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This case focuses on Charlotte Blank, the Chief Behavioral Officer at Maritz, as she tries to assist a major automotive manufacturer (CarCo) with increasing their sales by prepaying monthly bonuses to independently franchised car dealers and clawing them back if the sales targets are not reached. This pre-payment structure is what behavioral economists call "loss-framing." Broadly, this prepayment structure is an attempt to increase sales effort by harnessing people's desire to defend their earnings, endowments, and possessions. The case is based on a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper that can be read for additional detail on the underlying theory or empirics.

Facing mounting criticism and evidence of widespread racial discrimination on the platform, apartment rental platform Airbnb needed to decide a path forward. For years, Airbnb had given hosts extensive discretion about whether to reject a guest after seeing little more than a name and a picture, believing this was the best way for the company to build trust. While Airbnb ran thousands of experiments per year looking at ways to grow the user base and short-run profit, they failed to track or account for the possibility of discrimination. Should they become more proactive about identifying discrimination on the platform? Should they change the design of the platform to reduce discrimination? If so, how would they decide whether the changes were successful?

John Branca, attorney to pop musician Michael Jackson, must negotiate a series of deals on behalf of his client in order to safeguard his financial interests and creative license during a period of rising stardom.

Supplements the (A) case and describes the events following it.

In 2019, members of the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (WNT) filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. The case describes the history of the WNT's quest for equal pay leading up to this event.

On April 12, 2018, two African American entrepreneurs had scheduled a business meeting at a Starbucks in Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square neighborhood. They sat without ordering, waiting for a local businessman to show up for the meeting. The store manager called 911 on them, despite the fact that they were behaving neither violently nor disruptively. When the police arrived soon after the call, they arrested the young men. The incident was viewed by the Starbucks' leadership team, including the CEO, as "a disheartening situation" and, in the words of John Kelly, the company's Senior VP of Public Affairs and Social Impact, "a profound failure to live up to our ideals and a violation of our values." Starbucks, which employed around 175,000 individuals nationwide and served more than 4 million customers daily in its approximately 8,000 U.S. stores, strived to abide by its mission statement: "...To inspire and nurture the human spirit, one cup, one person, one neighborhood at a time." The case describes how the company and its leadership responded to the crisis. To react to the incident, the leadership decided to close down its stores for a day of unconscious bias training, aimed at raising awareness of racial bias and discrimination in particular. The company also started a journey of providing more training and development for the partners, to assure that they lived by the company values on a daily basis, and revised store policy that, the leadership believed, contributed to how the store managers and employees in the Rittenhouse Square store behaved back in April 2018. As the case closes, CEO Kevin Johnson reflects on how he could assure that every Starbucks employee not only understood the company mission and values, but truly connected to them emotionally and carry them out daily in their work.

Chief is a New York-based peer network that provides mentorship, support, networking opportunities, and a sense of community to women executives. Co-founders Carolyn Childers and Lindsay Kaplan launched the company in January 2019, and just two months later, Chief has 400 members and a growing waiting list. Now, Childers and Kaplan must determine how aggressively to scale Chief's model to other cities. How much money should they raise in Chief's Series A, and when? Which cities should they expand to first? What are the potential risks of moving too fast, and how can they best mitigate them? For more background on Childers and Kaplan's decision to found Chief, please see "Chief: Role for Carolyn Childers" (HBS No. 920-019) and "Chief: Role for Lindsay Kaplan" (HBS No. 920-020).

In 2018, Lindsay Kaplan is preparing to meet with Carolyn Childers about the possibility of co-founding Chief, a New York-based peer network for women executives. Kaplan is currently the vice president of communications and brand engagement at a successful mattress company, and she is happy in her current role. However, she is excited by Childers's vision for a community of women executives and believes she could bring valuable expertise as Chief builds its brand experience. Should Kaplan join Chief as a co-founder? What do they need to discuss before teaming up?

"The Boss Has the Wrong Idea" is a two-person conversation exercise in which an MBA student seeks advice from a mentor in her field about how to handle an incident of workplace sexual harassment. The case consists of two confidential role materials: a role for the student, Julia, which describes her troubling experience with her boss during a summer internship, and a role for the senior mentor, Lee, which mentions that Julia is hoping to receive advice from him about a complicated situation. Julia's story presents a richly detailed, first-hand (fictionalized) account of a young woman's experience in a male-dominated, competitive firm. Her narrative provides a compelling representation of the nuances and challenges associated with experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace. Because it is written as a conversation exercise, the case provides students, faculty, and administrators with not only the opportunity to think about how to address (and prevent) sexual harassment within their own organizations, but also with the opportunity to engage in the difficult conversations that these issues demand. How can we best offer support and guidance? What are strategies for effective listening, question asking, and advice-giving in emotionally-charged and sensitive situations?

"The Boss Has the Wrong Idea" is a two-person conversation exercise in which an MBA student seeks advice from a mentor in her field about how to handle an incident of workplace sexual harassment. The case consists of two confidential role materials: a role for the student, Julia, which describes her troubling experience with her boss during a summer internship, and a role for the senior mentor, Lee, which mentions that Julia is hoping to receive advice from him about a complicated situation. Julia's story presents a richly detailed, first-hand (fictionalized) account of a young woman's experience in a male-dominated, competitive firm. Her narrative provides a compelling representation of the nuances and challenges associated with experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace. Because it is written as a conversation exercise, the case provides students, faculty, and administrators with not only the opportunity to think about how to address (and prevent) sexual harassment within their own organizations, but also with the opportunity to engage in the difficult conversations that these issues demand. How can we best offer support and guidance? What are strategies for effective listening, question asking, and advice-giving in emotionally-charged and sensitive situations?

John Branca, attorney to pop musician Michael Jackson, must negotiate a series of deals on behalf of his client in order to safeguard his financial interests and creative license during a period of rising stardom.