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It was October 2013, and global law firm Clifford Chance was coming under fire for the second time in less than a year for reputedly failing to provide a supportive work environment for its female associates. A memo entitled "Speaking Effectively" was just issued to the U.S. offices of the firm and immediately sparked controversy, as some female associates claimed that the gender-specific advice in the memo was condescending and sexist. This controversy came close on the heels of a memo released in November 2012, in which a third-year associate gave her resignation and explained why she was leaving the firm by detailing her unsustainable schedule as both a corporate lawyer and a mother to young children. Both memos were leaked on the internet, prompting bloggers, media outlets, and the public to chime in with their own opinions as to whether the firm was sexist. How should Clifford Chance have responded to these allegations? Was the firm sexist, or were things being taken out of context and blown out of proportion? If the firm determined that it needed to take heed and create a more inclusive culture that better met the needs of its female associates, where should it begin? Finally, how were the lessons learned in this case applicable to corporate America in 2014, where only 5.2% of Fortune 500 CEOs and 16.9% of board members in the United States were women?

This case details the transformation of a health care delivery system, UnityPoint Health - Fort Dodge, into a Pioneer Accountable Care Organization (ACO) after the passage of health reform in the United States. The case explores in detail how the hospital CEO and staff designed and implemented new models of care delivery and built relationships across health care delivery settings in an effort to better coordinate patient care and lower health care costs. Using patient stories, care delivery prior to the formation of the ACO is compared to care delivery after the formation of the ACO. Three novel programs that were cornerstones to transformation efforts are highlighted: 1) reducing readmissions; 2) creating advanced medical teams; and 3) creating a palliative care program.

In 2015, Chris Godfrey, founder and CEO of Bloodbuy has to consider the best path to growth for his young company that is attempting to disrupt the blood donation industry.

The case describes the effects of a proposed change in Excel's manufacturing strategy as seen through the eyes of the company's VP of Manufacturing, Caroline Regis. Following a merger with Gemini, Excel's new CEO advocates a new manufacturing strategy: outsourcing. Regis is threatened by the diminution in the role of in-house manufacturing and by the VP for Supply Chain Management at Gemini. The case traces Regis's reactions to the proposal. She seems ready to accede to the organizational politics and support the new strategy, only to change her mind and anger her superiors, who thought she would support the plan. She tries to seize control of the situation and threatens to resign if she is not allowed to determine the appropriate strategy. The case facilitates analysis and discussion of career and personal development issues regularly faced by high-potential employees by showing that particular career and behavior strategies that are successful at one point can become dysfunctional as professionals advance through an organization.

This case describes the challenges pharmaceutical multinational corporations (MNCs) face in understanding and navigating the intricacies of patent law in India and what they can learn from key pharmaceutical intellectual property (IP) cases being fought in the nation's courts. Like most emerging markets, India is both an exciting new market opportunity for MNCs and a challenging and complex environment in which to operate. For instance, while the patent protection afforded to products and processes is stringent, at least on paper, its enforcement has often been problematic for MNCs and has thwarted MNCs efforts to operate profitably in India. The case study discusses some of the recent judgments handed down by the Indian courts in high-profile pharmaceutical IP cases (such as Novartis' Glivec and Bayer's Nexavar) with a view to helping students formulate strategies to overcome value appropriation problems in India.

Stephanie Collett sighed as she tried to focus on her laptop. It was late at night shortly before Christmas 2012, and she had spent hours trying to make the math work on a struggling apartment complex. Although she had no training or background in real estate, as a Stanford MBA student (2013), she was the best resource her family had to solve a complex financial dilemma. Her husband's grandmother had just passed away, leaving the family a portfolio of low-end rental properties scattered throughout the Los Angeles (L.A.), California, metropolitan area. One property in particular, an apartment complex located at West 92nd/94th Street, was behind on its maintenance schedule, as well as behind in payments on taxes and the mortgage. Collett's brother-in-law, Aaron Collett, had been working hard to bring the property back to profitability, but the bank was threatening to foreclose, and the Colletts had to make a decision. Should they pay off the loan and continue renting the property, which would require taking out a mortgage on the family home? Should they sell the property and use the proceeds to pay off the loan? Or should they just hand over the keys? Stephanie Collett was not at all sure how to go about valuing the property, but she knew two things: the West 92nd/94th Street complex was hemorrhaging cash, and the bank was preparing the foreclosure paperwork. Whatever they were to decide, they would need to decide fast.

