Asia Symbol (Guangdong) was part of the Royal Golden Eagle Group (the RGE Group)'s China presence. RGE was a multinational conglomerate that spanned the forestry, pulp, papermaking, viscose fiber and gas industries. It mainly ran businesses in China, Brazil and Indonesia, with a clear business strategy to leverage its industry integration business model to gain the advantage of cost leadership. In an effort to replicate its successful experiences in other countries, it established Asia Symbol (Guangdong) and another pulp processing plant in Shandong province. The case describes how RGE saw China's potential in its global business layout and how it managed to grab over one-third of China's copy paper market share.
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...
This case narrates Bestore's initial success as a regional snack food brand and goes on to introduce its multiple channel innovations, i.e. from running 100% self-operated stores in central China to opening franchise stores all over the country, then to striking online-offline balance in revenue, and finally to finding ways to increase its presence in a rising channel, Douyin, also known as the Chinese version of TikTok, a globally popular short-video-themed social software on smart phones. As Bestore's founder, Yang Hongchun, observed that Douyin was attracting increasing user traffic, he decisively assembled a team to build business there. However, it seemed that the underlying logic between traditional e-commerce platforms and Douyin's e-commerce model was largely different. He needed to push for constant iterations on the part of the Douyin business team based on the data service and with the tools provided by the Douyin platform. In addition, the team also needed to grow its capabilities in many aspects to adapt to business on Douyin, such as having a familiar understanding of the new fads and creating contents that could resonate with Bestore's target customer groups. Bestore was just a small firm compared to western food conglomerates. As Bestore already had a complex online and offline channel system, was it worth the sweat to further invest in creating and running more Douyin accounts?
When Yonyou's founder Wang Wenjing was considering the pros and cons of fully embracing the cloud-based SaaS (software as a service) model, the company was on the road to becoming China's leading ERP software provider. It took years for Yonyou to entirely change its business model from selling software licenses to collecting services fee. Industry-wide, the trend was more than clear that providing cloud-based service would become a predominant business model, but it was still a difficult decision for individual competitors because it would mean a series of changes, including reshaping executives' mindset, reorganizing teams, cutting staff, redefining key performance indicators and incentive plan, to support its shift from the traditional cash cow business to an emerging one. Some actions were painful but necessary. Additionally, Yonyou's management needed to keep a close eye on its financials just in case that investors might not be satisfied with the results. The new business model that Yonyou adopted was a cloud platform that provided a base and a set of uniform standards for partners such as independent developers and service providers to join and prosper. The biggest challenge ahead was to take every opportunity to educate the market and grow its subscription-based revenue so that it was able to stand fast in terms of domestic market share.
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.
In 2019, Bestore Co. Ltd. went public on the mainboard of China's Shanghai Stock Exchange. With the mission of bringing Chinese delicacies to the world, the RMB 6 billion-revenue company proposed an ambitious revenue goal of RMB 100 billion with the new financial resources acquired from the public offering. Bestore expanded from its base market, Wuhan city, in central China to southern and eastern parts of the country. It opened flagship stores on China's key e-commerce platforms with online revenue equal to offline. It continuously upgraded its brick-and-mortar stores and outlets to project a high-end brand image. These physical stores were also fulfillment centers for orders taken from online food ordering platforms. Maintaining an online-offline balanced revenue structure expanded the customer base and increased the brand awareness for Bestore, but also posed many unique challenges for its Board and executives.
