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The chief executive officer (CEO) of Taiwan Taxi must assess the adoption of iCall by the firm's taxi drivers. When originally conceived, iCall was supposed to be the basis for substantial growth in the number of taxi drivers signing up with Taiwan Taxi. But even after many years, adoption still lags behind the plan. The CEO must assess the reasons for the slower adoption of iCall and make recommendations on whether to revise the goal or improve adoption in order to meet it. The case demonstrates the many complexities involved in realizing business value from the adoption of information technology.

The case deals with issues of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability in the specific setting of a medium-sized enterprise (Host Europe) in the IT industry. Host Europe is the third largest webhosting company in German-speaking Europe. In recent years, the company has put substantial efforts into living up to its CSR and improving sustainability. The case presents the IT sector in Europe and Germany and highlights several industry-related issues such as green IT (especially in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and e-waste) and the digital divide. Host Europe has already implemented a couple of measures, such as building a new energy-efficient green data centre, switching to renewable energy, promoting virtualization, introducing several workplace measures, pursuing efforts to improve family friendliness, and publishing a sustainability report. However, there are still some challenges ahead and students are asked to think about further efforts of Host Europe to complete its path to becoming a responsible and sustainable medium-sized IT company.The case can either be used as an introductory case for CSR in medium-sized businesses and sustainability in the IT industry, or in advanced-level CSR and sustainability courses. As an introductory case it provides in-depth insights into a company that has already put substantial efforts into becoming a responsible and sustainable IT company. Students learn about various sustainability and CSR issues and measures in the specific context of a medium-sized enterprise. As an advanced case for CSR and sustainability, it can be used to build upon the existing knowledge of students and to ask them to come up with other ideas and a sophisticated strategy to pursue further CSR and sustainability. For example, since Host Europe is not certified according to environmental or social standards yet, students could come up with a detailed and customized plan on how to implement such a management system for the company.

The chief executive officer (CEO) of Taiwan Taxi must assess the adoption of iCall by the firm's taxi drivers. When originally conceived, iCall was supposed to be the basis for substantial growth in the number of taxi drivers signing up with Taiwan Taxi. But even after many years, adoption still lags behind the plan. The CEO must assess the reasons for the slower adoption of iCall and make recommendations on whether to revise the goal or improve adoption in order to meet it. The case demonstrates the many complexities involved in realizing business value from the adoption of information technology.

This case, a supplement to Google in China (A), details the search engine’s cyber attack from within China, as well as Google’s response.

Set in November 2007, the case is about a soon-to-launch social networking website (Yumcha) in Australia intended for the country's significant Asian population and diaspora. The case describes the process that Yumcha's founder went through in establishing the entity, including her initial motivations and business rationale. The case goes on to describe the dilemma facing the founder in choosing a web developer for the site, including whether to source the developer from new online bidding platforms. The challenges involved in this relatively new means of sourcing and bidding for technical talent are presented. The case also outlines the strategy questions facing the founder concerning expanding the social networking venture in an external environment that has seen the rapid development and expansion of numerous other social networking websites.

The president of Unimicron must evaluate the degree to which the company's information systems support its business strategy. The case provides an extensive review of the company's history, its strategy and its key competitive and organizational moves. The case reviews the way in which information systems are used in the company, and challenges students to assess the degree of fit between strategy, organization and technology.

The director of Acute Care Information Management at University Health Network is thinking about how to form a steering committee and several working groups to manage the implementation and ongoing operation of the Medication Order Entry and Medication Administration Record module. This initiative would be the most challenging and complex the IT department had ever undertaken. She would need to address the concerns of administration, physicians and nurses.

Protegra is a small company established in 1998 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The company specializes in the area of computer software development and business performance consulting. Protegra features a unique organizational design, characterized by a lack of hierarchy and a collegial, professional culture centred on employee and customer values. Various information systems support Protegra's design. In the process of expanding into foreign markets and enlarging staff, Protegra has been concerned with preserving its way.

Praxis Language is a small company in China started by three non-Chinese entrepreneurs. Originally focused on teaching Chinese to native English speakers using podcasting and other online tools, Praxis has also developed content to teach English to native Chinese speakers, which the company perceives as a much bigger market. The case describes the challenges facing the co-founder of Praxis as he navigates emerging mobile technology (hardware and software), the complexities of doing business in China, and the consequences of explosive growth.

