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"For ghSMART, freedom is the first principle from which all good things flow"-Geoff Smart, Chairman and Founder, ghSMART. ghSMART was a leadership advisory firm that was grounded in the principle of freedom. Talented Consultants and Partners could work remotely from where they wanted to, they could work on whatever they wanted to, and with whoever they like. There was no up-or-out culture, and employees were rewarded based on outcomes, not hours worked. In January 2022, ghSMART & Company conducted a comprehensive review of its 12-year performance, revealing remarkable growth with nearly $100 million in revenue by 2021 and a strong reputation for employee satisfaction and client impact. However, after a decade of success, the firm faced challenges related to its freedom-based culture, including difficulties in promoting self-sustaining partners, limited knowledge sharing, and uncoordinated innovation efforts. To shape its future, the firm's leadership had identified five key questions regarding maintaining its culture, formalizing promotion policies, decentralizing or centralizing innovation, geographic expansion, and the possibility of going public to address capital constraints. This case discusses these questions, and the central question of whether the company should change or keep their freedom-first culture as the company continued to expand.

Sajjan Jindal, Chairman & Managing Director of JSW Steel, India's largest steel producer by market capitalization, was facing a dilemma. Steel demand in India was expected to grow exponentially over the next decade. However, given its traditional reliance on carbon, steel was a "hard to abate" sector and was one of the most highly polluting industries globally. It was particularly polluting in India, where its production relied heavily on the use of coal. Given investor's increasing focus on sustainability, and global regulatory changes that were likely to penalize high emitters, Jindal was acutely aware of the need to decarbonize production. But investing in these technologies required heavy capital expenditure. Moreover, technology was fast evolving and there was considerable uncertainty about which one would be the ultimate "winner." Jindal and his team needed to make decisions. What kind of emissions intensity should it target, how much should it allocate towards decarbonization strategies, and which technologies should it bet on?

US-based lingerie retailer Victoria’s Secret Stores Brand Management, LLC (Victoria’s Secret) was started by a man who had been embarrassed to shop for lingerie for his wife and aimed to make the lingerie purchasing experience more comfortable for men. In 2020, after struggling to adapt to changing consumer habits and tastes and suffering from decreasing quality in its products and increasing competition from online retailers, the company faced a final blow from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Revenue streams were drying up, stores were closing, and the company was struggling with a tarnished image resulting from its links to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Its parent company’s top management team and board of directors now faced a critical decision: Should they attempt to repair Victoria’s Secret’s brand image and fight to strengthen sales, sell the Victoria’s Secret brand, or spin off the brand?

This disguised case set in April 2016, based on true events, describes an existential crisis faced by an English law firm operating in Italy. English law firms entered Italy in the 1990s through alliances with reputed Italian firms. The intention was to gain access to the lucrative Italian legal market. When they started operations, these firms aimed to achieve a leading position in the Italian market (top three strategy). Hence, their Italian operations were afforded a high degree of autonomy and preserved their distinctive Italian identity. But later, in the 2000s, English law firms started adopting a one-firm strategy to integrate their Italian operations into the global network. This created a great deal of tension and complexity, as Italian professional logic differed radically from the English logic. Subsequently, alliances and mergers between the English and Italian firms unravelled quickly, resulting in an existential crisis for the English law firms in Italy after over a decade of operations. The case presents such a situation through the eyes of partner John Smith, of the firm Smith and Jones, who must determine how to avert such a crisis while taking into account the Italian legal approach, and without diluting the global nature of his firm.

This case is written to help students explore how companies can maintain and develop trust while innovating, how to identify and respond effectively to warning signs that they may not be as trusted as they believe, and how being trusted can aid in expanding and growing a business. In June 2021, Mikhail Lomtadze, co-founder and CEO of Kaspi.kz (Kaspi), the number one player in digital payments, fintech, and online commerce in Kazakhstan, was weighing paths to future growth. In the fourteen years since he became CEO, Lomtadze had transformed the business from a commercial bank into a leading technology company. By 2014, Kaspi had built an impressive ecosystem of three planforms: fintech products, digital payment products, and an online marketplace. Yet that same year, a bank run fueled by misinformation made it clear to Lomtadze that Kaspi wasn't as trusted as he thought. In 2017, Kaspi unrolled a super-app, fulfilling a vision they'd had from the get-go of being a one-stop shop for all the products and services they offered. In 2020, Kaspi turned its attention to new customers, creating a suite of products to make merchants' lives easier, and collaborated with the government to begin digitalizing the most used public services. Kaspi's products enjoyed widespread adoption and were used by about 50 percent of Kazakhstan's population that year. As Lomtadze considered expanding outside of Kazakhstan, he wondered if Kaspi could successfully export its company culture and approach to building trust, and how Kaspi's image as a homegrown brand could be used as an asset to its expansion strategy. In addition to the main case, two short cases on management's response to the 2014 bank run, designed to be taught in class, provide a striking example of a successful response to a trust crisis and show how lessons learned can help companies become even more trusted by customers and employees.

