個案總覽

The managing director of a multinational company turns a loss-making business into a profit-making venture by using his unique brand of leadership to change the organizational culture and develop a responsible proactive attitude in his employees. Throughout this process, many difficult personnel decisions must be made, including the decision to remove some senior employees who resist the necessary changes.<br><br>Once under the new leadership team, recruitment and talent development become essential to the future growth of the company. The managing director wonders how to manage this challenge.

On February 2, 2012, the Supreme Court of India cancelled all 122 second-generation (2G) telecom licences issued on or after January 10, 2008 by the Department of Telecommunication (DoT). This judgment, along with the announcement of the National Telecom Policy-2012, forced the DoT to rethink the issue of pricing spectrum, which was earlier bundled with 2G licences. First, was re-auctioning required? If so, what should be the minimum reserve price? Should DoT follow a uniform pricing strategy for all the incumbents, including those whose licences were cancelled? How could it strike a balance between investor apathy and the government’s objective of increasing rural tele-density, given the possibility of a tariff hike after the refarming of spectrum?

This case highlights the journey of an organization that was set up in Hyderabad, in southern India, to provide affordable maternal care services to women from low-income urban families. LifeSpring Hospitals grew from a single hospital into a chain of nine hospitals, all in Hyderabad, in only five years. The chief executive officer has spent this initial period trying out new methods, continuously fine-tuning the model and learning from this process of experimentation. As the company seeks to scale the business to 200 hospitals, the chief executive officer must decide whether or not the business model is defined clearly enough to warrant the start of a rapid scaling process.<br><br><br><br>The case is unique because it juxtaposes a commitment to high-quality health care service delivery through processes and protocols with a commitment to making maternal care affordable to low-income urban women. LifeSpring Hospitals tries to achieve these seemingly disparate objectives by attempting to create a financially sustainable business model.

At the end of 2001, the senior partners of an investment management firm were concerned. The bear market was going on two years, and, worse, the firm’s performance over that time had been less than that of the index. Clients, more than disappointed, were starting to vote with their feet. The firm, a top-10 player in Canada’s institutional investment business, had claimed client assets under management of more than $15 billion in 1998, but was now under serious threat. Without some change in the fortunes of the business, a continued loss of revenue would endanger its viability.<br><br>In the previous few years, the two senior partners had been working behind the scenes on an idea that they thought could return the business to success. The hitch was that the idea involved a radical transformation of the firm. While the senior partners had seen some success with the small steps they had taken with this new business model, they needed to ask their partners to commit to a still largely unproven strategy — a business model that not only had no known comparable model but that also ran contrary to contemporary views of how an asset management firm should be structured. Would their partners commit to the unproven plan?

Since early 2009, the information technology (IT) division of a leading manufacturer of semiconductor chips had noticed a growing trend among the company’s 80,000 employees worldwide to bring their own smartphones and storage devices to their individual workstations. Recognizing that Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) was not a passing fad but a growing phenomenon, the company decided in January 2010 to formally implement this initiative. As the company’s chief information security officer prepares for a full rollout of BYOD, he revisits the issue of ensuring security of corporate data stored on devices owned by individual employees. He also wonders how Intel should respond to the demand for e-Discovery, wherein a litigant could seek access to internal documents stored on devices not owned by the company. He also reflects on a more fundamental and strategic issue: How can Intel extract value from the BYOD initiative and turn this initiative into a new source of competitive advantage?

The chief executive officer of eRAD Inc., a company that develops picture archiving and communications systems for the diagnostic imagery industry, is preparing for an upcoming board meeting, where he will face several challenges related to the potential sale of the company. The founder’s recent death in a plane crash has left the company struggling to meet its financial obligations. On one hand, the sale of eRAD to a larger health care technology company will provide enough money to end the ongoing struggle to keep solvent. On the other hand, the business is on the threshold of profitability, and some board members consider the sale premature. All that remains is to reach agreement on the factoring of debt and a few other financial details to satisfy the many shareholders whose votes are needed to accept the offer.

The vice-president and general manager of the Canadian operations of a multinational vehicle manufacturer learns that the plant he supervises will be shut down in 15 months. In the months leading up to the shutdown announcement and subsequent winding down, he needs to manage the communications and followup with several stakeholder groups. The vice-president and general manager needs to balance several issues, including the need to keep production high and waste down, while preparing to lay off the workers who will be contributing to the plant’s short-term success. To be used with supplemental cases (9B13M019, 9B13M020).

This is a supplement to Volvo Construction Equipment: Managing a Plant Closure (A), product 9B13M018. To be used with (9B13M018, 9B13M020).

This is a supplement to Volvo Construction Equipment: Managing a Plant Closure (A), product 9B13M018. To be used with (9B13M018, 9B13M019).

Cargill Inc., a U.S.-based multinational company, is known for its skills in business-to-business (B2B) marketing. It processes food products and markets them in bulk to large institutional buyers with whom it has a strong customer orientation. However, the head of the refined edible oils business at Cargill India, the company’s fully owned subsidiary, is facing a problem with the parent company's value proposition around B2B. While developing the annual marketing plans for the next financial year, he finds that the volatility of commodity price movements has made the task of revenue forecasts at Cargill India difficult. This volatility is compounded by frequent changes introduced by the federal government to official regulations governing the edible oil business in India. In order to gain control over the two variables, he is examining the prospect of moving into the business-to-consumer (B2C) space in India. This is a new strategic direction not only for the Indian subsidiary but also for Cargill Inc. Can he achieve buy-in not only from the parent company but also from his own managers? Will he be able to attract marketing professionals who can promote his new brands successfully to the Indian consumer?

