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Incorporated on February 18, 1959, Oil India Ltd. (OIL) was a leading public sector oil and gas company involved in the exploration, development, production and transportation of crude oil and natural gas in India. Since its inception, OIL had committed itself to being a socially responsible organisation in and around operational areas, particularly the north-eastern state of Assam where 90% of company operations were concentrated. Despite many successes, the "People's Company" continued to be a target for disgruntled local and student communities who frequently created operational hazards for the firm-from sit-ins and blockades to pilfering and disrupting production facilities. No less than 400 organisations, of which 50-60 had been consistently active, were currently in the forefront of demanding something from OIL. Many of these demands were beyond the purview of OIL's CSR policy and focus areas. Additionally, being a Public Sector Undertaking (PSU), OIL also faced multiple demands from the government. On February 16, 2019, news arrived that there was yet another blockade in Duliajan, Assam. What should OIL do to address and possibly mitigate operational interruptions?

This case features a family business working to better integrate the voice of the whole family into corporate governance. In November 2019, the Herschend Enterprises board prepared to elect its first family chair in almost 20 years. For several years, the business, which owned and operated multiple popular US-based theme parks and other entertainment offerings, had been governed by a majority independent board led by an independent chair and run by a non-family CEO, with an engaged but largely hands-off family ownership group. Third- and fourth-generation owners struggled with how best to provide input on company direction. This was partly because several longtime independent directors, who were deeply trusted by the family and knew the business very well, were able to shape decisions and wield influence with minimal family input. In this context, the family had recently formed an owners' council responsible for consolidating the owners' voice. But the inaugural council members recognized that family leadership in general remained concentrated among a few members who filled slots on the family council, owners' council, and board. The company therefore had no effective mechanism in place to consolidate the voice of the owners and assure this was heard in the boardroom. Instead, it relied on the individual voices of owners who reached out to independent directors or on owners who already served as family directors. Grappling with these challenges were third- and fourth-generation family and owners' council members Chris (the incoming board chair), Jim, Jonn, and Austin Herschend--all serving or former Herschend corporate board directors. They considered how best to unify and engage the family around issues such as advising and working with the board, engagement of the broad ownership group, determination of optimal profiles for owners' council members and family directors, and the looming decision of moving from an independent chair to a family chair.

In 2018, automotive tycoon Carlos Ghosn was arrested in Japan on financial misreporting charges, followed later by charges of improper payments and misappropriation of funds. Over a year later, still awaiting trial, Ghosn organized his escape from house arrest in Tokyo to Beirut, Lebanon, where he held a press conference alleging an unfair Japanese justice system and political persecution. This case introduces the business and legal context surrounding Ghosn's case, and explores Ghosn's perspective and decision-making process from the time between arrest and escape.

In May 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the protests that followed the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody, leadership at the National Association for Stock Car Automobile Racing (NASCAR), the American auto-racing company best known for stock-car racing, had to decide whether to ban the Confederate flag at its events. To many, the flag was emblematic of racism and a celebration of the Confederacy and its attempts, in the American Civil War, to retain the institution of slavery. Race attendees often carried the flag with them, it was emblazoned on clothes, souvenirs, and mugs, and some even tattooed it on themselves. The Confederate flag had been controversial for years, and NASCAR had tried to eliminate it and other racist symbols from its events, but to no avail. But this time was different: awareness of injustice and inequity had permeated the country's social consciousness and people throughout America had taken to the streets to protest. Nonetheless, many NASCAR fans claimed the Confederacy flag was representative of "heritage, not hate" and threatened to boycott the sport if it were banned. Despite NASCAR's attempts to diversify both the organization and the audience, NASCAR's fan base remained decidedly conservative and, for the most part, tolerant of the flag's presence. NASCAR did not want to alienate its fan base, but leadership did want to change with the times and instill diversity in every aspect of the organization. It also did not want to put up roadblocks to attendee comfort-and for many current and potential fans, the Confederate flag's presence was a roadblock.

This case is a follow-up to ""NASCAR and the Confederate Flag (A)"" (UVA-E-0441). It outlines how National Association for Stock Car Automobile Racing (NASCAR) leadership announced on June 10, 2020, that the Confederate flag was no longer welcome at race events and venues. Reaction was both positive and negative. However, despite this decisive move, questions remained, including: How would each track enforce the ban? What steps could NASCAR take to move past this controversy and get fans-and some employees who disagreed with the ban-to focus on the sport? How could NASCAR grow its demographics beyond the conservative, white Southerners who had comprised much of NASCAR's fanbase over history, and how could the organization become more inclusive?

