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"Being a Change Agent"is a three-part case series set in a rural district of Assam in India. It describes the efforts made by Kuladhar Saikia, Deputy Inspector General of Police in the early 2000s, to tackle witchcraft-related crimes that were prevalent in this isolated and economically backward part of the country.

"Being a Change Agent"is a three-part case series set in a rural district of Assam in India. It describes the efforts made by Kuladhar Saikia, Deputy Inspector General of Police in the early 2000s, to tackle witchcraft-related crimes that were prevalent in this isolated and economically backward part of the country.

"Being a Change Agent"is a three-part case series set in a rural district of Assam in India. It describes the efforts made by Kuladhar Saikia, Deputy Inspector General of Police in the early 2000s, to tackle witchcraft-related crimes that were prevalent in this isolated and economically backward part of the country.

Sidhi was a cooperative society aimed at rehabilitating destitute tribal women living in one of the poorest states in India. Most of these women were illiterate or had only primary education. A professionally educated non-tribal social entrepreneur has helped these women to set up cottage industries and earn a decent living. Because of her own health concerns, this social entrepreneur needs to resign. Her successor needs to be a woman who can arrange for funding, coordinate the funding and training, and liaise with both the government authorities and the vendors. The challenge is to either identify such a leader among the illiterate women or to recruit an outsider, who will understand Sidhi’s needs and be accepted by the Sidhi membership.

An entrepreneur has a venture idea that he believes can be successful. After his family’s farm was sold to a company, the entrepreneur was contacted by the new owners and asked for help finding farmers to rent the land. This request formed the seed of his idea that a website could be used to link farmers with landowners for the purpose of land rental. Following an invitation to submit an application to a local business pitch competition, the entrepreneur faces many questions about what steps he should take to launch the business, specifically what he should do, how he should do it and when and why he should take these actions. The entrepreneur is also challenged to act entrepreneurial in the face of uncertainty.

In 2005, Victorinox, the original producer of the Swiss Army Knife, acquired Wenger, including the fragrance label “Swiss Army Fragrance.” The acquisition of Wenger allowed Victorinox to become the only producer of the famous Swiss Army Knife as well as the key player in Swiss Army watches. Victorinox’s head of marketing was asked to design a business strategy that would successfully allow the company to enter the fragrance industry. How should Victorinox diversify into the fragrance business? Should it aim to transfer its existing brand attributes to fragrance products? Or should it adopt a strategy that would include the use of another brand to market the perfumes? The head of marketing had to present a plan to the CEO of Victorinox on how best to brand and position the product, and how to compete in the fragrance industry.

Sidhi was a cooperative society aimed at rehabilitating destitute tribal women living in one of the poorest states in India. Most of these women were illiterate or had only primary education. A professionally educated non-tribal social entrepreneur has helped these women to set up cottage industries and earn a decent living. Because of her own health concerns, this social entrepreneur needs to resign. Her successor needs to be a woman who can arrange for funding, coordinate the funding and training, and liaise with both the government authorities and the vendors. The challenge is to either identify such a leader among the illiterate women or to recruit an outsider, who will understand Sidhi's needs and be accepted by the Sidhi membership.

An entrepreneur has a venture idea that he believes can be successful. After his family's farm was sold to a company, the entrepreneur was contacted by the new owners and asked for help finding farmers to rent the land. This request formed the seed of his idea that a website could be used to link farmers with landowners for the purpose of land rental. Following an invitation to submit an application to a local business pitch competition, the entrepreneur faces many questions about what steps he should take to launch the business, specifically what he should do, how he should do it and when and why he should take these actions. The entrepreneur is also challenged to act entrepreneurial in the face of uncertainty.

