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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.

Spreadsheet supplement for case UV8080.

Companies need to focus on how people feel about them, even in a recession. PLUS the unanticipated effect of price promotions, building trust during the pandemic, hiding emotions at the office, and more.

In April of 2018, Mike Horsfield, CEO of Rock Valley Physical Therapy (RVPT), was scheduled to meet with shareholders to discuss the future ownership of the company. All RVPT shareholders and key executives were licensed physical therapists. Most of the shareholders and a large number of important, long-term employees expected to retire in the coming years, with retirements starting in 2020. RVPT's line of credit was tied up in their growth strategy, leaving them unable to cash out those seeking retirement. Horsfield had a lucrative offer from a Private Equity (PE) firm to buy into the business, which would provide the funding for those planning to retire, but he was concerned about how a profit-focused PE investor might change RVPT's culture and its patient-focused medical practice. The offer was tempting, but he was unsure how to present the offer to the shareholders and whether he should argue for or against accepting the PE firm's offer. As the only MBA among the shareholders, Horsfield's opinion carried weight and could sway the decision.

The widespread shift to remote working can endanger corporate culture, but leaders can take action to protect and sustain it. They should recognize it in action and call it out, be open to modifications that arise from new circumstances, and take advantage of disruption to bolster core values.

The COVID-19 lockdowns have underscored the degree to which some people are better able than others to work from home based on their occupations, home situations, or other factors. Likewise, some countries are in a better position than others to thrive under social distancing. Understanding how a country's mix of occupations, technology infrastructure, and demographics affect people's ability to work from home can help government and business leaders prepare for future disruptions.

The Roche Diagnostics Belgium (RDB) case study consists of two parts: Part (A): "Changing a Winning Formula?" and Part (B): Cultural and Digital transformation. The cases focus on the transformation which Anna-Maria Heuchel-Reinig initiated to turn the company into a more successful business. RDB had a strong track-record within Roche for high-performance and good market share. Anna had an equally solid reputation, having managed different businesses and country organizations within Roche over a 20-year career. The two-part case study covers the period from April 2017 until October 2019 and recounts how Anna made sense of the situation she inherited when she became the General Manager of the Belgian organisation and the actions she took to initiate a journey focused on customer centricity, cultural change and digital business transformation. Case A covers Anna's first 100 days as General Manager from April 2017 - August 2017. She was told that RDB was a high performing, customer-focused organization, yet she encountered a company living on past successes with weakening customer focus. The case outlines the company context, Anna's early encounters with the Belgian organization, her developing concerns and the gap between RDB's narrative of success and her own assessment of the company.

Case B focuses on the year of transformation. In January 2018 Anna disrupted ths narrative of success and told RDB it needed to transform. The case outlines the critical decisions and actions Anna initiated to steer the transformation, engage customers and staff and address concerns in the leadership team. Focusing on cultural transformation was a pre-requisite to prepare the company for digital transformation. The case provides the opportunity for participants to assess whether Anna succeeded in introducing transformation to an already successful business.

With the economy in a freefall, MetricStream is losing customers, hemorrhaging cash and struggling to make payroll. Several board members are threatening to quit. Others are pressing to sell the company even at dismally low valuations. It's 2008 and lightning has struck for Shellye Archambeau once again. As CEO of MetricStream, she had spent the last seven years turning a tech startup on life support after the dot-com bust into a market leader of governance, risk, and compliance software for businesses. As a black female CEO, Archambeau is no stranger to adversity. Becoming a leader had been her goal since high school and she had achieved it through decades of hard work and skillful decision making. Now she faces her most critical leadership decision. She calls a meeting with her board chairman, Gunjan Sinha, to discuss the best path forward: Sell MetricStream while offers are on the table, or try to save it by looking for a big customer of the company's risk management software against the backdrop of the financial crisis? Both options have dire consequences. Valuations are plummeting by the day. Cash is disappearing by the minute. Archambeau and Sinha need to decide and act swiftly.

With the economy in a freefall, MetricStream is losing customers, hemorrhaging cash and struggling to make payroll. Several board members are threatening to quit. Others are pressing to sell the company even at dismally low valuations. It's 2008 and lightning has struck for Shellye Archambeau once again. As CEO of MetricStream, she had spent the last seven years turning a tech startup on life support after the dot-com bust into a market leader of governance, risk, and compliance software for businesses. As a black female CEO, Archambeau is no stranger to adversity. Becoming a leader had been her goal since high school and she had achieved it through decades of hard work and skillful decision making. Now she faces her most critical leadership decision. She calls a meeting with her board chairman, Gunjan Sinha, to discuss the best path forward: Sell MetricStream while offers are on the table, or try to save it by looking for a big customer of the company's risk management software against the backdrop of the financial crisis? Both options have dire consequences. Valuations are plummeting by the day. Cash is disappearing by the minute. Archambeau and Sinha need to decide and act swiftly.

This case discusses the evolution of VIKAS, from a small non-profit organisation to a cluster of non-profit as well as for-profit organisations, collectively attempting to address the issues of poverty and under-development. This case discusses the factors that influenced the evolution of VIKAS (non-profit organisation) and SAVE (for-profit organisation). The case provides an understanding about the necessity of incorporating a for-profit entity along with a non-profit entity in order to enhance the sustainability and impact of the developmental work carried out by VIKAS. The main questions this case raises are: Is the model of combining cause (developmental work carried out by VIKAS) with commerce (for-profit work done by SAVE) sustainable? What are the advantages and disadvantages of such a model? Is this model of organising scalable? Why or why not?

