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In December 2020, Daytoy Group, a leading global furniture and home furnishings retailer, asked the small Chinese candle supplier Dalian Talent Co. Ltd. to become its sole supplier of aromatic and unscented candles. Daytoy Group was offering the supplier a large amount of new production volume after terminating its relationship with its only other candle supplier in the Asia-Pacific region due to a corporate social responsibility issue. The supplier had to consider the cost of the additional supply chain management, manufacturing technique, and production capacity that would be needed to comply with the new request. The company already had enough orders from other reliable clients to fill its schedule until April 2022. Expanding production capacity and adding work teams to meet the request would take one to two years. How should the supplier respond to the request? What impact would the new arrangement have on its operations? How would it affect its long-time collaboration and future partnership with Daytoy Group?

On October 31, 2021, Thistle Links Inc. (Thistle), a sports management company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, had just finished its fiscal year 2021. During the year, the company had experienced a wide variety of occurrences related to its equity financing activities. Starting with the shareholders’ equity section of the previous year’s statement of financial position, Thistle’s accountant is tasked with recording all transactions that occurred over the course of the year.

The vice-president at Tencent LeXiang (LeXiang), the enterprise social networking platform of Tencent Holdings Limited (Tencent), had been overseeing the development of the platform from its inception. Since its official launch in 2017, LeXiang had been successfully adopted across a wide range of multinational corporations; it was also popular internally at Tencent, with many employees engaging with their fellow co-workers on the forums.<br><br>The vice-president was preparing for a meeting with Tencent’s leadership about the future of LeXiang and how the platform could bring value internally to the company. As part of her preparations, she received a data set that included many posts and replies within Tencent’s own LeXiang platform. While she thought there was significant value in the insight the platform provided about Tencent’s own employees, she was unsure how to organize the wide-ranging posts and demonstrate their potential value to Tencent’s leadership.

In early 2021, an investor had a substantial amount invested in three companies in the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group Reliance Group: Reliance Communications Ltd., Reliance Infrastructure Ltd., and Reliance Capital Ltd. The market price of Reliance Group shares had fallen steeply during the past five years (2016–2020), eroding the wealth of shareholders; consequently, the investor had lost almost all of his investments in the three group companies. Further, in 2019, Reliance Communications Ltd. had filed for bankruptcy. In 2020, the chair of the Reliance Group mentioned that Reliance Capital Ltd. had stopped its lending business and initiated stake sales. The investor decided to sell his shares in Reliance Communication Ltd. and Reliance Capital Ltd. at a huge loss. However, good dividend payments, and positive signals from the Reliance Group chair regarding betterment in the top line, a promotors’ stake increase, and his intention to reduce the companies’ debt to zero in 2020 made the investor hold their Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. shares. Nevertheless, to understand the possibility of improved fundamentals, the investor had to analyze the financial statements of Reliance Infrastructure Ltd., examining these for potential red flags that could identify significant threats to the future of the company and his investments.

In July 2013, the chief information officer of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) was preparing for an upcoming meeting with FINRA’s board of directors. He was building an argument for why the organization should reverse the decision he had advocated just a few months earlier and shift from a model that used on-premises data centres to one that focused on public cloud resources. Some board members were already familiar with the cloud and were using it in their own organizations, whereas others were concerned about taking their most critical data and putting it into the hands of a cloud service provider. This decision would have a profound impact on the technical direction of the regulator moving forward. Choosing to abandon their on-premises resources and shift to the cloud was a fundamental architectural decision that would significantly affect job roles and be difficult to reverse. The chief information officer had to make the case that a cloud-focused approach would meet FINRA’s current needs and serve the organization better in the long term.

Supplement for product W28614.

Dalian Bio-Chem Co. Ltd. (Bio-Chem) had been deeply involved in the field of industrial fungicides for nearly twenty years and occupied a place in both domestic and overseas markets. Since its establishment in 2003, Bio-Chem had adhered to a strategy of centralization, with industrial fungicides as its main business products. Bio-Chem was successfully listed on the A-share market in China in 2012, and it grew rapidly in the ten years that followed. Although Bio-Chem had become a leader in the field of industrial fungicides, its chairman believed that companies should not be content with the status quo. Some within the company believed Bio-Chem should carry out a diversification strategy because it had sufficient funds to do so; others thought it should carry out an integrated strategy because the downstream industry was very profitable; and others thought it should stick to a centralized strategy because the market demand for industrial fungicides was still very large, and adhering to a centralization strategy meant there would be room for growth. The chairman had to consider the opportunities and challenges of each strategy and determine which direction to take the company.

