個案總覽

In January 2011, the group medical director of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd (AHEL), India’s largest integrated health care provider in the private sector, is weighing his options in promoting clinical excellence among group hospitals. AHEL has been using a clinical scorecard, called ACE@25, as a tool to measure and monitor clinical excellence, which is becoming a source of differentiation in the Indian health care industry. ACE@25 measures 25 clinical parameters, benchmarked against the best hospitals globally, every month. The group medical director is wondering whether his role should be limited to monitoring clinical outcomes or whether, in order to drive clinical excellence, he should also prescribe the steps that the medical superintendents of individual hospitals should take in improving outcomes on their watch.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is an American mixed martial arts (MMA) company based in Las Vegas, Nevada. The UFC is controlled by its parent company, Zuffa LLC, which is owned by Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta and Dana White. The UFC has seen a great deal of success since its purchase from its founders in 2001 for $2 million. The owners have made MMA a highly marketable product in terms of live event ticket sales, at-home pay-per-view purchases, and general popularity among their key demographic: men aged 18 to 34. However, this success has mainly occurred within the United States and Lorenzo, current UFC chief executive officer, wants to expand the organization’s reach across the globe. The UFC has held several successful international events in countries that are fairly culturally comparable to the United States (the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada), and Lorenzo must decide if the organization can be culturally viable in several new international markets — specifically, China, India, and South Korea.

Porsche Canada wants to encourage its Canadian customers to drive their cars in winter. The goal is increased sales of cars (by consumers unwilling to buy a Porsche only for summer driving) and winter accessories such as snow tires. This is a three-fold challenge because Canadians generally believe that luxury vehicles should not be driven in winter due to ice and salt; that sports cars generally perform poorly in winter conditions; and that it is unwise to drive a luxury car in winter when it could be more easily scratched or damaged.

The case describes the selection of an information technology (IT) product to support the operations of 1-888-Junk-Van, a small waste-collection business. Marcus Kingo, the business owner, has five alternatives from which to choose: a database upgrade, contracting out development of a new software application, using Google Docs, using an online tool framed as Platform as a Service (PaaS), or implementing a small-business enterprise resource-planning (ERP) system. Each option presents strengths and weaknesses, and students are left to make a decision. The case exemplifies the IT deployment challenges faced by small companies.

Fairmount Minerals, a leading producer of industrial sand in the United States, embarked upon a journey of sustainable development in 2005. The mining industry had a reputation for environmental harm that threatened the sustainability of the company. Given the strong personal values of stewardship of the planet and community held by the CEO, and because of the reputation of the industry, Fairmount Minerals sought to integrate sustainable development in every step of its value chain — from mining to shipping the product to the customer. Starting in 2006, each year the organization generated a set of bold goals and monitored its progress toward them. These goals clearly spelled out the benefit for the environment and the planet. The question that remained was how this benefit translated into prosperity for stakeholders and the company. Under what conditions did this stewardship of planet and people lead to increased growth for the company?

In August 2010, Phaneesh Murthy, chief executive officer of iGATE Global Solutions, was reflecting on the strategic options before him with regard to the future of iGATE. The options were two-fold. Should iGATE continue to focus on its traditional markets of North America and the European Union, or should it change track to focus on India? The U.S. and E.U. markets had been growing at less than four per cent since 2008, and this would likely continue until 2013. However, iGATE had developed a product tailored to the specific needs of customers in the developed world who were facing the economic downturn. Known as iTOPS, it was showing the promise of adding to both the top line and bottom line of iGATE. <br><br><br><br>The IT-enabled services market in India was growing at an average of 14.5 per cent for the period of 2008-2013. The promise of top-line growth had drawn many global business process outsourcing (BPO) companies to India. iGATE would be just another player in India with plain vanilla offerings and no differentiation. The domestic market was competitive. The commoditization of its BPO products and services had, of course, opened up an opportunity to develop a product tailored to Indian needs, but iGATE had no such offering in the pipeline. It was in this context that Murthy wondered what strategy he should pursue: iTOPS or India?

Ruwwad was a youth-centric community development organization aimed at empowering and supporting marginalized and underdeveloped communities in the Arab world. It had launched numerous programs revolving around three main components: 1) youth empowerment, 2) community empowerment, and 3) child development. Samar Dudin, regional head and program manager of Ruwwad, was reflecting on the key strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges that Ruwwad faced in its home operation so that she could present her recommendations to the board of directors (BOD) on Friday. Her main concern was to present to the BOD a reasoned plan on how to expand the Ruwwad model and how to strengthen the partnerships required to scale up the impact of the model in the future.