Leaders must engage with the issue of racism and discrimination, both because of its effect on employees and in order to demonstrate their genuine commitment to diversity and human rights. Here are five actions your organization can take right now to contribute to addressing the national issue of racism and help your employees cope.

In 2013, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) published the Land Transport Master Plan 2013, where additional foci were placed on improving commuters' experiences in the first and last legs of their travelling journeys. The LTA actively promoted the theme of "active mobility" where the use of bicycles and personal mobility devices (PMDs) were encouraged as a means of transport over short distances. Due to the affordability and conveniences of PMDs, the population of PMD users grew steadily in Singapore over the next three years. The boom also saw an uptake on PMDs in the food delivery service industry as service providers saw PMDs as an efficient and cost-effective means of transport in the area-of-operation. The increased PMD traffic on the shared footpath, however, resulted in a rising trend of accidents between PMD users and pedestrians. Voices of dissent swelled and concerned Members of Parliament (MPs) continuously highlighted the issues on safety and control of PMDs during Parliamentary sittings. Consequentially, the Singapore government announced on 4 November 2019 that PMDs or e-scooters would be banned on all public footpaths. The announcement caught many PMD users by surprise as the campaign of "active mobility" promoted actively by the government barely took off six years prior. What are the change processes that were carried out and what were some of the communication barriers affecting this change in policy?

A shift to widespread remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic has created new challenges, but the good news is that organizations around the world are experimenting with creative solutions to meet workers' needs. Analysis from a recent survey of HR leaders and other employees on the most meaningful actions their organizations have taken to support remote work uncovered five principles that can help leaders more effectively manage a distributed workforce.

Historically, personal and commercial banks (P&CB) maintained long relationships with their clients who tended to do most if not all of their banking with one bank. However, by 2017, industry-wide change was well underway as switching costs had become negligible if not non-existent. New entrants were disrupting the banking industry as digitization allowed upstarts to break through long-standing barriers to entry. RBC's Cultural Transformation, intended to reposition the enterprise for the "new normal" in the financial industry, included the creation of this team of collaboration enablers (called Operations Transformation or OT) to drive efficiencies across operations within the current fulfillment operating model and importantly to envision and enable a new digital operating model where people only intervened in a transaction when there was an exception, i.e., a transaction that fell outside the technology's capabilities. OT was tasked with enabling-through collaboration and without radical surgery-the day-to-day optimization of P&CB fulfillment activities and facilitating major change in the way work was done. At the time of the case, eighteen months in, the team was seeing mixed results, which deeply troubled its leadership. Questions abounded: Was it foolish to try to enable major change through collaboration without upending the traditional RBC organization with more radical approaches? Or was the OT group not structured correctly to enable it-and if not, what changes should be made? Was a different collaboration model needed? Internally, some questioned whether the group was optimally located within the organization (as part of the back office organization structure), since the back office was often viewed as more of a servant to the front office. Others wondered if OT's internal structure was getting in the way of its purpose.

Historically, personal and commercial banks (P&CB) maintained long relationships with their clients who tended to do most if not all of their banking with one bank. However, by 2017, industry-wide change was well underway as switching costs had become negligible if not non-existent. New entrants were disrupting the banking industry as digitization allowed upstarts to break through long-standing barriers to entry. RBC's Cultural Transformation, intended to reposition the enterprise for the "new normal" in the financial industry, included the creation of this team of collaboration enablers (called Operations Transformation or OT) to drive efficiencies across operations within the current fulfillment operating model and importantly to envision and enable a new digital operating model where people only intervened in a transaction when there was an exception, i.e., a transaction that fell outside the technology's capabilities. OT was tasked with enabling-through collaboration and without radical surgery-the day-to-day optimization of P&CB fulfillment activities and facilitating major change in the way work was done. At the time of the case, eighteen months in, the team was seeing mixed results, which deeply troubled its leadership. Questions abounded: Was it foolish to try to enable major change through collaboration without upending the traditional RBC organization with more radical approaches? Or was the OT group not structured correctly to enable it-and if not, what changes should be made? Was a different collaboration model needed? Internally, some questioned whether the group was optimally located within the organization (as part of the back office organization structure), since the back office was often viewed as more of a servant to the front office. Others wondered if OT's internal structure was getting in the way of its purpose.

In 2017, Billy McFarland set out to create an immersive music festival in the Bahamas. He spent eight weeks with rapper Ja Rule planning the Fyre Festival, which, in the end, never brought a single act to the stage. The Fyre Festival became one of the most widely documented festivals of the century, and the subject matter of thousands of news articles, parodies, and memes that poked fun at what was an event planning nightmare. What had gone wrong from an organizational standpoint, and what proactive measures could have been taken to avoid the problems?

Many organizations began fielding their largest-ever remote workforces during the coronavirus crisis. But that widespread shift to virtual work also poses risks to interpersonal networks within companies. With an understanding of how trust and cooperation might erode, managers can act to bolster good working relationships.