The case describes the growth spiral of the TCL Group during a long time span of 40 years. TCL's predecessor TTK started as an importer of magnetic tapes from Hong Kong to China's mainland. TCL was founded by TTK to tap into the growing China market with a series of electronic products and home appliances. In the early 2000's, it stumbled after two merger deals with international TV and cellphone giants Thompson and Alcatel. Later, the company decided to move upstream into the semi-conductor industry and tried to seize the opportunity of China's TV industry technology upgrade from CRT to flat screen. A few years after the semi-conductor business took off, TCL moved further upstream to producing silicon materials for the semi-conductor and solar power sectors. While TCL was chasing a vertical integration strategy, it faced severe financial difficulties as a result of many factors, such as continued post-merger losses in acquired businesses, integration challenges, sluggishness in growth and lack of innovation in the consumer electronics sector, prolonged lead time for the high-tech units to turn into profit...
Teld was one of China's largest EV charging pile network operators. It was a young company founded by a serial entrepreneur, Yu Dexiang. His first company, TGood, designed and manufactured box-type substations, which represented a relatively small and saturated market. Yu started Teld based on rational analysis of China's EV industry. His strong vision made him an early starter. He adopted high financial leverage to invest in building a nation-wide infrastructure and new technology development. Teld's business did not take off quickly enough, which almost put TGood on the verge of bankruptcy. Deeply influenced by Yu's passion and charisma, no one in the management team, including key scientists, chose to leave even though they had not seen the pay check for three months. Fortunately, after two years of turmoil, favorable government policies came one after another. Teld spared no effort in building joint ventures with China's local governments. Yu needed to find roughly a thousand qualified city managers to oversee local businesses and handle government relations discreetly and wisely.
Chinese Online (COL) was one of China's largest Chinese-language digital content distributor. Its offerings ranged from literature, audio, TV, film, and micro-drama. From 2018 to 2020, the company was in serious financial trouble as a result of an unwise acquisition. The founder of COL returned from overseas to turnaround the company by executing a strategic refocus to its core business field, which was literature and other forms of content. In addition to business contraction and cost reduction, he creatively designed a collective decision-making system called Class Committee, where he encouraged divisional heads to break the ice and make decisions together. This mechanism aligned divisional goals and allowed for executives to understand COL's business lines from a more integral perspective. In early 2021, COL recovered from the crisis thanks to the executives' joint effort. Tong was thinking how to leverage this mechanism to cultivate the next generation of CEO.
In 2014, as the firm celebrated its ten-year anniversary, Jia started to take an interest in the sharing economy that was sweeping China. He was intrigued by the sharing concept and wondered whether designers' work time and professional abilities could be shared. He twice attempted to establish sharing models and was not frustrated by the setbacks. He kept searching for a good business model that could make his idea work. In 2016, for the first time, LKK's 100 per cent annual growth rate started to show sluggishness. This time, he decided to fully devote himself to the new economy as he knew this would become a new growth driver for the company and for the design circle. He was so determined that he appointed someone to take care of the traditional design company, LKK, declaring that he would focus 100 per cent on the new model and would lead the new team to "disrupt LKK". In July 218, a fire burnt LKK's Beijing office. Jia was surprised by what the office symbolized to his team when he saw an old partner break into tears. It suddenly hit him that his full devotion to the sharing platform model might have hurt the feelings of his old partners and have shaken LKK's basic values, professional idealism, pride and ambition of LKK designers. This was probably the deep-rooted reason why they felt so frustrated by the fire. Most senior designers were against the new model. Jia needed to conduct this venture by himself. Consequently in 2016, he founded a separate firm, LKKer, a platform company, later referred to as LKP, without taking any one from the LKK team. Inside LKK, a friendly joke, "the chairman went out to start his own business", went viral, and Jia perceived LKK staff hostility towards LKP. Jia desperately needed talent support from LKK and also LKK's existing brand influence, but he found himself unable to utilize these resources at LKP. LKP's first two years were very difficult.
This case is about the growth of one of China's top design companies. The design trade is a knowledge-intensive and traditional industry. The protagonist Jia Wei started LKK in 2004. Following the industry's traditional organizational model, over 10 years he managed to grow the company's staff size to over a thousand and reach the peak of the industry. Jia's understanding of how the organization structure could unleash output upgraded several times. Owing to the reorganizations, LKK was able to reach 100 per cent annual growth rate. The story begins with Jia graduating from college and tells of the founding and evolution of LKK's organizational structure step-by-step. It allows participants to clearly see the relationship between organizational structure changes and enterprise growth. The goal is to illustrate that there is no ultimate, static organizational structure that necessarily leads to rapid development. The authors also try to use this material to illustrate that organizational culture needs to evolve along with the organizational structure. In addition, this case features change leadership.
