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Leading analytics firm, Insights Global Analytics, handled many analytics processes and projects requiring extensive domain and statistical expertise. Employees with prior analytics experience had skill-sets that could be utilized for other projects. Analysts and consultants working on business research projects had strong domain knowledge about various technological trends. However, sometimes one team did not know about the rich skills possessed by another team. To build a knowledge-sharing culture that would facilitate the incubation of new ideas, spread different skills across the organization, break the silos among teams and promote free exchange of ideas among employees the company decided to implement a knowledge management (KM) program. A team was appointed with the challenge of selecting an appropriate cost-effective technology that would achieve the objective of fostering a knowledge-sharing culture.

International Services Group (ISG) serves global and local clients with accounting solutions. ISG has grown substantially over the last few decades, thanks to a very pro-active management culture at the local subsidiary level. While this growth has been good, it has also introduced certain inefficiencies. ISG’s chief executive officer now wants to change the organization from a locally responsive structure to a globally integrated one by introducing a global accounting software program. The case describes how the implementation meeting, which was conducted in a video-conferencing format, failed. The case deals with boundary-spanning leadership issues across functional, cultural, hierarchical and geographic domains, and it highlights the managerial side of change.

The Chery Automobile case focuses on the Chinese company, which, in 2007, was the fourth largest automotive company in China. Chery was growing at enormous speed, and was already exporting to over 50 countries, primarily in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Chery was determined to enter the coveted U.S. and Western European markets, and in 2007 it struck a strategic alliance with the struggling U.S.-based Chrysler Company. The case explores the barriers that Chery was facing trying to enter these markets and asks students to evaluate if the strategic alliance was the best strategy for it to eventually establish itself independently in the mature and discerning U.S. and European markets.

This case finds Chery after the collapse of its alliance with Chrysler. For Chrysler it meant losing one of its most promising routes to building a competitive small-car lineup for consumers who were pinched at the pump by rising gas prices. For Chery, it meant losing Chrysler's technical ability, quality, and regulatory ratings consistent with U.S. and Western European markets. Students place themselves in the shoes of Chery executives as the company goes about creating a new strategy to tap into the U.S. and European markets.

Parul Prakashani started out as a textbook publisher in 1961. Slowly, it diversified into a wide repertoire of non-textbooks for children, young adults and adults. In early 2013, the non-textbook division of the company is not earning enough revenue, while strong revenues are coming from textbooks. The major issue faced by Parul is how to grow the non-textbook business. This requires significant branding activity and a marketing communication plan. Phasing out the non-textbook business is not an option, since it is close to the founder’s heart and lends prestige to the company. The major dilemma facing the founder is whether to allocate more resources to the non-textbook division to improve growth, and if so, how to allocate these resources. Parul must think up new products and new markets in order to stay in the business of publishing non-textbooks.

The chief executive officer of Oy Moomin Characters Ltd. (Oy Moomin) had dramatically increased revenues since he joined the firm, but breaking into the major markets of the world, including the United States, was proving to be quite difficult. The firm’s long-standing relationship with its master agent, Bull’s Press of Sweden, had given the firm a dominant presence in the Nordic region and Japan but little presence elsewhere. He must consider his options for sustaining the growth of the firm, which involves developing a strategy for the character licensing industry, understanding sources of sustainable value creation, and adapting to the demands of a global marketplace.

Neelkanth Drugs Pvt. Ltd. (NDPL), one of the leading pharmaceutical distributors in Delhi, was making plans for further expansion, and the dynamic nature of the business was leading this small- and medium-sized enterprise towards implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The company’s head of information technology had prepared a complete report on the various ERP solutions available for NDPL and presented it to the chief executive officer (CEO). According to this analysis, cloud-based ERP was the best solution out of the various options available. The CEO was indecisive because of NDPL’s past cloud experience, which had been disruptive and unsatisfactory, to say the least. The CEO pondered whether it would make sense to go for a cloud-based ERP solution, or whether it would make more sense to look for an alternative that may not be as cost-effective but that would entail less risk.

