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The case traces the roots of culture at Ganga Hospital, a trauma care center in Coimbatore, an industrial hub in South India. The hospital was founded by an anesthetist with his resourceful wife. Their sons trained overseas with legends in plastic and orthopedic surgery, and returned home. Given the triad of specialties within the family, trauma care emerged as a focus for the hospital. As directors and expert surgeons, the brothers established a core team, and carefully built a sustaining culture at the hospital. Culture emerges in a hospital setting from the attitudes of employees towards each other, their shared values, and governance structures. This culture impacts patient safety and outcomes. The case begins by contrasting the transactional principal-agent model of culture with that of pro-organizational stewardship. The RBV framework helps administrators who wish to make their staff valuable and inimitable. The case provides examples of stewardship by the directors of Ganga Hospital as well as its senior leadership. A few tenets form the threads of shared thinking at Ganga: a spirit of Ubuntu, collective patient ownership, a healthy hierarchy based on mentorship, delegated decision making, and so on. In the natural progression of the hospital, Ganga has gone beyond its focus on clinical excellence to establish academic and research pillars. This has helped the hospital nurture its homegrown talent, as well as train doctors in the streams of anesthesia, plastic, and orthopedic surgery, the triad of disciplines constituting trauma care. The case concludes by highlighting the societal orientation of the hospital with numerous examples.

The case showcases a variety of innovations at Ganga Hospital, a trauma care center located in Coimbatore, India. These innovations have helped the hospital handle large patient volumes. The DNA of innovation at Ganga is traced to the enterprising mindset of the founders and their sons. Trauma surgeries rely on precision. The case depicts the fallout of a clinical complication on the patient as well as the treating surgeon. By investing in technologies like computer-assisted 3D navigation, the directors have created a conducive atmosphere for consultants to safely undertake challenging surgeries. The principle of patient-centricity governs all activities at Ganga. The case elaborates on the factors helping the diffusion of these innovations.

The case traces the genesis and growth of Ganga Hospital, a trauma care center in Coimbatore, which is an industrial hub in South India. The case presents a study in contrasts. In a landscape that is dotted with multi-specialty hospitals, Ganga has chosen to provide niche trauma care. The decision to differentiate in the prevailing circumstances of the day amounts to a disruption, and highlights important management and strategy issues. The case highlights the central role that family members of the Ganga founders have played in establishing, running, and growing the hospital in an ethical way. It describes the contingencies that drove decisions about expansion made by the Ganga founder and directors. The narrative illustrates issues confronting hospitals that choose to expand primarily in response to patient demand. This is in stark contrast with investor-funded ventures that have come to dominate the landscape of Indian healthcare.

Founded in 2016, udaan operated India's largest B2B e-commerce platform, which catered to millions of vendors registered on its app and trading a wide range of products. Its Capital arm focused on enabling the country's multitude of micro-enterprises with financial services and products, so that sellers and buyers could grow their business with easily accessible trade credit. Having crossed the "small start-up" stage, the HR team at udaan Capital was weighing its options to grow the organization with structured yet empowering processes and policies. The case goes over how the Head of HR architected a performance management framework along contemporary lines. Its philosophy laid emphasis on combining organizational targets with employee aspirations via constructive dialog around goals. Skill ladders were drawn up to help employees at different career stages to navigate their path within the organization. The case reader is invited to contrast this approach with rank-and-yank approaches, which rely on assessments that craft a score to guide actions on rewards and layoffs. Managers were integral to this framework rollout and had to be carefully equipped to conduct productive conversations with employees. A technology tool captured the reviews and tracked the milestones of the exercise. Insights derived from these conversations informed the HR organization about the next steps.

Spreadsheet supplement for case IMB761

Organizations large and small must source a variety of items and services in order to sustain their quotidian operations. This activity takes centerstage with retail outfits, where sourcing constitutes a primary business activity. This case illustrates the problems faced by a fledgling online start-up called Fiesta Gifts, which caters to a clientele of retail stores that are spread across continental United States. Under pressure from its investors, the firm's management is faced with the option of turning around the loss-making operation or shutting shop. The case begins by familiarizing the reader with the context of the US gifting and novelty sector. It then describes the complexities of Fiesta's operations, which involves sourcing thousands of items from hundreds of suppliers and routing them to customers through distribution centers that are located across the country. Despite fulfilling a steady stream of customer orders all year round, the company has accrued substantial losses; inefficiencies in its supply chain are largely to blame. Taking note of this, the CEO has demanded concrete action steps from the senior management. The CFO and CPO have initiated a strategic sourcing exercise, with a vision to curtail spend by rationalizing item categories and suppliers, and to improving lead times. Working from a dataset of purchases that have been made by Fiesta's customers since the launch of the online portal, the duo has employed analytical tools like ABC analysis to arrive at a grand list of decisions; implementing them could address the problems that the firm is facing. The CEO must deliberate the proposal points and decide on further action.