XCMG was a leading construction machinery manufacturer in China, competing in a highly competitive international market. This case describes XCMG's chairperson Wang Min's role in the company over several stages of development. In the late 1990's, he eliminated corruption among XCMG's management personnel, pushed for the consolidation of dozens of unprofitable affiliates, and led the group through a period of turmoil into high growth. In the early 2000's, he actively sought a capital injection to power XCMG's next stage of growth. In a period of market downturn after 2011, his determination to stay in the construction machinery business reassured employees at XCMG and boosted their morale. In the following years, he steered the company towards two new strategic goals-internationalization and digitalization. This case provides students with an example of a long-serving leader who has exerted significant personal influence over his organization, and has played different roles in the highs and lows of the company. It is suitable for a discussion of how a leader's vision and values can impact the strategic goals of the company and its corporate values. The open-ended topic of this case is-What should a company do to pass on its corporate culture and spirit to the next generation of leaders, especially when the company is developing rapidly or experiencing dramatic changes in its business environment?
Before CVTE becomes a listed company, people rarely know its idiosyncratic management structure and process. None of the founders has ever served as CEO or Chair of the company, and none has ever been a majority shareholder. They have no need to clock in or out; they are accommodated in nearby apartments provided by the company; they have free canteen facilities; their children have access to high-quality company-run education; there is an internal medical center providing services not only to the employees, but to their families too. These amenities have been provided since the company began, even in the digital age and an era in which competition in the IT industry has been fierce. The key member of the founding team, Sun Yonghui, expresses the company philosophy thus: "We are committed to helping people around us succeed in their career and live a happy life..." It is this commitment that has shaped the unique management and organization of CVTE. The key positions are filled from a shortlist of candidates following a selection process in which all CVTE employees are involved to some extent and at some point. The company's unusual approach extends into product development and business development, growth and expansion. CVTE operates an internal incubation mechanism, under which more and more new businesses have emerged or developed. After the company's listing, the senior management team came under increasing pressure to sustain rapid growth. Given the limited growth space for traditional businesses, CVTE pursued new growth by continuously incubating new businesses, which placed higher demands on human capital. However, due to the uncertainty of profitability, new businesses often struggled to attract talent-specially sales personnel-unlike traditional businesses which had secured stable markets and enjoyed steady growth. Moreover, despite substantial initial investments, new businesses struggled to be profitable in the early stages. In addition, larger investment
At 6:27 a.m. on May 14, 2018, an Airbus A319, Flight 3U8633 of Sichuan Airlines took off. It was dawning. Flight to and from Lhasa was very difficult. The route was featured with rough terrain and changeable weather, and there were several high mountains beneath. The airplane was passing Chengdu and heading for the Tibetan Plateau at 7:08pm when a heavy thud was heard in the cockpit. In a blink, Capitan Liu Chuanjian found himself in a dreadful situation--the front windshield on his right was gone, and his copilot was almost out of the cockpit, being held only at legs by the safety belt. Wind at over 800 km/hr and -40℃ was blowing in and cutting Liu's face and body. In the cockpit, oxygen was very thin. Wind pressure and extreme coldness were tearing him. The dashboard failed and the airplane was diving at a large angle with port-wing down. Holding the sidestick in his left hand and the throttle lever in his right hand, Liu was intensely trembling in his seat due to coldness. He had to quickly pull himself together. He knew that the lives of all passengers and the crew depended on him.
In July 2018, several employees of Yonghui Superstores stood outside the company’s headquarters in Chongqing, China to protest a pay cut that had been imposed on them. In 2012, the national supermarket chain had rolled out a performance monitoring system that periodically identified employees with inferior results. A broad-range profit-sharing plan was linked to the new performance system and calculated results based on team performance. Yonghui Superstores also applied organizational reforms to support the new system. All measures were intended to stimulate overall performance and increase labour efficiency. After the implementation of these measures, Yonghui Superstores saw favourable financial results and improved performance. Its new policies also helped increase personal income for many of its employees. However, the system also sparked anger among some workers who failed to meet predetermined performance expectations. Incidents such as employee protests had to be avoided because they could tarnish the company’s brand image. From an organizational perspective, the company also had to balance the interests of the various business divisions, which faced completely different competitive environments. Yonghui Superstores needed a systematic solution for its performance initiative.
In July 2018, several employees of Yonghui Superstores stood outside the company's headquarters in Chongqing, China to protest a pay cut that had been imposed on them. In 2012, the national supermarket chain had rolled out a performance monitoring system that periodically identified employees with inferior results. A broad-range profit-sharing plan was linked to the new performance system and calculated results based on team performance. Yonghui Superstores also applied organizational reforms to support the new system. All measures were intended to stimulate overall performance and increase labour efficiency. After the implementation of these measures, Yonghui Superstores saw favourable financial results and improved performance. Its new policies also helped increase personal income for many of its employees. However, the system also sparked anger among some workers who failed to meet predetermined performance expectations. Incidents such as employee protests had to be avoided because they could tarnish the company's brand image. From an organizational perspective, the company also had to balance the interests of the various business divisions, which faced completely different competitive environments. Yonghui Superstores needed a systematic solution for its performance initiative.