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In 2008, the incoming vice-president in situ of Suncor Energy is faced with problems of underperformance at a new facility that uses the innovative in situ technology. This technology accesses bitumen in reservoirs too deep for traditional mining practices to recover. Although it is deemed less harmful to the environment than surface mining, in situ technology does create more greenhouse gas and sulphur dioxide emissions, but these can be controlled with new equipment. Recently, the site has come under investigation for two environmental compliance charges related to a missing piece of pollution control equipment. The new vice-president needs to analyze the root causes of the facility’s operational challenges and develop a plan to deliver on the parent company’s operational excellence strategy.

In July 2012, Marissa Mayer was appointed chief executive officer (CEO) of Yahoo! Inc. and was tasked by Yahoo’s board of directors with turning around the company’s performance. Mayer’s ascension to the top position came with a number of challenges. Yahoo had seen seven CEOs come and go in its 18-year existence, five of whom had left within the last five years. In addition, Yahoo faced a number of corporate governance challenges, including the disgraceful exit of its former CEO amid charges that he had falsified his resumé, and the demands of an activist investor who was seeking four board seats to influence the company’s strategic direction. Mayer also had to decide on how best to use the proceeds from the partial sale of the company’s investment in the Alibaba Group, a Chinese Internet company. Mayer had to confront these issues prior to presenting her strategic plan to the company’s board in mid-September.

Two female small-business entrepreneurs belonging to the poorer sections of rural and urban India were trying to arrange for funds in order to ensure the viability of their commercial ventures in the long term. They had formed self-help groups with the help of Indian government development schemes aimed at poverty alleviation and human development. The first woman experienced opposition not only from patriarchal village elders but also from her own family. She persisted in getting training and setting up a workshop to employ her female neighbours. The second woman was supported by her family but also had trouble finding a suitable venue for making and selling the work her group produced. In spite of government support and the allocation of funds to their enterprises, both women had trouble persuading the banks to loan money to them. The long-term viability of their groups was thus in doubt.

Two female small-business entrepreneurs belonging to the poorer sections of rural and urban India were trying to arrange for funds in order to ensure the viability of their commercial ventures in the long term. They had formed self-help groups with the help of Indian government development schemes aimed at poverty alleviation and human development. The first woman experienced opposition not only from patriarchal village elders but also from her own family. She persisted in getting training and setting up a workshop to employ her female neighbours. The second woman was supported by her family but also had trouble finding a suitable venue for making and selling the work her group produced. In spite of government support and the allocation of funds to their enterprises, both women had trouble persuading the banks to loan money to them. The long-term viability of their groups was thus in doubt.

In July 2012, Marissa Mayer was appointed chief executive officer (CEO) of Yahoo! Inc. and was tasked by Yahoo's board of directors with turning around the company's performance. Mayer's ascension to the top position came with a number of challenges. Yahoo had seen seven CEOs come and go in its 18-year existence, five of whom had left within the last five years. In addition, Yahoo faced a number of corporate governance challenges, including the disgraceful exit of its former CEO amid charges that he had falsified his resumé, and the demands of an activist investor who was seeking four board seats to influence the company's strategic direction. Mayer also had to decide on how best to use the proceeds from the partial sale of the company's investment in the Alibaba Group, a Chinese Internet company. Mayer had to confront these issues prior to presenting her strategic plan to the company's board in mid-September.

The mayor of one of Canada’s largest tourist destination cities has to decide how to handle the media outcry that followed a major newspaper story in which eight former staffers at the local, popular aquatic zoo accused the zoo of treating its animals with severe cruelty. His initial response was perceived by many as being too glib and favouring the marine park, which is an important source of revenue for the city. Although he is no expert on animal welfare, it is his job to represent the interests of all of the city’s stakeholders, including those who are now angry about the alleged mistreatment of animals at the park. He does not want his constituents to see him as the park’s apologist.

The La Boulange: Exiting to a Large Strategic Buyer case follows the evolution of the La Boulange bakery and café chain and its eventual buyout by Starbucks Corporation. First, the case relates the founding story of La Boulange by its CEO Pascal Rigo. Then, the case discusses the controlling investment made by Sebastien Lepinard and the subsequent changes in La Boulange's strategy and governance structure. The case then discusses a buyout offer for the company and turmoil amongst leadership. Finally, the case delves into the buyout offer from Starbucks.

The La Boulange: Exiting to a Large Strategic Buyer case follows the evolution of the La Boulange bakery and café chain and its eventual buyout by Starbucks Corporation. First, the case relates the founding story of La Boulange by its CEO Pascal Rigo. Then, the case discusses the controlling investment made by Sebastien Lepinard and the subsequent changes in La Boulange's strategy and governance structure. The case then discusses a buyout offer for the company and turmoil amongst leadership. Finally, the case delves into the buyout offer from Starbucks.

