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<p style="color: rgb(197, 183, 131);"><strong> AWARD WINNER -Best case in the Entrepreneurship & Indian Family Business category, ISB-Ivey Global Case Competition</strong></p><br>An entrepreneur puts his entire lifetime into building an organization. When it comes to health care in India, it is all the more difficult as there are so many hurdles, such as a huge population that cannot afford to pay, shortage of trained manpower and increasing cost of supplies. LV Prasad Eye Institute has been successful, largely because of its founder’s dedication, hard work and innovative pyramid model of organizational structure. In spite of its success, this healthcare institution faces challenges from increased competition and the lack of a succession strategy.

The Chief of the Australian Army faces a significant public scandal. In recent weeks, allegations have emerged that members of the country’s defence forces, including officers, shared explicit emails and photos that denigrated women. The scandal occurs as the Australian Defence Force is actively encouraging more women to join the ranks of the military. The Chief of the Australian Army needs to devise a strategy to communicate to the victims of the scandal, members of the army and the general public that the Australian Army is a national institution with strong values and moral standards and will not tolerate chauvinism of any kind.

The relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Canadian government has been characterized by conflict and change. Although the Conservative government seemed to support Aboriginal objectives when it issued an historic apology in 2007 for the abuses suffered under the residential schools program and signed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People in 2008, it included changes to the Indian Act in its 2012 omnibus Bill C-45 that put economic development ahead of environmental protection and violated numerous First Nations treaties. In response, a group of First Nations activists initiated the Idle No More movement, which used social media to organize demonstrations around the country, including teach-ins, flash mob round dances and blockades of major transportation routes. Although supported by many non-Aboriginal environmental and human rights groups both in Canada and abroad, the movement appeared to lose steam after the prime minister met Aboriginal leaders to outline eight key items of consensus for action to address Aboriginal and treaty rights, health care, education and employment issues and Chief Theresa Spence suspended the hunger strike that had galvanized support. How could Idle No More organizers maintain the momentum and awareness they had worked so hard to achieve?

This case examines the mindset of a father who faces a complex situation when his adult son, who works with him in the family business in India, begins pressuring him to make a will. The father’s thought processes are revealed as he tries to understand the reasons behind his son’s motivation. The case explores the issue from the father’s point of view. It examines his hesitation to make a will and the points in favour of doing so.

Craig Pitchell is a young executive who has become director of the board at a local childcare centre. He has discovered that other board members do not comply with the by-laws for the centre. He is presenting at a special meeting to oust the current board and replace them with an alternate slate of directors.

Two people with opposing skills – business management and marketing on the one hand and technological know-how on the other – are joint chief executive officers of a market-leading smartphone manufacturer. Their leadership styles, decision-making and relationship with each other are paramount from the company’s inception, through its rise, its response to mounting competition and the period of declining performance that followed. Conflicting points of view provide the basis for debate about what led to the company’s decline and to what extent top management leadership (versus insurmountable market forces) was responsible for its loss of market share and brand loyalty.

The COO of a global knowledge-outsourcing and technology-services firm has been selected by his company’s board of directors to step in and rescue a large-scale digitization project that is in danger of missing its rapidly approaching deadline. The project requires the firm to create digital archives of a daily American newspaper, spanning a coverage time of 150 years. With teams from two different countries paired to work on this significant venture, things quickly go awry on several levels as a result of misunderstandings about client expectations, lack of employee training (both from a standpoint of cultural awareness and with respect to the use of new technology) and poor project management. The COO must quickly develop an action plan to address these issues and ensure the success of the project in the face of an ultimatum from the client: deliver the project on time or lose it completely.<br><br>In the role of the COO, students must create an action plan to overcome the issues that threaten to derail the project.

Human resource (HR) management practices in Japan are significantly different from those in Europe and North America. A knowledge of the traditional Japanese HR system, including practices relating to recruiting and compensation, unions and the labour market, is crucial for foreign companies operating in Japan as well as those seeking to do business with Japanese firms. While Japan’s distinct HR system was once considered a source of competitive advantage, changing economies and labour markets have called its current effectiveness into question. The traditional system primarily provided stable long-term employment for full-time employees; however, for a variety of reasons, non-regular forms of employment, including part-time and short-term positions, are on the rise. HR managers in Japan must consider relevant societal and economic changes and develop more effective HR systems in response.

A management consultant has been hired to fix the morale issues at a branch of SkillsForTomorrow (SFT) in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, United States. SFT is a government-sponsored organization tasked with helping at-risk young adults gain vocational training toward preparing them for a successful work career. Several factors appear to be influencing the morale of the SFT management team. Unfortunately, some of these factors point directly to the sponsor of the consulting project, the executive director at SFT Harrisburg. The consultant must identify the root causes of the management discord and derive a solution that can help solve the various issues. At the same time, the consultant will need to consider the political and interpersonal aspects of the consulting relationship between herself and the executive director in crafting and presenting a solution.

In 2012, an investment banking summer intern in the head office of a leading international financial institution has received some stellar reviews. His manager hints that as long the intern keeps up the good work, his full-time return offer is all but guaranteed. However, the 120-hour work weeks would deprive him of any opportunity to spend time with his family. He must choose between taking advantage of the organization’s Summer Intern Mobility Program, which would allow him to apply to work full time at another office, closer to his family, versus staying put at the head office, where he has already established a good reputation and where a full-time job offer seems imminent.

