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Student spreadsheet for product 9B16B008.

In July 2015, the owner of the Anandam Company approached a bank for additional funding to meet the growing requirements of his garment manufacturing firm. The owner was confident about the financial prospects of his firm, with its fourfold increase in revenue and phenomenal increase in profit after taxes over the last three years. In a lengthy discussion with the bank manager, the owner shared the development of his company and the dynamics and growth opportunities of the garment and textile market in India. He believed his firm was performing strongly in a highly competitive industry environment. The bank manager instructed the loan officer to process the loan application as soon as possible and make a decision. Determining the health of the company would involve preparing a trend analysis and a common size statement, interpreting selected ratios, and preparing a basic statement of cash flows. Was the Anandam Company a good candidate for receiving a loan?

Transformation is a preoccupation of corporate leaders like never before, creating a wave of multi-million-dollar organizational change programs. But as more companies decide to radically rewrite their business and operating models, as well as inject critical change into their underlying business, technology, and people strategies, the results are less inspiring. While many factors are at play, the essential elements of impactful transformation are effective leadership, vision and implementation. This article describes these principles in terms of the author’s recent change engagement with McCarthy Tétrault LLP, a 160-year-old law firm known as an industry poster child for modern customer service. <br><br> During the change initiative, the key components of leadership were quiet leadership, strong and supportive leadership, leadership that’s set up for success, and leadership that’s united as a team. Effectively establishing and communicating a new vision was broken down into balancing data and human insights; driving vision down to the details; and creating a new vision-supporting culture. Finally, the following best practices were key to implementing the change initiative: defining accountability and responsibility; introducing project management discipline; and planning to communicate and celebrate. Besides a communication plan, successful corporate transformations require a detailed celebration and recognition program to ensure that significant individual and team efforts are acknowledged. The principles of effective transformation ask three questions: What exactly do you want to accomplish? Who will lead the change program and how will they do it? How will you keep everything on track?

The Great Recession didn’t only harm financially troubled companies. After all, every time a bankruptcy is filed, shock waves travel along supply chains and often take healthy companies by surprise. In other words, when companies share suppliers, especially with major global corporations like General Motors, they share operational risks. Businesses can simply accept this risk. But with the global economy still struggling, it makes more sense for managers to consider using a group purchasing organization, or GPO, to insulate their operations from the ongoing business failures that are a natural result of any financial crisis or economic downturn. And let’s not forget the risk posed by black swan events like Japan’s earthquake/tsunami disaster in 2011. <br><br> Partnering with a GPO isn’t for everyone. Indeed, managing one’s own supply chain feels in line with the entrepreneurial spirit and enables flexible, one-on-one relationships with supplier partners. However, GPOs insulate companies against downturns and disasters and mitigate the risks associated with independent supply chain management. Other advantages include: 1) Better pricing: GPOs use the collective buying power of their members to negotiate better prices. 2) More advantageous payment terms: GPOs can negotiate better payment terms with sellers so that members can save money. 3) Greater reliability: When a supplier goes bankrupt, it can devastate a supply chain if there are no backup suppliers available. 4) Improved selection: Product development must continue even in a recession, so it’s essential that businesses can obtain the resources needed for new products and services. While GPOs have existed for a long time, they are growing in number in the post-Great Recession world because supply chain management is now more about guarding against market uncertainties than ever before.

In the summer of 2016, PepsiCo Beverages Canada faced a choice: whether to launch its new product, organic Gatorade, in Canada. Only a few months previously, PepsiCo North America Beverages’ chief executive officer had announced a company-wide initiative that was designed to offer consumers a greater variety of healthier products. Would such a product ultimately make PepsiCo more competitive in the Canadian market in light of recent trends that emphasized healthy options? Did Canadian consumers want organic Gatorade? PepsiCo also had to keep in mind its long-standing competition with The Coca-Cola Company, and decide how that would affect its strategic choices.

