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This case supplements the Career Coaching: General Manager Role case by providing briefing material for the individual who is assigned to play the Darcy Gallagher role. In preparation for his meeting with his general manager about his future career path, Darcy has crafted his career development plan over the next five years.

The Indian business landscape is marked by uncertainty, turbulence, hyper-competition, and non-linear growth, as exemplified by the automobile sector. Increasing competition from foreign automobile organizations and homegrown ones such as Tata Motors are posing a threat to the market leader, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. A fierce battle for market share is ensuing among these automobile giants. However, Maruti Suzuki has succeeded in maintaining its leadership position. Yet with more companies venturing into the territory of Maruti Suzuki — the small car segment — the threat to Maruti Suzuki’s market share is looming larger than before.<br><br>This case illustrates Maruti Suzuki’s journey and depicts the changes in its organizational strategy, HR strategy, and work culture in response to new challenges. Maruti Suzuki had to change from a government-owned organization and a monopoly, to a firm capable of competing with world-class automobile companies. This case describes the various challenges faced by the organization and how HR has assisted in bringing about much-needed transformation. The challenges include having to create a performing workforce, changing the mindset of the employees, coping with cross-cultural issues and, most significantly, engaging in breakthrough innovation. HR needs to create an organizational culture that not only supports breakthrough innovation but also helps retain employees.

In 1982, Fadi Ghandour founded Aramex, a leading provider of logistics and transportation solutions with headquarters in Amman, Jordan. From its early inception, Ghandour strategically included principles and practices of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability in the company’s culture in order to align business interests and competence with stakeholders’ needs. The community and environment were regarded as key stakeholders driving Aramex to act as a responsible citizen. Since its inception, Aramex had been involved in sustainability activities grouped into six primary areas: education and youth empowerment; community development; entrepreneurship; sports; environment; and emergency relief. Committed to growth and opening new offices globally, Aramex faced the challenge of preserving CSR as an integral part of its expansion strategy. In late January 2011, Ghandour and Hattar began brainstorming ways to address the need to harmonize CSR and sustainability values and practices across operations and ensure that sustainability principles were firmly institutionalized across branches and subsidiaries.

Office romance has challenged sexual norms at work. Under the prevailing norms 40 years ago, a workplace affair meant a semi-clandestine liaison between a male executive (married or unmarried) and a female secretary or low-level assistant. Over the past few decades, sexual norms have become more flexible, and office romances are more likely to be out in the open. This case provides six real-life examples of office romance. In each case, students have an opportunity to consider how well the parties to the romance have conducted the relationship in a business context and what leaders could have done to manage the situation.

Determining what employees want from their jobs has long been important to employers who wish to motivate them. This note explains the concepts of work values, organizational culture, and person-organization fit. Students will complete a personal values profile and an organizational culture profile to allow assessment of person-organization fit.

During the summer of 1998, Bob Aston and his partners, all bankers, spent many days discussing their plans to start a bank in southeastern Virginia, United States. Deregulation was transforming the banking industry. In Virginia, mergers and acquisitions in the industry had led to the emergence of large banks that had headquarters in other states. Aston felt that banking as he knew it was disappearing. However, before they could start a bank, Aston and his partners faced many questions and decisions: How would they raise the capital? Who would the bank serve? How would they compete with the larger banks that had emerged due to the deregulation? <br><br><br><br>The decisions they made at the founding had a lasting effect on TowneBank. This became evident a decade later as financial institutions around the country experienced a severe crisis that was triggered by exposure to risky mortgages, while TowneBank remained relatively unscathed. However, the management team had to consider several issues as the crisis unfolded. Should they accept the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds that the U.S. Treasury had offered to banks (even those that were unlikely to fail and were adequately capitalized)? How could they ensure TowneBank’s growth? Should they acquire distressed banks in the local market?

November 29, 2010, was “Cyber Monday,” one of the busiest online shopping days of the year, with the potential to approach $1 billion in online sales in North America. The chief designer of fashion company Donna Karan New York (DKNY) was facing a difficult situation. On this particular Cyber Monday, activists for the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) had posted simultaneous messages on DKNY’s Facebook page. Anyone viewing the page could not fail to discern the “DK Bunny Butcher” message. This action by PETA was the culmination of several years, beginning in 2005, of attempting to convince DKNY to stop using fur in its collections. This November 29 message was a sharp reminder to both DKNY and its Cyber Monday customers that, up to this point, the company had refused to stop using fur. It was available to be viewed by DKNY’s over 200,000 Facebook fans as well as millions of online Cyber Monday shoppers. The chief designer was unsure how to respond: on one hand was the desire to clearly explain the use of fur, but on the other was the desire to avoid escalating the publicity surrounding the matter. She needed an immediate strategy that would retain her brand’s image and protect future sales.