Samson Paper's 森信紙業 (SEHK: 731) main business was the manufacturing, trading, and marketing of paper products in China. After the company failed to file its year-end 31 March 2020 annual report before the deadline, the stock was suspended. Following the suspension, a board meeting was held on 11 July 2020, after which the board received resignation letters from one non-executive director (NED) and three independent non-executive directors (INEDs). In a public announcement on 14 July 2020, Samson declared that at the board meeting, Samson's auditors had advised: "There were substantial payments made to the company's connected party's suppliers. Such payments were booked to inter-company accounts rather than amounts due to the connected party." According to Samson's announcement, the NED, INEDs, and the auditor did not receive satisfactory replies from management on the commercial substance and intentions of these transactions during the meeting. The management denied any wrongdoing in relation to these transactions. On 18 July 2020, after the company had defaulted on a HKD780mn loan, it filed for voluntary liquidation.

In 2020, Amazon, the $386 billion online retail behemoth, built an eight-story shelter for women and families experiencing homelessness on its expanding headquarters in Seattle, Washington. The shelter, operated in partnership with a non-profit organization known as Mary's Place, was designed to address what had become a searing problem for Seattle and many other wealthy American cities: although urban areas like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco were thriving economically from a recent influx of major tech companies and their well-heeled, well-educated work forces, poorer populations in these cities were being simultaneously hit by the declining availability and surging cost of what was once affordable housing. Amazon's partnership with Mary's Place was a novel experiment in addressing this problem at its core, using some of the firm's own resources to fund and create attractive living space for families struggling with homelessness. Yet, critics of the firm argued that its apparent charity was misplaced. Rather than trying to fix homelessness, many held, Amazon and other tech giants should stop acting in ways that were only making the problem worse. Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary's Place is an opportunity for students to understand the problem of homelessness in American cities and to investigate business's role in both causing and addressing it.

Just as people can develop skills and abilities over time, they can learn to be more or less ethical. Yet many organizations limit ethics training to the onboarding process. If they do address it thereafter, it may be only by establishing codes of conduct or whistleblower hotlines. Such steps may curb specific infractions, but they don't necessarily help employees develop as ethical people. Drawing on evidence from hundreds of research studies, the authors offer a framework for helping workers build moral character. Managers can provide experiential training in ethical dilemmas. They can foster psychological safety when minor lapses occur, conduct pre- and postmortems for initiatives with ethical components, and create a culture of service by encouraging volunteer work and mentoring in ethics.

Businesses have traditionally assessed their climate risks primarily by reference to regulatory compliance requirements and related costs. However, recent developments in the law, regulation, and corporate governance suggest that businesses need to have a broader understanding of their responsibility for mitigating the effects of climate change and the potential risks to their business. This case sets out examples of four such recent developments: a Dutch court ordering Royal Dutch Shell to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions; successful shareholder activist campaigns at Chevron and Exxon; and regulators' scrutiny of listed company climate disclosures. The case highlights pressures from regulators and law courts in enforcing emissions reductions more strictly than previously and the greater litigation risk that corporations will face going forward. In addition, there is growing pressure from shareholders advocating that their corporations have a climate policy in line with international regulations and norms, which the senior management of corporations is taking seriously. The case provides the reader with an insight into the real issues of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues that senior management will need to resolve. This case places readers in the position of the board of a fictional global energy conglomerate and invites them to consider how these developments impact the company's strategic thinking and corporate policies. The case encourages discussion of corporate strategy, risk management, public relations, and investor communications in the context of ESG issues and aims to broaden students' conceptual framework of these key issues.

As incoming President and CEO of the National Urban League in 2003, Marc Morial believed that promoting racial equity in corporate America was a natural part of the organization's remit. In the latter third of the 20th century, the NUL had helped individual African Americans secure employment in a number of major industries, but these successes were hard-won, time-consuming, and, most frustrating, isolated. Morial wanted to push corporations to move beyond their one-off diversity improvements to institute sustained, systemic advances. Yet how exactly to do that was not so clear. Despite its longtime relationships in corporate America, the National Urban League did not have any obvious leverage to push its diversity mission. But Morial found a way to increase the NUL's bargaining position in two ways: one, by joining forces with other civil rights groups and two, by seizing on moments when a company needed permission for an acquisition or merger. This leadership case focuses squarely on Morial and his thinking. It includes descriptions of Morial's personal and family background in New Orleans during the 1960s, a time of racial change and difficulty, and it includes background about the history of the National Urban League and its challenges to meet the 21st century civil rights landscape.

