個案總覽

The case revolves around a critical incident that took place at an Indian pharmaceutical company, in which various stakeholders had very different perspectives regarding the nature, causes and consequences of the incident. By illustrating the contrasting perceptions of the same event, the authors have shed light on the nature of perception and perceptual processes, including cognitive biases and errors in human judgement. The case provides insights into how these manifest in the organisational context and how managers could be made more aware of them to avoid errors in judgment and make choices that are more informed.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Jeff Bezos, the chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc. (Amazon), became the world's richest person by adding US$6 billion to his net worth by the end of March 2020. While the worth of other billionaires was decreasing because of the unprecedented market volatility created by the pandemic, retail sales surged to a record level for Amazon. To meet the additional workforce requirements created by the sudden rise in demand, Bezos announced a new hiring drive for Amazon's warehouses and delivery network. The announcement came when Amazon's labour practices were under the scrutiny of New York State and New York City authorities for the disputed "wrongful termination" of a warehouse worker. Amazon's conduct was vehemently condemned by labour unions, labour supporters, the media, and New York City authorities. At the same time, Amazon employees expressed their concerns about the hiring of additional workers, as more workers could further aggravate the workplace safety issues at the company's warehouses. Bezos vehemently claimed to be committed to workers' health and safety and announced new paid sick leave and hazard benefits policies for workers who were not working from home. Was the authorities' scrutiny of Smalls' termination and the workplace safety measures at Amazon's facilities a signal of legal battles looming for Amazon? Was Bezos protecting the wellness of his employees? Did the new policies and safety measures point toward a change in Bezos's crisis management strategy? How could Amazon move from a greed/profit perspective to a profit with purpose perspective? How should Amazon manage in an almost permanent crisis-like situation?

La Esperanza was a mining unit owned by POFCO, a company with its headquarters in China and with operations in Peru, dedicated to the development of gold and copper projects. On November 19, 2015, Julio Soto, operations manager at La Esperanza, was getting ready to travel to the city of Lima, Peru, to attend a board of directors meeting, where he would present an "autonomous" transportation project. He considered it "an alternative that would boost efficiency, safety, and productivity in the mine." Despite his enthusiasm, he had some concerns; in fact, the decision implied dismissing the workers with the greatest seniority and legitimacy in the company, which could affect the relationship of the company with the workers union and the community. He was aware that his decision might also put his own position at risk. He was worried and knew he had to weigh his concerns before the meeting: What would be the impact of the project on the culture of La Esperanza? Would automation actually be profitable? Soto knew a tense conversation was awaiting him.

Ilene Lang started her career in technology at a time when the tech sector was new and women had only recently entered the workplace in large numbers. Over the next thirty years, she built a career spanning large and small tech companies, leading global teams and overseeing products such as AltaVista, an early search engine. After leading three dot-coms in the late 1990s, she was ready for a new chapter and joined Catalyst, a global nonprofit focused on women in the workplace, as CEO. Lang led Catalyst through the aftermath of September 11 and the Great Recession, all while expanding the organization's portfolio and reach, before retiring in 2014 and continuing her advocacy as a corporate director and advisor to organizations focused on increasing women's economic power and leadership.

Ana Paula Pessoa built a career at the largest media conglomerate in Latin America, combining a passion for digital transformation with a commitment to doing work that had a positive impact on society. Having grown up during a dictatorial military regime in Brazil, the value of a free press was clear to Pessoa. She ultimately rose to become CFO of the company's print media arm, before making a career shift to invest in technology startups and later to serve as CFO for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Throughout her varied career, Pessoa sought out connections with interesting people across industries, a practice that paid dividends when she was recruited to join the board of a large public company, which led to additional board appointments. Following her passions and building relationships enabled Pessoa to craft a fulfilling career spanning multiple industries and issues.

Michele Hooper joined the board of the Dayton-Hudson Corporation when she was in her late thirties, becoming the company's youngest director as well as the only woman and the only person of color in the boardroom. Such "firsts" were not unusual for Hooper, who had been tapped to lead the Canadian subsidiary of Baxter International a year earlier, one of very few women moved from a staff to a line role at the company. More board opportunities continued to come Hooper's way, and over time she gained expertise and experience across all aspects of corporate governance, often serving as a lead director or committee chair. Seeing that too few women, and far too few men and women of color, were breaking into the boardroom, Hooper cofounded the Directors' Council to help companies diversity their boards. Widely acknowledged as a leader in corporate governance, Hooper dedicated herself to serving as a role model and mentor for Black professionals aspiring to leadership.

