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PagAmigo specializes in transactions for the public from cashiers' windows located near the exit counters of supermarkets located mostly in the greater metropolitan area of a country in Latin America. These transactions included the payment of electricity, water, phone, and Internet bills, loan repayments, credit card payments and other banking transactions, the sending of remittances to relatives in foreign countries, the purchase of lottery tickets, or tickets to sporting or cultural events and many other types of transactions. Five year earlier the supermarket chains, which had been owned by the same business group that owned Pagamigo, were sold to a European retailer that was not interested in purchasing Pagamigo. This had a serious impact on Pagamigo employee morale, and led to a period of declining investment in both infrastructure and training. Shortly before the opening of the case, a major banking group known for its aggressiveness acquired Pagamigo as a going concern and placed one of its rising executives as the new general manager. An MBA from a well-known business school in the region, with several years´ experience in the banking industry, the new general manager must now decide upon the organizational changes that must be made within Pagamigo, and on a long-term strategy for achieving his vision of bringing Pagamigo into the digital era.

TeenSmart is an organization that offers information, counsel and online courses to young people ages ten to 24, mainly in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, on how to prevent the top six risky health behaviors: tobacco use, violence or accidental injuries, risky sexual practices, alcohol and drug use, poor nutritional habits and obesity, and lack of physical exercise. Founded in 2004 by Dr. Catherine (Cathy) S. Lindenberg, whose missionary grandparents created the first private hospital in Costa Rica, in recent years, the organization had received several awards for the impact of its work. However, at present, TeenSmart stood at the crossroads of whether to consolidate itself in the Central American region with its current service model or to rapidly expand into Latin America and beyond. Views varied among board members and it was up to Adriana Gómez, general director since 2015, to implement the decision, whatever it might be. Obstacles to expansion were huge. TeenSmart did not charge for its services and largely depended on donations from Cathy's family contacts and friends. The technological platform, designed to be used with its own text and audio applications in school computer labs, did not easily adapt to new content for use in smartphones. Some board members questioned the "scalability" of TeenSmart's existing model, based on promoters who sought alliances with schools and volunteers who provided online personalized advice to youngsters. Other members held that instead of serving such a reduced population, TeenSmart should form global alliances with technology companies that shared its mission and values.

Hortifruti´s Tierra Fertil (Fertile Land) Program was created in Costa Rica in the 1970s as a result of an initiative carried out by the Uribe family, founders of Corporacion de Supermercados Unidos - Corporacion de Companias Agroindustriales group (CSU-CCA). In 1973, with only five supermarkets, the group had a hard time supplying its points of sale with quality farming products to respond to its consumers´ demands. As a result, that year, Hortifruti-a company owned by CCA--started to organize Costa Rican farmers in order to establish some business criteria, including profit margins and minimum and maximum quality standards. Once these criteria were determined, Hortifruti proceeded to introduce production programs based on market demands. Safer and more hygienic product conditions were promoted both at the packaging and transport stages, including special requirements for suppliers. Small farmers who were unable to meet these requirements and who lived along the way to a point of sale, had their produce picked up at the farm. In 2005, Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world, bought CSU-CCA. Strategies, business model, management practices and work procedures of the newly-acquired organization were revised in order to adjust them to Walt-Mart's equivalents. Given that the Tierra Fertil program had entailed challenges in technical and economic infrastructure development, education, financial resources and cultural differences, the initiative represented a new conceptualization of the "conventional" value proposition as well as a deep understanding of local needs and CSU-CCA believed that Wal-Mart Central America should continue the program. Jorge Cordero, recently-promoted Agriculture Director for Central America, was in charge of elaborating and presenting arguments to help Wal-Mart executives decide about the usefulness of this supply model in Central America operations.

In July 2007 Joris Brinckerhoff, founder and owner of Costa Rica Entomological Supplies (CRES), must decide whether to accept an offer from RBA, a publications firm in Barcelona, Spain, to sell mounted butterflies or "deadstock" as part of RBA's "collectibles" program for schoolchildren. Joris had always avoided the deadstock business which he considered to be low margin and unstable. The business proposed by RBA would also require additional investment and increased overhead. Nevertheless, he thought that the RBA offer might be attractive to CRES and its many suppliers in rural areas throughout the country. Currently, the oversupply of butterfly pupae was adversely affecting not only his business, but also the livelihoods of dozens of breeders, many of whom had been low-income rural families, endangering the social gains that had been made over the past years.

Presents the corporate social responsibility initiatives of Pantaleon, a leading sugar company from Guatemala, and their relation to its competitive strategy. Since 1990, Pantaleon's management invested in projects aimed at the communities surrounding the mill, featuring educational, health-related, and environmental programs. These activities reinforced corporate strategy, which included infrastructure and agricultural practices updates, vertical integration, and internal and regional expansion of productive capacity and markets. In the second half of 2004, becoming a worldwide leading sugar mill entailed significant strategic challenges for Pantaleon's top executives. In turn, these challenges posed two problems: defining the company's position on social projects undertaken by Pantaleon Foundation and Fundazucar and analyzing the internal consistency of its competitive strategy.

The American Chamber of Commerce of Nicaragua (AmCham) developed through its education committee, a School Sponsorship Program. The objective was to encourage its members, mostly private businesses, to help improve national education through the support of needy educational institutions. The collaboration was voluntary, depending on the initiative of the people involved and the time and resources available within each participating firm. As the program progressed, the committee faced the option of becoming independent from AmCham and transforming itself into a nongovernmental institution. In this way, the support of the educational centers would increase through the raising of international funds, while easing sponsors' efforts at the same time.