個案總覽

Virtual working became the norm for most organizations since March 2020, and it brings well-recognized challenges. But we know little about the impact of virtual working on managerial behavior. This article presents the results of three surveys conducted before and during lockdown to understand what changed. It shows how managers became more blinkered: turning inward, becoming task-focused at the expense of relationship-building, and finding few opportunities to develop new skills. The article offers practical suggestions for how the evolution of managerial work might be accelerated, so that managers can become more effective in this changing environment.

This case profiles the career of Ghana-based chef and entrepreneur, Selassie Atadika. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, she faced many questions about the future, such as: How could she convince Ghanaian consumers to view their native cuisine in a fresh, compelling way? How could she sustain the fine dining arm of Midunu, Atadika's food and lifestyle company, in a nation where the average annual income hovered at USD5,000? Should she expand her chocolate business internationally? As Atadika became an important player on the culinary world stage, what were the best ways to promote her business and capitalize on her increasingly high international profile?

Masai Ujiri, the President and General Manager of the Toronto Raptors (Raptors), had an illustrious career on and off the basketball court; he had not shied away from making bold, even controversial, decisions; and he had led his franchise, the Raptors, to the National Basketball Association (NBA) Championship. Following the Raptors' clinching the NBA Championship in 2019, Ujiri faced an altercation with an Officer in Oakland, California. At the height of his success, Ujiri explicitly called out his mistreatment because of his being a Black man, highlighting the racism prevalent against Blacks and minorities. Contemplating his future as an executive, Ujiri would need to decide whether to continue, and if so, how to marry the worlds of sport and activism, charting his own path for social change.

Risk reporting is often unconnected with business strategy and performance, and is considered merely as a matter of compliance, which defeats the purpose of risk management. This article describes four best practices of companies that have improved their risk reporting by strengthening the vertical and horizontal communication of risks, reporting near misses, and communicating risk digitally through apps. Better risk reporting involves simplification and incentivization. It enables organizations to improve risk management and risk culture overall.

This case study describes the simultaneous evolution of both Health and Happiness (H&H) International Holdings Limited (referred hereafter as "H&H") and the senior executive protagonist, Laetitia Garnier. The instructor followed the history of company as it evolved from a single-product company in China (then known as Biostime) to a global group encompassing multiple brands following a series of acquisitions. This expansion allowed H&H to gain synergies across their value chain and shared channels in different continents, leading to an impressive growth in revenue and profits. This rapid progression was not without its growing pains, however. The case reveals several problems that H&H was facing with regards to cultural integration, particularly following their largest acquisition of the Australian supplement provider, Swisse. Meanwhile, the company's founder and CEO, Luo Fei, also finds himself wondering whether he should stay on in the CEO role or if it is time for him to relinquish the reigns to someone new like Laetitia Garnier, a female leader with rich experience in business management who has been with the company for almost a decade.

Executive Chris Ernst uses a unique personal strategy to define his six life roles (spiritual explorer, natural being, development pioneer, global/local citizen, thriving family, true friend) and achieve harmony among them.

The Peerless Potato Chip Company (Peerless) is a private-label, family-owned-and-operated, national potato chip manufacturer specializing in organic chips. The CEO, Kate Kelly, had been with the company from the beginning-since her uncle had first started making chips more than 25 years earlier on his farm in the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia. In fact, she'd been the primary architect of its growth and expansion. For the first time since its founding, the company's profit margin had been declining steadily-to almost one-third of what it had been just seven years earlier. Kelly admitted that much of the downturn stemmed from her lax, even absentee management. As she came to grips with the situation, Kelly identified an array of missing or incomplete metrics, unquantified performance indicators, and uncontrolled variable costs that were severely impacting the company's bottom line. The case, designed for an MBA or non-MBA audience, is about management, especially of performance-indicating metrics and operating data. Students are asked to consider a number of options Kelly is looking at: determining key manufacturing data, making cuts to the product line, ""going green,"" and other potential cost-cutting and profit-generating possibilities to reverse the downtrend in profits and regain control of the company's finances.

