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This case looks closely at the management of a branch of the YMCA in Boston during periods of growth and contraction and at the development of Wendy Zinn’s career, all in the context of the YMCA’s organizational culture. The roles of strategy, decision-making, leadership and organizational culture are described as critical both to the organization’s development and to the career development the organization affords. Social capital and networking skills are also critical success factors in the YMCA’s growth.

Pure Organic Food and Juice Bar (Pure) is a restaurant located in Collingwood, Ontario specializing in raw, organic and vegan foods. The company’s strategy is to tap into the growing demand for food that is associated with a healthy and more sustainable lifestyle. However, the difficulty of attracting customers in a small town with seasonal fluctuations in the number of residents/visitors, combined with competition from “green” products provided by competing restaurants and grocery stores and the lack of a focused strategy have resulted in weak profit levels. The co-founders are wondering what needs to be changed to tap into the lucrative mainstream market. Students are pushed to think about how Pure should change its strategy, what sorts of marketing approaches it should use and, most importantly, how the co-founders can tap into the mainstream market without compromising their original values.

BBC Pvt. Ltd. (BBC), a chemical manufacturing company, was in urgent need of funds in order to secure an important contract. BBC was able to manufacture a product that involved low investment in the form of fixed assets. Although the product was of an inferior quality due to its cost-effective production, the company was able to pass on that cost advantage to its end customers, enabling BBC to maintain its position in the market. In addition, the company sold the product primarily on credit and was therefore a preferable option for buyers.<br><br>BBC followed a traditional approach to working capital management. Its assets were much greater than its liabilities. The company repaid its creditors promptly before the credit period. However, in terms of credit management, the company followed a casual approach. It extended credit sales for large periods and its large inventory in the form of raw material and finished goods resulted in excessive blockage of working capital.<br><br>In this case, BBC had the opportunity to pursue a promising contract that would require significant investment immediately. The company’s managing director needed to make a decision about how to obtain and manage adequate funds for the upgrade that BBC needed in order to secure its contract.

The chief financial officer of Acer Incorporated has to decide how to manage the higher level of complexity of the company's exchange risk after their restructuring. This must be done in a way which is consistent with Acer's core principles, one of which is to find simple effective solutions to unavoidable business risks. The case addresses the technical issues of exposure measurement and hedging, the challenge of hedging expected, but not contracted, future foreign currency revenues, and IFRS hedge accounting requirements.

Dr. Reddy’s Foundation (DRF) was established to focus on offering education and livelihood programs in India. The case deals with DRF’s innovative program called Livelihood Advancement Business School (LABS), under which vocational training programs are conducted to upgrade the skills of underprivileged, semi-educated and unemployed youth. These programs develop specific and marketable technical and work-related skills and provide entry-level jobs to the target group. The LABS program fills an important gap between employers’ need for skilled youth and potential employees who might not have training, skills, credibility or access to such jobs. The case describes DRF’s entry into this particular niche sector and the difficulties that it faced along the way. The case also analyzes the following aspects of the LABS program: monitoring systems and processes; partnering relationships formed to expand its presence and outreach to the target population; challenges related to ensuring fair wages and skilling the differently-abled youth; and potential future directions for the program.

Maria D’souza planned to expand her business by introducing a new product line of frozen foods. She wanted to estimate the attractiveness of the new expansion by estimating net present value (NPV) of the expected cash flows. Her main concern was to find a suitable discount rate to be applied to cash flows to ascertain the NPV of the project.<br><br>D’souza’s consultant friend asked her to analyze cost of capital of similar companies operating in the same industry. The basic principle in this case is that firms in the same industry often have similar customers, operations and assets; therefore they have similar business risks and should have similar costs of capital.

HootSuite is one of the fastest growing SaaS (Software as a Service) social media dashboards on the market. The company’s vice-president of business development needs to determine the best strategy for segmenting and monetizing HootSuite users. He needs to introduce a tiered pricing plan that generates revenues without alienating users.

Patient safety is a critical issue in health care and remains a problem in almost all health care institutions. The challenge is to change the culture so that all providers of care put patient safety as job one. Traditionally physicians have suggested that patient safety is due to individual error. In contrast, patient safety is a system and cultural change. The joint chief of staff at a medium-sized community hospital wants to address patient safety by influencing his fellow physicians to change practices of patient care without appearing paternalistic. The arena of patient care and changing attitudes is a new concept at Grand River Hospital. The case examines the various means that the joint chief of staff can employ to introduce a patient safety culture at the hospital.