The chairman and chief executive officer of a manufacturer of entry-level musical instruments decides to take advantage of the popularity of music video games by creating a gaming division. After spending $30 million on product development, the company launches its first music video game just as the market for this subgenre has fallen into a steep decline. The case discusses the specific attributes of this music video game that may have doomed it, both despite the decline in music video games and in the context of the broader background of music video games, their success and the reasons behind their decline.

East Solutions was a successful business process outsourcing (BPO) provider based in Bangalore, India. Although salaries for Indian IT professionals were about half of those of their counterparts in the United States, the board of directors at East Solutions recognized a worrying trend: if salaries in India continued to grow at a fast rate, they would soon erode the cost advantage of sending work to India and potentially threaten the entire Indian BPO industry. As a solution, East Solutions repositioned itself by leveraging technical, industry and process expertise to form a partnership with clients based on value added in addition to cost savings. This plan required East Solutions to refocus on fewer geographic and sector groups. It also required transforming the role of the company’s IT managers, who needed extensive training, additional resources and a new compensation strategy. On an average year, the new compensation plan increased the IT managers’ incomes by 4 per cent, so it was expected to be popular, but IT managers rejected the new compensation plan and it was abandoned after 18 months. The chief executive officer (CEO) in charge of the new plan for East Solutions was unsure why it had failed.

A social enterprise organization, whose mission is to battle poverty and gender discrimination through providing access to technology, is faced with the prospect of losing some or all of its government funding in a time of global recession. Under the legal structure of a non-governmental organization, Digital Opportunity Trust has partnered with large corporations and other organizations and established a local presence in disadvantaged areas. It has worked in a partnership setting to mobilize the information technology knowledge of young people and train them to become leaders of change in their local communities, which in turn will give them the relevant skills and experience to support their own career paths. The organization’s striking success has been driven by its innovativeness and, more particularly, its noticeable efforts to reconcile the corporate and non-profit aspects of doing business, along with the challenges that come with it, without compromising the quality of the social enterprise brand that it is bringing forward.

The systematic analysis of an annual report of a large Canadian public company provides a framework and a set of skills and concepts to determine whether it is worth investing in the company. The detailed examination of the annual report includes an analysis of profitability — including return on capital employed, return on equity, return on sales, gross profit margin and asset turnover — and liquidity measures.

Greg Popovich, head coach of the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) San Antonio Spurs (Spurs), decides to rest his three aging star players during a highly-anticipated game against the NBA champion Miami Heat (Heat). Miami fans have paid a premium for tickets to the game. Many intend to bring their children to see the young, upstart Heat face the much older, but still highly-competitive Spurs. This is a Thursday night game, nationally-televised by the important sponsor of the NBA, TNT. Not to have the Spurs’ stars in the game is very disappointing to fans and to the NBA itself. Popovich needs to decide whether it's right to rest his players, and what to say to the fans and to the NBA.

The director of a rural metropolitan water supply facility faces a complex risk management challenge. The facility uses chlorine gas in its water treatment, largely because it has determined that chlorine is the most effective treatment available, in terms of safety, cost and environmental impact. However, a security report from the Department of Homeland Security suggests that chlorine, a hazardous chemical, can be used by terrorists, both during its transport to the treatment facility and at the facility itself. The director of the water supply facility wonders whether the Department of Homeland Security made its recommendation based on an isolated risk without considering the big picture. The case provides students with an opportunity to analyse a complex sustainability-related management issue.

The regional manager of Latin America for a Canadian defence contractor must decide whether or not to employ a South American agent to represent the company and negotiate an agreement to supply body armour to the procurement group of a Central American country's armed forces. The Canadian manager is concerned about whether or not the employment of this agent poses a reputational risk to his company, given the current Canadian legislation with respect to the corruption of foreign public officials, legislation that parallels that in the United States and in most other developed countries. He also wonders whether he will even be able to build business in that region if he opts against using agents with local knowledge and connections.

The CEO and founder of ExerciseApp decided to take the plunge and spec out the features of his new iPhone mobile application and supporting website. He planned for ExerciseApp to stream exercise workouts from pro-athletes to followers who wanted to “Train. Play. Be. Like the Pros” and get an edge to their workouts. As he envisioned the application, he realized he would need a lot of help with the technology and the setup of this entrepreneurial venture in order to successfully bring it to market. With limited funding, he must decide on the next steps for the business, including the application’s features, business model and market strategy.

The CEO of Britannia Industries Ltd, a manufacturer of bakery products, was at a crossroads. Two years earlier, the firm had started providing specially fortified biscuits to small groups of school-going children in selected locations in India. The product offered a step toward addressing the widespread national problem of malnutrition and, unlike corporate philanthropy, this initiative was an extension of what the company was fundamentally good at – making biscuits. After early signs of success, Britannia’s CEO faced two challenges. How should Britannia scale up the manufacture and distribution of social products? And, how should the firm develop the social products into a sustainable business?

A $2.4 billion bid made by a competing company presented the founder and chairman of China Huiyuan Juice Group Limited with a dilemma. He had successfully transformed his company from a small-scale canned-fruit manufacturer into the largest juice producer in China. Despite the strong need for external funds to achieve further growth, the company’s founder had always been prudent in introducing outside investments into the firm, carefully maintaining his control of the business. To him, Huiyuan Juice was almost like a child that he had nurtured, rather than a product to be sold. However, the company’s rapid expansion had placed its founder under increased pressure and he now had to decide whether or not he should sell.