Massachusetts General Brigham (MGB) Chief Innovation Officer Christopher Coburn had overseen a period of exciting transformation and growth in healthcare innovation at MGB. In November 2019, the health system was the largest recipient of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding in the world. The Innovation Office sought to capitalize on that funding. Their team aimed to help the organization's 3,505 Principal Investigators translate and commercialize their research, with the goal of both producing revenue and improving patient care. Despite the success of Coburn and the Innovation Office over the last decade, MGB CEO Anne Klibanski and other key stakeholders had a serious concern. Although women comprised approximately 40% of the medical researchers and physicians it employed, the percentage of women participating in innovation activities lagged behind--in some categories, by a ratio of 4:1. Coburn knew that change would require an understanding of the main sources of disparities, the right strategy to address those disparities, and an equally robust execution. How could MGB expand and diversify its community of innovators?

Clarke Building and Supplies Limited was a multi-generational family-owned building supply and contracting company headquartered in the western region of the island of Newfoundland, Canada. After the death of the company's founder and chief executive officer, it fell to the founder's son to take the helm of the company. With his engineering background, this son noticed inefficiencies and lax controls within the company. He was especially worried about the possibility of a more tightly run national store entering the market and outcompeting his family's business. Complicating any decision to tighten operations was the community culture of the business, which included many long-time employees, friends, and family members. He could see that there were issues in the company, but he lacked the business acumen and distance to separate symptoms from causes and develop a plan to keep the company healthy and strong for generations to come. He knew he needed to achieve buy-in from the managers so he could implement any solutions he devised.

Group Business Services (GBS), a shared services organization predominantly based in India, provided support services to Koninklijke DSM NV (Royal DSM), a multinational corporation headquartered in the Netherlands, which produced nutrition- and health-related products. When the COVID-19 pandemic created a set of "new normal" circumstances for business organizations, GBS India, like many businesses, introduced remote working for all of its employees during the pandemic lockdown. The company experienced a series of challenges from March to July 2020. While some employees and managers offered positive feedback, many expressed doubts and misgivings about remote working. The challenges they reported compelled the GBS leaders to debate whether or not to continue remote working in the post-lockdown period. More importantly, they had to decide how best to establish a balance between employees' concerns related to remote working and the need to maintain business continuity in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. They needed to design the optimum working model for GBS India in this new-normal era.

In the summer of 2019, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Canada's largest mental health teaching hospital, found itself at the centre of a high-profile media crisis after three patients absconded from care at its forensic mental health unit. The events had led to public concern from the community, the media, and the government, putting CAMH's reputation at risk. Much of the concern manifested through stigmatizing statements due to a common misunderstanding and ignorance towards mental health, especially in the forensic area. CAMH's chief executive officer, Dr. Catherine Zahn, and her team had to decide how they would address the crisis both externally with the public and internally in their own organization.

During a strategic planning process in early 2018, the chief executive officer of St. Joseph's Health Care in London, Ontario, Canada encountered various challenges that tested her values-based leadership style and innovative approach to stakeholder engagement. She had not anticipated the skepticism from the senior management team that surfaced when she attempted to finalize the strategic plan for presentation to the board of directors. Although she faced resistance to the detailed wording of the proposed aims, she was opposed to diluting the language in the strategic plan. She found it important for all engaged stakeholders to see that their input had shaped the resulting plan. However, successful implementation of the strategic plan would depend on the support of her team members, who were accountable for its implementation. Overruling a management recommendation could potentially jeopardize the good working relationship she had established, but failing to deliver a plan to stakeholders that reflected their input posed a reputational risk for the organization. The chief executive officer had to decide how to move forward.