Employee conflict is a problem that costs the global economy billions annually. As part of a six-year study on organizational effectiveness, the authors surveyed more than 750 people at 500 companies worldwide. According to their findings, the majority of today’s employees must regularly deal with what they consider unreasonable counterparts when trying to do their jobs. When faced with conflicting opinions, one in four study participants reported that people within their organizations predominantly relied on manipulation or coercion to get their way. In addition to increasing turnover, toxic work relationships reduce employee productivity and engagement by increasing employee dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, and depression. The good news is that people often misread each other. The other good news is that when companies proactively work to resolve workplace conflict through joint problem-solving, they are around four times more likely to report that personal differences fuel learning and innovation rather than conflict. This article aims to help organizations turn employee conflicts into a positive force, which requires effectively navigating a challenging workplace terrain by creating a culture in which colleagues strive to see others with the same degree of empathy as they see themselves. According to the authors’ research, when collaboration goes beyond individual actors and pervades a company’s culture, and a joint problem-solving approach to influence is routinely employed, people learn from disagreement, make better decisions, and develop innovative solutions.

As a traditional retailer focused on selling home appliances, Suning.com Co. Ltd. (Suning) grew quickly and became a leading retailer in China, dominating the market until the 2000s. By 2021, however, Suning was facing challenges, including fierce competition from e-commerce giants such as Alibaba Group Holding Limited, Jingdong, and Pinduoduo Inc. and from its upstream brand manufacturers. It also faced financial pressure in its core business due to aggressive expansion. Suning’s revenue, assets, and equity declined, and its net income, which had significantly declined since 2018, had been in the red since 2020. Should Jindong Zhang, co-founder of Suning, change the company’s current business strategy? How could Zhang use an omnichannel structure to ensure Suning’s sustainable growth?

In 2019, an investment analyst for a hedge fund firm based in the Bahamas was tasked with evaluating his firm’s exposure to the automotive industry. The hedge fund firm held various large positions in the automotive segment, most notably in two equities—Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. and Ford Motor Company. The analyst decided to focus on these global industry giants as a proxy for the broader automotive segment. His manager expected an assessment of the industry’s prospects, so the analyst had to decide if the past stock performance of the two companies was a fair indicator of each company’s and the industry’s future. He also had to consider why one company would lose almost twice as much value as the other in one specific period. And why did the stock of the more diversified company experience the steeper decline? The analyst was eager to answer these and other questions, both for his own and his manager’s interest.

Spreadsheet to accompany product W25528.

Additional Supplement to accompany product W25528.

In September of 2020, an international business executive at the North Dakota Trade Office was asked by a client company, Dakota Growers Pasta Company Inc., to advise it on how to increase pasta exports to South Korea. Like many other firms in North Dakota, the client faced a number of hurdles to building successful export businesses. These included limited exposure to foreign markets and limited expertise in trade-related regulations and processes, as well as logistical issues. In his role, the business executive aided local companies’ efforts to develop and sustain export businesses. The client company now needed to find a new distributor to grow sales in the South Korean market, but selecting the right one required deciding which market segment to focus on first. The business executive had to determine what advice he should he give to his client company about expanding in South Korea.

It was March 2020 and a newly hired account executive at LinkedIn Corporation (LinkedIn) was keen to close his first major deal. His job was to help marketing teams acquire new customers and grow their businesses by leveraging the LinkedIn Ad network. He had secured a meeting with the vice-president of marketing for the video conferencing company Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (Zoom). He had just one hour to prepare for the meeting and determine the best way to position LinkedIn as a solution for Zoom to handle its growth challenges and opportunities.