On November 2012, a fire in a garment factory near the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka killed 112 people and injured several hundred. The factory was owned by Tazreen Fashions Ltd., a subsidiary of The Tuba Group, a large Bangladeshi garment exporter whose clients included Wal-Mart, Carrefour, C&A, Kmart, and Li & Fung. The factory opened in May 2010, employed about 1,500 workers, and had sales of $35 million a year from the production of clothing such as T-shirts, polo shirts, and fleece jackets. In the aftermath of the fire, questions were raised about accountability. Some people argued that the factory owners and the regulators who establish Bangladesh fire safety standards were responsible. Others said that Western clothing companies and retailers who rely on low-cost clothing manufacturing in Bangladesh should ensure that their suppliers have safe factories or take their business elsewhere. Some assigned the blame to Western consumers' desire for cheap clothing that forced retailers to constantly look for low-cost manufacturing locations.

The case discusses LinkedIn's corporate culture in 2012-2103 and the importance the professional networking company put on maintaining that culture as it dramatically expanded in headcount domestically and internationally. LinkedIn's leadership believed its culture was its competitive advantage. The company fostered creativity, innovation, and a collaborative and open working environment, embraced humor, and was results oriented. LinkedIn sought to hire staff who wanted to make a positive lasting impact in the world and who valued integrity. To build and grow the corporate culture, two programs were designed to inspire creativity and collaboration: 1) Hackdays, in which teams of engineers worked to find solutions to problems they found personally engaging; and 2) Incubator, in which a team could pitch a product to the executive staff and potentially get time to turn the idea into a reality. Maintaining the culture also meant that employees were given a day off every month for personal development. LinkedIn Analytics data was used to measure overall strategy and results as well as employee satisfaction; "All Hands Meetings" twice a month included fun activities and some tiebacks to the company's culture along with reviewing the company's operating priorities and progress; and social impact programs were given a high priority. LinkedIn aimed to hire and promote from within, and when hiring externally looked for evidence of collaboration, humor, and passion. New employees were assigned a personal mentor, and all employees were part of initiatives to help colleagues learn new skills. The company's leadership had to figure out how it could maintain or modify these activities as it quickly grew.

On April 5, 2012, President Barack Obama signed into law the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, dramatically changing the landscape for many companies raising capital. One of the most interesting sections of the Act is Title III, the CROWDFUND Act, which enables entrepreneurs and small business owners to sell limited amounts of equity in their companies to a large number of investors via social networks and various Internet platforms. Prior to the CROWDFUND Act, selling equity interests in companies via crowdfunding was for all practical purposes illegal under United States securities laws. The Act attempts to exempt crowdfunding from expensive registration requirements and allow crowdfunding websites to avoid the classification of broker, which would impose substantial registration costs on such sites. Through the CROWDFUND Act, equity-based crowdfunding has the potential to open funding opportunities to countless underfunded entrepreneurs and small businesses. In addition, it can provide investors with new ways to diversify their portfolios. However, the benefits of crowdfunding do not come without substantial risks. Given the combination of unsophisticated investors, inherently risky businesses, and the zeitgeist that changed regulations quickly, crowdfunding must be approached with caution.

Even in these financially challenging times, business performance always comes down to a firm's competitive advantages. Subsequently, how can companies sustain a long-run competitive advantage, especially in the face of increasing competition? Apart from the pat answer that innovation is critical to organizational survival, we argue that it is the innovation process and how companies manage it that forms the foundation of a resilient organization. Our research finds that organizational innovation processes take three main forms: reactive, proactive, and anticipatory innovators. It is from anticipatory innovators that resilient organizations emerge. Here, resilient organizations not only anticipate the needs of buyers but do so by creating an innovation orientation within the firm's culture. This culture-based focus goes beyond any specific innovation; it directs leaders to create an organizational culture that is receptive to innovative ideas and to the changes they produce. Here, the competitive advantage is not so much innovation per se but the organization's ability to continuously create competitive advantages based on innovations.

Transformational leadership has emerged as one of the most important approaches for understanding and influencing employee effectiveness. Inherent in this approach is the belief that transformational leaders inspire employees to greater levels of motivation and performance. Recent evidence has shown that this effect is accomplished by managing the meaning of work for employees, yet it is often unclear exactly how leaders may influence perceptions of work for their employees. Consequently, in this article, we present behavioral and verbal cues leaders may use to enact positive change in their employees.

This article aims to scrutinize an emerging and prominent type of work team in organizations: the spontaneous virtual team (SVT). Despite the promising benefits an SVT can provide, it is confronted with great challenges throughout its lifecycle. In this article, we first highlight the unique structure and characteristics of SVTs as compared to other conventional types of work teams. Furthermore, we decompose the lifecycle of an SVT into three stages. We then use interview data among SVT managers and participants across several industries to analyze the challenges, corresponding solutions, and the role of information and communication technologies in each of the three stages. Understanding the emerging SVTs will be of salient value to professionals and corporate executives who are interested in finding effective technology-enabled means and work patterns to improve organizational work performance. The current work can also serve as a basis for future academic research on exploring the SVT phenomenon.

