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Student Spreadsheet to accompany product W26681.

In May, 2020, Rio Tinto PLC, a global mining company, blasted a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal site in the Juukan Gorge, an area in Western Australia. While Rio Tinto's actions were legal, the company was nonetheless widely criticized for its blasting of the sacred site, which contained remains and artefacts dating back tens of thousands of years. Furthermore, investigations revealed that Rio Tinto had knowledge of the sacred nature of the site. Internal investigations also revealed that the company had earmarked the site as being important to the Aboriginal peoples. The reaction to the blast was swift and unforgiving.

Role play assignments for product W26681.

Vimeo, Inc. (Vimeo), led by Anjali Sud, was a New York City-based listed company that operated across the entirety of the video creation and distribution value chain. When the company was spun off from its corporate parent in a May 2021 initial public offering, Vimeo was growing but not yet profitable. As the country and the world was recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, Vimeo and a fast-growing set of competitors were facing the end of a nearly two-year tailwind that had helped them grow very quickly. Sud and her team had to respond to growth and profitability challenges to help Vimeo maintain its industry leadership position.

On December 29, 2021, the independent shareholder advisory firm InGovern Research Services (InGovern) published a report accusing Asian Paints Limited (APL) of corporate governance lapses. Nearly 53 per cent of the shares of APL, which was based in Mumbai, India, were owned by its promoters and their families. InGovern had followed up on a whistle-blower’s report claiming that APL had engaged in several related-party transactions but had failed to adequately disclose them in its annual report. InGovern demanded large-scale changes in APL’s board of directors, and APL’s share price fell by approximately fourteen per cent after the charges were made public. The seven independent members on the company’s board had to respond to the accusations.

Vimeo, Inc. (Vimeo), led by Anjali Sud, was a New York City-based listed company that operated across the entirety of the video creation and distribution value chain. When the company was spun off from its corporate parent in a May 2021 initial public offering, Vimeo was growing but not yet profitable. As the country and the world was recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, Vimeo and a fast-growing set of competitors were facing the end of a nearly two-year tailwind that had helped them grow very quickly. Sud and her team had to respond to growth and profitability challenges to help Vimeo maintain its industry leadership position.

On December 29, 2021, the independent shareholder advisory firm InGovern Research Services (InGovern) published a report accusing Asian Paints Limited (APL) of corporate governance lapses. Nearly 53 per cent of the shares of APL, which was based in Mumbai, India, were owned by its promoters and their families. InGovern had followed up on a whistle-blower's report claiming that APL had engaged in several related-party transactions but had failed to adequately disclose them in its annual report. InGovern demanded large-scale changes in APL's board of directors, and APL's share price fell by approximately fourteen per cent after the charges were made public. The seven independent members on the company's board had to respond to the accusations.

In January 2022, Maha Research Labs Private Limited (MRL) needed to boost its sales force effectiveness (SFE). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, MRL experienced losses in sales revenue and saw dwindling profits through 2020 and 2021. The pandemic had changed the sales ecosystem of the pharmaceutical industry, with many physicians and retailers now preferring online sales presentations. MRL’s managing director was concerned about the increased marketing and selling expenses that were affecting the company’s profitability, and he had identified gaps in the company’s sales process, performance, and SFE. The managing director proposed investing ₹40 million for the implementation of an SFE program, and he had one week to convince his team that this investment would create a smarter, more efficient sales force, restrain operating costs, and generate much-needed profitability for MRL.

Intolerance and discrimination against LGBTQ+ identifying individuals are widespread in the workplace and in academic institutions. This case explores the consequences of intolerance and offers participants an opportunity to consider and practice how individuals can use inclusive language and mindful communication strategies to deal with episodes of intolerance. Learning how to break the silence when faced with taboo or challenging topics enables people to understand other individuals’ perspectives and draw them into a shared conversation, thereby fostering understanding. <br><br>The case focuses on the prevalence of common types of microaggressions and discrimination in the workplace and in academic institutions and enables participants to consider and role-play multiple mini cases connected to queer and trans experiences based on real-life events.

By the spring of 2021, My Sisters’ Place, a safe, welcoming, and inclusive support centre for women in London, Ontario, had welcomed countless women to Buchan House, a historic Victorian mansion located in downtown London, that had been generously donated by a local family. While it had become a safe haven for so many people in the community, the building’s age and heritage status also meant frequent and high maintenance costs, and the recent roofing repair bill was just another item on a long list of expenses. With strong community support, My Sisters’ Place had many plans for future programs and initiatives, but the organization’s manager was feeling a little overwhelmed by mounting financial needs, including the unexpected roof repair cost. As the manager of a not-for-profit social enterprise with limited funding, she understood that proceeding with the repair would translate into a painful cut somewhere—a reduction in services or in staff hours. Both would heavily impact the vulnerable population the organization was designed to serve, but the manager had to make a choice.

Ye Ji had a dream: to build a unicorn enterprise. Ji, a serial entrepreneur in his forties, had the experience of setting up three businesses as an entrepreneur. From 2010 to 2014, he owned and managed Dalian Lingdong Technology Development Co. Ltd. (Lingdong), which specialized in developing e-commerce systems. From 2014 to 2017, he was the agent for Baidu Waimai’s Dalian operations. In 2017, he set up Flashfood.Shop, a company providing office workers with affordable and convenient fresh meals, twenty-four hours a day. However, Flashfood.Shop was almost brought to a halt by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. By April 2021, Ji had yet to realize his entrepreneurial dream of building a unicorn enterprise. The time had come for him to make a decision. Should he stick with Flashfood.Shop’s operation and wait for a turnaround? Should he close Flashfood.Shop and return to Lingdong, a business with which he was more familiar? Or should he start over with a new venture? Ji needed to seriously consider how to choose his next step.

