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Between 1998 and 2018, JD.com Inc. (JD.com) transformed from a compact disc (CD)-burner shop into a technology-driven group of service companies (JD Group) and China’s largest retailer by revenue. Yu Long joined the Group in August 2012 as chief human resources (HR) officer and general counsel. Over the years, Long launched various initiatives to strengthen the HR team and improve its practices to support the Group’s rapid growth and transformation. This case describes the new challenges that faced the Group’s HR management committee headed by Long.

In 2018, the leaders of Cisca Engineering Ltd. (CEL), a small engineering firm in Waterloo, Ontario, faced a decision about whether to go beyond their normal pay scale in order to hire a mechanical engineering candidate they desperately wanted. The company was struggling to attract top talent since its normal base salary capabilities were thought to be lower than those of larger firms. Considering the trade-offs, the company president weighed the potentially negative effect on overall employee morale with the advantages of having a needed new employee. Should he offer the candidate the pipe stress analyst position at a lower salary and risk being turned down? Should he offer the salary the candidate wanted and risk upsetting his other employees if they found out? Should he revamp his compensation system and increase salary levels for all of the company’s engineers?

In 2018, a dealership facilitator needed to decide whether to continue implementing the Thumbs Up application (app) at Lakeside Automotive Ltd., a family-owned car dealership in the Greater Toronto Area. The Thumbs Up app was a digital tool that enabled employees to recognize each other's good work by sending digitalized badges. The dealership facilitator had introduced this app in an effort to future-proof the organization by leveraging information technology such as digital communications. The move toward more digital communication was also a strategic activity in light of the company’s upcoming relocation and expansion. While some employees acknowledged the value and convenience of this digital tool, others believed it was “a waste of time. How should the dealership facilitator decide on the future of the Thumbs Up app? If she decided to retain the app, how could she improve its effectiveness?

On May 27, 2018, Maryanne Trollope, the Learning and Development (L&D) manager for Anglo American South Africa, was considering her dilemma of handing over her brainchild to her successor. The Building Leaders and Shaping Talent (BLAST) program was a flagship talent management program for young graduates in South Africa, and she wanted to ensure a smooth transition for her successor and to ensure that the BLASTers (BLAST recruits) developed relationships with her replacement. Trollope was meeting with one BLASTer, who had been on an international BLAST placement in London, England. She had to decide when to introduce this recruit to the individual taking over the program and what information and insight she should recommend the recruit share with her colleague. What were the critical success factors of the talent management program, and how could Trollope ensure sustained success and a smooth handover process?

Presentation to accompany product 8B19C004.

The backwaters of Vembanad, in Kerala, India, were a renowned tourist attraction, known for their beautiful waters, schools of fish, and the people who lived along the shores. However, the exploitation of resources had taken a toll on the lake and its ecosystem. Pollution and the decline of the rich fish population had left the community impoverished. In 2008, the non-profit social enterprise Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE) had launched an innovative educational and self-regulatory program that had begun to improve the ecosystem. However, by 2018, the resurgence of the fish population had also attracted a fisheries-based food company that wanted to begin processing and exporting fish caught in Vembanad. The immediate employment benefits were attractive to the impoverished local fishers, but the long-term consequences for the region and its community were severe. How should ATREE respond to this pending crisis? Should ATREE use incoming money for immediate relief for Vembanad’s stakeholders or should it use the money for long-term benefit by focusing on further conservation efforts?

Job-search site iimjobs.com had evolved in the Indian recruitment landscape as one of the major players for premium jobs, spanning across mid-management and leadership roles, and across multiple industries. In January 2018, leveraging the database of job posts and resumes on its site, the company launched Calculus, a platform built using advanced talent analytics, to provide holistic and integrated talent management solutions. At the same time, market trends led the company to consider diversification into non-premium domains. The industry continued to grapple with the challenges of identifying critical talent to sustain growth plans, and talent management strategists were unable to base decisions on live, dynamic data points. However, the founder and chief executive officer of iimjobs.com faced several core concerns—the strategic implications of diversification into a non-premium job market and the expectations of the industry from a talent analytics platform. He looked at the talent analytics solutions provided by Calculus and considered: How far can the analytic solutions offered by Calculus meet modern human resources holistic requirements?

In 2012, Griffiths Energy International Inc. had secured the land leases needed to begin drilling for oil in Chad and was preparing for an IPO. During the due diligence, the company’s lawyers found consulting contracts that appeared to be payments to a public official to gain a business advantage. While bribing officials was not uncommon in Chad, it was a criminal offence in Canada. The company’s senior executive team was new, and the founder and former chairman, who might have been able to explain the contracts, had died in a boating accident. The directors needed to decide what to do: continue with the IPO and deal with disclosure if the matter did surface at some point later or report the findings to the authorities now and bear the consequences.

Supplement for product 9B18C031.

A doctor in the Department of Pediatrics at Riverdale Hospital, an Australian hospital affiliated with the faculty of medicine at a leading nearby university, reported directly to the chair of the department. The doctor received funding for his research in the amount of $380,000 per year, but because he was not a tenured faculty member, he was not able to directly control the contributions. Instead, the fund was administered by the department chair, under the doctor’s supervision. While checking the accounting of the fund in December 2010, the doctor discovered an irregularity that made him doubt the chair’s administration of the donations. As more clues and irregularities emerged, the doctor became convinced that the fund was being mismanaged and that this mismanagement was being covered up. When he eventually confronted the chair, he found himself in a stressful and difficult situation, with little support. In 2018, the dean of medicine circulated an external audit that claimed there had been no wrongdoing, and the doctor found himself facing a much larger, stronger opponent. Should he take action, pursuing civil or criminal charges? Should he leave the institution and take the donations with him? Should he stay where he was and deal with the consequences?

