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In the spring of 2003, the World Health Organization identified a worldwide epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) that had started in China and spread to the rest of the world, with early cases reported in Toronto and Vancouver. Little was known about the disease, which meant that symptoms were often misdiagnosed as simple flu, and the infection spread rapidly. After the third SARS-related death occurred in Ontario in mid-March, the provincial premier declared a state of emergency, which was finally lifted on May 17 when it appeared the outbreak had ended. A week later, on May 23, four new cases were reported at Toronto’s North York General Hospital. The lack of public health infrastructure in Ontario combined with its hospitals’ noncompliance with following existing policies concerning infection control and especially the lack of communication between hospitals, health organizations and levels of governments, with numerous spokespersons making uncoordinated and sometimes contradictory announcements, all led to the public perception that the government and health care authorities did not know what they were doing or were lying about the severity of the outbreak. Before the next provincial election, the premier must examine and address what could have been prevented, how public health interventions were managed and the differences between public health responses in Toronto and Vancouver.

A university student is working on a group project for a case-based business ethics course. Just over a week before the project deadline, one of her fellow group members reveals that he has found part (B) of the assigned case on the Internet. He has read this document, which specifies exactly what the company has done to address the challenge in the case they are working on. It is clear to the protagonist that her group cannot use this information, but she is unsure of how to handle the situation.

An entrepreneur in Atlantic Canada believes he has a five to six year window to capitalize on the growth of his newest venture, Maritime Bus, a passenger transportation and parcel delivery service, before his retirement. Having turned around a business that lost $12 million over the previous eight years in less than six months, he believes he has the opportunity to continue this success. However, he is unsure what strategies to follow to achieve growth: expand the parcel service, partner with other transportation operators to attract more riders, increase marketing efforts or move into Newfoundland and Labrador. He is also unsure about the value of the business and how he can smoothly and profitably transfer his ownership shares to his partner, one or more of his children or an external investor. Any decision needs to be made in consultation with his family.

In May 2013, the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, proposed to create the Churches’ Mutual Credit Union as an alternative to payday lenders. His chief target was Wonga.com, an online provider of short-term loans that was founded in 2006 in the United Kingdom and quickly grew to become the largest payday lender in the country. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, short-term lenders saw a rapid increase in business as banks tightened their lending standards. However, they often charged as much as 5,000 per cent interest or more. Customers were frequently unsophisticated borrowers, and Wonga’s advertising appeared to be directed to vulnerable populations and children. The archbishop did not feel that regulation was the answer to payday lenders and instead sought to compete with them. Is his strategy viable?

In November 2013, GoldieBlox was accused of copyright infringement. It used the Beastie Boys song “Girls” in one of its advertisements promoting new toys for girls without permission. The company’s reaction to file a lawsuit against the band was not well received and perhaps a little hasty.<br><br>In the wake of the crisis, the chief executive officer of GoldieBlox Toy Company and her team had some decisions to make regarding how to handle the lawsuit they filed against the Beastie Boys that then backfired. The hostile environment was not conducive to the image of the company and the negative media was of concern to GoldieBox and its employees.

The Treasure Trophy (Treasure) company manufactures trophies for all kinds of sporting, business and celebratory events. The trophy manufacturing industry is highly competitive and, as a result, pricing decisions with respect to formulating bids are very important. Treasure has traditionally used a job order system of cost accumulation (i.e., job cost). Treasure has to bid on two new jobs, and the new general manager must decide which method of costing should be used for these orders and subsequently set a price for each order.

Transfer pricing used by multinational corporations to lower its tax burden, thereby increasing its consolidated income, can have far-reaching implications for the stakeholders, as a fund manager for Saskhedge fund found out the hard way. A stock investment the manager had made in Cameco Corporation has dropped its value by 20 per cent. In addition, Canada Revenue Agency has initiated a law suit against the firm for alleged tax avoidance in relation to the company's transfer pricing practices with its Swiss subsidiary. The suit could result in an additional tax liability of $800 million to $850 million. The manager needs to explain to the investment board the implications of the lawsuit on the stock price and advise the board on whether the projected $800 to $850 million is a fair estimate.

