In the early 1990s, Donna Klein, Director of Work/Life programs for Marriott International, surveyed hotel and resort managers and found they increasingly were relied upon to help employees cope with the stresses of their personal lives. Immigration, child custody, spousal abuse--numerous personal issues were requiring up to 50% of managers' time and fueling extremely high turnover among the company's over 100,000 lower-wage workers. Although Marriott offered a traditional dependent care resource and referral service, Klein realized that this service was not particularly useful or appropriate for hourly workers. She understood that hourly employees needed help finding cost-effective ways to solve their personal problems and more one-on-one consultation to help them tap into their local resources. Shocked by the survey results, senior management asked Klein and her associates to devise a solution to address the problem.
Entrepreneur Judy Wicks has built The White Dog Cafe from a carry-out muffin shop into a full-service restaurant. She has ambitions to provide her diverse clientele with more than an acclaimed dining experience. She also wants to incorporate broader community concerns into her restaurant's operations. How can she meld her social values with her business objectives?
Entrepreneur Judy Wicks has built The White Dog Cafe from a carry-out muffin shop into a full-service restaurant. She has ambitions to provide her diverse clientele with more than an acclaimed dining experience. She also wants to incorporate broader community concerns into her restaurant's operations. How can she meld her social values with her business objectives?
This case describes Jack Stack's efforts to revive a diesel engine remanufacturing plant owned by International Harvester. Stack engineers a leveraged buyout of the factory by its managers. He then implements a radical system for managing the company, through which every employee is trained to read complete financial reports of the company and given weekly operating data. In this way, they can see in detail how the company is progressing. The case may be used in Human Resources, Organizational Behavior, Strategic Management, and Entrepreneurship courses.
A long-time community development worker creates hundreds of jobs for low-income women and minorities by forming a for-profit home health care cooperative, Cooperative Home Care Associates. May be used in Entrepreneurship, Strategic Management, Organizational Behavior, Human Resources Management, and Ethics courses to help students explore: 1) the motives of an entrepreneur starting a venture to meet a tangible social need--the "social entrepreneur;" 2) the concept of worker-ownership and its potential consequences; 3) how to simultaneously serve the needs of various groups in an economically deprived area; and 4) the creation of jobs for individuals many dismiss as "unemployable" (single mothers on welfare, etc.).