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The owner of Leisure Gardens, a restaurant and accommodation business in a small town in Ghana, faced problems with his business. Approximately 40 per cent of his restaurant customers were paying on credit and not paying on time, causing cash flow problems. His sole employee was unreliable, often absent when the restaurant was busy. This two-part problem hindered the restaurant's success and owner’s ability to expand the business. Moreover, the owner faced external pressures from competitors in the restaurant market. The owner was considering three options to sustainably reduce bad-debt accounts and ensure profitability in the future: implementing an employee contract, changing the payment options, and expanding the business to generate more revenue. Which option would be the best course of action for the future of Leisure Gardens?

Excel spreadsheet for students.

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product 8B18A002.

Spreadsheet to accompany product 9B18A002.

In October 2015, Squatty Potty’s chief executive officer (CEO) launched the first viral video campaign in the U.S. company’s history. In terms of cost, it represented the largest single marketing promotion ever for the company’s home remedy for constipation—a foot stool that made going to the bathroom more ergonomic. Further raising the stakes of his decision, the CEO’s three business partners had reservations and objections. The partners worried that an irreverent viral video could be expensive, ineffective, and even offensive to the target markets. For the good of the business, the strength of the partnership, and the efficacy of future marketing efforts, it was critical that the CEO be able to provide credible proof of the campaign’s efficacy. In addition, his ability to critically assess the strengths, weaknesses, and outcomes of the campaign would provide precious insight to shape future promotion campaigns, both online and offline.

In the Newstar Magazine exercise, participants are assigned one of three roles—managing editor, publisher, or board chair—and provided with information about personnel difficulties that have emerged at the independent Canadian magazine. The organization is small, financially strapped, and conflict has appeared within the magazine’s leadership. The objective of the exercise is to understand the source of this conflict and ultimately to resolve it. Use with 9B17C051 and 9B17C052.

In the Newstar Magazine exercise, participants are assigned one of three roles—managing editor, publisher, or board chair—and provided with information about personnel difficulties that have emerged at the independent Canadian magazine. The organization is small, financially strapped, and conflict has appeared within the magazine’s leadership. The objective of the exercise is to understand the source of this conflict and ultimately to resolve it. Use with 9B17C050 and 9B17C052.

In the Newstar Magazine exercise, participants are assigned one of three roles—managing editor, publisher, or board chair—and provided with information about personnel difficulties that have emerged at the independent Canadian magazine. The organization is small, financially strapped, and conflict has appeared within the magazine’s leadership. The objective of the exercise is to understand the source of this conflict and ultimately to resolve it. Use with 9B17C050 and 9B17C051.

In June 2017, a bancassurance director at South Africa’s Liberty Group Limited (Liberty) was making his way to a public school in Soweto, south of Johannesburg. Liberty was an insurance company in South Africa, part of Liberty Holdings, a leading financial-services group with representation in 24 countries across the African continent. As he drove along the highway he wondered how he could encourage more business leaders at Liberty to get involved and ultimately contribute to improving the country’s public-education system. He recognized that there were ethical implications in using the school in Liberty’s marketing campaign—a campaign that would eventually contribute to a goal of sustainability. Various issues had to be considered that related to conducting business with people at the bottom of the pyramid and a decision had to be made.

In December 2016, the founder and chief executive officer of R3 was preparing for an offsite meeting, where his management team would debate what business model to pursue to extract the most value from the company’s new distributed ledger product called Corda. Founded in 2014, R3 was a blockchain technology company with headquarters in New York. R3 was leading a consortium of over 100 banks, financial institutions, and technology companies to develop a distributed ledger technology that could meet the needs of the financial services industry. R3 had run a number of proof of concept tests of existing distributed ledger technologies with its bank members before deciding to develop an enterprise-grade distributed ledger from scratch. R3 was still privately-owned and controlled by the founder, but had financed its research and development by selling memberships in a joint venture to a consortium of over 40 banks. With Corda operational by mid-2016, the founder had to decide what business model to follow to monetize the investment in Corda. A second question was how to finance R3’s future growth.

As one of its first international projects, the China Guangxi Corporation for International Techno-Economic Cooperation (GCITEC) began a joint venture initiative with a local Pakistani firm in September 2015. The joint venture centred around constructing a canal in the Khus area of northern Pakistan. The Chinese firm brought funding and technical experience; the Pakistani partner brought local experience and local construction staff. After working together for several months, significant problems began to emerge between the two sides. These tensions resulted from differing management cultures and institutional differences between the Pakistani and the Chinese business environments. The president of GCITEC's Pakistani branch was faced with a choice: find a way to renew the partnership and fix both the immediate personnel conflict and its underlying factors, or, if the conflict was beyond reconciliation, dissolve the joint partnership and bear the cost of this choice.

In 2016, Fair and Handsome, a skin-whitening cream produced by Emami Limited, led the men's fairness skin cream category in India, with a market share of 60 per cent. In late 2017, however, the company faced both a public backlash and an adverse court decision about its marketing of the product. A growing movement called Dark is Beautiful was galvanizing support against companies that portrayed fairer skin colour as a means for both personal and professional fulfillment. The company had also appealed a lower court's decision to ban the company's use of skin whitening in its advertisements. Since the product was earmarked for significant growth in the next five years, the company needed to develop an immediate response. What should it do?

