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Founded in May 2020, FirstConnect Solutions is a micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSME) focused on providing recruitment and staffing solutions. When the pandemic hit recruitment activities across industries, FirstConnect Solutions demonstrated its mettle through robust growth within the first year, meeting clients' expectations by successfully filling the few but challenging recruitment mandates. The pandemic environment also allowed the firm to hire inexperienced recruiters and train them on the job. The company motivated recruiters with monetary incentives linked to successful placement and a powerful reward and recognition program. While all employees appreciated the organization's culture, FirstConnect continued to lose recruiters after they were painstakingly trained and had just started to become productive. To ensure client service did not suffer, FirstConnect hired gig recruiters, who were paid only for sourcing relevant candidate profiles through a milestone-based incentive system. The variability in quality and availability meant that this route of ensuring client satisfaction was not entirely reliable owing to an uncertain talent pool. The dilemma for FirstConnect was to identify the target demographic segments for its permanent workforce and how to build its employer brand and employee value proposition to prevent attrition. Further, it needed to determine the percentage of work to be managed by gig workers without risking their client servicing capability.

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FunctionFox Systems Inc. (FunctionFox) was a small company headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, specializing in project management and timesheet tracking software. Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing restrictions, FunctionFox decided to move to 100 per cent remote work in late 2020 and sold the building where its office had been located. In early 2022, when the pandemic appeared to be subsiding, the president of FunctionFox was considering whether the company should continue with fully remote work, return to in-person work, or find a hybrid mode. She had to consider the pros and cons of each alternative and prepare a recommendation for her colleagues.

FunctionFox Systems Inc. (FunctionFox) was a small company headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, specializing in project management and timesheet tracking software. Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing restrictions, FunctionFox decided to move to 100 per cent remote work in late 2020 and sold the building where its office had been located. In early 2022, when the pandemic appeared to be subsiding, the president of FunctionFox was considering whether the company should continue with fully remote work, return to in-person work, or find a hybrid mode. She had to consider the pros and cons of each alternative and prepare a recommendation for her colleagues.

In January 2020, the human resources (HR) head of MAGIS Infotech (MAGIS), a software solutions provider to banking and financial firms, was asked to come up with a set of new HR measures to resolve problems related to coordination between employees at MAGIS’s two locations—in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and Coimbatore, India. The Abu Dhabi location had all of the client-facing roles and support functions such as HR and finance, whereas Coimbatore had the back-end roles related to software development and testing. The HR head, located in Abu Dhabi, was responsible for HR matters for both the Abu Dhabi and Coimbatore locations. Within the next two months, MAGIS would recruit and onboard a large batch of employees to double the workforce at the Coimbatore location, which faced a lack of cohesion between employees at different levels. In addition, there was friction between the Abu Dhabi and Coimbatore teams. The HR head had to come up with HR measures to resolve these issues before the new employees were recruited.

In January 2020, the human resources (HR) head of MAGIS Infotech (MAGIS), a software solutions provider to banking and financial firms, was asked to come up with a set of new HR measures to resolve problems related to coordination between employees at MAGIS's two locations-in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and Coimbatore, India. The Abu Dhabi location had all of the client-facing roles and support functions such as HR and finance, whereas Coimbatore had the back-end roles related to software development and testing. The HR head, located in Abu Dhabi, was responsible for HR matters for both the Abu Dhabi and Coimbatore locations. Within the next two months, MAGIS would recruit and onboard a large batch of employees to double the workforce at the Coimbatore location, which faced a lack of cohesion between employees at different levels. In addition, there was friction between the Abu Dhabi and Coimbatore teams. The HR head had to come up with HR measures to resolve these issues before the new employees were recruited.

A 24-year-old female employee landed her first career job at Exeter Group only a few months after graduating from university. The employee worked as an assistant to the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer. A few months after the employee began her new job, her boss began making work requests that seemed personal and then began making repeated sexual advances, which made the employee feel increasingly uncomfortable. The employee tried to curb the boss’s behaviour on several occasions, but she felt caught between dealing with harassment from her boss and trying to develop her career.<br><br>One late evening during a business trip, the boss drunkenly and forcibly disrupted the employee in her hotel room and attempted to coerce her into having sex with him. The employee evaded the advance by locking herself in the bathroom of her hotel room. As she sat on the floor of the bathroom, she wondered how she had found herself in this extremely difficult situation and how she would get out of it.

This case presents the development trajectory of Meizu, a well-known smartphone brand in China, including its inception, rapid rise, and gradual decline, as well as how the leadership characteristics of J. Wong, its founder, precipitated both its success and failure. High school dropout Wong founded the company in 2002. As a result of the company's superb product quality, Meizu became the leading company in China's MP3 player market. In 2006, Wong realized that MP3 players would gradually give way to smartphones and decided to switch production to the latter. He had a perfectionist approach to product development. After three years of R&D and rejecting two versions he deemed unsatisfactory, he finally launched the M8, Meizu's first mobile phone. To craft a comfortable wooden back cover for the MX3, he even made 31 models using a woodworking plane. He was also one of the first people to ride the wave of the fan economy and internet marketing, and frequently discussed technological topics with users on the Meizu BBS forum. In the past, when copycat mobile phones inundated the market, Wong's geeky personality garnered attention and a vast fan base for Meizu. However, as the market gradually matured and competition intensified, Meizu slowly fell behind. It only launched one smartphone model per year, and its excessive perfectionism meant it could not keep up with the competition. What kind of person was Wong? How should we evaluate the successes and crises he has brought to the company? This case sheds light on how the personality traits of a company's leader could affect the development of both the leader himself and the company.