Jabwood, a wood trading company with four branches in Lebanon owned by the Jabado family, is contemplating international expansion into new markets — specifically, Saudi Arabia and China — to compensate for a decline in revenues. This case examines the macroeconomic environment of Lebanon, China and Saudi Arabia as well as the wood industry in those countries. The characteristics of a successful international expansion are considered. In addition to identifying the criteria of attractiveness for each country, the case requires a decision on a market entry strategy that would ensure a successful expansion for the company. Given the risks and tradeoffs in each country, Jabwood has to decide whether it should expand in either market or both and on the mode of entry it should adopt to increase its chances of success.

The founder and chief executive officer of Mobiroo Inc. must make several decisions regarding the future of his mobile application (app) gift card company. Mobiroo had created the first app gift card for Android and Blackberry users ? similar to the iTunes gift card for iPhone users. Over the past two years, the company had experienced phenomenal growth in the business-to-business space, selling a white-labelled app storefront to mobile carriers and handset manufacturers. Recently, the company had focused on moving into the competitive retail gift card space: should Mobiroo enter the world of retail slowly or go full speed ahead, making significant investments in both time and money? With the holiday season for gift-giving approaching, a decision was needed quickly.

This case presents the perspective of a Chinese company, Zhejiang Tianlong Capsule Co. Ltd. (Tianlong), and its experiences with the negative impact of an industry scandal. On April 15, 2012, China Central Television disclosed that several capsule producers in Ru’ao had illegally used industrial-grade gelatin to produce medical capsules. The capsules were found to contain excessive chromium, a heavy metal harmful to human health.<br><br>Tianlong was not on the list of guilty companies, but the scandal threatened to ruin the reputation of all capsule firms located in Ru’ao. Most pharmacy companies immediately avoided Ru’ao after such a nationwide scandal. The director of Tianlong must decide how to address customers’ concerns and keep Tianlong’s good reputation from being damaged as a result of the current scandal. The director was also annoyed by the local government’s requirement to suspend production. Some gelatin material had already been melted; suspending production would result in a direct financial loss. How should he respond to the supervision agency’s order?

The owner and general manager of a large retail establishment faced a dilemma about whether his long-time yard manager was still the right person for the job. The business increasingly depended on providing superior customer service in order to compete in the market. Recently, the owner had placed a personal friend in the operation as an assistant to the yard manager. This new addition had shown a real talent for developing employees and driving performance improvements. As a result, customer service feedback had drastically improved. The owner realized that the assistant had become the real leader of the yard. He wondered how to keep the momentum of the changes going while still showing due respect to a loyal employee.

The Hidesign case examines issues facing a niche fashion company in pursuit of its next growth phase. After three decades of offering a leather products portfolio, the founder and president of Hidesign has decided to extend Hidesign’s portfolio to include non-leather product categories such as sunglasses and pens. The company’s advertising tagline — “Real leather. Crafted the forgotten way.” — has helped position Hidesign as a quality leather accessories brand. How should Hidesign position its new product range? Should different taglines be used for its leather and non-leather products? Should Hidesign do away with taglines altogether? Could the decision to extend the brand to non-leather product categories dilute its carefully cultivated core identity? Or could this decision help transform Hidesign into a fashion lifestyle brand?

Advantage Food & Beverage Vending is a decision-based case that highlights four options for the owner and president of the Advantage Food & Beverage (AF&B) snack vending operation. He had been running his business for 16 years and possessed a great deal of knowledge about his company and the vending industry. His dilemma was whether or not to invest in his existing operation and, if so, how to determine the best use of his resources. The vending industry was stagnant and considered to be declining, which complicated his decision. However, newer technologies had become available that could improve AF&B’s competitive advantage in the marketplace.<br><br><br><br>Technology options included a system that (a) accepted electronic payments and (b) tracked inventory and transactions. The electronic payment method came in the form of the swiping of a credit card, or in the newer form of Touch-and-Go card readers. These features could be retrofitted to existing machines or built into new machines. The decision involved which option(s) would likely provide the president with the best return on his investment.