Reckitt Benckiser was the world’s largest manufacturer of household products and a major marketer of health-care and personal-care products. The company was at a threshold of opportunities provided by a growing market of Indian consumers who were becoming health conscious and buying antibacterial products to make their homes germ-free. At a time when more and more Indians were looking for antibacterial products to protect their health, the company wondered if it should launch an antibacterial laundry detergent powder as part of its brand expansion strategy. Would the company benefit from a first-mover advantage by launching the first antibacterial laundry detergent in India? If the company were to consider entering this market, what strategic and branding objectives should it adopt? Should this new detergent be an extension of the company’s famous Dettol brand or a new brand name?

In September 2014, an American expatriate project manager at High-Tech Construction Pvt. Ltd. (High-Tech) received a late-night call saying that an engineer at a remote project site in India was extremely ill after consuming alcohol at an employee party. The driver would not take the sick employee to the hospital unless the project manager gave permission, but would giving permission drag High-Tech into a complicated situation? The expatriate manager was unsure of the legal ramifications involved in death or injury due to drinking. In addition, he was concerned about the effect on the company if the media was involved. Because he was an American in a multinational company with Indian employees, the story was potentially more saleable. Furthermore, was it prudent to inform the sick employee’s parents yet, or should he call the head of the human resources department for advice? As the project manager, he would have to make the final decision. It had been just a couple months since he arrived in India and less than a month since the start of work on the current project, and now he had a crisis to deal with.

In late 2015, developments in the Canadian television industry led the incumbent players to reconsider their traditional distribution strategies. The conflux of changes to technology, regulatory reforms, and consumption patterns was complicated by the entry of new players, forcing established firms to consider revising their business models. The regulated oligopolistic industry structure that once protected the players and ensured superior performance was under attack from many directions. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, which regulated the incumbent players, was pushing for reforms, yet the ramifications of such changes remained unclear. The incumbents responded to the advent of subscription video on demand services that were enabled by widespread high-speed Internet access, the entry of new non-traditional competitors, and changing regulations. How would the industry evolve? What was the role of the regulator? How would customers respond to the new delivery options? How would the incumbent firms, the regulator, technology providers, and content developers and providers reconcile their ambiguous relationships?

In 2014, the vice-president and director of recycling at the Arizona-based First Solar, Inc., the world's leading solar energy company, was considering a business plan to convert its solar panel recycling initiative from a cost centre to a profit-making business. Although the company pre-funded the recycling of photovoltaic solar panels by adding the recycling cost to the end-customers’ purchase price, Europe had recently enacted laws requiring that solar modules be recycled after their useful life had ended. First Solar’s vice-president and director of recycling recognized a business opportunity in recycling solar panels but wondered about the timing of entry into this area and the profit potential of such a move. How could they best position First Solar's recycling offering to take advantage of the North American recycling regulations that they believed were imminent but that had not yet transpired?

Alaska’s economy had struggled for many years; however, in spring 2014, the Pebble Mine presented an opportunity to revitalize it. There was just one catch; the Pebble deposit was located in the headwaters of one of the richest salmon hatcheries in the world. Corporations, government agencies, and public interest groups clashed during the first few months of 2014 concerning not only whether the Pebble Mine should be developed but also who had the authority to make that decision.<br><br>See supplements: 9B16M049B, 9B16M049C, 9B16M049D, 9B16M049E, 9B16M049F, 9B16M049G

This is a supplement to The Pebble Mine (A) 9B16M049A. It takes the perspective of Alaska’s U.S. Senator.

This is a supplement to The Pebble Mine (A) 9B16M049A. It takes the perspective of the chairman of the Bristol Bay Native Association.

This is a supplement to The Pebble Mine (A) 9B16M049A. It takes the perspective of Northern Dynasty.

This is a supplement to The Pebble Mine (A) 9B16M049A. It takes the perspective of Rio Tinto.