In September 2019, Thomas Cook Group Plc (Thomas Cook), an iconic 178-year-old travel company based in London, United Kingdom, ceased its business after a failed negotiation to fund its huge debt of £1.7 billion (US$2.25 billion). The collapse caused about 9,000 employees in the United Kingdom to lose their jobs and made it necessary to repatriate about 150,000 holiday travellers. The company had experienced several profit warnings during the tenure of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Manny Fontenla-Novoa, who was replaced as CEO by Harriet Green, an outsider, in 2012. Between 2012 and 2014, the company’s share price rose from historic lows of about £14 to £130. However, the board unexpectedly asked Green to leave the company before completing her turnaround strategy and appointed Peter Fankhauser, an insider, as the new CEO, calling the departure a “hand-over from a turnaround specialist to a travel expert.” Despite his efforts, Fankhauser also failed to revive Thomas Cook. Who or what led to the collapse of Thomas Cook? Among the three CEOs, who should be held responsible, and on what grounds?

One Pot, One Shot (OPOS) was a revolutionary cooking technique developed by B Ramakrishnan, known affectionately as Ramki, in 2015 and subsequently validated by people from various countries. In its initial two years, OPOS had remained confined to a close group of followers on Facebook. Ramki was keen to build up the OPOS business among its followers. Having established a private limited company in July 2019 to meet the legal requirements of doing business in India, Ramki set up a network with multiple revenue streams. His pressing dilemma now was to connect with the wider population and enable OPOS to have a deeper reach. He also wanted to focus on shared value creation for scaling the business and for transforming OPOS into a “for-benefit” enterprise.

Ford Resource and Education Centers (FRECs) were established as a partnership between the Ford Motor Company Fund and GlobalGiving. The FREC in Bangkok, Thailand, housed eight non-governmental organizations, social enterprises, and foundations. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, just a few months after the FREC had opened in the city, FREC Bangkok and its collaborators found themselves paralyzed by the thought that all they had worked for in their Bangkok neighbourhood could be lost. With lockdowns in place, what could FREC Bangkok do to continue providing the necessary aid to community members? It might need to change the way that it served Bangkok. What would be the risks of shifting its focus? How could it mitigate those risks? How could FREC Bangkok continue to provide aid, and what would that aid look like for local residents? How could FREC address the community’s new concerns, and what would its strategy for addressing these concerns look like? Crucially, what would be the role and importance of FREC’s various stakeholders going forward?

Located in the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Cooperation Zone in Shenzhen, China, Vanke Port Apartment (Vanke Port) was the leader among China's centralized long-term apartment rental enterprises. Recently, the company had improved its cost and operational efficiency and recorded stellar performance. A key partner in Vanke Group recalled the struggles Vanke Port had encountered on its way to achieving this performance. In 2019, Vanke Port had been battling to survive, and shortly after, the business was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, Vanke Port capitalized on digital technologies and carried out major organizational changes. As the company made it through the crisis and even started to thrive, the partner needed to present the lessons learned and recommend next steps to the board of directors.

The liner shipping industry transported the bulk of the world’s cross-country semi-finished and manufactured goods and was fundamental to global trade, economic growth, and prosperity. Despite its importance, the industry suffered from poor profitability. Common explanations were that shipping rates were too low and industry capacity too large. The COVID-19 pandemic also negatively affected the industry, followed by a quick recovery in the second half of 2020 that led to increased cargo volumes, and in 2021, the highest rates in almost two decades. Amid growing optimism, the question was whether the industry was on a long-term path to sustained profitability.

Michele Buck became the first woman president and chief executive officer of the Hershey Company (Hershey) in 2017 and was elected as chair of the board in 2019. Now, in 2021, she was leading a company that was facing supply chain and legal challenges. Although Hershey was dedicated to bringing “goodness to the world,” the company was accused of having broken its 2001 pledge to uproot child labour from its cocoa supply chain. Global pressure for greater supply chain transparency and compliance with human rights increased throughout 2020, and in 2021, Hershey became a defendant in a US federal class-action lawsuit alleging harms caused by child labour. With an annual shareholders’ meeting pending on May 17, 2021, Buck had to decide how to mitigate the risks and deal with potential fines of up to US$500 million.