In November 2022, OpenAI launched the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT on the web. Demonstrating the ability to understand human language and generate human-like, high-quality dialogues, answers, essays, jokes, and even poetry, ChatGPT attracted 100 million users within two months—setting the record of the fastest-growing consumer app in history. This case introduces ChatGPT and generative AI, elaborates on ChatGPT’s underlying large language models, examines the drivers of the technology’s rapid adoption, and investigates potential use cases, risks, and societal impacts. Finally, through an optional design exercise, the case leads the students to explore how the technology can shape the future of business and society.

In November 2022, OpenAI launched the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT on the web. Demonstrating the ability to understand human language and generate human-like, high-quality dialogues, answers, essays, jokes, and even poetry, ChatGPT attracted 100 million users within two months-setting the record of the fastest-growing consumer app in history. This case introduces ChatGPT and generative AI, elaborates on ChatGPT's underlying large language models, examines the drivers of the technology's rapid adoption, and investigates potential use cases, risks, and societal impacts. Finally, through an optional design exercise, the case leads the students to explore how the technology can shape the future of business and society.

In January 2022, superstar-athlete-turned-entrepreneur David Beckham is deciding on a proposal that has the potential to significantly change the trajectory of his business career: Authentic Brands Group ('Authentic') has offered to engage in a strategic partnership that will see that company co-own and manage Beckham's brand and Beckham become a shareholder in Authentic. The proposed deal will yield a significant payment for Beckham in exchange for a 55% stake in his company, David Beckham Ventures. But as he will no longer own a majority stake in his commercial activities, it will also come with a handover of majority control. Is a joint venture with Authentic the right move for David Beckham and his team?

In June 2023, David Beckham, co-owner of Major League Soccer team Inter Miami CF, is hoping to find a way to bring Lionel Messi, widely regarded as one of the best players the world of soccer has ever seen, to his team. But Messi-a seven-time winner of the Ballon d'Or and fresh off a fairy-tale-like FIFA World Cup victory with the Argentine national team-is in high demand, and Inter Miami do not have the means to enter a bidding war, so Beckham and his partners will have to be creative. They have been working on an offer for Messi that involves a deal that runs until the winter of 2025, is worth between $20 million and $25 million in salary (including bonuses and other incentives), and that offers him an equity stake in Inter Miami after his retirement from professional soccer. Will the offer he and his partners have been preparing be sufficient to make Messi choose Miami?

A.P. Moller-Maersk (MAERSK), an integrated container logistics company based in Copenhagen, Denmark, has been on a decade long strategic transformation journey that was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. MAERSK’s ambitious strategic business transformation converted the organization from an unwieldy family-owned conglomerate to an integrated container and logistics company. This massive shift required new organizational capabilities, new leadership, and most importantly, a significant change in company culture. The transformation helped make MAERSK successful both from a business perspective (e.g., digital transformation, mergers, acquisitions) and from a culture transformation perspective. The company took appropriate steps to break away from a traditional culture without jeopardizing its core values. From a change management perspective, MAERSK’s 9,000 people managers evolved from “a victim mindset” within “a cycle of despair” to a “growth mindset” within “a cycle of hope.” However, the company faced several key questions about its future: “Why did it implement strategic change in the first place? What are the benefits of strategic transformation? Was the company’s transformation successful? What comes next? What challenges will it face in its consistent drive to be better?

A brief overview of how to measure social impact at nonprofits, social organizations, and impact investments.

A.P. Moller-Maersk (MAERSK), an integrated container logistics company based in Copenhagen, Denmark, has been on a decade long strategic transformation journey that was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. MAERSK's ambitious strategic business transformation converted the organization from an unwieldy family-owned conglomerate to an integrated container and logistics company. This massive shift required new organizational capabilities, new leadership, and most importantly, a significant change in company culture. The transformation helped make MAERSK successful both from a business perspective (e.g., digital transformation, mergers, acquisitions) and from a culture transformation perspective. The company took appropriate steps to break away from a traditional culture without jeopardizing its core values. From a change management perspective, MAERSK's 9,000 people managers evolved from "a victim mindset" within "a cycle of despair" to a "growth mindset" within "a cycle of hope." However, the company faced several key questions about its future: "Why did it implement strategic change in the first place? What are the benefits of strategic transformation? Was the company's transformation successful? What comes next? What challenges will it face in its consistent drive to be better?