As an engineering company operating in India’s steel sector, Pennar Industries boasts gross sales of INR 7.3 billion in financial Year 2009. Pennar had been on the brink of bankruptcy in the early 2000s, but, thanks to foreign investment, the company went on to experience a remarkable turnaround. In 2009, the board of directors at Pennar is considering a share buyback.<br><br>As the chief financial officer at Pennar Industries prepares the share-buyback proposal that is due to be presented to the board of directors for approval, he wonders whether a share buyback represents the right decision for the company and its shareholders. If so, what buyback price should he recommend to the board? And if not, what other investment options should the company consider instead?

The national head of sales for consumer business for one of India’s largest paint companies was anxious and concerned about the plummeting levels of employee engagement at his company. He was also aware of an increasing number of complaints about employee’s attitudes and their approach towards both work and the organization from people in senior management. As a seasoned business manager, he knew that he needed to understand and address the gaps between the employee’s expectations and the needs of the organization.

At the beginning of 2012, Nespresso, a manufacturer and distributor of home-brewed, single-serve coffee machines and capsules, is considering how best to increase its share of the U.S. market. It had always relied on organic growth through its own retail stores and a few premium department store chains. However, between 2005 and 2011, the demand for capsule coffee boomed, and this attracted a number of new competitors, including Starbucks, while existing competitors increased their marketing expenditures. At the same time, Nespresso’s patents were expiring, and some supermarkets started selling generic capsules for Nespresso machines. How should Nespresso change its strategy to ensure future growth? Should it relinquish its tightly controlled distribution system in order to offer increased convenience to consumers? Should it alter its product to better match the U.S. taste for milk-based coffee? Or might an increase in advertising spur demand?

Yamato Transport Co., Ltd. innovatively used the field cast model of housewives as part-time employees to meet the increasing delivery demands of morning peak-load hours. The housewives provided Yamato with a cost-efficient source of human resources and the nimbleness to adjust its staff deployment to respond reliably and quickly to customers’ needs. A series of recruitment, training, and compensation and appraisal processes was designed for the field cast model.<br><br>The case outlines the challenges with the implementation of the field cast model and the decision facing Yamato’s managers of whether to expand it throughout the company’s Japanese operations. Yamato’s managers were largely satisfied with the progress of the field cast model; although field casts made up less than 2 per cent of the delivery manpower at Yamato, they played a crucial role in improving customer satisfaction levels and lowering parcel delivery costs. However, the implications of the expansion plan were multi-dimensional. At an operational level, the inconsistency in the field casts’ performance could be magnified as the number of field casts continued to increase over the coming months. As well, the sales drivers might struggle to cope with the additional responsibility to train and supervise field casts. More broadly, the sustainability of the field cast model was unknown because of Japan’s changing social structure. In addition, with the improvement of the global economy since 2010, the supply of part-time employees was threatened by competition from alternative employment opportunities.

Kundanmal Mukanmal Trans Logistics Pvt. Ltd. (KM) is a well-known road transportation company in Western India, operating out of its headquarters as a family business in Jaipur. It functions as a logistics provider for flatbed steel and finished automobiles (primarily four-wheeler passenger cars and light to medium cargo vehicles). The co-executive directors are grappling with large delays with the workshop repairs that are hurting the timely truck availability and causing immense customer dissatisfaction (with about 14 per cent of the trucks taking more than one day to complete their repair). The co-executive directors believe that staffing the workshop with the right number of labourers may address the issue of long repair delays — but is the issue just with the labour availability? Is the number of bays available for repair sufficient for the volume of truck repairs? What is causing the trucks to pile up at the workshop?