The president of Zeus Strategic Investments Inc. was reviewing an acquisition opportunity related to a spin-off of a division of Maxim Automotive. This opportunity was exactly the type of thing that excited the president — a non-strategic business unit within a large industrial organization that faced significant challenges in forming into a standalone business. The president felt that it provided an excellent opportunity to create significant value in a very short period of time with a very small amount of equity. <br><br>He was particularly concerned about getting a clear grasp on the historical and projected financial statements provided by Maxim. Historical financial information would need to be extracted from the Maxim corporate records and adjusted to reflect the anticipated transaction, including removing some corporate allocations and reflecting the potential additional costs of operating the business on a standalone basis. The president was also concerned about the accounting for liabilities and potential liabilities in the division statements, as most often these liabilities were carried at the corporate level, rather than at the division level.

De Kuyper Royal Distillers was a 300-year-old family firm in the Netherlands and produced the largest variety of liqueurs in the world. The firm had always been owned and controlled by the De Kuyper family. In 2009, Bob de Kuyper, the 10th generation to own and run the firm, retired from his position as managing director and an outsider was brought in as the interim managing director. In January 2010, Marc de Kuyper, the eldest son of Bob de Kuyper, worked for an outside firm in a marketing position. He had a strong desire to join the family firm and was trying to decide how to convince his father, and the family firm's supervisory board, that he had the capabilities to eventually take a leadership role in the family business. Was there a future for Marc at the family firm? What could he do, if anything, in the succession process?

New York Fries’ president and executive vice president were preparing for the next biannual meeting of domestic and international franchisees. They planned to provide an update on all aspect of corporate strategy and planning for the year ahead, but they only had a few days to formulate a new international growth strategy. The president and executive vice president were hesitant to expand into new territories partly due to poor experiences in Australia and South Korea, yet international franchisees had encouraged them to investigate promising areas of expansion into China and India. Complicating matters was the future development of the company’s chain of premium hamburger restaurants. While New York Fries was a well-received brand in Canada, it had not yet decided if and how to internationalize the brand. How could the president and executive vice president pursue new opportunities while maintaining their premium brands of French fries and hamburgers?

The controller of a publicly traded mining company must make a series of recommendations to the chief executive officer and chief financial officer of the company as it prepares to adopt international financial reporting standards (IFRS). Major decisions revolve around accounting for the company’s fixed assets and mining properties — specifically, whether to capitalize or expense certain items, whether to record certain assets at their values of historical costs, the company’s depreciation policy, and other issues around impairments of capital assets. The controller also considers the recent International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) discussion paper on accounting for extractive resources and its possible implications to the company in the future.

Two entrepreneurs were investigating Fabric Super-Store franchise ownership opportunities available to them in Ontario, Canada. The Fabric Super-Store had 68 locations worldwide, comprised of both corporate-owned and -operated stores and licensed franchises. It had recently undertaken to convert all existing corporate-owned stores to franchises. The entrepreneurs had recently re-located to the area after several years pursuing different careers in the United States. Unable to find significant meaningful employment, they decided to pursue franchise-ownership. The Fabric Super-Store appealed to them due to its high-margin product, little competition, low overhead, and steady supply of customers. Recognizing their limitations in terms of finances and product unfamiliarity, the entrepreneurs had to determine the critical points to be negotiated into their proposal for becoming a Fabric Super-Store franchisee.

Bannari Amman Group (BAG) was one of the largest industrial conglomerates in South India, with manufacturing, trading, distribution, and financing corporations. Starting as a set of businesses in a family-owned entity, the group now had three publicly listed companies and over 15 family-owned businesses. <br><br>The chairman of BAG — the eldest in the family, according to tradition — held a meeting with the unit heads of BAG on January 6, 2011, to discuss their yearly performance and future plans. At the annual meeting, each unit head had to make a presentation on their unit’s performance and provide a detailed business plan. <br><br>The chairman wondered if the business heads were capable of handling their units by themselves. Until now, he and his brothers had always been ready to offer guidance. He wondered, “What is the appropriate method of guidance for the new generation of entrepreneurs?” How would the unit heads act to optimize performance of their units? He observed that while the group’s units were independent entities, the businesses complemented each other somewhat. Due to this, the group’s businesses enjoyed an inherent advantage. As he looked at the challenges that the units would face under new leadership in upcoming years, he was aware of the need to develop a common vision across all units. The chairman looked for processes to keep the group synergies in place and identify the businesses that could be strengthened.

New legislation in Ontario, Canada, might require all appliance manufacturers and brand owners to take responsibility for end-of-life collection and recycling of products. The senior manager of government relations for Whirlpool Corporation was updating his colleagues on Ontario’s proposed extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation. Whirlpool was the Canadian market share leader in household appliances such as washing machines, dryers, and cooking ranges. With EPR, Whirlpool and other firms would now have to manage — or pay to manage — a more complex model involving reverse logistics. Each appliance manufacturer had at least three options from which to choose: it could argue the legislation was unnecessary, it could join an industry-funded organization (IFO) to meet EPR’s requirement, or it could set up its own IFO.