The blood supply chain is under pressure from COVID-19. How should the 3rd largest blood bank in the US, OneBlood, respond? Is adopting an agile supply chain philosophy an effective approach? The case provides an overview of the agile approach to management and its impacts on supply chains. It details the need for IT, operational and managerial competence to enable a successful agile approach. The specifics of the blood industry and OneBlood provide the context for examining when and how agile can be effective. The case challenges the students use the specifics of the blood industry in general and OneBlood in particular to write a memo from the CFO to the rest of the executive team advocating for the adoption of the agile approach to managing the company's blood supply chain.

The blood supply chain is under pressure from COVID-19. How should the 3rd largest blood bank in the US, OneBlood, respond? Is adopting an agile supply chain philosophy an effective approach? The case provides an overview of the agile approach to management and its impacts on supply chains. It details the need for IT, operational and managerial competence to enable a successful agile approach. The specifics of the blood industry and OneBlood provide the context for examining when and how agile can be effective. The case challenges the students use the specifics of the blood industry in general and OneBlood in particular to write a memo from the CFO to the rest of the executive team advocating for the adoption of the agile approach to managing the company's blood supply chain.

The goal of the case is to understand how to design, build, and engage with digital technologies as they relate to civic participation, equity, governance, and accountability. Delivering critical services to the public requires building technology that works for people. In environments like the public sector, this can be a challenge, but it is possible and necessary. Students will learn how product managers set strategy, define products, advocate for the user, manage stakeholders, and understand market or policy factors in order to ship technology services and products that benefit people. In 2015, the Obama Administration asked a cross-governmental team to reimagine the College Scorecard, a website to assist high school students with their college decisions. This team consisted of the United States Digital Service (which fell under the Executive Office of the President), 18F (which fell under the General Services Administration), and the Department of Education. The team, whose members had diverse skillsets and backgrounds, understood the problem by conducting a thorough discovery sprint. This helped them understand users, particularly high school students from different backgrounds, parents, guidance counselors, and other stakeholder groups. The team then continuously engaged users as they built the product, working across three different government entities to get a digital product launched. The team members and technology leaders included in this case: Holly Allen, Sarah Allen, Shawn Allen, Lisa Gelobter, Michelle Hertzfeld, Jessica Teal, Sabrina Williams, David Nesting.

In mid-October of 2020, Rico Ruiz, Director of Organizational Development at Tampa General Hospital (TGH), had to decide on a Digital Badging Platform (DBP) to support a professional development program hosted by University of South Florida (USF) for delivery to TGH's health care workers in the proposed People Development Institute (PDI). Ruiz was approached by TGH's CEO, John Couris, about a challenge with organizing and tracking the engagement of professional development of employees across its various departments. TGH was a highly respected hospital with nationally ranked clinical programs. Couris insisted that the development of the professional skills of 8,100 members in their interactions with other employees and patients needed to be better organized and tracked. Couris was prepared to invest $10M over a 10-year period into a healthcare professional development center, PDI, in partnership with the USF Muma College of Business. Dr. Matthew Mullarkey, a professor and co-director of USF's Doctor of Business Administration program, where Couris was in his second year of study, thought a system of micro-credentials based on academic digital badges could provide an innovative way to credential TGH's employees as they completed developmental programs through USF. The digital badges allowed for better tracking of TGH employee development and they could be stacked into more meaningful credentials such as college credits and certificates. Additionally, employees could share their earned digital badges on social media which would be free marketing for TGH. Although he had 19+ years of experience in education and organizational development, Ruiz knew nothing about digital badges or DBPs when first approached by Couris. After meeting with a DBP consultant who specialized in the digital badging space, Ruiz was able to narrow his choice to 3 DBPs: Accredible, Badgr, and Credly. Couris needed a proposal by Mid-November, giving Ruiz ten days to select a DBP and author a

On August 14, 2019, WeWork filed its IPO prospectus. Within its pages, it stated that WeWork CEO Adam Neumann had purchased the rights to the "We" trademarks from an entity known as We Holdings LLC for $5.9 million. We Holdings LLC was also managed by Adam. When the media picked up on this, it initiated a tumultuous period of scrutiny by business pundits of the IPO prospectus. Furthermore, the lack of a clear path to profitability raised red flags with potential IPO investors, as did incidents of Adam's self-enrichment and conflicts of interest. This made investors question Adam's ability to run a large, public company. Something had to be done to restore investor confidence, but what? The voting power of Adam's shares made it difficult to impose sanctions or remove him from his leadership position. The IPO roadshow was scheduled to kick off as soon as the week of September 16, 2019! What should the board do?