Innovations in big data and machine learning have begun diffusing into various functions at the workplace. The case touches upon the challenges of instituting a culture change within HR divisions of large organizations that might not have fully embraced technology-led hiring that is backed by solid analytics. Using the backdrop of a large IT firm (HCL Technologies), the case provides an appropriate context to debate if technology offerings such as HIREalchemy from EdGE Networks can galvanize the talent acquisition function. Can leveraging such IT help the HR function break out of its "administrative" image, and emerge as a strategic contributor to the organization's direction-setting exercises? Will such technologies dis-intermediate the recruitment function, and potentially disrupt the L&D function? While engaging the learner on these questions, the case also provides an insight into the ground realities of industry sectors such as IT/ITeS that rely on a well-oiled people supply chain.

Information technologies enable key divisions of an organization such as HR, Training, Operations, and Legal, to achieve operational efficiency. In addition, IT can and must be used to enhance the company's strategic positioning by "socially" engaging an ecosystem of stakeholders: employees, suppliers, and customers. For this, the company's back-end IT infrastructure must be linked up with the front-line so that information can flow smoothly, and important decisions can be made in real-time. In this context, we make a distinction between Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement. The latter category of IT is now emerging, and will change the business landscape in substantial ways. This case is about one such platform of engagement called Wooqer, which business heads can harness to tackle a variety of problems. Wooqer facilitates communities of users to function independently, without requiring constant assistance from IT. The case begins by describing the information systems that drive business at Madura Fashion & Lifestyle, India's largest apparel retailer. In a rapidly expanding retail environment, Madura's Strategy Head has to decide between implementing point solutions to different technology problems, and rolling out a system of engagement.

Information technologies enable key divisions of an organization such as HR, Training, Operations, and Legal, to achieve operational efficiency. In addition, IT can and must be used to enhance the company's strategic positioning, by "socially" engaging an ecosystem of stakeholders: employees, suppliers, and customers. For this, the company's back-end IT infrastructure must be linked up with the front-line, so that information can flow smoothly, and important decisions can be taken in real-time. In this context, we make a distinction between Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement. The latter category of IT is now emerging, and will change the business landscape in substantial ways. This case is about one such platform of engagement called Wooqer, which business heads can harness to tackle a variety of problems. Wooqer facilitates communities of users to function independently, without requiring constant assistance from IT. The case begins by describing the information systems that drive business at Madura Fashion & Lifestyle, India's largest apparel retailer. In a rapidly expanding retail environment, Madura's Strategy Head has to decide between implementing point solutions to different technology problems, and rolling out a system of engagement.

In 2006, Mudra Communications, the third-largest advertising agency in India, is in the middle of an organizational transformation in which information technology (IT) is seen by the top management as pivotal. The IT setup is undergoing a transition at Mudra from manual systems to an Enterprise System (ES) which has been developed internally by the eight-member IT team led by executive vice president for technology Sebastian Joseph. As he gets ready to implement the first module of ES, known as Mudra Business Operations Support System (mBoss), covering 70 per cent of the activities of the agency, Joseph is facing some managerial dilemmas related to planning the roll-out, training the end users, and managing the change that the new system will bring to the agency. He is also facing choices between outsourcing the ES architecture or owning it, and between outsourcing the development of the remaining seven modules or developing them internally, as before.

In 2006, Mudra Communications (Mudra), the third largest advertising agency in India, is in the middle of an organizational transformation in which information technology (IT) is seen by the top management as an enabler. The IT set-up itself is witnessing a transition at Mudra from manual systems to an Enterprise System (ES) which has been developed internally by the eight-member IT team led by Executive Vice President (Technology) Sebastian Joseph. As he gets ready to implement the first module of ES, known as Mudra Business Operations Support System (mboss) covering 70 per cent of the activities of the agency, Joseph is facing some managerial dilemmas related to planning the roll-out, training the end-users and managing the change that the new system will bring to the agency. He is also making a choice between outsourcing the ES architecture and owning it and between outsourcing the development of the remaining seven modules and developing them internally, as before.

In December 2007, the management of Mercedes-Benz India (MBI), a fully owned subsidiary of Daimler AG, the 12th-largest automobile manufacturer in the world, has decided to relocate to a new facility near Pune in western India. In overseeing the installation of information technology (IT) infrastructure at the new premises, the company’s chief information officer (CIO) must deal with some managerial choices pertaining to IT architecture, IT tools, and IT skill sets of the company. Each choice involves several trade-offs. The CIO’s decision on each will have a major effect on the revenues, margins, and competitive positioning of MBI in the Indian automotive industry.

In December 2007, the management of Mercedes-Benz India (MBI), a fully owned subsidiary of Daimler AG, the 12th-largest automobile manufacturer in the world, decided to relocate to a new facility near Pune in western India. In overseeing the installation of information technology (IT) infrastructure at the new premises, the company's CIO is dealing with some managerial choices pertaining to IT architecture, IT tools, and IT skill sets of the company. Each choice involves several trade-offs. The CIO's decision on each will have a major effect on the revenues, margins, and competitive positioning of MBI in the Indian automotive industry.