The owner of a large hardware, furniture, and building centre faced a dilemma regarding how to manage the upcoming wage review process. After two consecutive years of frozen wages, employees were impatient for financial progress, but there was no extra money in the budget. It was possible to pump savings from upcoming process improvement initiatives into wage increases. However, the owner had limited motivation to channel hard-won funds to underperforming employees. On the other hand, he was eager to reward the people who added value. Yet a plan that rewarded only some employees could result in an angry backlash. He had to decide if he wanted to divert the savings into compensation and, if so, he needed an effective distribution plan.

Margaret Linnane had just arrived home from a funders’ meeting where she had been asked questions that nearly challenged the very purpose of her nonprofit organization, Rollins College Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership Center (PNLC). She had been unprepared for the tough questions the funders had asked and she knew that she would need to be much better prepared for the next meeting in one month. She needed answers to the funders’ questions in four short weeks, so Linnane and the PNLC staff put other efforts on hold while they worked intensely to prepare. They gathered all the documents on the PNLC’s mission, vision, and strategic plan. They needed to determine what information to compile to convince the funders that the PNLC’s services (such as networking among established chief executive officers and foundation directors, and introducing newcomers to the nonprofit community) contributed to the professionalization of nonprofit leaders and organizations while addressing critical community issues — even if such services had not yet generated any revenue. What outcome measures were appropriate for assessing the success of non-income-generating activities such as networking? To start to search for answers to such questions, Linnane decided to review PNLC’s performance from the last two years and build a strategy for 2011-2012. Time was of the essence because without the support of funders, PNLC would be hard-pressed to continue offering its well-established networking activities.

This supplement to Maple Leaf Foods, Inc. (A): The Listeriosis Crisis describes what the company and its chief executive officer did to cope with this crisis in the days and months following.

This case deals with the problems that Platmin faces as it heads toward full production at a new open-cast mine in Pilanesberg, South Africa. Platmin is in a very difficult situation that is affecting the viability of the operation. The main issue is the timing of the production — investment in mining is typically heavy in the beginning, but when the mine starts producing, payback of loans is usually substantial. Any delay in production has an exaggerated effect on the payback period and, by extension, the viability of the mine. The second major issue is the economic downturn, which has seen the price of platinum decline substantially; however, this may benefit Platmin because it is a low-cost producer, and the downturn has led to some competitors leaving the industry or “mothballing” operations that are not viable at the current platinum price. On the other hand, while Platmin is seeing a shakeup in the industry, it is experiencing pressures on its margins, and this also has an effect on its capital funding.

The assistant site supervisor at Finemaster Projects Ltd. struggled with how to approach his boss for a raise. When hired, he had been told that regular annual reviews were held with employees and that good performance would be rewarded with corresponding pay increases. After one year with the company, the assistant site supervisor found that the owners rarely acted on this policy, leaving it up to staff to approach management about raises, promotions, and other performance-related issues. In his second year with the company, the assistant site supervisor experienced further disappointment with how his boss dealt with his compensation request, and his faith in the company’s pledge to reward employees for good performance was quickly fading. The (A) case covers the assistant site supervisor’s first meeting with his employer when offered a position with the company, as well as his conversation with a less experienced employee earning a higher wage. The supplements, Finemaster Projects Ltd. (B) and (C), describe his meetings with his boss after 12 months and two years, respectively.

This supplement to Finemaster Projects Ltd. (A) describes the assistant site supervisor’s meeting with his boss after two years.

The case narrates how A.P.V.N. Sarma, chairman and managing director of Singareni Collieries Company (SCCL) since 1997, realized the need for change to rescue the company from impending bankruptcy. SCCL, a supplier of coal to the power and energy sectors, had been declared bankrupt by the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction twice, in 1992 and 1996, and had accumulated losses of 12.19 billion rupees. As it provided direct and indirect employment to people residing in the region around SCCL, the health of the organization was critical not only to the massive workforce, but also to the state of Andhra Pradesh. The power generation units of the state relied significantly on the coal supplied by SCCL. <br><br>The case captures various initiatives undertaken by Sarma to bridge the trust deficit between management and blue-collar workers with low literacy and income levels. It discusses the novel communication strategies to connect with workers. The case describes how numerous strikes plaguing SCCL were curbed and order was restored to allow productivity to rise. Under Sarma’s leadership, SCCL achieved a net profit of 894 million rupees for the fourth consecutive year in 2001. Sarma had a fixed tenure of five years, ending in 2001. The task for the new leader was to build on the foundations laid by Sarma and take SCCL to new heights.