In July 2018, the general manager of the Banff Aspen Lodge in Alberta, Canada, needed to fill two vacancies at the Front Desk. He faced several challenges because of a tight labour market and the never-ending cycle of staff turnover in the hospitality sector, especially in a resort town. Although the general manager was confident that the hotel had many good human resource management practices, he wondered whether he could apply a more systematic long-term approach to human resource planning, recruitment, and selection. Was it time to review the company’s overall approach to human resource management?

Striving for Great Place to Work (GPTW) culture enabled Hella India Lighting Limited (HIL), a company that manufactured automotive lighting, to recover from huge losses and become profitable. Although the company’s German management had decided to stop further investment in India after the setback of the 2008 recession, in 2018 HIL became the number one Hella location worldwide. It was also recognized as one of the best places to work at the national level in the automotive industry and ranked 20th in the 2018 GPTW Great Mid-Size Workplaces category. To achieve these milestones, HIL focused on effectively implementing existing policies and periodically upgrading and focusing policies around employee welfare; thus making way for strategic human resources (HR) management. Valuing its employees as equal to its customers, HIL’s main focus was employee engagement. The transformation led to successful GPTW survey results, which encouraged HIL management to revise the HR team’s 2020 target: their new task was to secure a position among the top 10 companies of the GPTW survey by 2020.

AWARD-WINNING CASE - African Business Cases Category, 2019 European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) Case Writing Competition. In 2014, an entrepreneur in Cape Town, South Africa, started SweepSouth with her husband. Their mission was to enable dignified home cleaning work for the most vulnerable blue-collar workers, and they offered several services to empower them. When the company struggled to meet the demand for domestic services over the December holiday period, the founders realized the extent of the market’s need to connect domestic workers with potential clients. Given the entrepreneur’s business acumen and her husband’s skills and experience in software development, they created a digital platform that was often labelled the Uber of domestic services. SweepSouth employed 40 staff members and had 8,000 contractors (referred to as “SweepStars”) on the company’s platform. In 2018, the two founders wanted to scale up the business for greater social impact and had to choose among expanding the business to other African countries, expanding the service offering to office spaces, or remaining focused on serving the home and adding new services such as gardening and plumbing.

Presentation to accompany product 8B19C010.

Student Spreadsheet for product 9B17C016.

Case A describes a leadership crisis affecting the managing director of the German construction company SÄBU Holzbau GmbH. In 2013, severe organizational problems, such as deficiencies in internal communication, indecisiveness, and a lack of clarity in the distribution of tasks and responsibilities, led to frustrations for both customers and employees. The crisis culminated with three key employees leaving the company because they were no longer willing to cope with what they described as “chaos.”

Case B describes how management at SÄBU Holzbau GmbH was able to overcome the crisis with the help of a team of consultants who supported the company through a change process that significantly altered the its culture.

At the end of 2017, the human resources director at Yuanbo Education Group, a fast-growing educational service enterprise located in Shanghai, China, was struggling to calm down the managers, who were complaining about their salaries. Managers of the established business units were paid a relatively lower base salary but often with a sizable bonus tied to a revenue target. In contrast, the new hires for the recently established business units were paid a much higher base pay but with little or no bonus available. Both veteran and new managers were dissatisfied with their pay structure. The human resources director knew that he needed to take action soon. But what should he do and where should he start?

The senior vice-president for sustainable investing at the U.S.-based Pax World Funds, a leader in socially responsible investing, needed to identify and invest in companies for the company's Pax Ellevate Global Women's Leadership Fund, an investment fund that promoted labour rights through gender equality. The fund had more than US$200 million in assets under management, a 25 per cent one-year rate of return, and a three-year annual rate of return of 10 per cent. In June 2018, a newly hired analyst was asked to evaluate a company to determine its suitability as a potential gender-lens investment target for the fund, using specific socially responsible investing criteria. She wondered how she should evaluate the company. What characteristics would make it suitable as an investment target for the fund?

In late September 2014, students in the Arnold School of Business (Arnold) full-time MBA program wrote an open-book managerial accounting exam. Immediately after the exam, one of the students, who was also vice-president academic of the Graduate Business Students Association (GBSA), was informed by a classmate that some students accessed the Internet for solutions during the exam. The GBSA representative knew she had to do something but was unsure how to proceed.<br><br>In part A of the case, the student representative consulted with her colleague, the GBSA president. The two considered four potential courses of action: (1) do nothing; (2) bring the issue to the entire GBSA council; (3) inform the course instructor; or (4) speak directly to the academic chair of the MBA program.<br><br>In part B of the case, the two student representatives speak with the academic chair, who explained that without any hard evidence of academic dishonesty, little could be done. The academic chair and GBSA representatives must decide how to resolve the issue when any solution is likely to disappoint some students and cause division, and possibly enmity, among classmates who are just one month into their MBA.