The chief executive officer of Mission Hills, a Chinese golf course operator, is thinking about how to expand his resort operations into Hainan Island, a few hundred kilometres away. He is wondering what his organization needs, from a human resources standpoint, to be able to develop another five-star resort. Mission Hills is a top golf course brand in China employing 7,000 people in its Shenzhen and Dongguan facilities. The expansion to Hainan Island is part of a larger plan to establish Mission Hills resorts around China.

This case chronicles the challenges of establishing an innovative tissue bank service to accelerate the research and development processes of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies worldwide. Asterand’s two major challenges involved achieving a standardized approach to collecting tissue samples in hospitals all over the world and achieving the highest possible quality of tissue samples shipped to their primary customer, Amgen. Despite the identified need for high-quality tissue samples, Asterand was experiencing multiple quality control problems in their processes and procedures. Tissue samples were being packaged poorly, labeled incorrectly or delivered at the wrong time or to the wrong place. Additionally, there were quality issues with the RNA analysis of the samples, which was a critical factor in the usability of the tissue sample for research and development of new therapies and drugs. <br><br><br><br>The head of pathology at Amgen’s California facility was threatening to terminate their existing order and communicate the failure of Asterand to all company employees, which would have a devastating ripple effect across the industry and likely destroy opportunities for any future orders with Asterand. If this happened, Asterand would not be able to secure contracts with customers and was at risk of losing investors and going bankrupt.

In the summer of 2010, the members of the business development team of Target Systems were carefully considering the possibility of entering the Electronic Health Information (EHI) systems arena. The company had both breadth and depth of experience in providing logistics, project management and information technology (IT) services to clients in the public and private sector. Although the employees of Target Systems were experts in a full range of IT services, no one in the company had deep expertise about the way IT applications were being used to manage patient care or administer health care organizations. The lack of expertise implied that a movement by Target Systems into the EHI systems arena would call for the company to simultaneously develop new products and services for a new set of clients –– to engage in growth by related diversification. That strategy would stand in contrast to the growth by concentration strategy the team had employed throughout company history. To pursue a diversification strategy the team would have to decide if it should provide services to regional health information organizations, hospitals or individual physicians’ practices. It would also have to decide whether it would cultivate new capabilities by investing in internal development or by seeking a strategic partner that was already operating in the arena. Ultimately, the way the business development team weighed the opportunities versus the challenges of adopting a new growth strategy in the context of a still uncertain external environment would strongly influence its decision as to whether or not the company should enter this new arena.

In 2010, a hybrid entrepreneur working at a full-time job has come up with the idea for his first product, a smartphone car stereo. He has invested $10,000 of his own money plus $3,000 from an early investor to develop his prototype. He needs to put together a viable commercialization plan and is considering crowdfunding as a viable funding source. He also needs to decide whether to distribute his product through direct sales or a traditional retail model.

This case concerns the implementation and strategic direction of LGBTA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and ally) initiatives at TD Bank Financial Group (TD). In order to maintain its position as the “employer of choice” for the LGBTA community, TD must expand the measures it had taken since its Diversity Leadership Council was created in 2006 to promote a comfortable, barrier-free and inclusive work environment for all employees. TD’s corporate diversity group had been providing a growing number of resources, events and LGBTA-related sponsorships for the past six years, resulting in an exponential growth of engagement by LGBTA employees, but lately the bank’s competitors and other large companies were catching up. Moreover, a recent review showed that there was a large variance in the quality of experience between the different subgroups of TD’s LGBTA community. The bank’s senior manager of corporate diversity must report within a week to the Diversity Leadership Council on how to solve these issues.

The president of a Chinese auto parts manufacturer is facing a crisis. For nearly 10 years the company's production lines have not been able to keep up with the orders. Deliveries are due, but the in-house stock is in short supply despite the production lines operating under extended hours. Quality issues have resulted in recent recalls in the United States, making the company's prospects worrisome. Faced with worsening international trade conditions and mounting problems, the chair and president decide to expedite the initiative of transforming their company into a lean manufacturer based on the Toyota Production System. However, the company has no in-house expertise or experience in lean production. The case presents a challenging situation faced by many companies as they move up the ladder of production competence and operational excellence. The major learning focuses on the adoption of Japanese production practices in an emerging Chinese company as it implements lean production.