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In April 2018, Amit Darekar, director of operations at Hydropack India Pvt. Ltd. (Hydropack), was focused on revamping the company's information technology (IT) infrastructure. This had become crucial in the face of a product design leak resulting from an employee who had left Hydropack to join a rival company and taken valuable data with him in the process. The design that Hydropack had made was for a tender floated by a public sector company. The rival company had submitted the stolen design with a lower bid, putting Hydropack's own bid in jeopardy. Darekar now had to rise to the challenge and ensure that Hydropack implemented secure IT infrastructure and policy to avoid further data leaks in the future. His objective was to ensure that all of Hydropack's data in the form of designs and other confidential documents was suitably protected and accessible only to those who had authorized access.

Spreadsheet supplement for case W21348.

You might assume that independent contractors hired to tackle core management tasks would be hobbled by their lack of history and relationships in the client organization, but research shows that they often succeed because of their outsider status. These findings expand our notion of what it means to be an effective manager, and they have practical value for organizations seeking flexibility.

Mergers and acquisitions have picked up in the aftermath of the pandemic. As companies seek partners that can boost their competitive capabilities, it's important that they ensure compatibility between the two organizational cultures. New research suggests that looking at political leanings among the companies' employees can provide clues to whether the merger is likely to flourish or fail.

SkySpecs is a company that helps the wind energy industry optimize performance of wind farms to improve productivity and efficiency and minimize downtime. It has developed a proprietary drone system to automate the task of inspecting wind turbine blades. This core technology allows rapid turbine blade inspections and provides analytics capability. The case first describes the stakeholders in a wind energy ecosystem and the challenges the industry faces. It then presents SkySpecs' product strategy and explores how the company brings value to different stakeholders in the wind energy ecosystem. Looking to the future, SkySpecs is exploring two options for growth. These are broadly classified as pursuit of depth, offering a broader set of solutions within the wind energy industry, or pursuit of breadth, leveraging its expertise to offer similar solutions within other industries. Students will discuss the pros and cons of these two directions and make a recommendation.

Changing employers has been linked to larger pay increases for executives and managers. Although survey-based studies suggest that men gain more than women, an analysis of more than 2,000 job moves found that executive women are commanding bigger increases than men when switching employers. In certain contexts, female executives can use these external moves to increase their own compensation and perhaps narrow the gender pay gap overall.

Front-line employees can offer essential insights to be used in strategic decision-making, yet top management teams rarely ask these employees about strategic issues. In so doing, leaders are depriving themselves of new information that could improve their analyses, and they risk making decisions in isolation within the C-suite echo chamber. But the right tools and training can equip employees to better understand forecasting and teach executives to recognize their insights.

In February 2017 the Team Project Manager and Flow Project Coordinator for Dell Technologies-Limerick (Ireland), is preparing for a review with Dell's Systems and Processes Improvement board, early in a transition from the use of one agile software development method (Scrum) to another (Flow, which applies lean manufacturing techniques to software engineering). The new manager has been on board less than six months. With ten years' prior software development experience in Brazil, he moved to Ireland when hired by Dell. Dell is midway through its attempts to transform from a manufacturing-heavy strategy to an IT-supported service-heavy strategy; its recent acquisition of EMC is an important step in that direction, and executives expect Flow will help globally-distributed software developers produce higher quality code, faster, in follow-the-sun mode. The Flow coordinator/champion recognizes Flow is a complex innovation; it will take time and focus for busy software developers (who only recently mastered Scrum techniques) to master new Flow techniques. The champion is also concerned that needed digital Kanban functionality (essential for supporting globally distributed teams using Flow) has not yet been approved or provided by the Dell IT organization in Texas; this and other obstacles are impeding the developers' transition to Flow. Keen to demonstrate his commitment to help Dell achieve these aims, he worries that some executives expect performance improvements sooner than teams can realistically deliver. He seeks to persuade executives to be both patient and helpful. As he plans his 20 minute presentation for the next day's meeting, he is told to keep his remarks to executives simple: highlight no more than three messages.

Working remotely during the pandemic weakened social capital networks within organizations, making it harder for employees to maintain the same high level of productivity and for new employees to get up to speed. When thinking about returning to in-person work, leaders can help build those important ties by strategically addressing three areas: strengthening weak ties, building social capital in new teams, and onboarding employees.