LifeNet International was a social conversion franchise concept aiming to provide basic, quality and sustainable healthcare to poor and underserved populations in sub-Saharan Africa. The founder and president had relied on the assistance of others to help bring about his idea of affordable healthcare. In 2012, the executive director for LifeNet International's operations in Burundi, began focussing on developing the company in Burundi. She was excited to see LifeNet International's presence expanding into Uganda. Her vision for LifeNet International, however, was much bigger. She envisioned LifeNet International as a sustainable organization that could provide quality healthcare and medicine to millions of people around the world.<br><br>If it planned to expand internationally and bring healthcare to more of the world's population, LifeNet International needed a solution to tie its services together to further scale, replicate and measure its social impact. How could LifeNet International bring its social conversion franchising model to other African nations and internationally? Would LifeNet International's model work logistically, financially and culturally? What adaptations would LifeNet need to make and what legal challenges would it face in the process of expansion? Furthermore, what structures would LifeNet need to put in place to manage the complexity of its growing network of partner clinics and operations?

Supplement to case IMD724. Case D looks at the sustainability challenges in the airline industry, given that aviation emissions have more than doubled in the last 20 years and are a significant contributor to climate change. The industry has adopted voluntary carbon reduction targets but discussions on a specific market-based regulatory policy at the global level are still at a standstill. As the industry remains under the environmental spotlight, in 2013/14 Singapore Airlines developed a new sustainability strategy and has to decide whether its current efforts are sufficient to address the magnitude of the sustainability question and how it should fit within its overall strategy. Learning objectives: To illustrate how sustainability programs, when not aligned with current external forces or existing strategic priorities, result in marginal or insignificant outcomes.

LifeNet International was a social conversion franchise concept aiming to provide basic, quality and sustainable healthcare to poor and underserved populations in sub-Saharan Africa. The founder and president had relied on the assistance of others to help bring about his idea of affordable healthcare. In 2012, the executive director for LifeNet International’s operations in Burundi, began focussing on developing the company in Burundi. She was excited to see LifeNet International’s presence expanding into Uganda. Her vision for LifeNet International, however, was much bigger. She envisioned LifeNet International as a sustainable organization that could provide quality healthcare and medicine to millions of people around the world.<br><br>If it planned to expand internationally and bring healthcare to more of the world’s population, LifeNet International needed a solution to tie its services together to further scale, replicate and measure its social impact. How could LifeNet International bring its social conversion franchising model to other African nations and internationally? Would LifeNet International’s model work logistically, financially and culturally? What adaptations would LifeNet need to make and what legal challenges would it face in the process of expansion? Furthermore, what structures would LifeNet need to put in place to manage the complexity of its growing network of partner clinics and operations?

This technical note explains what corporate governance is and why it is important. It examines how corporate governance is practised within developed and developing economies by identifying four distinct models of capitalism in which corporate governance is embedded: liberal market economies, coordinated market economies, family-led market economies and state-led market economies. Depending on the model of capitalism in which they operate, governance actors — owners, managers, directors and employees — engage distinct governance practices. The note concludes with a discussion of the corporate governance challenges facing multinational firms.

By 2014, Tencent Holdings Limited, headquartered in Shenzhen, China, had become one of the most innovative companies in Asia. It had created several leading Internet platforms to form China’s largest Internet community. WeChat (or Weixin, as known to Chinese users) was one of the company’s most popular mobile platforms, having grown to 200 million active users in the first two years after its launch in 2013. Shortly thereafter, WeChat rolled out a payment platform that sought to capitalize on its customer base across China. However, its president was concerned about how to expand WeChat Payment in the country’s emerging mobile payment industry. Where was the next major opportunity? Tencent had to be highly creative in navigating the world’s largest economy.

For many years, GE has been held up as the exception to two arguments: (1) that related diversification strategies outperform unrelated diversification strategies, and (2) that conglomerates are no longer a viable organizational form in an era of outsourcing, focus, and shareholder value maximization. Whereas many formerly diversified firms have become narrower and more focused with their corporate strategies, GE continues to buy and sell businesses and operates an extremely complex set of businesses. This case provides a vehicle for examining the strategic rationale behind GE's corporate strategy and complex diversification. The core arguments for and against unrelated diversification can be linked to the GE strategy.