Sumeru Software Solutions was a software development consultancy firm headquartered in Bangalore, India, with offices in Washington, D.C., Dubai, and London. It began operations in July 2001 as a single project with two employees, and grew over 10 years into an organization with approximately 200 employees. The founding objective of Sumeru Software Solutions was to support Art of Living’s social development initiatives through profits earned from delivering high-quality services. Art of Living (AOL) was founded in 1981 by Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji as a not-for-profit, educational, humanitarian non-governmental organization engaged in stress-management programs, including yoga and meditation. Sumeru had developed a unique culture that combined corporate culture with the Art of Living principles of Seva, Satsang, Sadhana, and positivity even in the face of adversity. In line with the AOL principles, the four pillars of Sumeru culture were ethics, caring, sharing and trust. It purported to follow a peaceful yet aggressive way of doing business called “Serene Dynamism.” Harish Ramachandran, CEO of Sumeru Software Solutions, had created an enterprise that was different from other IT organizations. He was wondering how he would sustain the culture of the organization and make Sumeru a high-performing company over the next 10 years as it expanded its business and hired new employees.

Vlaad and Company, a recruiting firm specializing in the Canadian capital markets, has embarked upon an initiative to recruit more women to capital markets jobs. The case describes the early stages of this initiative and provides six examples of capital markets job candidates — four women and two men. The director of the women in capital markets initiative must decide which of these six candidates, if any, to present to client firms. She must also think about the design of the women in capital markets initiative.

This case depicts how executives who are holding power in an organization can create chaos due to interpersonal conflict. Rao and Naik, two senior executives at TKC Consulting in India, scapegoated an innocent subordinate during the course of their rivalry. Their actions, not befitting the positions they held, created confusion and misunderstanding in the organization. The chairman of the company understood that their selfish, power-hungry actions could not be explicitly pointed out, as this would merely result in a cycle of blame. Yet he also knew that if the conflict was not addressed immediately, it would cause more discord within the organization.

The Liang family, experienced family hoteliers in China, had to leave the mainland under the pressure of the forces of Chairman Mao and the Communist Party of China in 1949. They resettled in Taiwan, resumed their hospitality business and now, two generations later, have returned to Nanjing to find that their family’s old guest house has been allowed to run down and deteriorate as a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SoE). They repurchase the old guest house with the intention to redevelop it. How will they deal with this privatization and the inevitable bureaucracy of purchasing, demolishing, and rebuilding the old guest house? How will they convert the existing SoE human resources (trained under planned-economy conditions) into dynamic employees operating in the market economy, while being sensitive to the cultural characteristics and challenges of this mainland Chinese workplace? With more than 6,000 Chinese SoEs still being targeted for privatization, this case is very relevant and provides a real-world opportunity for students to exercise their research, analytical, international management, entrepreneurial, and cross-cultural management skills.

AWARD-WINNING CASE: Adjudged third-best case at the ISB Case Competition 2010 held in partnership with the Richard Ivey School of Business and the Association of Indian Management Schools and sponsored by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.<br><br>ABC Energy Limited (ABCEL) was created in March 2007 by ABC Infra Private Limited and XYG Private Limited. In September 2007, MNP Finance Limited joined ABCEL as an equity partner. In 2010, ABCEL operated in power generation and had plans to diversify into transmission and distribution. It aspired to be a world-class energy company with operations in India and neighbouring countries. ABCEL had grown by investing in greenfield projects and acquiring existing operations. The promoters of ABCEL had set a target of achieving a project portfolio of 30,000 megawatts by 2015, up from the current portfolio of 8,655 megawatts. The chief executive officer of ABCEL wanted to discuss the following issues at the board meeting on July 31, 2010, with regard to the opportunities and challenges in the growing market: 1) the key organizational needs that ABCEL might have in achieving its target by 2015, 2) the present culture of ABCEL, 3) the relationship between the culture and extent of formalization and hence the ramp-up of formalization that ABCEL might require, and 4) the method of introducing this formalization.

The chief executive officer of Maple Leaf Foods, Inc., a food processing company employing 23,000 people in more than 50 locations, has just been advised that a deadly outbreak of Listeriosis has been linked to products shipped from a Maple Leaf Foods plant and that there have been several fatalities and many more severe illnesses linked to this contamination. He must decide what to do immediately, within the next few days, and in the longer term to deal with the problem and the effect that the negative publicity will almost certainly have on the company.