Over the past 20 years, a convergence has occurred regarding the importance of building relationships with valuable customers as the cornerstone of service strategy. Customer satisfaction and delight have been associated with supporting the retention and growth of important relationships. More recently, firms have adopted penalties and fees as a central means of growing revenue. This has caused friction with the programs targeted at improving customer relations, and increased defections and spurred government regulation. In this article, we collect and analyze data to identify the aspects of penalties that generate customer dissatisfaction and negative emotional and behavioral responses. We offer guidelines for the implementation of penalties that balance the goals of revenue generation and customer loyalty. These include: preventing unintentional failures, managing the perceived magnitude of penalties, effectively educating customers on the offer, ensuring that penalties are clear and transparent, linking penalty decisions to responsibility for the transgression, taking into account narrowly missing avoiding a penalty, and consideration of the customer relationship and employee empowerment.

Recent trends in advertising and social media (e.g., facial/body recognition technologies) will change how people need to think about their digital representations and privacy, as well as how managers can use these technologies to interact with customers. The term avatar is usually associated with a video game character or a pictorial representation on a social network, and among other components of the definition of the concept is the notion that users control the avatar's appearance and actions. Facial recognition and video analytic technologies being applied in public digital signage displays and on social networks like Facebook capture and create an embodied biometric database that is essentially an avatar-like profile that will be used for marketing products and supporting consumer applications. In this article we discuss the nature of these new marketing avatars, which we call mavatars, and offer a framework for understanding where and how these embodied profiles are and will be used. We also discuss and speculate how these representations and the applications they spawn will evolve; where they will be used; and the ramifications of these embodied representations for consumers, managers, and society at large.

redBus has enjoyed tremendous success in the structurally unattractive, fragmented, and non-transparent market for private bus travel bookings by introducing a technology platform to bridge the supply-demand gap in real-time. This technology platform connects the bus operators, travel agents, and bus travelers in a seamless and transparent manner. redBus is considered an industry transformation change agent that has altered the dynamics of the bus travel booking industry by using a disruptive business model to eliminate the pain points of the bus operators and travelers and provide greater convenience and efficiency. This case examines the evolution of the company’s business model and considers redBus’s next growth step. Should it expand beyond the Indian market to receptive Western and Asian markets, diversify its portfolio of service offerings to include air travel, hotels, and tour packages, or simply continue to focus on what it does best?

In 2004, Boston's preeminent homeless shelter, Pine Street Inn, faced the prospect of steadily dwindling funds for shelter services over the next few years. This stark reality-combined with persistent frustrations at finding permanent homes for homeless clients-persuaded Pine Street's director and board to regroup, gather data, and rethink Pine Street's organizational strategy. The Harvard Kennedy School has designed two cases that look at this juncture in Pine Street's history-this one, intended for an introductory statistics class and a second case, intended for a strategic management class. Each case is designed to stand on its own. It is also possible to use the cases in sequence-the statistics case followed by the management case. There is some overlap in the content of the two written cases, as the description of Pine Street's history and organizational identity is included in both. This case, designed to introduce the concept of statistical "outliers," consists of two parts: • Five-page written case introduces the Pine Street Inn, provides a brief description of its origins, history, and mission, in the context of a burgeoning homelessness population between its founding in 1969 and 2004, when the case dilemma is set. The key point is to understand the strong historical commitment of Pine Street (1) to turn no one away (making it the place of last resort for many of the "hardest core" homeless in Boston) and (2) to provide a respectful, non-judgmental, and non-conditional welcome to all. • Data from the length of stay study, presented in spreadsheet form. Students are challenged to interpret the length of stay data, in the context of Pine Street's history and organizational identity, and to consider whether it suggests a new path forward. Case number 1988.0

Spreadsheet Supplement for HKS748

In 2004, Boston's preeminent homeless shelter, Pine Street Inn, faced the prospect of steadily dwindling funds for shelter services over the next few years.This stark reality-combined with persistent frustrations at finding permanent homes for homeless clients-persuaded Pine Street's director and board to regroup, gather data, and rethink Pine Street's organizational strategy. The Harvard Kennedy School has designed two cases that look at this juncture in Pine Street's history-this one, intended for a strategic management class, and another case, intended for an introductory statistics class. This case, designed to teach about the important role of organizational culture when changing an organization's mission, begins by introducing Pine Street's history and organizational identity as a place of last resort for many of the "hardest core" homeless in Boston. The case goes on to describe how, in 2004, faced with dwindling funding, Pine Street's director and board decided to commission a study that analyzed how long each incoming homeless client stayed at its shelters over a two-year period. The striking results: a small number of homeless people were "chronic" shelter-stayers, while the vast majority came and went in 10 days or fewer. About 20 per-cent stayed between 10 days and 20 weeks. Over the course of five years, these data, combined with Downie's frustrations at finding housing alternatives for shelter guests, lead Pine Street's director and board chair to propose a controversial new strategy: to shift from an organization that primarily provides the homeless with shelter beds and services to one that primarily provides permanent supportive housing to a subset of the homeless population-the chronically homeless-while providing a smaller pool of shelter beds to short-term stayers and a combination of shelter beds and transitional services to medium-term stayers. The case ends by posing board and staff concerns about the proposal. Case number 1989.0