In 2014, Tim Hortons Inc., a powerhouse in the Canadian quick service restaurant industry for 50 years, has a number of strategic choices to make if it is going to address increasing competition and shifting consumer trends. To have an international presence, it needs the financial resources, organizational capabilities, store saturation, product innovation and brand recognition to compete with Starbucks, McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts, the world's largest and best known providers of fast food such as coffee, donuts and sandwiches. However, while the brand is almost synonymous with Canada, it is far less known beyond that country's borders. In mid-August, the company announced its potential acquisition by 3G Capital, the Brazilian parent of Burger King, but this still has to be approved by its shareholders and likely by Canadian and U.S. regulators. The potential merger might help the company move forward, but will it be enough to create a competitive advantage on a global scale?

An immigrant entrepreneur created Hi-Bridge Consulting Corporation, a company that imported and distributed alcoholic products in Canada, among other activities. In 2009, the entrepreneur brought Yanjing beer to Canada from China, even though the Chinese brewery did not have an articulated international expansion strategy in Canada at the time. Despite numerous challenges in the Canadian beer market, the entrepreneur made significant headway. However, six years after the product’s introduction, she understood that many Canadian consumers were still not aware of Yanjing beer and that she needed to find an effective way to increase its market share.

In February 2011, the senior associate deputy minister of Industry Canada was appointed as the Canadian prime minister’s personal representative to the bi-national team charged with developing the “Beyond the Border Action Plan” to both improve security and streamline cross-border commerce and travel between Canada and the United States. He was immediately faced with a range of decisions on how to proceed — whom to consult, which Canadian team members to hire, which of many possible priorities to pursue in discussions with his U.S. counterparts and which steps to take to manage a complex process involving a multiplicity of large and powerful Canadian government departments and agencies as well as private sector interests. While he didn’t yet have strategies to address these issues, he knew that he would have to formulate them rapidly. Both the prime minister and the U.S. president had made clear their desire to move quickly — ideally, an action plan was to be in place within six months.

In late December 2003, the new acting CEO of Ontario Power Generation, the provincial Crown corporation responsible for the bulk of the province’s electrical power generation, was deeply worried. Three major events had led to a decline in the company’s revenues in 2003: a massive power failure that affected large portions of Ontario and the U.S. eastern seaboard in August, the maintenance-related planned outage at the Darlington Nuclear Station and the new provincial Liberal government’s mandated future phasing out of air polluting coal-fired electricity stations. In addition, in reaction to a damning report on cost overruns at the Pickering Nuclear Station, the Liberal government had dismissed the board and CEO and ordered a comprehensive audit. The acting CEO knew that he needed to respond quickly to the crisis of confidence facing the firm.

In 2012, a highly controversial bill was passed that called for major reform and restructuring of Britain’s government healthcare system, the National Health Service. Public opinion of the reform was both highly polarized and volatile. The Secretary of State for Health faces two tasks: addressing key issues to ensure successful implementation of the reforms and developing a plan to ensure both long-term and short-term success.

Since its inception as an organization dedicated to promoting women’s entrepreneurship through coordinated activities, the Association of Lady Entrepreneurs of Andhra Pradesh (ALEAP) has gone through different phases, acquiring distinct competencies and resources to offer an integrated approach to helping women entrepreneurs. In the two decades of its operations, ALEAP had established two industrial estates. There was scope to establish more industrial estates for women but ALEAP was contending with severe financial and manpower constraints that would make it difficult to pursue the manufacturing route to develop women entrepreneurs. ALEAP’s president believed that it was time to scale up operations and explore new opportunities. However, several questions had to be addressed: What growth strategy should ALEAP adopt? Was it time to look for a new model? Should ALEAP look beyond manufacturing for its growth? Should ALEAP look for innovative approaches to set up incubation centres? Whose support should it seek?