This is a supplement to The Pebble Mine (A) 9B16M049A. It takes the perspective of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

This is a supplement to The Pebble Mine (A) 9B16M049A. It takes the perspective of the Wild Salmon Center, an international organization dedicated to protecting salmon and their ecosystems.

Founded in 2005, UFO Moviez India Limited (UFO) was the largest satellite-based digital cinema distribution company in the world by late 2012. Within a few years of its inception, UFO had established a differentiated platform-based business model that offered benefits to the entire film industry ecosystem of distributors, exhibitors, advertisers, and audiences. The company had spread rapidly to movie theatres across India but was about to face saturation if the growth of new movie theatres was not faster than the company’s own growth. Thus, UFO had two choices to increase revenue: maintain its current strategy or explore alternative revenue sources using the same business model. In addition, there was always the threat that a new firm could copy UFO’s technology and business model at a lower cost. Thus, UFO needed to devise a strategy to counter competition, while also implementing one of its two options for growth.

In 2014, FotoNation, an international venture previously located in Ireland, produced innovative solutions for digital photography from its headquarters in California. At the core of FotoNation’s technology were its proprietary algorithms, which were embedded in software and used in over 2 billion digital devices such as the cameras in smartphones. The company placed an emphasis on research, and it had its research and development units in Romania, Ireland, and the Western United States. However, after being acquired by Tessera Technologies in 2008, FotoNation had to relocate its top management team from Ireland to the headquarters of Tessera Technologies in the United States. FotoNation’s management had some difficult decisions to make in light of the acquisition. How would a research-based product fit into the grand scheme of Tessera Technologies? How would FotoNation compete with larger industrial players, while coping with the relocation of its top-tier staff?

Defining a perfect day is a powerful way of getting employees focused so that they can achieve profoundly new performance. This article examines this simple, practical approach to improving performance and helping organizations clarify what needs to happen to prepare for sustained, long-term change. Companies that have succeeded with the perfect-day approach have taken four steps. First, leaders have aligned senior management around a definition and measures of the perfect day. Next, leaders have worked with managers to generate area- and team-level goals that, if met, would produce the desired improvements. The third step is honing in on the workforce behaviours critical to attaining the perfect day. The fourth step is aligning leadership behaviours across the organization to ensure that the right consequences exist to help motivate the desired behaviours. <br><br> Focused as they are on long-term strategies and short-term operational plans, leaders often think it’s enough to train people, tell them what to do, and give them some tools — but it isn’t. Decades of research in behavioural science have shown that nothing really changes until behaviour changes, and the right kind of behaviour change doesn’t happen on its own. To achieve sustained performance, leaders often look to the latest trend, methodology or technology. Yet the most effective path to superior execution is simpler. Focus employees on a few key good behaviours, and align the organization around performing them. Over time, as you increase the number of perfect days, you’ll become more skilled at aligning your employees to improve their execution. You’ll come to master what lies at the core of any successful change in an organization’s operations: behaviour.

In this Ivey Business Journal Q&A, Monica Lewinsky — former White House intern and “patient zero” of online harassment — talks with Ivey Professor Gerard Seijts about what it takes to survive shame and bullying on a global scale. She offers two important considerations for victims of public humiliation. First, many people — those bullied and otherwise — suffer from shame or some form of public humiliation, and there is no reason to suffer in silence. Second, victims should know that they can survive the shaming. Resilience, she says, is like a muscle that can be built up. It may be safer to remain silent in the short term, but allowing others to define you exacts too high a price — both psychologically and socially. In her time of need, Lewinsky had a network of support, including family, close friends and professionals. Such a core group of people in one’s real life is the best defense against being humiliated online. Finally, she says, we need a cultural revolution when it comes to empathy and compassion in our society. More people need to click with compassion. When content providers earn advertising dollars from clickbait, they are encouraged to offer more articles rooted in shame and public exposure. Every time people click on gossip, or an article celebrating a public shaming, they are “feeding the beast.”