個案總覽

New research links leaders' actions in their personal lives with outcomes for their firms. The researchers used crime databases, private investigators, tax and property records, and other sources to identify executives with personal legal records and ones with unusually materialistic lifestyles. They then looked for correlations between those traits and certain on-the-job behaviors. Across four studies, they found that leaders with legal records were more likely than their law-abiding counterparts to engage in stock trades made on the basis of insider information and that their companies were more likely than others to have submitted fraudulent financial statements to the SEC. Materialistic leaders, for their part, tended to helm firms in which other executives made intentional and unintentional reporting errors. They were more likely than frugal leaders to take risks, and they got lower scores on CSR measures. Simply having governance structures in place across a firm is not enough, the researchers conclude, because individuals have very different appetites for taking chances and breaking rules.

The case presents the status of sports in general in India under official federations, place and shape of the football game before and after introduction of premier leagues, and global trend and debate around games going the path of premier leagues. In India, sports, in general, is dominated by the official federations whose performance track has been dismal. The premier football league is at the early stage of its life cycle. Marketization of the game has succeeded in bringing to the fore the latent demand and passion for the game. It has brought forth initial success in professionalizing the game, identifying the talents, upgrading the infrastructure, etc. However, the purists would like to voice their concern about unbridled marketization in terms of dominance of star players, financial viability, conflict with national games, etc. This case is built around All India Football Federation (AIFF) at the center and AIFF weighing the development of premier leagues and latest rift between two leagues. The challenge for AIFF is: Can it calibrate the contours and trajectory of the game to keep in check unhindered marketization? Can and should the official federation influence the rules of game, terms of engagement of investors, players, agents, etc. or best leave it to the leagues; and their influence on the game once the floodgates are opened? Or, is marketization such a juggernaut that it rolls on its path sidestepping regulations and national fervors? Can something be learnt from other sectors in protecting national brand against the onslaught of global brands in the context of international management?

Bank of Baroda is one of the oldest banks in India with a large international footprint. The bank was nationalized in 1969 and since then has been under the control of the government. Ever since India embarked on the program of economic reforms of 1991, there have been efforts to change the culture and management of public sector banking enterprises in India. As a part of the larger reform process, the Government of India appointed an independent non-executive chairman for the bank and also laterally recruited the CEO from the private sector banking space. In the light of this move, this case examines the challenges of managing a large bank with legacy systems and with multiple expectations - from customers, markets, and the state. Given the nature of the bank's incorporation and ownership, it operates under multiple constraints at the operational and governance levels. The case documents the challenges and opportunities at the operational level; examines the process of transformation and raises the questions regarding these changes and whether they could last beyond the current leadership. The case also juxtaposes the experience of the transformation exercise undertaken by the organization in the past to review the progress of some of the erstwhile changes and provides an opportunity to examine the subsequent transformation exercise amidst a severely constrained situation.

We often assume that only purely digital companies like Google or Netflix can be called 'algorithmic'. But the reality is that every type of organization, at every scale, will soon live and breathe by its capacity to leverage data, automation and algorithms to be more effective and create better customer experiences. The author shows that as a result, a new breed of leader is emerging with an ability to use machine intelligence to transform organizations - and reinvent the world. He argues that these 'algorithmic leaders' are different from traditional leaders in three key ways.

Judgment--the ability to combine personal qualities with relevant knowledge and experience to form opinions and make decisions--is "the core of exemplary leadership," according to Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis (the authors of Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls). It is what enables a sound choice in the absence of clear-cut, relevant data or an obvious path. Likierman believes that a more precise understanding of what exactly gives someone good judgment may make it possible for people to learn and improve on it. He approached CEOs at a range of companies, from some of the world's largest right down to start-ups, along with leaders in the professions: senior partners at law and accountancy firms, generals, doctors, scientists, priests, and diplomats. He asked them to share their observations of their own and other people's exercise of judgment so that he could identify the skills and behaviors that collectively create the conditions for fresh insights and enable decision makers to discern patterns that others miss. As a result, he has identified six key elements that collectively constitute good judgment: learning, trust, experience, detachment, options, and delivery. He describes these areas and offers suggestions for improvement in each one.

Most of us think of ourselves as good people. We set out to be ethical at work, and we hope that in pivotal moments we will rise to the occasion. But when it comes to building an ethical career, good intentions are insufficient. Decades' worth of research has identified psychological processes and biases that cloud people's moral judgment, leading them to violate their own values, and often to create contorted, post hoc justifications for their behavior. How can we ensure that we will consistently do the right thing in our professional lives? The authors argue for a mindset shift to what they term "moral humility"--the recognition that we all have the capacity for ethical transgressions if we aren't vigilant. They suggest a three-stage approach for staying on the straight and narrow: Prepare in advance for moral challenges, including instituting proper safeguards; make good decisions in the moment; and reflect on and learn from moral successes and failures.

