Executives need guidance about managing their organizations' engagement with societal issues-including hot-button topics such as gender, climate, and racial discrimination. Success in this realm does not mean avoiding public controversy or achieving unanimous support among key stakeholders, the authors write. Rather, it results from adhering to certain processes and strategies, which they have derived from recent global survey research along with examples from managerial best practice. They offer an approach that is anchored in data but sensitive to values and context. It can be helpful in figuring out which issues to address and how; in ameliorating disappointment among stakeholders; and in managing any potential blowback. Data can tell you what your various stakeholders care about, they write, but judgment is necessary to act in careful consideration of conflicting preferences while being consistent with your company's values.
This case is written to help students explore how companies can maintain and develop trust while innovating, how to identify and respond effectively to warning signs that they may not be as trusted as they believe, and how being trusted can aid in expanding and growing a business. In June 2021, Mikhail Lomtadze, co-founder and CEO of Kaspi.kz (Kaspi), the number one player in digital payments, fintech, and online commerce in Kazakhstan, was weighing paths to future growth. In the fourteen years since he became CEO, Lomtadze had transformed the business from a commercial bank into a leading technology company. By 2014, Kaspi had built an impressive ecosystem of three planforms: fintech products, digital payment products, and an online marketplace. Yet that same year, a bank run fueled by misinformation made it clear to Lomtadze that Kaspi wasn't as trusted as he thought. In 2017, Kaspi unrolled a super-app, fulfilling a vision they'd had from the get-go of being a one-stop shop for all the products and services they offered. In 2020, Kaspi turned its attention to new customers, creating a suite of products to make merchants' lives easier, and collaborated with the government to begin digitalizing the most used public services. Kaspi's products enjoyed widespread adoption and were used by about 50 percent of Kazakhstan's population that year. As Lomtadze considered expanding outside of Kazakhstan, he wondered if Kaspi could successfully export its company culture and approach to building trust, and how Kaspi's image as a homegrown brand could be used as an asset to its expansion strategy. In addition to the main case, two short cases on management's response to the 2014 bank run, designed to be taught in class, provide a striking example of a successful response to a trust crisis and show how lessons learned can help companies become even more trusted by customers and employees.
Globally, over the past fifty years, more companies have used layoffs to cut costs during periods of decreased demand or economic downturns. But layoffs have far-reaching consequences, generate hidden costs, and harm the company in myriad ways. This note reviews ways to approach and manage workforce change in two ways: 1) It examines the hidden costs and consequences of layoffs on employees (those who leave and those who remain), the company's financial performance, the community, and industry. 2) It offers suggestions for managing workforce change, including strategies for conducting layoffs to mitigate the negative effects for all parties.
This case examines the mass layoffs that swept through the tech industry (2022-2023) through the lens of four companies: Twitter, Stripe, Meta, and Google. How these companies implemented workforce change through mass layoffs raises critical questions applicable beyond the tech industry. During economic downturns, most companies may consider layoffs to cut costs. The case compares how different companies conducted mass layoffs at scale and discussed the long-term consequences that layoffs have on the company's financial performance, innovation, quality of service, staff commitment, and ability to attract future talent.
LCA action plans integrate responsibility and accountability into decision-making and planning. This module note was designed for the LCA course and reviews six steps leaders can follow to develop a practical LCA action plan for their business. It shows how integrating an LCA perspective can help leaders make better strategic decisions when planning by helping them clarify analysis, sharpen criteria for success, and be better prepared to manage risk.
In 2015, the top management of French tire-maker Michelin, was evaluating Michelin's approach to divesting its rubber plantations ten years after incorporating a novel strategy. In 2004, Michelin had a Brazilian rubber challenge. Its BahÃa plantation had been hit with the South American Leaf Blight fungus, the same fungus that destroyed Henry Ford's dreams of industrializing rubber production, and the plantation's productivity had dropped. BahÃa had to go. That much was clear. But how to do it? From the Michelin headquarters in Clermont-Ferrand, the rubber plantations of BahÃa Brazil seemed half a world away. Still, Michelin, then led by Édouard Michelin, great-grandson of Michelin's founder, was founded with a deep belief in the importance of treating its employees and the environment fairly. Michelin embarked on an ambitious plan to divest the plantation while practicing corporate social accountability. However, in doing so, it had to understand the needs of its plantation workers, its environmental impact, while also considering its own needs as a business. Now, Michelin had to evaluate how well the company had done with its BahÃa program, if there was anything that could be improved in its divestment process, and whether or not the plan, or elements of it, was something Michelin should consider using again in the future.
In Fall 2017, Tommy Hilfiger launched Tommy Hilfiger Adaptive, a line of adaptive and inclusive fashion apparel intended to make dressing easier. Now, Tommy Hilfiger is planning to launch Tommy Hilfiger Adaptive internationally in early 2020. The prospect of making adaptive clothing available globally is exciting, but some wonder if a global launch might be a bit premature. While Tommy Hilfiger Adaptive has experienced some initial success, it is still a relatively unknown line in the U.S. Moreover, despite conducting extensive research, the Tommy Hilfiger team continues to learn more each day about how to best serve the adaptive customer. With a global launch looming on the horizon, there is a lot of work to be done. This case highlights the opportunities and challenges faced with the introduction of a new product line that effectively serves an entirely new and unknown customer while simultaneously starting a movement to provide fashion for all.
