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Established in 1980, Chandos Construction (Chandos), a Canadian general contractor, prioritized inclusivity, collaboration, and innovation. As the largest B Corporation–certified commercial builder in North America, Chandos aimed to create a legacy and promote shared prosperity through employee ownership. The vice-president of Collaborative Construction at Chandos, Jen Hancock, championed initiatives such as lean integration and waste diversion policies. In September 2023, she prepared for a meeting with the project management team to propel sustainable construction initiatives forward. She aimed to advance Chandos’s sustainable construction and believed that integrated project delivery (IPD) could revolutionize the industry, aligning with the company’s goal of achieving net zero by 2040. Despite challenges in wider IPD adoption and collaboration on smaller projects, Chandos saw an opportunity to lead by emphasizing both environmental and human health aspects.

Atijeevan Foundation was founded in 2013 with a mission to rehabilitate and empower victims of acid attacks. The founder, who was a survivor of an acid attack herself, wanted to ensure that the past traumatic experiences of survivors did not impede their opportunity to make a place in society and lead a meaningful and dignified life. She learned about the challenges through interactions with the survivors she trained and helped find employment. Many of them reported incidents of harassment, bullying, discrimination, and insensitive behaviour from co-workers. The founder was contemplating how to help. Should she support and encourage survivors to independently manage their own workplace challenges at work, which would align with her philosophy of self-advocacy and resilience? Or should she ask the human resources department in each organization to support survivors? She was also contemplating how each organization’s equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives could be expanded to integrate the unique challenges and needs of survivors of acid attacks to foster their empowerment in the workplace.

The case presents three mini-cases on employment discrimination. In the first, “(Un)See the Seen," a project manager faced the dilemma of how to support a neurodivergent associate whose principal consultant opposes him. In the second, "License to Ageism—When the Old Play Games with the Young," a young project leader faced the dilemma of how to protect himself from a junior partner and a toxic culture in the firm. In the third, "Cold Shoulder Another Day—A(vo)iding Disability," an HR manager faced the dilemma of how to ensure a paraplegic intern continued his internship when his reporting officer did not support him.

In 2021, amidst a world pandemic and escalated racial tensions, Allens Lane Art Center, a non-profit art centre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was losing its leadership and failing to live up to its history-making initiative to promote integration among community members through the arts. The Center's executive director was stepping down and there was no replacement in line. Also, like many small businesses in the West Mount Airy neighbourhood of Philadelphia during this period, the Center suffered low revenue, among other issues. <br><br>The president of the Center's board of directors had to determine how to bring the small non-profit back to life and generate a reawakened commitment from the board. They had to be prepared to make difficult decisions, including determining how the Center could change its business model while holding to its mission of bringing diverse communities together through the arts.

The recently appointed placement officer at a prestigious business school in Bangalore, India, faced an unexpected challenge in the placement process involving a diligent second-year master of business administration student. The student's encounter with a leading restaurant aggregator during the final interview had taken an unexpected turn, leaving her feeling harassed. Disturbed by the student's experience, the placement officer began questioning the existing recruitment procedures, contemplating their alignment with evolving societal values. The student's experience underscored the intricate dynamics of modern recruitment, urging a reconsideration of established practices.

Bhima Jewels (“Bhima”) was a household name in southern India, where the company had built up a loyal clientele spanning three generations over its 97 years in business as a retailer in the jewellery sector. In 2015, Abhishek Bindu Madhav, the grandson of the founder, took over the family-run business. He introduced professionalization, infused technology into the company’s practices, and notched up creditable successes in the early years of the transformation, including during the trying times of the pandemic. <br><br>However, now Abhishek must prove that this early success was not a fluke and provide the board with a blueprint outlining how Bhima could realize its ambition of becoming a national brand. Abhishek needs to determine which factors to consider for investment and focus on to successfully script the company’s Transformation 2.0.

Within a single year, Lebanon experienced multiple adversities, from the economic crisis in October 2019, to the COVID-19 pandemic, to the Port of Beirut explosion on August 4, 2020. Many start-ups had to shut down during this period. This case investigates the role of organizational culture in how Toters Delivery, a high-tech Lebanese-based start-up, responded to these challenges and adapted its business model to overcome adversity. Its co-founder believed that organizational culture was a key factor in its survival. The case examines questions such as: How can a start-up maintain its culture in the face of grand challenges? and What strategic changes does a start-up need to make during challenging times, and how?

