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In case B, in late summer 2020, the founder has decided to prioritize the company's rating agency, advocating for robust and standardized impact assessments for all firms. He felt confident about his company's new strategic direction and focus during the pandemic. But how could he ensure impak Finance Inc. grew toward its mission and attained financial sustainability?

In July 2020, Hindustan Unilever Limited, the Indian subsidiary of global fast-moving consumer goods company Unilever plc, renamed its Fair & Lovely skin-lightening cream in response to criticism that the product’s positioning and advertising reinforced a pre-existing bias toward fair skin in India. India's market for skin-lightening creams, the largest in the world, was valued at US$450 million–US$535 million, and Fair & Lovely was the market leader with a 70 per cent share. However, the company had been criticized for its positioning and advertising of Fair & Lovely, which many saw as reinforcing a pre-existing bias for fair skin in India. Did the company make the right strategic move by renaming the popular brand? Or should the company have instead followed the path of some competitors and withdrawn the brand from the market? What else could the company do to support the brand?

In April 2021, the co-founders of the Onyx Initiative (Onyx) were reviewing the progress of their six-month old organization. The co-founders had founded Onyx to expand the Black talent pipeline by offering a scholar program that connected Black students with mentors and offered them online professional development. The initiative had successfully accepted an inaugural cohort of 170 Black students and partnered with numerous corporate, community, and educational partners. Recently, corporate sponsors had approached Onyx with a request to expand programming to their US offices. The co-founders needed to decide if now was the right time for expansion, or if this would be spreading their new organization too thin.

Sterlite Copper (Sterlite), owned by Vedanta Resources Limited (Vedanta), was one of three major copper plants in India. However, the plant had been the subject of controversy and public protests. The people residing in Tuticorin, where the plant was located, considered Sterlite to be a major contributor to the air and water pollution in the neighbouring area. In light of the latest public protest on May 23, 2018, which was supported by several national and international non-government organizations, human rights activists, and Tamil solidarity groups, the Government of Tamil Nadu ordered a permanent shutdown of the plant. Since the plant contributed around 5 per cent to Vedanta’s operating profit, the closure of the plant not only threatened the earnings and profitability of the parent company but also damaged its brand image. The plant was a major source of copper for over 400 small and medium-sized industries in its downstream value chain. The closure of the plant put at risk the jobs of a large number of employees, which Sterlite supported both directly and indirectly through its value chain. What should Vedanta do in such a hostile environment?

Eagles Nest Association of Waterdown was a not-for-profit organization in Waterdown, Ontario. It had two active programs: the HOPE Centre (Home of Practical Education) and Rescued & Restored (R&R), a thrift shop that provided up to 40 per cent of the organization’s revenue. Changes in the retail environment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and increased turnover of volunteers at the store have forced the volunteer coordinator to evaluate the costs and benefits of the organization’s staffing model. Should Eagles Nest hire paid staff as sales associates for the thrift store or recruit volunteers to fill those roles?

In May 2019, Chiban Leather, a socially conscious leather manufacturing firm based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was undergoing an expansion and the company’s chief executive officer was contemplating its strategic future. She wanted to take advantage of opportunities in the Ethiopian leather industry and expand her client base to include 10 primary wholesalers. She was proud of the social impact the company had achieved so far, and she hoped to be able to focus more on this by expanding the company’s production process. She was also considering other options, including developing Chiban Leather as a retail brand, focusing on trade shows, and pursuing alternative exposure through diversified products and subscription boxes. She wondered if this was the right time to establish the brand and sell directly to clients. She also had to consider whether this option would align with her current goals and strategy.

Bombardier Inc., a Canadian manufacturer of business jets and small aircraft, developed the C Series aircraft amid numerous technical and financial challenges. In 2016, the US aviation company Delta Air Lines Inc. made a large purchase of the plane at an allegedly highly discounted price, which was expected to help Bombardier Inc. enter the lucrative US aviation market. In response, The Boeing Company, the world’s largest aerospace company, filed a complaint about the deal with the US Department of Commerce and with the United States International Trade Commission. The complaint was consistent with the current US administration position of promoting protectionist economic and trade policies. The US Department of Commerce concurred with The Boeing Company and levied anti-dumping and countervailing duties of 292.21 per cent against Bombardier Inc. However, the United States International Trade Commission found the tariffs unjustified and overturned the decision on the grounds that The Boeing Company was not materially harmed by the transaction. The Boeing Company had multiple options for pursuing a challenge, but each option had potential consequences.