In this fictional case, an associate director of business development at a gaming company is selected for a prestigious cross-functional innovation group. When one of her peers in the work group isn't able to meet his deadlines because of his heavy workload, she picks up his slack. But at the end of the project, she needs to give him a rating in the company's new peer-feedback system, and she's worried that if she's honest, it will hurt his career and cause trouble for her. Should she give him the low rating she thinks he deserves? Or should she give him a pass this one time? This fictional case study by Anthony J. Mayo, Joshua D. Margolis, and Amy Gallo features expert commentary by Dan Goldenberg and Aiko Bethea.

During his 20-year career as a professional boxer, Sugar Ray Leonard won world titles in five weight classes, became the first in his sport to earn more than $100 million in prize money, and helped fuel fans' interest in boxing following Muhammad Ali's retirement. In this interview he talks about bypassing boxers' traditional reliance on promoters, why he retired repeatedly, which of his fights is most worth rewatching, and more.

In this fictional case, an associate director of business development at a gaming company is selected for a prestigious cross-functional innovation group. When one of her peers in the work group isn't able to meet his deadlines because of his heavy workload, she picks up his slack. But at the end of the project, she needs to give him a rating in the company's new peer-feedback system, and she's worried that if she's honest, it will hurt his career and cause trouble for her. Should she give him the low rating she thinks he deserves? Or should she give him a pass this one time? This fictional case study by Anthony J. Mayo, Joshua D. Margolis, and Amy Gallo features expert commentary by Dan Goldenberg and Aiko Bethea.

In this fictional case, an associate director of business development at a gaming company is selected for a prestigious cross-functional innovation group. When one of her peers in the work group isn't able to meet his deadlines because of his heavy workload, she picks up his slack. But at the end of the project, she needs to give him a rating in the company's new peer-feedback system, and she's worried that if she's honest, it will hurt his career and cause trouble for her. Should she give him the low rating she thinks he deserves? Or should she give him a pass this one time? This fictional case study by Anthony J. Mayo, Joshua D. Margolis, and Amy Gallo features expert commentary by Dan Goldenberg and Aiko Bethea.

Smoking was once considered as American as apple pie, but times change. Cigarette sales in the United States dropped to 216.9 billion in 2018, marking the industry’s lowest level in demand since the tracking of cigarette sales began in 1967. But today’s smokers are not just being banned from lighting up at work—they are being banned from employment by companies like U-Haul, at least in the United States. (In Canada, the Human Rights Act theoretically protects nicotine users from this sort of selective hiring policy.) There is no question that well-designed wellness programs can benefit employers and society alike. But on the other hand, besides having the potential to negatively impact employee morale, aggressive wellness initiatives can spawn a culture of deceit, fostering unhealthy attempts to beat the system. In the case of weight-loss programs with financial incentives, studies have found that employees often attempt to manipulate results by binge eating and crash dieting. As a result, wellness programs must be well designed. Providing employees with knowledge, risk management tools, and positive incentives has a role to play in today’s workplace. But refusing to hire people who, for better or worse, use any legal product can do more harm than good.

In January 2020, a U.S. hunter-killer drone killed Iran’s second most powerful person, without congressional approval. During the fog of Iran’s response, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was shot out of the sky over Tehran by jittery Iranian military defense personnel. Michael McCain, CEO of Toronto-based Maple Leaf Foods, blamed Trump for the accident, which claimed the lives of 176 people, including the wife and 11-year-old son of a Maple Leaf Foods employee. Without mentioning the president’s name, McCain used his company’s official Twitter account to express what he said were “personal reflections” about the tragedy. The corporate world was divided by McCain’s blunt assessment of Trump’s leadership, with critics insisting he had crossed a clear line by using the official Maple Leaf Foods Twitter account to spread personal opinions without any regard for the corporate bottom line. There is no question that CEOs are accountable to company stakeholders via corporate boards, but the guiding principles of corporate leadership and governance are constantly evolving. While fans of the shareholder primacy model are free to resist change, there is no universally accepted line that separates the duties of corporate leaders and the personal views they hold, especially not on matters of interest to the stakeholders they serve.