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Alice Moore worked remotely as a full-time senior data associate for Bloom Inc., a global technology firm in the United States. The department in which Moore worked was restructured while she was on maternity leave; yet despite having a strong performance record, Moore received neither a promotion nor a pay increase, while some colleagues did. She returned from her maternity leave in June 2018, and regardless of more than a year of emails and meetings with managers, Moore’s concerns about her role in the restructured department were not resolved. In August 2019, Moore was preparing for her final meeting with a manager and needed to decide how best to advocate for her career concerns within Bloom.

Alice Moore worked remotely as a full-time senior data associate for Bloom Inc., a global technology firm in the United States. The department in which Moore worked was restructured while she was on maternity leave; yet despite having a strong performance record, Moore received neither a promotion nor a pay increase, while some colleagues did. She returned from her maternity leave in June 2018, and regardless of more than a year of emails and meetings with managers, Moore's concerns about her role in the restructured department were not resolved. In August 2019, Moore was preparing for her final meeting with a manager and needed to decide how best to advocate for her career concerns within Bloom.

In the contemporary business reality, marked by unemployment and loose labor markets, workplace abuse is likely to climb as organizations and managers wield increased leverage in the employment relationship. We explore the organizational phenomenon of worker abuse and examine workplace blog accounts from abused workers to uncover shared insights. Based on these findings, we offer research-based suggestions, implications for practice, and resources for organizations, managers, and workers. Specifically, we advance an ABUSE mitigation model as a holistic management system for identifying and dealing with workplace abuse.

They may be turning great candidates away.

This case relates to a novel human resource initiative undertaken by IOCL, one of India's largest public sector organizations. IOCL, a Fortune 500 organization, had 33,000 employees spread across seven business divisions and 40 offices across India and abroad. When Ranjan Mahapatra assumed office as Director of Human Resources at IOCL in February 2018, he realized that many IOCL employees perceived that the human resources department is distant and indifferent, in spite of increasing automation of human resources function. Several concerns related to human resource policies remained unaddressed, although the organization had complaint redressal forums. Mahapatra proposed an idea of a novel role of a human resource facilitator (HRF), HR personnel who would act as a single point of contact for employees within their department and ensure that employee concerns are addressed while navigating the organizational bureaucracy. The case describes how Mahapatra and his team implemented the new HRF scheme. Within seven months of its introduction, the 41 HRFs successfully resolved 1600 queries raised by the employees, which was widely appreciated by the IOCL employees. The case ends by highlighting some challenges faced by HRFs and leaves Mahapatra wondering whether he should delay the launch of the HRF scheme in other business verticals until these challenges are overcome.

A 24-year-old female employee landed her first career job at Exeter Group only a few months after graduating from university. The employee worked as an assistant to the company's co-founder and chief executive officer. A few months after the employee began her new job, her boss began making work requests that seemed personal and then began making repeated sexual advances, which made the employee feel increasingly uncomfortable. The employee tried to curb the boss's behaviour on several occasions, but she felt caught between dealing with harassment from her boss and trying to develop her career. One late evening during a business trip, the boss drunkenly and forcibly disrupted the employee in her hotel room and attempted to coerce her into having sex with him. The employee evaded the advance by locking herself in the bathroom of her hotel room. As she sat on the floor of the bathroom, she wondered how she had found herself in this extremely difficult situation and how she would get out of it.

In 2010, 3G Capital acquired Burger King, the second largest burger chain globally. 3G expanded Burger King's operations via acquisitions into a multi-brand business, renamed Restaurant Brands International. The acquisition had been a financial success story for 3G. However, in recent years RBI had faced its share of challenges including competition in its home markets, the rollout of a digital strategy, and increased employee turnover. In March 2022, the questions facing José Cil, RBI's CEO, and the company's co-chairmen, Daniel Schwartz and Alex Behring, were whether they had done the right things to address these challenges and position RBI for continued success and what else needed to be done?

This case reviews IBM's efforts to widen its hiring funnel and broaden its talent pool.

In 2016, UltraTech Cement Limited acquired a number of Jaypee Cement Corporation Ltd.’s cement capacity assets in India’s largest cement sector deal. As a result of this acquisition, all permanent employees at the acquired plants became employees of UltraTech Cement Limited. This included people working in plants, logistics, sales and marketing offices, and head office. On analyzing the employee data and organizational structure, considerable differences became apparent. The differences were related to organizational culture, organizational structure at the plant level, reporting relationships, and employee compensation. The challenge was to combine the two organizations and streamline human resources policies and practices fairly and equitably and help Jaypee Cement Corporation Ltd. employees integrate well into the newly merged entity.

The Happy Turtle was a bootstrapped start-up in Delhi, India, that was focused on driving a circular economy for plastics. The company aimed to offer sustainable and biodegradable lifestyle alternatives to plastic, which could secure a greener future for the planet. The founder of The Happy Turtle had left a successful and flourishing corporate culture to follow her passion for sustainability. By mid-2019, The Happy Turtle had been growing at a slow but steady pace to reach a breakeven point. One year later, however, the company was finding itself at a crossroads. Business uncertainty had arisen due to the Indian government’s new policy on plastic waste management, various underlying issues related to the circular economy, and the challenge of raising money from angel investors. In addition, the founder was finding it difficult to recruit, hire, and retain the right talent to help her achieve The Happy Turtle’s vision. What strategic and routine decisions would she have to make to reach her company’s goals and vision?

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