The case provides a background on the Saudi financial sector, as well as NCBC, and continues to chronicle Al Suhaimi's journey in NCBC and the transformation process she and her team put in action. When she joined NCBC as the first female CEO of a Saudi investment bank at the young age of 31, Al Suhaimi inherited an underperforming business with broken relations with all key stakeholders including the parent bank, customers, and the regulator. The case follows the turnaround process Al Suhaimi executed. After putting together a senior management team both from inside the business and external hires, Al Suhaimi worked with her team to diagnose and address pain points. Most notably, they drastically shifted NCBC's strategy from a brokerage driven, transactional revenue model to a recurring revenue, full-fledged investment banking and asset management model. They also made cultural and operational changes across NCBC, and mended fractured relations with their parent bank and the regulator. By 2019, NCBC became the market leader in revenues and profit securing landmark advisory mandates and creating innovative, successful products. At the fifth year mark of her appointment, in 2019, Al Suhaimi was now looking at a much different picture: NCBC was the market leader and internally, members of Al Suhaimi's senior management team were being poached by the competition, with no immediate candidates to replace them. Meanwhile, Al Suhaimi knew that she needed to make adjustments to the strategy to get the company on its next wave of growth. Externally, the Saudi stock exchange was opening up to foreign investors and had just joined three of the top emerging markets indices and competition in investment banking had heated up. With her trusted team at risk of departure, she needed to decide on her focus for the next five years: succession planning, setting the strategy for the next growth phase, and inspiring and motivating the team were top of her list.
Today layoffs have become companies' default response to the challenges created by advances in technology and global competition. Yet research shows that job cuts rarely help senior leaders achieve their goals. Too often, they're done for short-term gain, but the cost savings are overshadowed by bad publicity, loss of knowledge, weakened engagement, higher voluntary turnover, and lower innovation, which hurt profits in the long run. This article looks at better ways to handle changing workforce needs that make sparing use of staff reductions and ensure that if they do happen, the process feels fair and the affected parties have a soft landing. Most successful approaches begin with a philosophy that spells out a firm's commitments and priorities, establish methods for exploring layoff alternatives (such as furloughs, retraining, and reassignments), and determine options for three scenarios: a healthy present, short-term volatility, and an uncertain future. As firms like AT&T, Michelin, Honeywell, and Nokia have learned, thoughtful planning helps organizations address workforce transitions and cope with a shifting economic landscape far better than layoffs do.
A summer intern isn't sure how to respond to a request that she misrepresent herself in collecting competitive intelligence for her company. One of her primary duties is to assist with market research by calling direct competitors and asking for sensitive information. Her manager wants her to tell these contacts that she's a student working on a project. She needs the internship and the money, but she also doesn't want to start her career in this industry by deceiving people. Should she push back on her manager? Or perhaps ask to do the project another way? This fictional case study written by Sandra Sucher and Matthew Preble features expert commentary by Josh Bersin and Ruwan Weerasekera.
A summer intern isn't sure how to respond to a request that she misrepresent herself in collecting competitive intelligence for her company. One of her primary duties is to assist with market research by calling direct competitors and asking for sensitive information. Her manager wants her to tell these contacts that she's a student working on a project. She needs the internship and the money, but she also doesn't want to start her career in this industry by deceiving people. Should she push back on her manager? Or perhaps ask to do the project another way? This fictional case study written by Sandra Sucher and Matthew Preble features expert commentary by Josh Bersin and Ruwan Weerasekera.
A summer intern isn't sure how to respond to a request that she misrepresent herself in collecting competitive intelligence for her company. One of her primary duties is to assist with market research by calling direct competitors and asking for sensitive information. Her manager wants her to tell these contacts that she's a student working on a project. She needs the internship and the money, but she also doesn't want to start her career in this industry by deceiving people. Should she push back on her manager? Or perhaps ask to do the project another way? This fictional case study written by Sandra Sucher and Matthew Preble features expert commentary by Josh Bersin and Ruwan Weerasekera.
An HBS student is asked to misrepresent himself during the course of his summer internship by his employer in order to obtain data from industry competitors.
An HBS student is asked to misrepresent himself during the course of his student internship by his employer in order to obtain data from a competitor. This case describes how the student handled the situation and what he learned about himself from it.
When we think of human behavior, especially from a moral perspective, we often rely on explanations based on character. We think that good decisions and responsible behavior require people with integrity and strong character, and immoral behavior originates with people with little integrity and weak character. However, important research in recent decades strongly suggests that situational factors often dominate character in ethical decision-making - for leaders and for members of their organizations. This note summarizes the recent research, shows its implications for the basic steps in ethical decision-making, and provides a basis for in-depth discussion of the character-versus-situation question.