The global consumer goods company Unilever was on pace to hit a number of aggressive targets by 2020 as part of the Unilever Sustainable Living Project, including a goal to halve the waste associated with the disposal of its products. Unilever's Chief Supply Chain Officer Pier Luigi Sigismondi and his team were working towards this goal and had chosen to first focus on three key areas-sugar, tomatoes, and tea-and had analyzed where in the 'farm to fork' value chain product was wasted. This analysis showed that very little was wasted within areas of the value chain directly controlled by Unilever, and most occurred either upstream with its suppliers or downstream with consumers. How could Unilever encourage these actors to change established practices and entrenched behaviors within a short timeframe to help Unilever meet its sustainability targets and also to improve the operations of its partners in the value chain? By encouraging consumers to better manage their food purchases, did Unilever risk harming its own sales or those of its retail customers? Could Unilever encourage industry-wide changes to have a real impact on global environmental sustainability?

By the spring of 2014, the pilot had come to an end for JPMorgan Chase's ReEntry Program, a program designed for women coming back to the workforce after a period of time away. Mary Callahan Erdoes, CEO of Asset Management, and her team had to evaluate whether or not the program had been successful. Participants and managers both had provided some anecdotal positive feedback on the program, but Erdoes wanted to know how they could truly calculate the ROI. Wall Street was a data-driven place to work, and if they wanted to create something that would survive beyond the tenure of the firm's existing leadership, they had to prove that the time, money and energy invested by the firm was worth it. Calculating ROI would also help them to prepare for subsequent runs of the program and determine in what ways, if any, they should differ from the pilot. What factors should Erdoes and her team consider when calculating ROI? How can they position the program to ensure its survival?

In early 2011, the founder of REfficient, an asset recovery service based in Hamilton, Ontario, was thinking about how she should manage the rapid growth that seemed just around the corner. Founded in 2010 to help cable firms generate value from their stock of surplus equipment, REfficient, with no direct competitors in the Ontario market, had grown rapidly and had a list of corporate customers, two warehouses and five employees. The company was positioned as the efficient way for customers to recover value from their surplus assets; it would collect and inventory them, provide an online list and track the environmental impact of selling or discarding them. The company was now looking to secure a pilot project with the Ontario provincial government. Innovative in the "green" sense because of its innovative reuse, recycle or resell model, as well as its integrated carbon footprint estimator, REfficient was a good match for the program. But how would it deal with an increasingly large variety of items, given its limited resources and space?

The founder and president of Sport-Fresh was in the middle of a four-state road trip to meet his firm's U.S. distributors and sales representatives. He had just returned from an international trade show in Germany, and was eager to update his agents about the incredible response the company product Sport-Fresh, a disinfecting equipment spray, had received. But he was worried about the time commitment required to follow up on all the leads he had received, and juggle his normal workload at the same time. The president looked at the challenges and opportunities in front of him. He had built a growing brand and he felt as if he was at a crossroads. Sport-Fresh was the only disinfectant spray on the market; all of its other direct competitors were odor masking and perfume sprays. There was potential for growth, if he could find a way.

A North America-based representative of a major European airline has just received a letter from an unhappy customer detailing a very large number of service problems. A quick check had revealed that this premium-paying customer's complaints were all valid. A meeting is planned with the customer. Before this, the airline representative must decide (A) what to say in response, and (B) what, if any, compensation should be offered. Internally, there was a need (C) to resolve what their organization should learn from this experience, both from a subsidiary and parent company perspective, and the implications on their participation in the Crown Alliance. This case raises many important questions regarding service recovery, communications, and non-equity alliances.

An equity research analyst is preparing to attend a road show presentation by WH Group Limited, the world's largest pork company headquartered in Hong Kong, concerning its upcoming initial public offering. She is reviewing the preliminary prospectus as well as other publicly available background information on the company and its two core subsidiaries, Shuanghui International Holdings Inc. and Smithfield Foods Inc., whose recent acquisition was the largest by a Chinese company of a U.S. firm. She wants to assess the prospects for the company as a whole and arrive at her own independent valuation to support a buy or no buy recommendation for her fund. Her analysis includes assessments of economic conditions and the pork industry in the United States and China and the perceived strengths and weaknesses of WH Group, including the issue of large bonuses to corporate executives and the benefits or risks of the recent acquisition.