In 2012, Manish Enterprises, a leading coal supplier firm located in Ludhiana, India, was facing a decline in growth. A year later, a business graduate was appointed as the chief executive officer of the company. He managed to reduce the cash cycle from six months to three months by running the operations of the firm efficiently. Sales increased by 127 per cent, and the firm began financing its growth by taking advances from customers. The firm was thus able to reduce its investment in current assets. However, despite adopting best practices, the profitability of the business was declining. The challenges then faced by Manish Enterprises were to manage growth and liquidity while retaining profitability.

Started in 2001, Putien, a full-service Chinese restaurant, has grown successfully in Singapore. By the end of 2011, it has nine restaurants in Singapore, one in Jakarta, Indonesia and one in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Except for the one in Jakarta, which is a joint venture, all the other restaurants are fully owned by the company. From the beginning, Putien has differentiated itself from its competition by focusing on its unique cuisine, based on fresh and flavourful food from Fujian Province, China and by its creation of a home-like atmosphere with fine furnishings and tableware, elegant décor and a serving staff that is warm and sincere. The company keeps in touch with its customers through requesting feedback and answering queries on Facebook and Twitter. Now, the founder and chief executive officer is considering growth by expanding into international markets. With limited international experience, he needs to consider carefully where to go and how to enter these markets without jeopardizing the quality standards that have made Putien so successful.

In the spring of 2003, the World Health Organization identified a worldwide epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) that had started in China and spread to the rest of the world, with early cases reported in Toronto and Vancouver. Little was known about the disease, which meant that symptoms were often misdiagnosed as simple flu, and the infection spread rapidly. After the third SARS-related death occurred in Ontario in mid-March, the provincial premier declared a state of emergency, which was finally lifted on May 17 when it appeared the outbreak had ended. A week later, on May 23, four new cases were reported at Toronto’s North York General Hospital. The lack of public health infrastructure in Ontario combined with its hospitals’ noncompliance with following existing policies concerning infection control and especially the lack of communication between hospitals, health organizations and levels of governments, with numerous spokespersons making uncoordinated and sometimes contradictory announcements, all led to the public perception that the government and health care authorities did not know what they were doing or were lying about the severity of the outbreak. Before the next provincial election, the premier must examine and address what could have been prevented, how public health interventions were managed and the differences between public health responses in Toronto and Vancouver.

In May 2013, the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, proposed to create the Churches’ Mutual Credit Union as an alternative to payday lenders. His chief target was Wonga.com, an online provider of short-term loans that was founded in 2006 in the United Kingdom and quickly grew to become the largest payday lender in the country. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, short-term lenders saw a rapid increase in business as banks tightened their lending standards. However, they often charged as much as 5,000 per cent interest or more. Customers were frequently unsophisticated borrowers, and Wonga’s advertising appeared to be directed to vulnerable populations and children. The archbishop did not feel that regulation was the answer to payday lenders and instead sought to compete with them. Is his strategy viable?

This relatively short case describes the development of Rolls-Royce's (RR) Seletar plant in Singapore, and in particular how the plant moved very quickly from a factory receiving information and innovation from its sister facility in the United Kingdom to a node in RR's manufacturing network. The Seletar plant in Singapore is RR's first overseas plant to assemble aircraft engines, as well as to produce some high tech components. The case is divided into three main parts, each discussing a key question: Why did RR decide to set up a plant in Singapore? How did RR develop in the early days of the plant (e.g. talent development, transfer of knowledge, etc.)? How did the RR Seletar plant evolve from a receiver of knowledge to a partner in the network? The case ends by asking the question how to maintain the good network interactions after the plant has matured, and the initial attention paid to the new plant by the UK management has subsided. The case pays particular attention to the transfer of knowledge from the UK to Singapore and the development of a capable local workforce and management.

As an engineering company operating in India’s steel sector, Pennar Industries boasts gross sales of INR 7.3 billion in financial Year 2009. Pennar had been on the brink of bankruptcy in the early 2000s, but, thanks to foreign investment, the company went on to experience a remarkable turnaround. In 2009, the board of directors at Pennar is considering a share buyback.<br><br>As the chief financial officer at Pennar Industries prepares the share-buyback proposal that is due to be presented to the board of directors for approval, he wonders whether a share buyback represents the right decision for the company and its shareholders. If so, what buyback price should he recommend to the board? And if not, what other investment options should the company consider instead?