Barbara Hackman Franklin was one of the first women to earn an MBA from Harvard Business School. She went on to break barriers in the private and public sectors, rising to leadership positions in business and government. In the 1970s, she led a successful White House initiative to hire more women into high-level roles, helping to change the makeup of the federal workforce and advance the national conversation about women's roles in public life.

Jack Rivkin's innovative approach to hiring, developing, and retaining employees created opportunities for female analysts to thrive at the equity research department he led, and also made the entire department more effective. Rivkin fostered a culture of gender inclusion and focused on developing the unique strengths of every employee, rather than expecting women to fit a rigid masculine norm. His efforts led to an increase in the department's female analysts and also resulted in more analysts (both women and men) achieving star-ranked status. In just a few years, the department jumped from 15th to 1st place in industry rankings. However, when Rivkin departed, the overarching culture and practices of the firm undermined the inclusive environment he had fostered; high-performing analysts departed and the department rapidly tumbled in the rankings.

Ros Atkins launched the 50:50 Project on a BBC news program he anchored, deciding with his team to start tracking the gender of the contributors and experts featured on the show. Before long, it was clear that monitoring the data led to increased awareness of a gender gap which in turn spurred action - the representation of women and men equalized. Atkins knew the simple process could have a significant impact, so he worked with colleagues to implement the project throughout the BBC. Rather than try to institute a mandate or directive from the top, Atkins took a grassroots approach, sharing the process and its success with colleagues personally. More and more programs adopted the effort, and ultimately the head of the BBC publicly endorsed it. Over time, 50:50 became a self-sustaining program adopted across the entire organization and beyond. Atkins dedication to gender equality in the media offers a compelling example of the potential that lies with male allies.

Etsy, the online seller of handmade goods, was founded in 2005 on an almost utopian ideal-a responsible, caring company that offered individual crafters a place to sell their wares, a wholesome alternative to companies that sold mass-manufactured products. The company grew substantially-though unprofitably-under the freewheeling leadership of two early CEOs. In 2015, Etsy went public and was forced into a new arena, beholden to new stakeholders who demanded financial success and accountability. Unable to contain costs, the company teetered on the precipice of being bought out by private equity firms. In came a new leader-Josh Silverman-with a mission: to save the company financially and, in the process, save its soul. This case examines the strategic, financial, organizational, and purpose-driven turnaround Silverman and his team led at Etsy. The turnaround not only greatly bolstered Etsy's finances, but also improved its social and environmental impact and helped the organization truly live up to its ideals. This case examines the circumstances that led Etsy to require a turnaround, how the turnaround was executed, and what challenges still remain.

A team of analysts at Nedbank Group (Nedbank) had generated a solution to an important client-centered issue, but the solution was not welcomed by the operations team. A business executive at Nedbank created an opportunity for the creative design team and operations team to collaborate. A solution was successfully implemented in 2019 and the executive and analysts' team leader were summoned to present their ideas at a business banking executive committee meeting to demonstrate how their initiatives supported the bank's strategic direction. Would the executive committee agree to invest capital in new ways of work to move the bank forward on its digital strategy?

In 2019, the head of leadership development for Anglo American plc (Anglo American), a global mining conglomerate, was reviewing the two years she had been working with the human resources (HR) leadership team to establish the company's international Leadership Academy. Her task was to determine leadership development solutions that supported Anglo American's strategy and to recommend how to resource, identify, develop, and retain the diverse talent pool required to achieve the company's business objectives. She had gone to great lengths to ensure the Leadership Academy's offerings underpinned the organization's strategic imperatives. She now pondered how to assess the impact of the Learning Academy. Was the human resources leadership team looking at and measuring the right things?

As 2019 ended, the founder and chief executive officer of Nudestix Inc. (Nudestix) had overseen phenomenal growth during the firm's five years of operation. However, the company was about to encounter a series of issues as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic that resulted in lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, and closures of non-essential businesses around the world. Nudestix, like many companies, suffered a severe decline in revenue. How could the company respond to this crisis in a way that would minimize its losses?

As world-renowned chef Franck Giovannini contemplated his future and the future of The Hôtel de Ville Restaurant, he wondered how would he handle the transition of leadership at the restaurant when it came time for him to step down. The Hôtel de Ville Restaurant was the first restaurant ever to earn three Michelin stars under four consecutive chefs. How did Giovannini and his three predecessors manage to maintain the restaurant's status through these transitions, which were both planned and unplanned? What steps could Giovannini take to give his eventual successor the best chance for continuing the restaurant's legacy of excellence?