Arist was a Boston, Massachusetts-based startup with a text message learning platform. It was founded by three undergraduate students and raised more than $3.9 million in funding during its first three years. The inspiration for Arist was the lack of learning opportunities for young people in war-torn Yemen where schools were closed and access to high-speed internet was limited. After much research, testing, reflecting, and pivoting, the Arist team made an exciting discovery: Not only would a short-form SMS approach to teaching likely be desirable in regions such as Yemen, but this approach could also be valuable to well-funded Fortune 500 training and development organizations. According to research referenced in the case, more than 12 years after the introduction of the iPhone, not only had SMS sustained popularity, but businesses were increasing their SMS spending for marketing and other uses. Early clients included Dupont and the State of California. The founders recognized that a focus on the needs of large, for-profit companies in the United States would not directly address the learning needs in education-challenged regions such as Yemen. However, they hoped that by building a text-message-based learning business in the United States, they would one day be able to recruit professors to create courses for interested students worldwide, delivered through the Arist platform.

Courier company XDel Singapore is not only involved in express courier and delivery services, but also e-commerce and last-mile fulfilment, international and cross-border deliveries, as well as mailroom and logistics activities. It has grown from a two-man operation in 1993 to a firm of close to 100 staff as at 2021, with its revenue rising from US$26,150 in its first year of operations to US$5.4 million in 2020. To enable the company to gain a competitive edge in the local logistics industry, XDel Singapore has invested heavily in information technology (IT) infrastructure. It has developed key technological innovations to improve its efficiency and productivity, which include the HOMES Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, its proprietary mobile app LUKE, and a website with enhanced capabilities. In addition, it has also switched to using the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone system and adopted the use of the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered Springboard engine as part of its Vehicle Route Planning (VRP) system, while tapping on WhatsApp and Telegram messaging apps to communicate with staff and customers. Additionally, XDel Singapore has started to use data analytics to make better decisions on deploying staff and conduct route planning.

Leaders will need to offer a compelling rationale for why post-pandemic work models that include some degree of in-person collaboration are not only good for the company but also valuable for employees. The authors explain how organizational network analysis a methodology that maps employees' working relationships can help guide leaders' return-to-office decisions and show employees how hybrid work can improve their own effectiveness.

A monolithic, highly interdependent organization can become a modular one by turning traditional business processes whether financial, legal, or HR-related into microservices with application programming interfaces. APIs can help codify interactions among departments, reduce ad hoc communication, and minimize coordination complexity.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated long-running retail profitability issues many of which have been plaguing the sector since the early 2000s. New research from Deloitte sheds light on the current consumer-to-business paradigm, the direction in which customer experience trends are headed, and what retailers can do to ensure their sustained success.

For a telecom regulatory authority in a developing country, reducing the digital divide is an important goal, while it maintains net neutrality through the mechanisms it implements or allows to be implemented. The case "The Question of Net Neutrality" presents the dilemma that the Indian telecom regulator, the TRAI, faces while it decides whether to allow a private firm, Facebook, to launch a zero-rating service. The case is set at the time when Facebook Inc. came up with an offer of launching Internet.org as a zero-rating service. Under this plan, Internet.org (later rebranded as Free Basics) would act as a platform to connect a range of content providers (CPs) through which the hitherto unconnected populations would have access to the internet. However, this access would be limited to the content provided by CPs, who tied up with the Free Basics platform. Presenting a comprehensive history of the net neutrality debate, the case offers views of all the stakeholders called by the regulatory authority to present their perspectives. The stakeholders include the ISPs (internet service providers), CPs, end consumers represented by civil society, the regulatory body itself, and the government. The case brings up the issues related to the digital divide, privacy of consumers, competition, freedom of expression, etc., from the perspective of all the stakeholders.

When hackathons are held virtually, people from a variety of circumstances have an opportunity to participate. But facilitating such events entirely online requires an organizational and mindset shift for making the collaboration work, with greater emphasis on steps such as onboarding and building in fun. Recent hackathons around COVID-19 offer insights into how to make remote collaboration succeed with participants who have diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experience with technology.

Understanding the real reasons why racial equity initiatives provoke opposition can help you lead employees through cultural transformation. These efforts often lead to predictable responses as individuals seek to deny, distort, or distance themselves from the realities of systemic racism. This article presents strategies for countering those reactions and steering individuals toward a fourth common response: engaging actively with anti-racism efforts.

Early analysis of racial and networking data in 10 organizations highlights three behavioral drivers of inclusion: establishing ties with colleagues and stakeholders early on, building networks with diverse "bridging" ties, and seeking out mentoring. These behaviors were associated with faster promotions and longer tenures for employees of color.

Only certain details about job candidates are relevant for hiring decisions; knowing other details can undermine the fairness and accuracy of employers' assessments. Organizations can establish policies that "blind" decision makers to potentially biasing information, but this is rare. This article looks at when managers and other evaluators might choose to blind their own judgment and suggests ways they can foster less-biased decision-making in their organizations.

People feel a need to belong and have an inherent desire for deep and meaningful connections. This is true both outside and inside of work. To facilitate connection, leaders can design what the authors call immensely human interactions moments in which social interactions are interwoven with empathy, curiosity, and humility. The authors offer six specific strategies for bringing these moments into organizations.