Founded in Hyderabad, India in 2019, Inkpothub is India’s first digital media platform to offer researchers, scholars, and academics a forum for sharing success and experience stories. The platform allows users to share their journeys to promote research as a career, help researchers make informed career choices, and avoid common pitfalls. Inkpothub also creates, curates, and shares content, information, and knowledge to promote management scholarship and research. The platform connects users with scholars in major Indian academic institutions through content, mentorship programs, courses, and workshops. Inkpothub facilitates high-quality research output and works closely with institutions across the country to promote their doctoral programs to prospective students.<br><br>Inkpothub’s co-founder and current sole owner is Anita Sharma, India’s first woman skydiver with a disability, who is also an entrepreneur with a doctorate from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indore. Sharma has worked as professor at IIM, Amritsar and has been a keynote speaker, among other roles she has held. In April 2020, Inkpothub’s co-founder Nishan Singh left the company for personal reasons, leaving Sharma to lead the company alone and face the impact from the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. With a difficult business environment for all businesses across all countries, Sharma was considering three potential options for the future: sell the business to regain her investment in the company, find a new partner to grow the business and share the risks and revenues, or continue to run the business on her own.

The case explores the challenges faced by the leader of the El Dandara tribes in Egypt, as he confronts the disappointing results of an assessment on the status of women within his tribe. Despite being praised for his leadership style, the assessment reveals a significant gap in female empowerment within the tribe. Hashem, known for his transformative initiatives, had initiated a project to uplift women in his tribe. Now faced with the need to reassess and improve the project, Hashem must navigate the complexities of tribal leadership, cultural norms, and the urgent need for female empowerment. This case helps students understand the importance of culture for leadership by providing insights into Western and Arab leadership practices.

In October 2022, the chair of Hancock Prospecting Pty. Ltd. was negotiating a sponsorship partnership worth AU$15 million with Netball Australia, which was $7 million in debt. Netball Australia had just announced that Donnell Wallam would join the national team as the third ever Indigenous Australian player on the Diamonds team. However, in 1984, the founder of Hancock Prospecting Pty. Ltd. had stated on national television, “I would dope the water up so that they [Indigenous Australians] were sterile and would breed themselves out in the future.” This made the proposed partnership particularly controversial. Wallam and other players raised concerns about the proposed sponsor, considering the founder’s racist statement. In addition, some players wondered publicly if taking money from a fossil fuel mining organization would be consistent with the association’s environmental values. The sponsorship deal raised a considerable amount of media and public attention. Wallam stated she was only interested in playing netball at the elite level to make her Indigenous community proud, but some observers were accusing her of putting the critical $15 million sponsorship deal at risk. What would be the best way forward for the partnership between Hancock Prospecting Pty. Ltd. and Netball Australia?

Soma Solutions was a small consulting firm based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Soma Solutions had provided face-to-face, on-site information and communications technology (ICT) training on SAP and ERP to state-owned enterprises. However, due to the nationwide lockdown and the need to curb the spread of the virus, the company could no longer conduct on-site training. The state-owned enterprises, its main clients, also had to close temporarily and shift to remote work. The economic upheaval left Soma Solutions facing uncertainty and instability. Despite having operated for only four years, it grappled with the decision to pivot or preserve its existing approach. The challenge was to remain relevant and competitive while navigating evolving norms and limited resources. How prepared was the company to transition to virtual training? What would pivoting look like for the company, and would it help sustain the business post-pandemic?

RA Group, a technology consulting firm, introduced changes in 2019 that were impacting the organization and its employees. Employees were dealing with the transition to a new office location and resulting changes to the company’s transportation services, the less private office configuration, a surge of new employees lacking proper supervision, and increased turnover. Employees encountered numerous organizational problems during the change process and were experiencing frustrations with the transition from the way things had been before the changes, leading to an identity crisis and resistance to the changes.

A life-changing event prompted marketing professional Stacey Thomas to leave her successful career in media and entertainment to join dynamic, fast-growing healthcare provider, OceanView Medical. Initially drawn to, and inspired by, the company’s mission and values, Thomas quickly discovered that the role for which she had been hired had expanded drastically in terms of responsibilities and challenges in the five weeks since her interview. The events that ensued became increasingly frustrating for Thomas, leaving her to decide whether to stay with the team she had built at OceanView Medical or to find a new job.