With an increasing number of women joining the workforce in India, the women's office-wear segment was gaining traction in the clothing industry and a number of start-ups had recently appeared in the country. Ayushi Gudwani founded FableStreet (FS), a premium office-wear brand, when she found it difficult to find office-wear that fit her well. She found this to be a major pain point for many professional Indian women and decided to solve the problem. After extensive research, Gudwani developed a sizing guide unique to Indian women’s body types and an algorithm that drove the development of FS’s well-fitting quality clothing for professional women. In December 2019, FS raised US$2.95 million in a Series A round to fund its expansion. Now Gudwani has to choose the company’s next course of action by evaluating various growth options and choosing whether to build an offline presence, add accessory items as a new product category, or expand internationally.

Ethos - Spirit of the Community (Ethos), a sustainable tourism company in Sa Pa, Vietnam, existed to support a wide variety of environmental and social initiatives that benefited members of local, ethnic minority groups. In early 2019, the organization’s founders were working with 22 female tour guides and 260 ethnic minority host families to offer sustainable and socially responsible treks in the region. However, their ability to continue was in jeopardy due to changing regulations that would affect the working status of the company’s local trekking guides. Addressing this change was essential because the business depended on the local women who led Ethos tour groups, and the new requirement could mean Ethos’s underlying business model could fall apart, undermining its ability to support related environmental and social initiatives. How could the founders ensure that Ethos would survive as a long-term venture that was able to make a difference in the lives of the local people while also accomplishing their own long-term goals?

Serum Institute of India (SII) was the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines and had signed an agreement to produce the Oxford vaccine, a top five candidate. The chief executive officer, Adar Poonawala, had announced in late July 2020 that the government of India had agreed to buy two doses of the vaccine, at a price of US$13 per dose. In early August, two developments caused Adar to revisit SII's initial pricing decision. The first development was that Russia had announced it had developed a vaccine that was ready for mass distribution in early October—two months ahead of SII. The second development was that Johnson & Johnson had announced a price of US$10 per dose. The case outlines the decisions facing SII concerning the pricing strategy and pricing dynamics for their COVID-19 vaccine.

In May 2020, Benjamin Chua, the founder of Spic & Span, a cleaning company with a stated social mission to employ marginalized Singaporeans, was reviewing the company’s strategic goals. Since its founding in 2017, the start-up had become an award-winning company, and with the introduction of its new cleaning technology, Speco, in September 2019, new job opportunities had been brought to the table for cleaners and management staff alike. The company’s workforce had effectively doubled in size in less than a year. Spic & Span was expanding its services from condominiums and offices to schools, restaurants, hotels, transportations, hospitals, and homes. While the new technology had opened up new job opportunities for marginalized Singaporeans, it had also increased the level of job complexity. As a consequence, the turnover rate of newly employed staff had increased. Why were the cleaners not motivated by the new job opportunities? How could Chua motivate cleaners to stay with the company?

In 2019, the clinical director of the South East Grey Community Health Centre was conflicted about whether to proceed with presenting the chief executive officer with a proposal to expand the health centre's primary services to a satellite location in the neighbouring community of Port Elgin. The clinical director recalled the challenges she and her colleagues had faced in 2018, during the satellite expansion to Dundalk. As a nurse practitioner, she understood the pressing need for services and the moral imperative to put the patient's needs first. However, as a key member of the Centre's management team, she also knew what this proposal would entail operationally, and what internal pressures and risks were involved. The clinical director wondered how, in an environment of static or declining budgets, the Centre could build on its successes and challenges to date to address the emerging demand for further growth. Should she present the proposal to expand to another neighbouring community during a time of fiscal constraints?

In November 2016, the secretary of Mannarkkad Rural Service Co-operative Bank Ltd. (MCB) based in Kerala, India, learned that the prime minister of India had announced that large-denomination currency notes would be invalid as of midnight November 8. This demonetization move was to eradicate unaccounted for “black money” from the nation. Co-operative banks like MCB were excluded from the purview of India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, and as a primary agricultural credit society providing short-term credit to rural borrowers, MCB stood out from similar institutions by providing best-in-class banking services and constantly innovating to meet its vision of providing “the pleasure of personal banking” to its customers. MCB was the only bank in India to provide 24/7, 365-day banking operations through its overnight counter, and through a series of innovations, it had successfully pushed the boundaries of a rural co-operative bank to provide maximum convenience to its customers. The secretary of MCB now had to make some critical decisions: How should MCB handle the demonetization crisis with its existing and potential customers? Should MCB keep its overnight counter open? Should the secretary alert the bank’s micro-ATM agents? Would MCB’s parent bank provide funds? How could he address these concerns in a way that would maintain the goodwill MCB had built up among its customers over the past 27 years?