Daudnagar Organization for Rural Development (DORD) was determining how to expand its successful eye-care hospital into reproductive and child health services. The case lays out the financial and organizational risks and asks the student to evaluate the possibility of expansion given the economic and governmental constraints in one of the poorest parts of India.

By mid-2007, Wawa, headquartered outside Philadelphia, had grown into a chain of 564 convenience stores (200 of which sold gasoline) within a 250-mile radius. A privately owned firm, Wawa employed over 16,000 people and had $4.67 billion of sales in 2006, an increase of 19.6 per cent over the prior year. It was widely admired as a highly effective and humane organization with a loyal and expanding body of customers. <br><br><br><br>This case addresses Wawa’s supply chain management (SCM) in the context of strategic direction, organizational design, and future growth opportunities. Over an eight-year period, Wawa had transformed its supply chain from a disjointed array of parts into a coherent, high-functioning system. Issues before the company now included (1) the relation between SCM and competitiveness; (2) the nature of the typical store and store manager; and (3) possible expansion beyond Wawa’s current area of operations. Another question concerned Wawa’s stores. Historically, these had featured a friendly ambience where “everybody knows your name,” but the company was moving towards larger, more standardized units with fewer offerings, with the goal of minimizing customer throughput time. What would this shift mean for the role of the store manager, and for the overall customer experience? Finally, to what extent was Wawa “landlocked” in its concentrated, middle-Atlantic market? Could — and should — the company attempt to export its distinctive value proposition, culture, and methods to other geographic areas?

Shamit Bagchi, owner of the online art company Dhonuk, recognized that art was a niche market in India. He wanted to utilize psychographics in order to better understand art buyers and properly position his company, so he undertook a survey of art consumers’ behaviour. He believed that through selecting the appropriate demographic segments, analyzing his competition, and using the behavioural insights of the survey, he could create the proper platform for his art company.

Oded Carmi was a social entrepreneur striving for a “green Bali.” He started Sari Organik as a model farm intended to grow according to market demands and to benefit the local community while serving as an educational centre for small-scale farmers in the region. Thirteen years later, the idea was not as well embraced as he had hoped. The case discusses some of the challenges the entrepreneur was facing as the founder and owner of Sari Organik farm and the restaurant Warung Bodag Maliah (“overflowing basket”). His main challenge was to replicate and sustain his organic rice-farming model across Bali and eventually other parts of Indonesia. His initial thoughts involved some options: (a) to utilize the established village system and its leadership to re-introduce traditional rice-farming culture in Ubud, Bali, and eventually Indonesia; (b) to introduce a new model such as micro-franchising through which he would recruit a number of local farmers and provide them with the resources to grow rice organically; (c) to go into a joint venture with the few existing organic rice farmers in the region; and (d) to expand his business as a sole proprietor. The case may be a good starting point for a discussion on the impact of modernization on a traditional society and the role of business in society. Carmi, a native of Israel, tried to revive traditional farming techniques that were more sustainable and healthy. He realized he had to come up with a strategy soon.

Over the past four years the chief administrative officer (CAO) had worked hard to bring change to the city of Havenstock, Canada. Prior to his arrival at Havenstock in 2004, City Hall was awash in media scandal, secrecy, and suspicion. Moreover, the work environment at City Hall was plagued with closed-channel communication and a lack of trust between employees and management. Staff morale was low and the relationship with the press was tense. The CAO had had a clear vision of what he wanted to bring to the city. At the centre of his vision was an embracing of collective accountability. He had worked hard to instill a sense of purpose, priorities, and direction. Slowly, the CAO had begun to rebuild the corporate culture into a supportive workplace. <br><br><br><br>Despite his best intentions, the improvements made over the past few years were threatened, following a Council Oversight Committee meeting. During the meeting, city employee absenteeism numbers had been questioned. Unsatisfied with the explanation of what management was doing to address the problem, a city councillor leaked the absenteeism numbers to the media. After working so hard to improve both internal and external perceptions of City Hall, the CAO now found himself and his team on the headlines of the local newspapers. In order to save his reputation, the CAO needed to prepare a presentation to go before city council and address the employee absenteeism issue head on. He knew that what he said and how he said it would be a defining moment in his career.

3M Canada has been a corporate sponsor of the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (CBCF) since 2005. In support of the CBCF, 3M Canada has produced and sold pink products (i.e. products that bear the pink ribbon, such as Post-it notes, flag pens, Nexcare bandages and Scotch-Brite sponges), with a contribution of each sale benefiting the CBCF. This case examines this corporate sponsorship relationship, and specifically how 3M Canada’s brand manager for Post-it brand office products can further engage the relationship with the CBCF. The brand manager’s marketing campaign for 2009 was successful; however, she now needs to determine the best approach for her 2010 campaign.