Sonali Saini was the founder of Sol’s ARC, a nonprofit organization that worked to benefit neurodiverse individuals. She had just returned from a meeting with senior representatives of a leading organization at which they expressed concerns about hiring neurodiverse people. She had managed to persuade them to agree to another meeting in 15 days, at which she planned to try to address their concerns. Saini was contemplating three strategic options: (a) developing a compelling business case by leveraging the past success stories of organizations that had benefited from hiring neurodiverse individuals, (b) channelling additional resources into advocacy and awareness efforts to change corporations’ perceptions of neurodiverse talent, and (c) offering additional services such as job mapping and carving jobs that are suited to neurodiverse individuals.

This role-play exercise presents students with a realistic and complex negotiation challenge: it asks them to participate in a quantifiable negotiation between managing partners in a venture capital fund who are embroiled in a co-founder dispute. The negotiation is multifaceted, focusing on both reputational safeguards and financial outcomes across five key quantifiable issues. The negotiation is also underscored by an atypical yet critical ethical conundrum, offering a rich context for exploring the interplay between ethical considerations and business decision-making. These scenarios compel negotiators to engage deeply with the ethical dimensions of their strategies, assessing not only the limits of their own moral flexibility but also the veracity of their adversary’s claims.

Zoho Corporation Ltd. (Zoho) was a privately held technology company that provided a suite of software applications for businesses of all sizes. The company was founded in 1996 with the aim of providing affordable, easy-to-use software applications to small- and medium-sized enterprises. In 2021, Zoho announced that it had reached $1 billion in revenue. The founders’ socio-economic vision of embracing collective well-being and purpose-driven leadership and following unconventional business practices such as transnational localism had contributed to its unwavering growth. Under the leadership of its chief executive officer, who focused on customer-centricity, simplicity, and doing business with responsibility and accountability, the organization was able to pursue social and commercial objectives simultaneously. In late 2023, Zoho intended to address the grand challenges of the world, particularly the challenges of a developing nation, through its coordinated actions and collaborative efforts. The chief executive officer faced several pressing questions: What should Zoho do to remain afloat amid the global downturn? As a socially responsible enterprise, how can could Zoho balance its business goals with social goals, given the complex landscape of social responsibility?

Khayal Gumaan, a professor at a reputable Canadian university, had many years of experience teaching on campus, where she prided herself in creating a safe and respectful environment by valuing diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) in her classroom. When the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 forced courses to be delivered online, she taught for the first time an online course in organizational behaviour for undergraduate students. Although still committed to promoting DEI in class, the professor found it difficult to do so in the virtual environment. Then, in the first month of her online course, a student appealed to her in a private email, asking her to intervene in an unsettling group discussion. The professor was determined to engage her students on the sensitive topic of DEI. How should she respond to the situation in her class’s online group discussion and also use it as a teaching opportunity?

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges for businesses worldwide. With operations halted and supply chains disrupted, Exide Industries Limited (EIL), a prominent name in India’s battery sector, found itself at a pivotal juncture. It had a machine imported from Italy that was critical to its manufacturing operations sitting uncommissioned due to travel restrictions. An innovative solution was proposed to adopt an augmented reality (AR) solution for remote support, which could potentially transform EIL’s manufacturing operations, but also raised questions about the feasibility and implications of integrating this technology. EIL had to weigh strategic, operational, and technological considerations to decide whether to embark on this technological innovation and service transformation path during a global crisis.

The president of Thompson Rivers University (TRU) in Kamloops, Canada, Brett Fairbairn, faced backlash and scrutiny for his handling of a harassment and discrimination investigation into two of his senior leaders. In November 2021, two local media outlets released details of the allegations that were brought to the attention of the President and Board of Governors months earlier. The case outlines the public reactions, and a timeline of events, as reported via TRU’s public website and local news media, as well as social media posts from interested parties. The President is faced with a decision on how to respond to his varying stakeholders when his leadership and the vision of the university are at stake.

The case study revolves around Amir Hashem El Dandarawy, the leader of the El Amara tribe in Upper Egypt, who faces two pressing conflicts. El Dandarawy must navigate these conflicts, mediate between the embattled families, and assert his tribe's rights while maintaining neutrality and integrity. The case examines El Dandarawy's leadership style; prominent Western leadership models such as servant leadership, transformational leadership, situational leadership, and ethical leadership; and different approaches to conflict resolution in Arab culture, including mediation, negotiation, consultation, and consensus-building. Students are challenged to compare and contrast Western and Eastern approaches to leadership and conflict resolution.