In early July 2020, the US government was considering banning TikTok, a social media platform for creating and sharing short videos, because its Chinese ownership had led to national security concerns. The founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, had taken several measures to distance TikTok from China, including hiring an American CEO and establishing offices in Los Angeles, California, and London, England. However, ByteDance investors expressed concerns that the company's Chinese ownership would still remain a liability. How could the founder and CEO prevent a possible ban on TikTok in the United States? Should he sell ByteDance's stake in TikTok to American investors? Did he have other options?

On August 12, 1819, a crew set sail for the Pacific Ocean on a three-year voyage on the Essex whaling ship. On November 20, 1820, a giant sperm whale emerged from the ocean and critically damaged the Essex’s starboard hull. The crew consisted of the captain, two officers, three boat steerers, and 13 sailors, most of whom lacked experience. While the captain and officers of the Essex huddled to plan their next move, the crew trusted the first officer to make the crucial decisions about using the ship’s three remaining whaleboats for the long voyage home. Surviving the wreckage would not be an easy task; therefore, making the right decisions would be essential for survival. As the ship continued to take in water, the captain and officers had to decide who should go in each whaleboat, what direction they should take, and what provisions they should carry.

By May 2020, Rivian Automotive (Rivian), a new electric vehicle (EV) battery manufacturer in the United States, had become a darling of the new battery electric vehicle (EV) market in North America. Rivian had not yet released any products, yet it had customers signed up and waiting in three distinctly different market segments. First 10,000 customers had deposited US$1,000 each for one of Rivian’s two electric adventure vehicles. Second, the Ford Motor Company, a Rivian shareholder, had made a commitment to purchase Rivian’s advanced electric skateboard powertrain, positioning Rivian as an EV component wholesaler. Finally Amazon.com Inc., also a Rivian shareholder, had pre-ordered 100,000 electric delivery vans. With three different markets, three different sets of customers, and three different commercialization challenges, had Rivian bitten off more than it could chew?

Eco Femme (EF) was a social enterprise founded in 2010. It developed re-usable cloth sanitary napkins and marketed towards those looking for sustainable products to manage their menstrual hygiene. The enterprise faced several challenges in reaching their target market of poor women in rural India. There was a taboo attached to menstruation and it was thus a difficult topic to discuss. Also, there were popular, commonly used, and easily available substitutes in the market, which were heavily marketed and distributed. EF had narrowed its options down to three broad distribution options—community groups, small convenience stores, and apparel retailers; the team needed to choose and develop a plan.

Welspun India Limited (Welspun) was a global leader in home textiles, supplying to top global retailers like Costco Wholesale Corporation, IKEA, Tesco plc, and Bed, Bath and Beyond, Inc. Welspun undertook many sustainability actions like eliminating freshwater usage through a sewage treatment plant in Anjar, improving energy efficiency in manufacturing and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, using transportation modes to leave a smaller carbon footprint, and creating products out of waste material. In order to move forward, the chief executive officer needed to decide how to use sustainable fashion to gain a competitive advantage. Was becoming a circular company the answer? If so, what steps needed to be taken for Welspun to become circular?

In the spring of 2018, the marketing team at Nike Inc. (Nike), based in Oregon, was faced with a decision regarding whether to follow the suggestion of the company’s long-standing advertising agency to sign Colin Kaepernick as the face of its upcoming “Just Do It” promotional campaign commemorating the 30-year anniversary of the slogan. Kaepernick was an NFL quarterback who had famously begun kneeling during the US national anthem in 2016 to protest social inequality and police brutality. At this juncture, the US political climate was extremely polarized, President Donald Trump had spoken out very negatively about Kaepernick’s “take-a-knee” protest, and the campaign would mark the first time in Nike’s history that the company adopted a clear political position in its promotional messaging. The company had to carefully weigh several issues, including the impact using Kaepernick would have on sales and on Nike’s brand image. Should Nike partner with Kaepernick on its campaign or pick a less controversial spokesperson? What market segments would be affected, and how? What were the implications for company sales and brand image?

On January 12, 2020, Michael McCain, the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Maple Leaf Foods Inc., posted four tweets on the company's social media platform, venting his anger at the US administration over a civilian airplane shot down in Iran. Specifically, he expressed his anger at the loss of life—including that of the wife and 11-year-old son of an employee of Maple Leaf Foods—which, according to McCain, stemmed from “a needless, irresponsible series of events in Iran. McCain cast blame on US president Donald Trump for escalating tensions with an ill-conceived plan to divert focus from political woes. Should McCain, as CEO, have expressed his personal views on Maple Leaf Foods' Twitter feed? Would his tweets damage the company's brand and destroy shareholder value?