This case examines an exciting new approach to health care that will help care providers identify when hospice services are the appropriate type of care for patients. The company, Medalogix, already has a product on the market that uses a proprietery algorithm to consider dozens of factors and determine when a patient qualifies for a hospice care eligability review. The product has started to gain traction, and the case explores how Medalogix can scale and disseminate its innovative product.

In early 2010, Martin Grable, President of the Community Blood Center of the Carolinas (CBCC), was ready to move the first community blood center in North Carolina to a new level. In a strategic planning retreat, he asked the Board of Directors to evaluate seven strategic options and provide its expertise to assist in determining the future direction of the center: Increase provision of specialized blood services by 1. Pooling donors for sickle cell patients, 2. Offering cord blood storage, 3. Developing a therapeutic apheresis/transfusion service or 4. Become a Center that provides a reference lab for other blood centers in the region; 5. Improve blood inventory management software utilization for the region's current hospitals so that CBCC became their sole provider of blood; 6. Expand geographically serving more hospitals and patients; or 7. Re-double efforts to increase donations through additional collection sites, improved marketing, more attention to current donors, and so on. Although all of the alternatives were needed by the community, CBCC did not have unlimited resources. Further, health care reform loomed on the horizon. Clearly, to serve the community, CBCC needed to not only survive, but also thrive in the near term. Which of the alternatives would allow achievement of that goal for the newest FDA-licensed community blood center?

This case deals with how Sonata Software, an Indian software company, sought growth in Western Europe through TUI Infotec, a joint venture (JV) with TUI AG, a leader in travel and tourism in Germany. It provides a vehicle for reflecting on a firm's choice of a JV as a means for entering a new overseas market while building new competencies and buttressing competitive advantage. The case opens in Bangalore in May 2010, with B. Ramaswamy, President and Managing Director of Sonata Software, preparing for a meeting with his management team to review the performance of TUI Infotec. The case traces the history of Sonata from its spinoff from its parent company to the JV design and implementation. This case challenges students to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of this international JV, and to consider the decision of whether to continue the JV or to dissolve it when the revenue commitments made by TUI AG were set to expire in 2011.

The Behavioural Insights Team case introduces students to the concept of choice architecture and the value of experimental methods (sometimes called A/B testing) within organizational contexts. The exercise provides an opportunity for students to apply these principles to solve a managerial problem - increasing tax compliance rates among delinquent taxpayers. Students are asked to rewrite the letter that the UK tax department (HMRC) sends to delinquent taxpayers; this exercise is based on a successful behavioral field experiment run by the UK government.

FC Barcelona ranks as one of the world's most prestigious soccer clubs. Its legal status as a not-for-profit sporting club along with its collective ownership model and democratic structures set it apart from most other world-class teams. Since its founding in 1899, the club has had a rich history of sporting success tempered by recurring periods of financial instability. Its founder, Joan Gamper, made national identity a core element of his strategy for the club, turning it into a veritable symbol of Catalan nationalism. Despite the best efforts of the Francoist regime to "Spanify" the club, to this day it remains a powerful source of pride and national identity for the vast majority of Catalonians. After over a century of sporting exploits mixed with disappointments and internal conflict, the implementation of an aggressive strategy of modernization in the early 2000s has proved highly effective, as evidenced by the club's remarkable achievements on the field and its new-found financial stability. This case examines the evolution of this organization against the backdrop of the Spanish and Catalan socio-political context.

This case presents a realistic situation in which a firm in financial distress attempts an out-of-court financial restructuring by means of a debt exchange. Pinewood Mobile Homes is a large manufacturer of prefabricated homes, producing one-story, ranch-style houses; two-story, single-section and Cape Cod modular homes; and townhomes, apartments and duplexes. The company has lost the ability to compete effectively in the market place because it borrowed and acquired aggressively prior to the housing market crash. In order to avoid filling for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Pinewood Mobile Homes must receive consent form senior lenders, junior creditors, and shareholders for a comprehensive restructuring plan. This case is written for use in elective MBA courses in corporate restructuring or advanced corporate finance. It can also be used in upper-level undergraduate finance courses that cover financial restructuring and corporate valuation.