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Uber Technologies, the privately held ride-sharing service and logistics platform, suffered a series of PR crises during 2017. As Uber's legal and PR turmoil increased, Travis Kalanick, cofounder and longtime CEO, was forced to resign as CEO, while retaining his directorship position on the nine-member board. His June 2017 resignation was meant to calm the uproar, but it instead increased investor uncertainty. In an effort to put the recent past behind the company, the directors of Uber scheduled a board meeting for October 3, 2017, to vote on critical proposals from new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi that were focused essentially on one question: How should Uber be governed now that Kalanick had stepped down as CEO? In this case, students are asked to consider the responsibilities of the Uber board of directors to the company's investors and shareholders, employees, management, and contractors as the company moves rapidly towards its long-awaited IPO. Included with the case text are board member roles for use in a role play simulating board discussion.

Supplement to case CU243

An increasing number of social entrepreneurs and investors are realizing that social enterprises of all sorts, including many organizations regarded as charitable nonprofits, can generate returns acceptable to the financial markets. The key is to view the funding of social enterprises as a problem of financial structuring. If they treat charitable donations as a form of capital that seeks social, not financial, returns, organizations can then tap traditional sources of funding: venture capital firms, banks, mutual funds, bonds, and so on. And with access to these sources, they can make use of all the tools for transferring risk and return, allowing them to free up capital and grow. For this to succeed, the social enterprise sector will need to create greater precision and transparency around measuring and reporting social outcomes, and policy makers must build the necessary market infrastructure and legal frameworks. With these efforts, social enterprises could have a larger universe of investors than conventional businesses do. This would be a significant step toward a greener, healthier, and more equitable world.

The board of the European Middle and High School is engaged in a negotiation with an investment bank to lease a building that it needs in order to expand the size of the school. The negotiator for the investment bank has made a tough offer to the School which is under pressure to accept it. At the moment of the decision, the board discovers it will have to make additional investments in the property. Should it go ahead and accept the deal? What are the financial and business considerations? Is the negotiator for the investment bank right to try to extract the best deal for his company?

The current worldwide economic crisis illustrates how global the economy has become. But are global markets creating globally minded companies? Bruce Kogut, a professor of management at the Wharton School of Business, answers this question in his review of The Myth of the Global Corporation. The book, written by Paul N. Doremus, William W. Keller, Louis W. Pauly, and Simon Reich, argues that multinational corporations are still heavily influenced by the characteristics of their home country. It focuses on differences in corporate governance and research and development, and it finds that multinational companies are generally not accessing a global technology base. Kogut agrees that these and other national differences remain a steep hurdle in the way of creating a corporate strategy, but he says they do not imply that national differences are actually undermining the global competitiveness of multinational companies. As goods and people move freely across borders, companies are increasingly able to compete on a worldwide basis without straying far from headquarters. And when countries open up to international trade and investment, the theory of comparative advantage indicates that their companies tend to specialize in whatever the country of operation does best. This specialization can actually strengthen national differences, not weaken them. In this new environment, Kogut says, managers and other leaders face a difficult balancing act. They must meet the demands for global convergence in economic institutions while supporting the national policies that undergird a nation's distinctive competitiveness.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Shows how the value-added chain can be used to analyze sources of international strategic advantages. The author argues that it is essential to draw a distinction between competitive and comparative advantage. He looks at structural shifts in the world economy and argues that they reflect changes in comparative advantage. The impact of these changes leads to only a few choices for the firm facing import competition and possessing no competitive advantage. If the global advantages acquired by international participation are not sustained, competition reverts to domestic competition among firms with different national names.