In January 2018, the governor of the Bank of Japan (BoJ), was preparing for a meeting of the policy board of the BoJ. While the broad macroeconomic indicators hinted at a Japanese recovery, Japan still continued to have an inflation rate well below its target of 2 per cent. The accommodative, unconventional monetary policy of quantitative and qualitative easing engineered by the governor in 2013 had resulted in a bloated balance sheet for the BoJ, with little success in overcoming deflation. Was it time to wind up Japan’s monetary stimulus? What would be the results of continued monetary stimulus, especially for businesses? Would the Japanese economy be able to recover from deflation without such monetary stimulus?

Presentation for product 8B18M138.

The Cattier family had been active in the Champagne region of France for over 250 years. Starting out as growers of grapes, they moved into champagne production, initially for local consumption. By 2017, the Cattier company, which had reached 35 full-time employees, engaged in related diversification activities on multiple fronts and internationalized its market. Cattier was selling its champagne to markets such as the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom. The company also created new product formats, developing signature branding and packaging. Cattier also partnered with fashion houses, bistros, and an international distributor owned by the American rap artist Jay-Z. However, Cattier faced a multitude of challenges in 2017. There was fierce competition in the home market, while sparkling wine consumption was down in all key European markets. Rising protectionism and the possibility of raising trade barriers in key export markets also created new risks. These challenges were compounded by the fact that harvest conditions for producing vintage wines were unpredictable. Cattier was considering using further diversification to manage these threats. However, how would diversification address Cattier’s problems?

In 2018, Swagat Textiles (Swagat), a traditional family-owned textile business in Gujarat, India, was looking for growth amidst several challenges. Since 2017, the market for Swagat’s traditional products is shrinking—the younger generation preferred to wear Western casual clothes for daily use and traditional clothes only for special occasions. Additionally, branded competition from online and offline stores had increased, and there were concerns about possible fragmentation of the family business as more members from the next generation planned join the firm. A family member who was about to complete his master of business administration degree was asked to evaluate a proposal about moving into digital printing. He needed to address all of these problems while searching for the next big growth opportunities for the company.

In 2016, Elixir, a financial technology start-up, was developing a social banking application to provide mobile banking to young adults and other underserved banking customers. Elixir had a social finance business model called MillennialMoney, where existing customers had an opportunity to earn referral fees by introducing new customers. For the banks, Elixir provided a novel marketing solution to attract millennial customers. As a technology company in the social finance space, Elixir could use the strategic and operational advice of an experienced banker to help turn this vision into a reality. One such banker had been in discussions with Elixir’s chief executive officer and the chair of the advisory board. The banker had been conducting due diligence of the company all summer of 2016 and had even gone on sales calls in Malaysia to see what banks thought about Elixir. Now it was time to make a decision. Should he join the management team of Elixir and invest in the start-up?

In August 2016, China’s home-grown ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing Technology Co., Ltd. (Didi) acquired the Chinese assets of Uber Technologies Inc. (Uber), including Uber China’s brand, business, and data. Didi had previously ventured into Uber’s territory by investing and collaborating with Lyft Inc., Uber’s main competitor in the United States. Didi’s transformation from its beginning as a humble mobile application into a technology giant that was re-shaping transportation both within and beyond China was related to significant transformations in its social and business context. These transformations included the rapid growth of China’s cities and China’s status as one of the first countries to formally recognize the legality of Internet-based private car services. Looking to the future, Didi faced questions about its development in a rapidly changing global digital economy: How could it expand its products and services to the international market? Could Didi achieve the same impressive market record abroad? How could Didi continue to innovate? What was a truly sustainable business model for an online ride-hailing firm? How could it maintain its current leading position in the market?

In early 2017, the chief executive officer of Empowerment through Integration, a not-for-profit organization based in the United States and also operating in Lebanon, wanted to scale up the organization’s social impacts and improve its financial sustainability. Empowerment through Integration was committed to breaking social stigmas against people with visual impairments and empowering them to reach their full potential; however, it faced financial, legal, and social struggles in Lebanon, which limited its abilities to reach its goals. What tactics should the chief executive officer pursue to achieve the dual goals of scaling up the organization’s social impacts and enhancing its financial sustainability?

On April 20, 2016, printer and ink maker Lexmark International, Inc. (Lexmark) announced that it was being acquired and taken private by a consortium comprising China-based computer hardware company Apex Technology Co., Ltd. (Apex), as well as private equity firms PAG Asia Capital (PAG) and Legend Capital (Legend). On the same day, Apex formally announced its acquisition of Lexmark for the Chinese capital market. The announcement caused a huge sensation because Apex was a small company compared to Lexmark; Lexmark completed 2015 with US$3.6 billion in revenue—approximately 10 times the revenue of Apex. To raise enough money to pay for the acquisition, Apex had established the consortium with PAG and Legend, and borrowed a large sum of money from its controlling shareholder and banks. Although Apex had ultimately raised enough money to complete the acquisition, its satisfaction over this success soon gave way to pressing questions about financing. In order to dispel the doubts of regulators and the market, Apex needed to decide whether it should adjust its financing plan for the acquisition, and if so, how.