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The case describes the efforts of Anna Wagner as the newly promoted president of Epsilon Products as she plans to launch a major diversification for the business. Epsilon is a unit of the much larger Sussex Corporation (a disguised company), a diversified luxury goods company. More recently Epsilon has set up a joint venture with a Philippine-based company, Acoba, to develop a bio-leather material to be used in a new line of bags and purses. While the products have been well received by customers, the bio-leather initiative code named Project PineAlpha, has not proven profitable given low production runs. In order to increase production volumes, Epsilon has just received board support to expand the joint venture and launch a line of products that would be sold outside Sussex stores, an unprecedented move for the company. Meanwhile, Wagner, who is just taking over as president of Epsilon, is not well known by Sussex's CEO and Chair. Wagner has to decide how to roll out the new PineAlpha strategy, how to position and staff the new unit, and how to deal with the inevitable resistance to change from employees, both inside Epsilon but also Sussex overall.

St. Luke’s Hospital (SLH) started out as a community hospital (CH) to help rehabilitate patients who had undergone or were undergoing treatment at acute-care hospitals. By 2016, SLH’s range of services had increased manifold, making SLH one of the few CHs with a comprehensive suite of services, such as rehabilitative, wound, and dementia care. Beyond inpatient care, SLH also offered outpatient and support services such as day-patient rehabilitation, diagnostics and laboratory services, and home-care services. To meet the growing health-care needs of an aging population, Singapore adopted the CH concept for its national health-care master plan, which projected a tripling in the number of CH beds over the next 10–15 years. As more new public CHs were established, especially in the western region of Singapore—where SLH used to operate as the only CH—SLH had to review its role and future direction. To sustain its competitive advantage, should the organization invest its resources into strengthening its existing capabilities, or diversify into new areas of growth? Tan had to provide his recommendation at the next quarterly board meeting.

St. Luke's Hospital (SLH) started out as a community hospital (CH) to help rehabilitate patients who had undergone or were undergoing treatment at acute-care hospitals. By 2016, SLH's range of services had increased manifold, making SLH one of the few CHs with a comprehensive suite of services, such as rehabilitative, wound, and dementia care. Beyond inpatient care, SLH also offered outpatient and support services such as day-patient rehabilitation, diagnostics and laboratory services, and home-care services. To meet the growing health-care needs of an aging population, Singapore adopted the CH concept for its national health-care master plan, which projected a tripling in the number of CH beds over the next 10-15 years. As more new public CHs were established, especially in the western region of Singapore-where SLH used to operate as the only CH-SLH had to review its role and future direction. To sustain its competitive advantage, should the organization invest its resources into strengthening its existing capabilities, or diversify into new areas of growth? Tan had to provide his recommendation at the next quarterly board meeting.

This case is based on real negotiation dilemmas posed by a crisis generated when a peace agreement signed between the Colombian government and the guerrilla group FARC-EP was outvoted in a national plebiscite, causing the necessity of the renegotiation of the peace accord in order to gain public legitimacy. Both parties need to revise the agreement and adjust it in a short period of time in which the ceasefire is in place. Negotiators are pressured to maintain the spirit of the original accord, avoid conflict relapse, while making adjustments to respond to the population's concerns and attain legitimate approval of Parliament.

This case is based on real negotiation dilemmas posed by a crisis generated when a peace agreement signed between the Colombian government and the guerrilla group FARC-EP was outvoted in a national plebiscite, causing the necessity of the renegotiation of the peace accord in order to gain public legitimacy. Both parties need to revise the agreement and adjust it in a short period of time in which the ceasefire is in place. Negotiators are pressured to maintain the spirit of the original accord, avoid conflict relapse, while making adjustments to respond to the population's concerns and attain legitimate approval of Parliament.