Transfer pricing used by multinational corporations to lower its tax burden, thereby increasing its consolidated income, can have far-reaching implications for the stakeholders, as a fund manager for Saskhedge fund found out the hard way. A stock investment the manager had made in Cameco Corporation has dropped its value by 20 per cent. In addition, Canada Revenue Agency has initiated a law suit against the firm for alleged tax avoidance in relation to the company's transfer pricing practices with its Swiss subsidiary. The suit could result in an additional tax liability of $800 million to $850 million. The manager needs to explain to the investment board the implications of the lawsuit on the stock price and advise the board on whether the projected $800 to $850 million is a fair estimate.

The national head of sales for consumer business for one of India’s largest paint companies was anxious and concerned about the plummeting levels of employee engagement at his company. He was also aware of an increasing number of complaints about employee’s attitudes and their approach towards both work and the organization from people in senior management. As a seasoned business manager, he knew that he needed to understand and address the gaps between the employee’s expectations and the needs of the organization.

Yamato Transport Co., Ltd. innovatively used the field cast model of housewives as part-time employees to meet the increasing delivery demands of morning peak-load hours. The housewives provided Yamato with a cost-efficient source of human resources and the nimbleness to adjust its staff deployment to respond reliably and quickly to customers’ needs. A series of recruitment, training, and compensation and appraisal processes was designed for the field cast model.<br><br>The case outlines the challenges with the implementation of the field cast model and the decision facing Yamato’s managers of whether to expand it throughout the company’s Japanese operations. Yamato’s managers were largely satisfied with the progress of the field cast model; although field casts made up less than 2 per cent of the delivery manpower at Yamato, they played a crucial role in improving customer satisfaction levels and lowering parcel delivery costs. However, the implications of the expansion plan were multi-dimensional. At an operational level, the inconsistency in the field casts’ performance could be magnified as the number of field casts continued to increase over the coming months. As well, the sales drivers might struggle to cope with the additional responsibility to train and supervise field casts. More broadly, the sustainability of the field cast model was unknown because of Japan’s changing social structure. In addition, with the improvement of the global economy since 2010, the supply of part-time employees was threatened by competition from alternative employment opportunities.

Kundanmal Mukanmal Trans Logistics Pvt. Ltd. (KM) is a well-known road transportation company in Western India, operating out of its headquarters as a family business in Jaipur. It functions as a logistics provider for flatbed steel and finished automobiles (primarily four-wheeler passenger cars and light to medium cargo vehicles). The co-executive directors are grappling with large delays with the workshop repairs that are hurting the timely truck availability and causing immense customer dissatisfaction (with about 14 per cent of the trucks taking more than one day to complete their repair). The co-executive directors believe that staffing the workshop with the right number of labourers may address the issue of long repair delays — but is the issue just with the labour availability? Is the number of bays available for repair sufficient for the volume of truck repairs? What is causing the trucks to pile up at the workshop?

Since 2005, the chief executive officer of Kering, a conglomerate headquartered in Paris, has successfully streamlined the company’s business strategy to concentrate on luxury goods and sporting and lifestyle brands —including Gucci, Yves St-Laurent, Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga, among others — through selling off non-related businesses. By 2012, the company was more focused than ever before but was sluggish in one key aspect — its online presence. Like most competitors within the luxury industry, it was struggling with how it should capitalize on the benefits of a web presence, trying not to stray away from the luxury strategy of its brands. Kering recognized the importance of growing online, but needed to come up with an ideal approach to successfully grow the digital presence of its luxury brands.

Firms in Korea’s securities and brokerage industries have experienced fierce competition in the domestic market, which has led to international expansion being considered a popular strategic alternative. The chief executive officer of Hyundai Securities Co., Ltd., a Korean securities firm, envisions his company becoming the “pan-Asian market leader.” As a result, he is pursuing an international expansion strategy in Hong Kong and Singapore. However, given the popularity of international expansion in these areas, the markets are highly competitive. Has the CEO made an appropriate strategic decision?

Dicore, the third largest supplier of drilling services in the world, must increase its profitability. To do so, the executive committee is considering an expansion into the southwestern United States. The senior vice-president and general manager must create a plan that outlines whether or not Dicore should enter the southwest drilling market and, if so, if it should enter this market organically or through an acquisition.