Pinnacle West is in the energy-related services business and headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. Its largest subsidiary, APS, is a power utility that serves over a million customers across Arizona. The case was written when one of the biggest recessions in recent history hit global and U.S. markets. Written from the perspective of the vice-president and chief information officer, the case chronicles the various recent successful process change initiatives at Pinnacle West. The vice-president has achieved initial success in instituting a process-oriented culture inside his own information technology (IT) services organization, and in some specific business units within Pinnacle West. He now faces a significant crossroads in his process orientation strategy for Pinnacle West. He has to devise a strategy for a wider rollout of a process-oriented strategy throughout Pinnacle West and determine if the larger enterprise is ready for this strategy. He has to consider various issues in making this decision - resource availability, change management competency and buy-in from other top-level managers. He has to carefully weigh the various options in rolling out this strategy, as he fears that any misstep may derail his carefully executed plans for bringing a process-oriented approach to managing at Pinnacle West. This case can be used in an introductory systems course. It can also be used in a course on business process management or operations management.

Engro Chemicals Pakistan Limited (Engro) was a very large manufacturer and marketer of fertilizer in Pakistan. It had a number of subsidiaries and joint ventures in a variety of businesses. The company was listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) and was among the top companies as ranked by the KSE. In August 2007, the company's head office was completely destroyed by a fire. The office was located in Karachi and the fire destroyed all the equipment as well as the hardcopies of the accounting records. The company was suddenly faced with a catastrophic loss as the records were critical to Engro's day to day operations. The information technology (IT) department had developed a disaster recovery plan (DRP) in 2005 that was exclusively related to reestablishing the IT facilities after any event that could make the business systems inoperable. The company invoked the DRP as soon as the news of the complete destruction of the office facilities was received. The IT and finance staff had to use the backup equipment and data files to restart the transaction processing.The case includes a description of various business systems used by Engro and the data security processes that had enabled the company to restore the accounting and other systems needed at its head office. The main teaching objective is to focus on minimizing the business risks arising due to the destruction of the IT facilities. The case also has details of the DRP, which can be analysed as to its contents, and details of the management processes of Engro, which allows for a discussion on corporate governance within the company.

This case considers the process of organizational transformation undertaken by Partners Healthcare System (PHS) since the 1990s as their hospital and affiliated ambulatory medical practices have adopted both EMR and CPOE systems. Encompassing a strategic investment in information technologies, wide-spread process change, and the pervasive use of institutional clinical decision support and knowledge management systems, this story has been 15 years in the making, culminating in 2009 with the network-wide use of EMR and CPOE by all PHS doctors. These developments in turn opened the door to the redefinition of services delivery and to the replacement of established therapies through the leveraging of the knowledge residing in 4.6 million now-digitized PHS patient records. As such, the PHS experience serves as a window into how one organization strove to address the daunting challenges of 21st century health care services information management, as a template for success in the implementation of large-scale information systems among research-based hospitals across the United States, and more broadly as a learning platform for industry executives in their efforts to transform health care delivery through data and knowledge management.

The vice-president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) was reflecting on the role NASSCOM currently played: it was considered the voice of the software and services industry in India and had been extremely successful in promoting Indian information technology (IT) to the world. Each success had now forced NASSCOM to reconsider its goals to better align itself to the complex needs of the quickly evolving IT business process outsourcing (IT-BPO) industry in India. The vice-president had been asked to address attendees at a leadership conference with details of NASSCOM's strategic refocusing. How could NASSCOM maintain its relevance in an industry that was already considered a global leader? How would NASSCOM position itself in response to its own president's desire to focus on the small-medium enterprise (SME) segment of the Indian industry, and also in response to a report that identified the domestic market as a significant future growth driver of IT enabled services? What role would it play, and how would it get there?

In September 2009, Brian Lee purchased a computer game developed by a major company and, like other customers, he was experiencing difficulty running it. The source of the problems was a highly restrictive system of digital rights management (DRM), which, while more or less universally disliked, was causing serious technical problems for a minority of users. Lee began to share his experience on the company's message board and was engaging in a debate about online piracy with a company representative. He was curious about piracy in the file-sharing age and wondered why it would be wrong to download a pirated version of the game with the DRM circumvented. The note deals with an issue which resonates with students. Although the context is simple, the problem is complex, thus giving instructors wide latitude on how to teach this note. It is suitable for modules or courses focused on ethics, service operations, intellectual property rights and information technology.