As the leading e-commerce platform in Hong Kong, Hong Kong TV Shopping Network Company Limited (HKTVmall) faced an important challenge in early 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic had severely disrupted the global supply chain for personal protective equipment (PPE), and prices for masks and other products on its website had skyrocketed. While management had little knowledge or experience in sourcing or producing such products, they wondered whether they had a responsibility to act on this matter. Despite its meteoric growth, the company had yet to turn a profit, so the executives were unsure as to whether they should let the invisible hand of the market restore the equilibrium between supply and demand or take an extra step to guarantee a stable supply of PPE. If the platform intervened, was contracting with new local suppliers the right way to go, or should HKTVmall itself start producing PPE?

In late 2022, E-Mart, South Korea’s leading supermarket chain, had pulled out of major Asian markets such as China and Vietnam after experiencing poor performance, and the company planned to expand into the US market. In the Asian markets, E-Mart relied on a direct entry mode, but in the US it changed its mode of entry by acquiring local companies and planning to open new grocery brand stores. Although the US market has substantial growth opportunities due to its large size, it is not easy to succeed there because of limited profit margins and fierce competition. Could E-Mart establish a foothold in the US supermarket and grocery store industry? What strategies should it develop to succeed in this new market?

In 2003, International Paper (IP) came under the leadership of new Chief Executive Officer John Faraci, a paper industry veteran who has spent his career in IP, across multiple functions and titles. The company had grown, organically and via acquisition, to be an international producer of kraft paper, coated paper and packaging, but hit a road block as growth had stagnated industry-wide. Faraci immediately launched a transformational campaign to turn the business around, even amid activist investors and other pressures.

In late 2022, E-Mart, South Korea's leading supermarket chain, had pulled out of major Asian markets such as China and Vietnam after experiencing poor performance, and the company planned to expand into the US market. In the Asian markets, E-Mart relied on a direct entry mode, but in the US it changed its mode of entry by acquiring local companies and planning to open new grocery brand stores. Although the US market has substantial growth opportunities due to its large size, it is not easy to succeed there because of limited profit margins and fierce competition. Could E-Mart establish a foothold in the US supermarket and grocery store industry? What strategies should it develop to succeed in this new market?

RideAlly, a ride-hailing platform headquartered in Bangalore, India, catered to the business-to-consumer and business-to-business segments. It operated in Bangalore and Hyderabad. Hariprakash Agrawal, the chief executive officer and founder, needed to devise a plan to sustain the business in India’s highly competitive ride-hailing market. It was time to think about scaling up the business, which needed significant investment and the right strategy to gain a solid foothold in the industry. Agrawal’s team needed to prepare a pitch for investors and present a strategy for penetrating the market and expanding the business.

<p align="justify">Acen Haitao Jiang, founder and chief executive officer of Aomi, faced a dilemma. Founded in 2016, Aomi was an online food delivery platform in Macao with a local market share of over 90 per cent. Nevertheless, Macao was a small market with a population of about 680,000 and an area of 32.9 square kilometres, which was becoming a bottleneck for Aomi’s growth. Jiang was considering a Y-strategy, composed of three business development strands: food delivery (i.e., maintaining the core business); business diversification (e.g., livestream commerce and online supermarket services); and international expansion to new, larger markets (e.g., Hong Kong). With limited resources and potential risks, however, Jiang was struggling to choose between diversification and market expansion. June 1, 2022, would mark Aomi’s sixth anniversary and Jiang had to decide on a growth strategy before then.

In May 2021, Discovery, Inc. announced the acquisition of WarnerMedia from AT&T, with David Zaslav to become the Chief Executive Officer of the new consolidated media giant, which would be called Warner Bros. Discovery. Now, the company and new leadership face the simultaneous issues of immediate debt servicing concerns as well as longer-term trends leading to the decline of demand for cable television. With the consolidation, there was also organizational restructuring, which included a steep reduction in headcount as well as brutal, decisive cuts of less profitable business lines.

