After a child was seriously injured by a toy that was alleged on social media to be one of Magformers' products, Chris Tidwell, CEO of the company, had to determine the best way to deal with the crisis. Magformers' signature products were sets of shaped plastic pieces with strong cylindrical magnets embedded in the edges that allowed children to build things. Beck White, a 4-year-old, ingested 13 magnets from a copycat product sold by IMDEN on Amazon's website. He needed surgery to remove parts of his colon, intestine, and appendix. On December 27, 2018, Beck's mother, Jennifer, posted a warning about the danger of magnetic toys to other parents on Facebook. The post generated a social media firestorm in which Magformers was incorrectly identified as the toy at fault. At the close of the case, Chris Tidwell faced two problems. First, Tidwell needed to figure out how to restore the brand reputation of Magformers in the aftermath of the Beck White incident. Second, he needed to figure out how to address inferior and unsafe products that were sold on Amazon.

This case is about a for-profit social enterprise in Rwanda named the Rwanda Trading Company (RTC) which purchases coffee beans from coffee growers in the country, roasts the beans and exports them to other coumtries. The company was begun in 2009 by Todd Brogdon who also managed the organization. The primary goals of the company were twofold: (1) Have a positive impact on the poorest of the poor in the country; and (2) To be profitable. RTC has been able to achieve these goals since its founding by working with the Rwandan coffee growers on a multi-year agriculturalo training program. All had gone well until the spring of 2016, when a German company named SRO which owned such coffee companies as Peet's Coffee & Tea and Green Mountain (which was owned by Keurig) decided to change the terms of its contract with RTC. A provision in the contract RTC signed with SRO was that their company would carry 180-day receivables. Brogdon immediately realized that this would lead to a serious cash flow problem that would threaten all of the good work they had been able to perform with the Rwandan coffee growers.

This case focuses on the necessity of developing a human resource strategy for downsizing Daktronics, Inc., a company that was founded in 1968 in Brookings, South Dakota as a small producer of scoreboards for collegiate wrestling matches. By 2009, the company was generating a half billion dollars in revenue annually by producing electronic scoreboards, programmable display systems, and large screen video displays using light emitting diode (LED) technology. The dream of the founder was to grow the company to a billion dollars in revenue. However, by the spring of 2010 the recession that the United States had been suffering since 2008 had now produced negative earnings for Daktronics. Carla Gatzke, VP of Human Resources, realized that she needed a strategy to further reduce personnel costs during the duration of the recession, yet respect company culture and its relationship with communities. The plan would also need to position the company strategically for continued growth.