solutions the company could use?

Midtown Medical Centre, a family clinic operating two centres in the Indian state of Kerala, provided quality and convenient health care facilities to nearby communities. Founded in 2016 by six young entrepreneurs, the project had grown to two centres by the second year of operation, serving semi-urban and urban patients in the cities of Thrikkakkara and Aluva. In August 2018, the six entrepreneurs were considering expanding to a third centre, but they were unsure how to proceed. They were also unsure about the sustainability of the business model they had adopted for the clinic. They were aware of the importance of attracting new patients and having the appropriate space for the success of any health care clinic. Therefore, the six entrepreneurs were considering revisiting their marketing strategies to make them more effective.

Lonnie Bunch creates the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) with only half the federal support given to the first 17 Smithsonian historical or zoological institutions. Bunch, to borrow from the African American experience of creating "a way out of no way," raised more than the $250 million required in his capital campaign to trigger matching federal funds. In the face of traditional philanthropy that did not support "bricks and mortar" projects and despite racially-tinged patronization of his ideas to market the museum, Bunch, appointed as director of the museum in 2005, saw the museum open to international acclaim in 2016. It became the third most-visited museum in the Smithsonian system.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 817040.

This technical note helps explain what leadership really is, explores some of the factors that influence leader effectiveness, and introduces the basics of how people can begin to develop as leaders. It is an introduction to a very big topic area, but provides simple definitions and explanations of complicated concepts.

Project Communication from Start to Finish is a five-chapter book by Geraldine Hynes, Ph.D., a communications expert, university lecturer, and author. Its key premise is that skills in project management are critical in a broad range of businesses and industries. A key knowledge area for project managers is communication. This book offers techniques and strategies that enhance communication in diverse environments. It offers innovative ways to bridge cultural gaps, increase understanding, and ensure project success. Project managers will learn how to build trust and rapport, manage conflict, listen, communicate expectations, give performance feedback, and overcome communication barriers. A look to the future includes best practices for using emerging technology when communicating with distributed teams. This book's concise format makes it a readable, practical guide, and it can also be used as a reference for fixing the most frequent communication breakdowns. Cases and examples are presented to illustrate applications of the communication principles from a project's start to finish. This chapter begins by explaining that communication is a key knowledge area for project managers and presents research findings that show the correlation between communication effectiveness and project success as well as organizational success. It then introduces the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (the PMBOK Guide), the premier resource for project managers, particularly the sections of the Guide that focus on communication competencies for project managers. In the third section of this chapter, project life cycles are described, as well as the role of communication at each stage of the life cycle. Finally, the chapter provides an overview of the book's conceptual model "The Sequence for Success"-and shows how the model embodies ideas that are found in the PMBOK Guide.

Project Communication from Start to Finish is a five-chapter book by Geraldine Hynes, Ph.D., a communications expert, university lecturer, and author. Its key premise is that skills in project management are critical in a broad range of businesses and industries. A key knowledge area for project managers is communication. This book offers techniques and strategies that enhance communication in diverse environments. It offers innovative ways to bridge cultural gaps, increase understanding, and ensure project success. Project managers will learn how to build trust and rapport, manage conflict, listen, communicate expectations, give performance feedback, and overcome communication barriers. A look to the future includes best practices for using emerging technology when communicating with distributed teams. This book's concise format makes it a readable, practical guide, and it can also be used as a reference for fixing the most frequent communication breakdowns. Cases and examples are presented to illustrate applications of the communication principles from a project's start to finish. Chapter 2 is designed to help project managers learn strategies and techniques for communicating in agile and waterfall methods of project management; overcoming communication barriers; appreciating diversity; and developing cultural competence. It begins by demonstrating the importance of communication in two typical methods of project management-agile and waterfall. It then lays two "cornerstones" or basic concepts that are the foundation on which the Sequence for Success model of project management, introduced in Chapter 1, is built. The first cornerstone is diversity appreciation (Figure 2.1). The chapter also suggests several communication strategies that you, as a project manager, can adopt to capitalize on the advantages of workforce diversity. In the final section, the chapter identifies and defines the model's other cornerstone, cultural competence.

Project Communication from Start to Finish is a five-chapter book by Geraldine Hynes, Ph.D., a communications expert, university lecturer, and author. Its key premise is that skills in project management are critical in a broad range of businesses and industries. A key knowledge area for project managers is communication. This book offers techniques and strategies that enhance communication in diverse environments. It offers innovative ways to bridge cultural gaps, increase understanding, and ensure project success. Project managers will learn how to build trust and rapport, manage conflict, listen, communicate expectations, give performance feedback, and overcome communication barriers. A look to the future includes best practices for using emerging technology when communicating with distributed teams. This book's concise format makes it a readable, practical guide, and it can also be used as a reference for fixing the most frequent communication breakdowns. Cases and examples are presented to illustrate applications of the communication principles from a project's start to finish. Chapter 3 focuses on helping project managers learn strategies and techniques for various situations that entail formal interpersonal communication, including: receiving formal communications-listening, responding, and asking questions; communicating performance expectations; delivering negative information and corrective feedback; giving positive performance feedback; conducting formal performance reviews; and managing conflict.

Project Communication from Start to Finish is a five-chapter book by Geraldine Hynes, Ph.D., a communications expert, university lecturer, and author. Its key premise is that skills in project management are critical in a broad range of businesses and industries. A key knowledge area for project managers is communication. This book offers techniques and strategies that enhance communication in diverse environments. It offers innovative ways to bridge cultural gaps, increase understanding, and ensure project success. Project managers will learn how to build trust and rapport, manage conflict, listen, communicate expectations, give performance feedback, and overcome communication barriers. A look to the future includes best practices for using emerging technology when communicating with distributed teams. This book's concise format makes it a readable, practical guide, and it can also be used as a reference for fixing the most frequent communication breakdowns. Cases and examples are presented to illustrate applications of the communication principles from a project's start to finish. Chapter 4 focuses on helping project managers learn strategies and techniques for interpersonal communication competencies that can be applied in informal settings, such as: developing trust; developing emotional intelligence; increasing employee engagement; and building rapport. These conversations will help you get along with your project team, sponsors, and stakeholders and increase the likelihood of a project's success.