In March 2020, as COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Atish Banerjea, the chief information officer of Meta Platforms Inc. (Meta) was tasked during a high-stakes senior management meeting with moving the company online. Banerjea knew that the future growth of Meta was dependent on talent and digitally enabling workers. He wondered how he was going to digitize Meta’s office-centric culture, in which almost all recruitment, onboarding, and workforce management activities relied on in-person engagement and processes. Until that point, all of Meta’s focus—and Banerjea’s mandate—had been to enhance in-person work. Banerjea assembled a team to rewire Meta’s onboarding and employee experience processes. They would have to quickly lead Meta’s pivot to remote onboarding and remote work around the world at scale.

In March 2020, as COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Atish Banerjea, the chief information officer of Meta Platforms Inc. (Meta) was tasked during a high-stakes senior management meeting with moving the company online. Banerjea knew that the future growth of Meta was dependent on talent and digitally enabling workers. He wondered how he was going to digitize Meta's office-centric culture, in which almost all recruitment, onboarding, and workforce management activities relied on in-person engagement and processes. Until that point, all of Meta's focus-and Banerjea's mandate-had been to enhance in-person work. Banerjea assembled a team to rewire Meta's onboarding and employee experience processes. They would have to quickly lead Meta's pivot to remote onboarding and remote work around the world at scale.

Over two decades old, Effet Boomerang is an advertising agency based in Quebec, Canada. In recent years, it has found it harder to win client contracts, which has been partially due to changes in the industry. This has left its co-founder and president examining her options for repositioning the agency. This case provides an interesting opportunity to introduce students to internal and external analyses by having them examine how a small firm may leverage its strengths to effectively adapt to a changing industry.

ZOLOZ, a biometrics platform within the Chinese technology provider Ant Group, served more than one hundred million overseas users with its advanced biometrics identification technology. In 2018, ZOLOZ’s general manager was appointed to promote the company’s facial recognition technology overseas, extending the company’s global ambitions. ZOLOZ aimed to not only increase its user base but also promote the growth of electronic Know Your Customer (e-KYC) processes. The company successfully expanded to the Philippines and planned to enter other Southeast Asian countries, helping users open accounts remotely. ZOLOZ’s general manager needed to decide how it could continue to expand the use of facial recognition technology to the rest of Southeast Asia.

This case is about designing and scaling up an innovative business model that leverages technology to solve the age-old Indian problem of expensive, unreliable, and unresponsive rural distribution of consumer goods. It explores an important decision concerning the growth path of a digital native, unicorn organization, ElasticRun, via exploit-led or explore-led strategy. The case is an inspiration to managers to take on yet-unsolved problems by leveraging the potential of crowdsourcing and technology.

In July 2021, Scarlett Johansson, the star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Black Widow, sued The Walt Disney Company (Disney), the producer of the film, for breach of contract when it simultaneously released the movie in theatres and on Disney+, the company's streaming platform, which resulted in a reduction of her compensation. The film saw a sharp drop in ticket sales in weeks two and three and ended its theatrical run with a much lower box-office take than many of the other MCU films. The lawsuit alleged that Disney's vertical integration into streaming had caused a conflict of interest that had adverse consequences for talent compensation. Disney's chief executive officer, Bob Chapek, was faced with the difficult decision of how to address talent compensation in light of streaming's growing popularity, as Disney+ competed on the quality and availability of content.

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. They 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 enhance their skills in facilitating and participating in healthy and productive dialogue about complex and provocative issues. This installment of the series examines Raymond Carver's "A Small, Good Thing," in which married couple Howard and Ann find comfort from an unexpected source after losing their son. In the story, their child is hit by a car on the morning of his birthday and later dies. As his parents grieve, they receive threatening phone calls from a baker who is angry that Ann never picked up the cake she ordered. Once the baker discovers their son has died, he apologizes and they talk into the morning of loneliness and grief. Carver's story examines how humans sometimes fail to communicate effectively due to misinterpreted context.