People can no longer always trust their eyes or ears thanks to generative adversarial networks (GANs), a special subset of artificial intelligence technology. This technology makes it relatively easy to create deepfakes—convincing clips of people doing or saying things that they never did or said. Deepfakes present a serious threat to Western civilization because they create an opportunity for bad actors to supercharge disinformation. National security experts worry about foreign actors deploying deepfakes to manipulate public opinion. The potential for an assault on reality has put a serious regulatory target on GANs. But the technology behind deepfakes might just be what democratic nations need to keep up in the AI race. The objective of this article is to highlight how GAN technology enables AI developers to augment or complete data sets where data is unavailable, incomplete, or otherwise lacking. GAN technology has plenty of other positive things to offer, including for medical research, automotive safety, and security and military applications. Instead of having a conversation based on fear and misunderstanding, Western nations need to explore deploying laws, policies, and regulations grounded in age-old legal concepts like defamation and slander to counter the threat posed by deepfakes. After all, knee-jerk calls for regulatory action risk putting unnecessary restrictions on the development of a technology that could hold the key to democracy’s survival.

This case deals with responsible business and the impact of firm actions on different stakeholders. In November 2019, the last operating units of the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) in Page, Arizona, were shut down. The plant was losing money and was no longer economically viable or necessary for Arizona's power grid. As the largest coal-fired power plant west of the Mississippi and one of the largest emitters of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the continental United States, the closure was seen by many environmental groups as a success for sustainability and climate change. For the communities that depended on the plant and associated coal mine for jobs and taxes, the impact of the plant closure was less positive. Although the air would be cleaner and water resources better protected, the plant and mine closures meant that the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe faced large cutbacks in their budgets. The plant and mine workers, almost all Native American, lost their jobs. The closure left a legacy of health issues on the reservations and unknown environmental issues from the abandoned coal mine.

In September 2019, Elliott Management (Elliott), a hedge fund manager and activist investor, disclosed that it had acquired a $3.2 billion position in AT&T and was seeking strategic and operational change. In a letter to the AT&T board, Elliott accused the company of becoming "a sprawling collection of businesses battling well-funded competitors, in new markets, with different regulations, and saddled with the financial repercussions of its choices." Elliott outlined the areas of concern and a set of recommendations, including divestments of non-core businesses and a cessation in acquisitions. AT&T must now decide if the recommendations are valid and what actions, if any, are warranted.

The economic woes of 2008 gave a boost to budget retailers such as Dollar General, Aldi, and these retailers have unleashed significant change in the retailing industry in general and the grocery business sin particular. The case focuses on the hard-discounters from Germany, Aldi and to a lesser extent on Lidl to describe their operating models and their relative impact on the strategies adopted by their US peers. The case provides a rich discussion of the industry environment in the U.S. grocery business and the key trends that were shaping organizational strategies. It follows with an in-depth examination of the cornerstones of the hard-discount model and how the German companies have been successfully implementing this approach in the U.S. As the case closes, the US retailers had started to respond to the new competitors while firms such as Aldi had moved more deliberately into the realm of service innovation to retain an edge over peers. It appeared as if the hard-discounters were trying to reach into the upper tiers of customers by tailoring their choices to suit such an audience. They were locating in richer neighborhoods, providing a more sophisticated product assortment, and some were even rethinking their store layouts. These changes seemed to be going against the grain of conventional budget operators. It remained to be seen whether the sources of competitive advantage built by firms such as Aldi would prove resilient against the much larger peers who enjoyed much greater advantages of scale and resources.

The case focuses on the efforts of Helena Borenius, an Executive Director of Scandinavian Building Group (SBG) Sweden who is in-charge of the company's civil engineering and construction work in Sweden. SBG is the disguised name of a major global construction and engineering company that was dealing with similar issues described in the case study. Borenius is under pressure to bid on work for a major expansion of the Arlanda Airport in Stockholm. However, she feels that the project is inconsistent with the company's as well as her own values.

The Desertec Foundation was established in 2009 to pursue a lofty vision: to power Europe by harnessing the renewable energy of the deserts of North Africa. The Foundation hoped to organize governments and organizations throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa (EUMENA), to create a structure that would use both wind and solar power to generate electricity which would then be transmitted to Europe for distribution across multiple countries and markets. It was an extremely ambitious vision based on advances in technology in energy production and cooperation across many countries. It seemed a very good idea.

This case regards the perils of ineffective management and design that led to an organizational crisis. The setting is an amusement park where a water slide thrill ride was created in pursuit of a world record. Signals and warnings that should have been recognized, assessed and fixed to operate successfully and prevent a crisis were ignored. The park and stakeholders paid ultimate costs for their oversights.