In 2008, a scandal in China involving milk products tainted with melamine (a chemical used in plastic production) brought regional and global attention to the country. More than 290,000 infants were affected and several died. At a time when international trade was important for China’s economic development, the tainted milk scandal raised concerns about the safety of products and food made in China. The case illustrates how the pressure of rapid economic development resulted in measures to cut costs at the expense of consumer safety and health, bringing into question the ethics underlying business practices in the country. The lack of quality control and corporate governance processes on the part of the company and government facilitated the ease with which the milk was tampered. The case also documents remedial efforts that followed the scandal, including recall of the tainted milk products, putting new government policies and regulations in place, arrest of top executives and the companies’ public apology in the unique form of a New Year text message.

A multinational company’s first senior female leader is assigned to the European headquarters. The assignment is a professional coup, and she is primed to meet the challenge. However, her new colleagues’ predominant view is that she is a non-European woman who represents the corporate head office. She has the opportunity to fly high or fail.

This case revolves around the experiences of an MBA student at an Indian business school. The student is dynamic, capable and intent on high achievement, but his pursuit of recognition eventually hampers his and his team’s learning and performance. The case is based on an event that happens within a course on organizational behaviour where the student makes a major mistake in his analysis of a case due to his need to demonstrate his competence and validate himself. This hurts his and his team’s performance on an assigned task. After the event, the student and his team members reflect on the events that led to this mistake. They also take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation - Behavior (FIRO-B) assessments to determine their personality preferences and interpersonal needs that might have influenced the team’s functioning.

The generation born in China in the 1980s has become an important force in the country’s labour market. Members of this generation were the first to grow up in a market economy with daily access to the Internet, and are considered to have different work values than past generations. Also, most were born and raised in single-child families and generally demonstrate more individualistic behaviours and less willingness to follow the norms of previous generations. This case describes the promotion story of Zhu Dandan, a member of the 1980s generation, and illustrates the different work values, behaviours and management style of her generation, as well as the challenges of managing it.

Martin Fassler’s dynamic entrepreneurial and innovative skills were evident when he saw an opportunity in the smoked marlin market and started his now-successful company, Fassler Gourmet (FG). After coping with the initial challenges that every new entrepreneur faces, he found success in supplying airlines flying out of Singapore, Bangkok and Seoul with original seafood dishes. Airline travel — and FG’s revenues — were decimated by the Asian Financial Crisis in 1998, the SARS epidemic in 2003 and the global economic downturn in 2008. During these hard times, Fassler excelled in innovation and diversification and developed five distinct and growing markets for exotic seafood. Rather than fire employees during these crises, Fassler instead reduced their work hours and thus cultivated an extremely loyal workforce. FG now works with many wholesalers, exporters, re-sellers, hotels, airline caterers, restaurants, cafes and sandwich shops and has factory outlet and home-delivery customers. Martin Fassler, now in his fifties, has reached a critical moment in his business career. Should he continue to lead, innovate and diversify further or should he begin to reduce his involvement? Selling a share to a new partner, handing responsibilities to his younger managers or divesting himself of this successful company altogether are all options, but risk alienating his loyal workforce.

A large, international benevolent association operating 22 children’s hospitals and four research centres in three countries has been negatively impacted by a number of external factors. The effect of the 2008 global financial crisis on its endowment funds coupled with rising health care costs and flat donations, have resulted in the hospitals running at a loss. To ensure the long-term viability of their not-for-profit hospital system, management feels it must present drastic options to delegates at its annual general meeting, including reconsidering the policy of providing free medical care to children regardless of their ability to pay, shutting down research facilities and closing over a quarter of their hospitals. While management is confident that the quality of care for pediatric patients will not be compromised, all of the options being considered will significantly impact hospital operations and the organization’s culture. For the first time in the 87 years of the organization’s existence, some very difficult options are on the table.

A graduating fourth-year HBA student faces an ethical dilemma as she struggles to decide which one of two job offers to accept. The situation is complicated by the fact that she has received an exploding offer from one firm and she must respond to it on the same day as she participates in a final-round interview with the other firm. The stakeholders in this case include the student, the two firms, the university and its career-management program, and the other graduating students in the HBA program. The (B) case 9B13C021 is set about two weeks later, when Patricia Coulter is wrestling with another decision.

This is a supplement to 9B13C020.

Rio Tinto, a major multinational mining company, signed a contract with the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games and the International Olympic Committee to supply all the gold, silver and copper for medals to be awarded at the London 2012 Olympic Games. Just three months before the opening ceremonies, a coalition of non-governmental organizations, titled Operation Greenwash Gold, combined with labour unions in Canada, Australia and around the world representing millions of workers to protest Rio Tinto’s alleged environmental, human rights and labour relations abuses. A number of damaging social media campaigns aimed to get the Olympic committees to cancel Rio Tinto’s contract were supplemented by street protests in front of the company’s headquarters during its annual general meeting. Rio Tinto’s chief executive officer must decide on a communications strategy in order to respond to its already tarnished reputation.

The new executive director is reflecting on her first two months at Carmichael Outreach, a non-profit organization that helps homeless people and others in need in Regina, Saskatchewan. She has already identified several risks to staff and client safety but must also address longer-term issues. Many believe the organization should do more to address the city’s chronic shortage of safe and affordable housing. Although clients, volunteers, staff and the board of directors expect her to develop and express her longer-term vision for Carmichael Outreach, she also needs to manage the day-to-day operations, which include ensuring the safety of clients and staff.