Lea Block has tried to initiate digital transformation at Seuzach AG, a large global provider of medical devices for the health care industry. As marketing director, she has identified major shifts in German health care that demand that Seuzach changes its ways of approaching customers. Instead of targeting the specific needs of doctors in hospitals, Seuzach should rather address the new decision makers: the CEOs, CFOs, or CIOs of hospitals, who have a different buying logic. Seuzach should also leap into the future players in the industry through the application of digital innovations which allow for data driven, cloud-based digital services and business models that integrate data across the whole product range. In Seuzach's matrix organization (global product responsibility, supported by regional sales) Lea wants to convince the heads of marketing for the different product businesses to change. She seems to be able to quickly convince her colleagues of what she calls 'digital C-level marketing.' However, as soon as work is supposed to start, she realizes that commitments were less strong than she assumed. A few weeks later, Lea is clearly told that there will be no support for her. The short case study is set when Lea realizes the failure of her digital transformation initiative. This case is an update of the case Anna Frisch at Aesch AG: Initiating lateral change, a sanitized case that was set in 2007, in response to demands from students to have more up-to-date case as a basis for classroom discussions. As compared to the original case, this case provides an update of the developments in the German healthcare sector and puts stronger emphasis on the technology-related aspects of the proposed changes.

Leaders driving transformation often focus too much on how employees' tasks will change but this is less of a hurdle for workers than dealing with the threat to the informal roles they've established. Major transitions cause personal disruption along three different dimensions: role adjustment, task learning, and emotional engagement. To better manage transformative change, leaders need to focus not only on how their own roles need to adapt, but also help employees adapt to new identities.

This case contains two briefs, one for each person in a two-party negotiation. They are relatively short in length and can be read in class just prior to a mock negotiation. This learning activity is appropriate for teaching negotiations skills to a broad audience, including undergraduate and graduate business school students, adult learners in a variety of settings, and in a corporate university.

This case contains two briefs, one for each person in a two-party negotiation. They are relatively short in length and can be read in class just prior to a mock negotiation. This learning activity is appropriate for teaching negotiations skills to a broad audience, including undergraduate and graduate business school students, adult learners in a variety of settings, and in a corporate university.

After a tsunami hits his island nation, Sahan Kumara believes that his family's business--one of the largest conglomerates in the region--should help with the country's recovery. He, his father, and his brother agree on the need to contribute financially. But Sahan wonders if that's enough. The Kumara Group has the resources and expertise to oversee the country's rebuilding program--which is faltering under the direction of the government and NGOs. As Sahan wrestles with the question of how involved Kumara should get, he weighs conflicting advice from his brother, others in the company, and an old friend at a different firm. This fictional case study by Christopher J. Malloy features expert commentary by Nirvana Chaudhary and Margaret Schuler.

After a tsunami hits his island nation, Sahan Kumara believes that his family's business--one of the largest conglomerates in the region--should help with the country's recovery. He, his father, and his brother agree on the need to contribute financially. But Sahan wonders if that's enough. The Kumara Group has the resources and expertise to oversee the country's rebuilding program--which is faltering under the direction of the government and NGOs. As Sahan wrestles with the question of how involved Kumara should get, he weighs conflicting advice from his brother, others in the company, and an old friend at a different firm. This fictional case study by Christopher J. Malloy features expert commentary by Nirvana Chaudhary and Margaret Schuler.

After a tsunami hits his island nation, Sahan Kumara believes that his family's business--one of the largest conglomerates in the region--should help with the country's recovery. He, his father, and his brother agree on the need to contribute financially. But Sahan wonders if that's enough. The Kumara Group has the resources and expertise to oversee the country's rebuilding program--which is faltering under the direction of the government and NGOs. As Sahan wrestles with the question of how involved Kumara should get, he weighs conflicting advice from his brother, others in the company, and an old friend at a different firm. This fictional case study by Christopher J. Malloy features expert commentary by Nirvana Chaudhary and Margaret Schuler.