Heilongjiang Feihe Dairy Co., Ltd. (Feihe) was located in Qiqihar City, a medium-sized city in Heilongjiang Province, northeastern China. Situated in the golden milk source zone at 47 degrees north latitude, the city had been producing powdered milk products and sold them to domestic consumers for 58 years. However, the 2008 melamine incident (MLM) almost wiped out local brands in the domestic infant formula market and left a vacancy for foreign brands to fill. In a further blow to domestic brands, a fierce price war started as Chinese companies all attempted to regain market share. MLM nearly destroyed consumer confidence in domestic brands across-the-board. In 2015, Feihe realized it needed to create a new brand image that resonated with Chinese mothers if it was going to emerge from the mire. In 2015, Feihe redirected its strategy towards building a domestic infant formula brand that most suited the nutritional needs of Chinese babies. By upgrading its technology and production capability and adjusting its promotional tactics, Feihe was able to grow into an industry leader. In 2020, Feihe's chairperson Leng Youbin was thinking of Feihe's future. Feihe's past win reassured him that Feihe should continue its mission of creating more value for customers. However, there were several paths to that goal. He asked himself whether he should customize the production of infant formula to cater to the needs of each individual baby and reach for higher premium, or, should he choose the low-hanging fruit of adding more product lines so that Feihe could leverage its current reputation to realize higher market growth?
In September 2019, the newly appointed manager of the procurement department at Jiangxi Hengda High-Tech Company Ltd., located in China, was wondering how to make his department more efficient. He took some time to understand the working relationships of his department with other internal departments and with external suppliers. During his research, he uncovered sources of conflict between the procurement department and other functional departments, including the marketing, manufacturing, warehousing, and finance departments, as well as the company's suppliers. The manager took his findings to the company's chairman and reported that the low efficiency of the procurement department was caused by the company's lack of synergy across departments. The chairman acknowledged the issue and agreed that some reform of the company's departments was necessary. However, he also pointed out that this would be a complex, costly, and difficult task. The manager of the procurement department was adamant that the company would have to resolve this systemic issue at some point and decided to prepare a proposal for his next meeting with the chairman.
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?
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.
Jia Yuan Company was a small Chinese business founded by two brothers in 2005. The more ambitious of the brothers worked at the front of the business, successfully transforming it from a local sales agent for foreign branded products to a contractor for government-financed construction projects. He saw new opportunities for the business and wanted to make further investment in a related company that his friend worked at. However, the conservative brother, in charge of internal management, was not convinced of the project's potential and did not approve of making drastic changes to their company's overall strategy. The brothers had a history of disagreement and suppressing resolution of the problems. Can the brothers manage their conflict, or should they go their separate ways?
In less than four years, Easy Flower (EF) grew from an e-commerce flower retail start-up to China's largest supply chain operator in fresh flowers. Easy Flower positioned itself as a provider of quality flowers to retail florists. Taking advantage of its strength in technology talent, and pooling its finances, the company successfully created a national distribution infrastructure network, disrupting and transforming the fractured supply chain system of China's flower industry and dramatically enhancing its supply chain efficiency. Having built an industry leader from scratch, founder Rong Chao had to think about Easy Flower's future strategy. In late 2018, he saw two options: further integrating the flower value chain in China, or internationalizing his business by exporting components of his technology and systems to flower platforms in other countries. Constrained by the company's resources, he had to assess the various risks and requirements that each direction would entail.
As a Chinese technology corporation founded in 2010, Cheetah Mobile (CM) formally launched its overseas strategy and entered international markets in 2012. As a born-global firm, CM moved forward along the path of internationalization and achieved success in international markets soon after its establishment. The case illustrates how CM faces and solves cross-cultural conflicts.
Supplement to case W19373 Case B describes what Long decided to do and how, in the first year, she executed her priorities, which primarily consisted of two improvement projects: culture consolidation and talent review. Case B asks students to set priorities on tackling the remaining HR problems in the coming few years.
In 2012, JD.com had emerged as the biggest business-to-consumer e-commerce retailer in China. The company's founder and chief executive officer, Qiangdong Liu, realized that he had to strengthen the company's internal management in order to sustain rapid growth. In 2011 and 2012, he recruited several chief officers, including Yu Long, who became JD.com's chief human resources officer and general counsel. Case A describes the challenges Long faced when joining the company in August 2012 and invites students to think about what her priorities should be when tackling these challenges.
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.