Vineland Research and Innovation Center, a not-for-profit organization looking to work with the Ontario local food industry, has requested two researchers to analyze the local food business landscape and propose a technology-driven solution that connects farmers in the Niagara region with buyers in Toronto. The case illustrates the challenges faced by each stakeholder in the local food supply chain, and allows students to analyze the farming and restaurant industries, assess the current Canadian market, and investigate technological advances that could enable improving the current local supply chain procurement and distribution model. This case allows students to identify competencies and gaps within the current environment, challenges facing the farming and restaurant communities, as well as opportunities to drive growth in a new market.

This (B) case to For the Love of Good Food: The pLateTrace Project (A), product #9B09E006, allows students to synthesize their findings and assessments from the (A) case to recommend a viable, financially sustainable technology-based solution that generates long-term benefits for the multiple parties who would be involved. Given the current focus on local food and environmental responsibility, pLateTrace is a very relevant case that raises awareness for tremendous untapped opportunities to marry improving existing supply chain models with environmental stewardship.

A member of the integration leadership team must help plan and execute the integration of Delta's information technology (IT) operations into those of Unity. He has been given a time limit of three years and has been charged with removing $60 million of expenses during the process. Half of the savings will come from reducing the number of staff whose roles have been duplicated as a result of the merger. The remaining savings will be achieved through the reduction of associated assets such as hardware, software and property. Irving has many hurdles to overcome, including motivating soon-to-be-made-redundant staff, finding and keeping Delta's star performers, designing the new organizational structure for the technology group, choosing the target IT platform and performing the infrastructure consolidation. This case takes a student through the important decisions in integration projects in order to ensure success in a merger or acquisition, bringing awareness to the execution aspects of these transactions.

The founder and president of Nuway Software (Nuway) must determine the pricing strategy for their new internally-developed mobile software product, Nulogic. Nuway develops custom mobile software applications that provide great competitive advantage to each of their customers; no two software modules it develops are similar. Nuway is now ready to market Nulogic as a stand-alone product and has identified three unique customer segments: Corporate in-house developers, competitors and independent software developers. The company has historically followed a cost-plus pricing model and has maintained positive profit margins. The software industry as a whole is moving towards value-based pricing, where cost is based on perceived value to the customer. The president does not favour value-based pricing and views it as price-gouging; however, he is aware that cost-plus pricing has limitations with regards to cost accuracy. By considering the entire software industry, Nuway's capabilities and his own preferences, the president must determine how to price the new software.

The chairman of Taiwan-based Polaris Securities Co. Ltd. (Polaris Securities), announced approval of Polaris' investment plans in Singapore, Vietnam and Abu Dhabi. The chairman's name was known in Taiwan as synonymous with innovation and entrepreneurship. He had experienced great success in launching an information technology strategy and related complementary assets for online stock trading and online transactions. With a prominent performance, the chairman had made Polaris Securities stand out conspicuously in Taiwan's securities market. He also copied Polaris Securities experiences, such as computational finance, trading platform and customer service, to Polaris Securities (Hong Kong) Ltd. (Polaris Securities HK) to expand his business scope. The chairman contemplated whether Polaris Securities and Polaris Securities HK experiences could be duplicated in Singapore, Vietnam and Abu Dhabi.

The chairman of Taiwan-based Polaris Securities Co. Ltd. (Polaris Securities), announced approval of Polaris' investment plans in Singapore, Vietnam and Abu Dhabi. The chairman's name was known in Taiwan as synonymous with innovation and entrepreneurship. He had experienced great success in launching an information technology strategy and related complementary assets for online stock trading and online transactions. With a prominent performance, the chairman had made Polaris Securities stand out conspicuously in Taiwan's securities market. He also copied Polaris Securities experiences, such as computational finance, trading platform and customer service, to Polaris Securities (Hong Kong) Ltd. (Polaris Securities HK) to expand his business scope. The chairman contemplated whether Polaris Securities and Polaris Securities HK experiences could be duplicated in Singapore, Vietnam and Abu Dhabi.