Led by iconoclastic founder and chief executive officer Torstein Hagen, Viking River Cruises, Inc. (Viking) had revolutionized river cruising and established a leading market share in that segment of the cruise travel industry. In 2022, the firm chose to enter the fast-growing expedition segment of the industry with two newly constructed ships. It faced a critical strategic question: could Viking’s proven formula in river and ocean cruising convey a competitive advantage in the expedition segment as well? Viking had to decide how to position itself in this segment and whether to scale up quickly in advance of projected demand growth.

Autosalon Klokočka Holding s.r.o. (Autosalon Klokočka), a Czech Republic-based car dealership, needed to change its business ways. A family-owned car dealership, the company was founded in Prague in 1988 by Jan Klokočka. In the last thirty years, the company had grown into one of the largest authorized car dealers in the Czech Republic by providing a comprehensive range of services to car owners. But the automobile industry had been among the most severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. As automotive companies braced for a revival, they had to be prepared to undergo significant modifications to alter how they operated and generated value for consumers. Despite its continuous expansion over thirty years, Autosalon Klokočka had been experiencing substantial slowdown and financial losses. In 2020, the company recorded a significantly lower revenue than in the previous years. By early 2022, it was still unclear how long the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic would last and how changes in customer behaviour and capabilities, supply chains, channels, original equipment manufacturer strategic choices, and other crucial factors would affect Autosalon Klokočka. As the company found its financial position vulnerable, Jan Klokočka needed to determine how to mitigate negative consequences and create growth opportunities. How could the firm adapt its existing business model to improve profits in the next three to five years?

Led by iconoclastic founder and chief executive officer Torstein Hagen, Viking River Cruises, Inc. (Viking) had revolutionized river cruising and established a leading market share in that segment of the cruise travel industry. In 2022, the firm chose to enter the fast-growing expedition segment of the industry with two newly constructed ships. It faced a critical strategic question: could Viking's proven formula in river and ocean cruising convey a competitive advantage in the expedition segment as well? Viking had to decide how to position itself in this segment and whether to scale up quickly in advance of projected demand growth.

Autosalon Klokočka Holding s.r.o. (Autosalon Klokočka), a Czech Republic-based car dealership, needed to change its business ways. A family-owned car dealership, the company was founded in Prague in 1988 by Jan Klokočka. In the last thirty years, the company had grown into one of the largest authorized car dealers in the Czech Republic by providing a comprehensive range of services to car owners. But the automobile industry had been among the most severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. As automotive companies braced for a revival, they had to be prepared to undergo significant modifications to alter how they operated and generated value for consumers. Despite its continuous expansion over thirty years, Autosalon Klokočka had been experiencing substantial slowdown and financial losses. In 2020, the company recorded a significantly lower revenue than in the previous years. By early 2022, it was still unclear how long the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic would last and how changes in customer behaviour and capabilities, supply chains, channels, original equipment manufacturer strategic choices, and other crucial factors would affect Autosalon Klokočka. As the company found its financial position vulnerable, Jan Klokočka needed to determine how to mitigate negative consequences and create growth opportunities. How could the firm adapt its existing business model to improve profits in the next three to five years?

The "Moral Complexity in Leadership" series of cases and teaching notes help business instructors harness the power of fiction to prepare students for the moral and ethical dilemmas they will face throughout their careers. Meaningful fiction challenges students intellectually and emotionally; it reveals the inner worlds of human players and enables learning that can be difficult to access through case studies, commentary, or reporting. Through literature, students will wrestle with the kinds of problems they will face as leaders looking to make courageous decisions aligned with their moral codes. The works in this series represent a wide range of settings, viewpoints, and cultural frameworks; the characters are complex and contradictory, and the systems within which they operate (whether family, organizational, or cultural) influence them in varied ways. These cases have been taught to executive, full- and part-time MBA student audiences for many years. The series aims to increase students' understanding of moral frameworks and to enhance their skills in facilitating and participating in healthy and productive dialogue about complex and provocative issues. This installment of the series, "Hubris and Humility," examines the short story "Dead Men's Path," by the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. In the story, Michael Obi, the new headmaster of the Ndume Central School, hopes to modernize the school and surrounding community, both of which are deeply rooted in traditional ways and customs. However, he ultimately pays a high price for his "misguided zeal," which did not take into consideration the context or the interests of the school's stakeholders. Obi's experience offers powerful lessons to leaders tempted to implement their ideas in--and impose their values on--organizations or communities before taking the time to listen and learn. It highlights what can happen when leaders ignore the risks of hubris and fail to recognize the limits of their perspective.