Carsten Schmidt, CEO of Sky Deutschland, needs to prepare for the auction of German soccer rights. Much was at stake. Not only was soccer the most widely watched sport in Germany, the company had long advertised that only Sky showed "every game, every goal." In evaluating his company's bid, Schmidt had to consider not only the intrinsic value of the media rights but also how his bidding strategy would influence competition in the German media industry. Was it a good idea to keep OTT players out of the market? What was the right amount to bid?

On March 20, 2020, in an effort to stem the transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic and under the direction of government officials, Canada's Stratford Festival halted work on its 2020 productions and ultimately postponed the entire season. Additionally, social justice issues had come to the forefront with the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Watching the protests unfold across North America, the Stratford Festival's executive and management team recognized the pain their black colleagues were experiencing and set their sights on doing something meaningful to champion anti-racism. The executive team offered the Black Caucus and the Indigenous Circle-two informal groups of the Stratford Festival artists and administrators-the opportunity to take over the Festival's social media channels for a 48-hour period and to conduct a town-hall session on the Stratford Festival's YouTube channel. The question remained, however, whether turning over the social media channel was a prudent strategy, given the difficulty of predicting the outcomes of activities that start out with good intentions.

Supplement to case W21126 On March 20, 2020, in an effort to stem the transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic and under the direction of government officials, Canada's Stratford Festival halted work on its 2020 productions and ultimately postponed the entire season. Additionally, social justice issues had come to the forefront with the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Watching the protests unfold across North America, the Stratford Festival's executive and management team recognized the pain their black colleagues were experiencing and set their sights on doing something meaningful to champion anti-racism. The executive team offered the Black Caucus and the Indigenous Circle-two informal groups of the Stratford Festival artists and administrators-the opportunity to take over the Festival's social media channels for a 48-hour period and to conduct a town-hall session on the Stratford Festival's YouTube channel. The question remained, however, whether turning over the social media channel was a prudent strategy, given the difficulty of predicting the outcomes of activities that start out with good intentions.

In 2020, the flagship location of Jamie's Market, a specialty supermarket retailer in California, struggled to hire enough temporary workers to meet the increased staffing demand resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The new assistant manager, who had been recently transferred to the company's flagship store, was tasked with figuring out what had gone wrong and recommending changes to ensure that the store would have enough qualified workers for the remainder of the pandemic (or until store sales returned to pre-pandemic levels, whichever occurred first). The assistant manager looked into the company's hiring and socialization processes, spoke with both temporary and permanent workers, and identified at least two reasons for the challenges in hiring temporary workers: insufficient advertising of the job listing for temporary workers, and little or no effort to socialize temporary workers once they were hired. Based on these conclusions, what changes should the assistant manager recommend when hiring the next group of temporary employees?

Founded in 2000, with its headquarters in Singapore, BreadTalk Group Limited used a creative lifestyle concept to attract consumers who were accustomed to viewing bread as inexpensive, basic food. In 2003, the company founder and chairman achieved his goal of listing the company on the Singapore stock exchange to raise capital for scaling up operations. By mid-2018, the company had grown to become a regional, multi-brand food and beverages enterprise with 11 brands, almost 1,000 outlets across 18 territories, and a staff of over 7,500 people. In 2018, BreadTalk Group Limited opened a new restaurant in London, United Kingdom, representing its first entry into the Western market. However, the executive team had to engage the company's employees across continents and inspire them to innovate, especially through the use of technology. The first step was to choose the right management team for the new business unit in London and build a new talent pool in Europe.

This field-based case chronicles how Embraer, a recognized market leader in Brazil's regional aircraft industry, designed and developed an almost entirely new aircraft, the E2-190. Given the success of the E1-190, a project to redesign that successful product was a bold move. Yet the E2 project excelled. It surpassed industry expectations, including being under time and under budget, and it logged many firsts, such as setting a world record for first flight and triple flight certification. The case explores how the project team created work groups and teams embedded within the company and leadership values to guide actions and decisions during this project, which was large in both scale and scope. Throughout the case, executives execute a change process and use influence and project-management tools, especially critical chain analysis, to align business practices with human behavior and scale the program with 98.5% scheduled reliability.