It was the height of the summer in 2022, and Michel Doukeris, the CEO of Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), and Peter Kraemer, the company's Chief Supply Officer, gazed across the vast desert surrounding Zacatecas, Mexico. They were visiting their Grupo Modelo Brewery, AB InBev's largest and the highest-volume producer in the world, to contemplate their goal of increasing sales while reducing the company's impact on the natural environment. This case documents how company executives led an organizational transformation designed to help the firm balance growth and sustainability and achieve two benchmarks: becoming the number-one consumer packaged goods company for top-line growth and achieving their 2025 sustainability target, referred to as 100+ goals, and composed of smart agriculture, water stewardship, circular packaging, and climate action. The case illuminates the key decisions AB InBev executives needed to make, including making capital-intensive investments into the supply chain that drive sustainability and growth, reinventing processes and an overarching business model that had remained largely the same for hundreds of years, as well as changing how people work in a culture steeped in tradition.
At its headquarters in Attendorn, Germany, Viega's chairwoman Anna Viegener gathered the company's leadership team to discuss their progress on formalizing purpose-driven leadership as a strategic driver within the organization. Viega manufactured and distributed plumbing, heating, and pipe-joining systems, and had been experiencing rapid growth and financial success during the past decades. Annual sales had doubled in 10 years, and the company had expanded its international presence to include offices around the globe. Still, with growth came an evolution in management and concerns about the ability of executives to instill in employees the values that had been key to the company's success since its founding by Anna and Walter's family in 1899. They wondered how they could continue cultivating the company's purpose: Installing lifelines for the buildings of tomorrow. To do so, Viegener developed a measurement system to quantify managers' adherence to the company's purpose and values, with plans to tie managers' bonuses to this values-based measure.
The Valuing Employment exercise can be used to show the importance of impact measurement in designing incentives and contracts. The exercise has two phases. In the first phase, participants play the role of managers at the State of Massachusetts Infrastructure Department. They are tasked with evaluating competing bids for a 10-year, $100 million project from two finalist companies: Infrastructure Bay and Infrastructure Gold. Participants are asked to evaluate the bids after taking into account workforce impact. To measure impact and determine the winning company, students must develop a methodology to create monetized impact figures for each company based on factors such as workforce diversity and injury rate. In the second phase of the exercise, participants are assigned to one of three teams: Infrastructure Bay, Infrastructure Gold, or State of Massachusetts Infrastructure Department. During this phase, the competing companies present their cases for why they should be awarded the bid, while the members of the Infrastructure Department must make a final decision and provide a rationale for who will win the contract.
This case addresses the events that took place following the conclusion of the case "Facebook's Libra (A): The Privatization of Money?" In October 2019, several months after the conclusion of the A case, multiple members of the Libra Association announced that they were leaving the project. Observers speculated that the departures were due to Libra's inability to meet regulatory scrutiny. Nevertheless, the Libra Association formed a board and formalized its governance structure with 21 founding members. Through the remainder of 2019 and 2020, Libra made significant changes to its product in an attempt to win regulatory approval. It also changed its name to Diem to distance itself from the controversies surrounding the original Libra product. By December 2020, the proposed cryptocurrency was a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. The Diem Association planned to launch the new currency in early 2021; however, it had yet to secure regulatory approval, even as political skepticism toward the product endured.
Tiffany Pham taught herself to code and created a technology platform, Mogul, with the goal of providing girls and women around the world with information and opportunities. After several years Mogul had reached more than 146 million women around the world and had measurable outcomes in increasing the diversity of talent pipelines for major Fortune 500 companies that served as its clients. The case explores Pham's journey in building Mogul and the idea of moving into other business lines, such as media or venture capital, making Mogul not just a place for people to connect but also a global brand.
Liz O'Sullivan, an employee at a fast-growing technology company called Clarifi, had a moral dilemma: She disagreed with Clarifi's decision to sell its image-recognition technology to the U.S. Department of Defense for possible use in weaponized drones. This case examines her career to this point and the potential ways in which she can address her concerns. The CEO has been receptive to her ideas, but there is little chance he will cancel the contract. She can either continue to advocate internally, or she can quit. If she quits, she wonders whether she should leak the details of the contract-and her decision to quit-to the media. The case contrasts her dilemma-in the voice-loyalty-exit framework-with that of Jack Poulson, a senior Google employee who quit the company in protest over Google's decision to build a censored search engine for the Chinese market.
SK Group was one of the largest companies South Korea. A family-run conglomerate consisting of around 120 subsidiaries and employing more than 100,000, SK was tightly knit into the fabric of Korean society. SK viewed their future success as contingent upon the strength of the societal ecosystem in which they operated. As such, the company had a long history of philanthropic giving. However, SK questioned if their donations were producing the desired impact, as many of the societal issues they, and the rest of Korean society, sought to address were not improving. In order to create a new system of generating social value, SK established the Social Progress Credit (SPC) initiative. The SPC initiative designed a measurement methodology that was used to measure the social value created by social enterprises - firms whose mission was to generate social value in conjunction with generating sustainable financial returns. Additionally, the SPC initiative provided monetary incentives to social enterprises in proportion to the social value generated by participating social enterprises. Looking to the future, SK envisioned a marketplace in which SPC's were traded among investors and credits were priced by the market. Initial results of the SPC initiative were positive, showing positive growth in social value created and financial stability of social enterprises. How then could SK convince other public and private organizations to adopt the SPC model and promote social value? Moreover, how could SK convince mainstream capital markets to make investments into society enterprises on the basis of the social value creation? More importantly, was this attempt to enrich and grow the ecosystem of social value creation making a difference?
This research note provides an understanding of income inequity, which is a component of broader income inequality. It begins by describing the difference between inequality and inequity before examining inequity within the workplace. Using the firm as the unit of analysis, the note discusses possible causes of inequity and the challenges of identifying and measuring inequity. It concludes by focusing on attempts to address inequity and discussing academic research that examines the impact of addressing inequity.
TJX Companies reported a CEO pay ratio of 1,596-to-1 in 2019, leaving board chair Carol Meyrowitz with a host of questions about whether, and how, she could take action to address concerns raised by having one of the highest pay ratios in the S&P 500. As a retail company, TJX had 270,000 employees, many making about $10 an hour. On the other hand, CEO Ernie Hermann made $19 million in 2019 as he successfully steered the company through the tumultuous retail environment. Meant to be read in tandem with the research note "Income Inequity and Income Inequality," this case examines the current disclosures companies make related to income inequality and asks whether they are sufficient or how they can be improved. This discussion around disclosure also provides opportunities to examine the role of the firm in creating income inequality and how the firm should balance its obligations to shareholders and employees when those obligations may be in conflict. Lastly, the case and note address the CEO pay setting process to give students an understanding of how pay is determined.