On July 15, 2021, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Loctek Ergonomic Technology Corp. (Loctek), located in Ningbo, China, was reviewing the mid-year financial report of his company. Loctek was a global leader in manufacturing and exporting office furniture—primarily monitor brackets and height-adjustable desks. Figures in the report portrayed the company’s solid growth in the midst of the global pandemic; the contribution from Loctek’s cross-border e-business was hard to miss. These figures assured the CEO that transforming Loctek from a traditional exporting business to a cross-border e-business was both correct and rewarding, despite some painful bumps and detours in the process. The CEO now had to decide whether to continue expanding Loctek’s overseas warehouses. If such an expansion were to occur, the resultant warehouse system could be opened to other small and mid-sized firms where international business had been strangled by limited storage capacity abroad. This idea, though never intended, had emerged during Loctek’s digital transformation. Considerable investments—in the millions of dollars—were at stake.

On July 15, 2021, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Loctek Ergonomic Technology Corp. (Loctek), located in Ningbo, China, was reviewing the mid-year financial report of his company. Loctek was a global leader in manufacturing and exporting office furniture-primarily monitor brackets and height-adjustable desks. Figures in the report portrayed the company's solid growth in the midst of the global pandemic; the contribution from Loctek's cross-border e-business was hard to miss. These figures assured the CEO that transforming Loctek from a traditional exporting business to a cross-border e-business was both correct and rewarding, despite some painful bumps and detours in the process. The CEO now had to decide whether to continue expanding Loctek's overseas warehouses. If such an expansion were to occur, the resultant warehouse system could be opened to other small and mid-sized firms where international business had been strangled by limited storage capacity abroad. This idea, though never intended, had emerged during Loctek's digital transformation. Considerable investments-in the millions of dollars-were at stake.

TravelBank is a tech startup founded by Duke Chung, Ching-Ho Fung, and Reid Williams in 2016 that provides companies with an online platform through which employees can book travel and directly generate expense reports using user-friendly technology. Within the first full year of offering travel, TravelBank had grown to $100M annually and managed travel spending for 100,000 users from 15,000 organizations. However, in 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic began, and travel was severely limited, causing issues for the company. This case explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on TravelBank, the company's crisis management strategy, and whether the founders should sell the company to an interested acquirer.

Supplement to case 423006

Organizations underperform, or fail, when members avoid partnering with managers--whether through subtle resistance, disagreement, protest, or walkout--to achieve common purpose. Managers should boost partnering not by affecting a pretense of leadership but through a nuanced balance of managerial authority and understanding of members' points of view. The objective of this article is to sharpen attention on the concept of partnership with organization members and how it relates to some of the important previous literature. We also argue that some of the previous scholarly work contributes to misconceptions related to these concepts. Our work is forward-looking in that it is motivated by the dangerous societal and cultural differences evident in the world, differences that surround management's decisions and that may induce an overuse of authority to quash disquiet. Using our experiences in both industry and academia, we argue that the crucial link between managers and members is leadership--not leadership thought of as directional and inspirational, but leadership as building a relationship toward common purpose through partnership. "Lead" and "leader" are sorely misused terms, and worse, substituting "leader" for "manager" is just plain wrong. We believe that managers become leaders only when followers agree to follow, not when the managers simply step forward energetically with direction. Managers are cheated by mistaken definitions. Reviewing past perspectives about what makes good leaders and managers, we rethink ways to enhance organizational harmony through a clearer understanding of managership, leadership, followership, and partnership. Only by thinking and acting as partners in common purpose can managers and members form the core of success in organizational endeavors.

Despite the proactive efforts of many firms to combat gender bias within their organizations, societal prejudices still disadvantage women leaders and the firms who employ them. This external gender bias shapes outside stakeholder evaluations of women leaders' efforts in various ways, and firms need strategies to cope with this external gender bias. We examine the conditions that might alleviate this burden of external bias and what women leaders and top executives can do to leverage these conditions--from a strategic positioning perspective--that will effectively allow female leaders to differentiate their work. To do this, we synthesize and build upon evidence that the external gender bias against women leaders diminishes when they lead in areas that are unconventional rather than mainstream. We then propose a two-step process based on (1) identifying the likely threat of external gender bias, which is stronger in some industry contexts than others, and (2) leveraging unconventionality to circumvent male prototypical comparisons, thereby reducing the hazards of external gender bias.

It is not a secret that many leadership development programs are not producing intended results, and the majority of first-time managers are ineffective. Even though organizations prioritize leadership development, most companies recognize that their programs need improvement in selecting and developing first-time managers. Perhaps it is time to reconsider the assumptions that these programs are based on. First, while organizations tend to promote high-performing individual contributors, the mindsets of an effective individual contributor do not translate to effective leadership mindsets. Second, leadership development programs generally assume that new managers can change behavior by focusing on skill development. These programs fail to identify, name, and address the underlying mindsets that influence individual action. In this article, I highlight research on leadership and leadership mindsets that can replace the flawed assumptions of underperforming leadership selection and training programs. Building on leadership mindset research, I make recommendations to help organizations better select and train new managers.

Most CEOs take a narrow, tactical view of pricing and delegate pricing to lower levels of the organization. This myopic approach is costly, as it prevents companies from realizing their potential. In the hands of the best-run companies, pricing is not a battlefield tactic to win a particular competitive skirmish but a transformative long-term strategy for sustained competitive advantage. We present an agenda of six specific action items that defines how to unlock the power of pricing. CEOs and senior executives, our research suggests, should not set prices, but instead, they should create the context, the capabilities, the behaviors, the infrastructure, and the aspirations that enable their organization to excel in pricing.