In this A case, it's December 2019, and Dr. Carol Evans is preparing for a meeting with the leaders of Garfield Health Sciences (GHS) Center. She aims to persuade them to launch a full-fledged direct-to-consumer (DTC) telemedicine offering. Evans needs to articulate a value proposition that secures support and funding for the initiative and pushes GHS to take on a leadership role in telemedicine. She considers ways GHS could expand its telemedicine offerings, including a program around e-consult for primary care providers, which she would like to expand to specialists. She also is aware of competition among programs for DTC virtual care. The case set provides students with a deep look into telemedicine. It offers a brief history of telemedicine initiatives since the 1990s, demonstrating how telemedicine can improve care and extend reach for both patients and medical professionals, while also addressing the myriad challenges associated with implementation. These challenges include integrating EMRs, billing virtual consults, and securing grants. This case set is taught in Darden's elective, ""Solutions and Innovations in Health Care.""

In the A case, Dr. Carol Evans is preparing for a December 2019 meeting with the leaders of Garfield Health Sciences (GHS) Center, about launching a full-fledged direct-to-consumer (DTC) telemedicine offering. This B case picks up a few months later, in March 2020. Now, in light of the looming COVID-19 pandemic, GHS leaders must make an urgent decision: Should they select a single EMR platform to expand GHS's virtual offerings or should they democratize the process and use systems like Zoom? The case set provides students with a deep look into telemedicine. It offers a brief history of telemedicine initiatives since the 1990s, demonstrating how telemedicine can improve care and extend reach for both patients and medical professionals, while also addressing the myriad challenges associated with implementation. These challenges include integrating EMRs, billing virtual consults, and securing grants. This case set is taught in Darden's elective, ""Solutions and Innovations in Health Care.""

In November 2020, infrastructure investment and development company InfraCo Asia Pte Ltd, investment management firm Gemcorp Capital, and Finnish development financier Finnfund's OP Finnfund Global Impact Fund I jointly financed the Indonesia Rural Wireless Broadband (IRWB) project through a senior debt facility of US$75 million. The IRWB project is expected to expand the fixed wireless broadband network of borrower Net1 Indonesia by installing 1,500 base transceiver stations (BTS) across the country, up almost five times from the existing figure of 357 BTS before the expansion commenced. The project would cover several provinces, including nine that are considered the least developed in Indonesia. It is estimated that 300,000 households, particularly those that fell between the fourth and last (i.e., poorest) quintile of the population, would benefit from the project. In deciding whether to proceed with financing the project, InfraCo Asia, which is funded by the foreign ministries of the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Australia, had to take into consideration several factors: risk management, commercial viability, technology, due diligence, business model, and development impact (DI). The case examines how InfraCo Asia ensured that the decision to finance the IRWB project is a well-considered one, such that the project has a fair chance of being commercially viable while also achieving considerable DI.

In March 2021, the Chinese government blocked access to H&M on leading e-commerce, ride-hailing, daily-deals, and map sites. The online blocking and calls for customer boycotts were in response to H&M's September 2020 statement that it would no longer source cotton from Xinjiang because of concerns about forced labor. At the time, H&M operated more than 500 stores in China, and it was the company's fourth largest country market. How will the boycott impact the H&M brand in China? How will H&M's decision impact its brand in other markets, such as the U.S., Germany, and the UK? Should H&M change its sourcing stance in China? Which stakeholders should H&M target in its messaging? Should H&M issue new supply chain statements?

This case study is set in May 2021. It describes how Sarah Lee, Director of Engagement at Federated Hermes (FH) has been engaging with Ruby Goods (Ruby), a consumer goods company that operates in Asia, Europe, Latin America and the United States, to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in its dairy operations. The case illustrates how an external stakeholder, an investment management company with minimal formal organisational authority, can influence and drive ESG (environmental, social and governance) performance improvements. While Lee was successful in getting Ruby to streamline its ESG approach and establish the Ruby Corporate Responsibility Council to drive company-wide ESG initiatives, she encountered resistance from Ruby's senior management and the board to commit to the more ambitious science-based targets critical for achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. What should she do to pressure Ruby's senior management into commitment and action while preserving FH's carefully cultivated relationships with Ruby's senior management?