Since 2005, the chief executive officer of Kering, a conglomerate headquartered in Paris, has successfully streamlined the company’s business strategy to concentrate on luxury goods and sporting and lifestyle brands —including Gucci, Yves St-Laurent, Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga, among others — through selling off non-related businesses. By 2012, the company was more focused than ever before but was sluggish in one key aspect — its online presence. Like most competitors within the luxury industry, it was struggling with how it should capitalize on the benefits of a web presence, trying not to stray away from the luxury strategy of its brands. Kering recognized the importance of growing online, but needed to come up with an ideal approach to successfully grow the digital presence of its luxury brands.

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In December 2011, the co-founder of Unbounce, a Vancouver-based software services start-up, is considering expanding into the enterprise user space. Unbounce got its start providing turnkey landing pages — web pages specific to current advertising campaigns — to the small and medium-sized enterprise market. Within 18 months, the company has achieved thought leadership in this space, has a list of paying customers and has built its support team from six to 25 people. The challenge is that since the entire company is focused on its core market segment, entering the enterprise user space means that different capabilities will have to be developed. Will developing the enterprise user market prevent the competition from invading this space or will it mean alienating and perhaps losing its current customers? What is the best plan for going forward?

A job candidate at Visa Inc., the technology payments company, prepares herself for her interview by considering what she can uncover about the company’s marketing from the published accounts. She analyzes what the company spends money on and how revenue is generated. She considers how marketing is accounted for – specifically, how marketing assets, such as brands, are dealt with on the balance sheet. She considers the relationship between values in the accounts and the market value of the firm, and the problem of brand valuation is discussed. Finally, she tries to understand the impact of accounting treatment on common financial ratios.

Firms in Korea’s securities and brokerage industries have experienced fierce competition in the domestic market, which has led to international expansion being considered a popular strategic alternative. The chief executive officer of Hyundai Securities Co., Ltd., a Korean securities firm, envisions his company becoming the “pan-Asian market leader.” As a result, he is pursuing an international expansion strategy in Hong Kong and Singapore. However, given the popularity of international expansion in these areas, the markets are highly competitive. Has the CEO made an appropriate strategic decision?

Dicore, the third largest supplier of drilling services in the world, must increase its profitability. To do so, the executive committee is considering an expansion into the southwestern United States. The senior vice-president and general manager must create a plan that outlines whether or not Dicore should enter the southwest drilling market and, if so, if it should enter this market organically or through an acquisition.

The Ivey Business Journal interviews Robert Kennedy, the dean of the Ivey Business School. He characterizes globalization as disruptive in the short term but crucial for long-term growth and discusses how the globalization of services has accelerated. To transfer work overseas (e.g. through call centres), firms have to implement new IT systems and digitize processes, and these typically generate a much larger return than the savings realized on labour, due to more efficiency. People often believe that heading offshore is just for “low-end” operations like call centres. However, what makes an activity amenable to going offshore is related not to being low end, but to whether or not one has to be physically present. <br><br>Dean Kennedy lists three foundational elements that position a country well for the services shift: a large English-speaking population, a higher-education infrastructure, and a tech-savvy environment. As an economist, he possesses three main global concerns: 1. America’s huge savings shortage, driven by huge government deficits and low personal savings rates. 2. Europe’s social welfare system, which is unsustainable because of the rapidly aging E.U. population. 3. Tensions between China’s economy and its fairly centrally controlled political system.

Emirates Airline (EA) needs to fund the purchase of 30 new A380 aircraft. On March 11, 2013, EA announced plans to issue US$1 billion of Islamic bonds (sukuk) and $750 million of regular bonds. These bonds arguably share similar risks and seniority even though the sukuk bonds sold with a lower implied yield. This difference in pricing for securities with similar default risks seems at odds with conventional finance thinking. Against this backdrop, the EA treasury department must decide on the appropriate funding for this next batch of A380 airplanes.