個案總覽

This case is a follow up to HBS Case No. 721-373, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (A). Following the events of the previous case, Takeda reached an agreement to acquire Ireland-based Shire Plc. The case follows some of the achievements and challenges Takeda and its employees face following the acquisition. It outlines the company's situation in 2019 and raises discussion about its future prospects.

In March 2020, Juno co-founders Chris Abkarians and Nikhil Agarwal decided to pitch banks in anticipation of their annual auction while negotiating directly with private lender Eager. Responses from the majority of private lenders-including Juno's 2019 partner-were not encouraging, yet Eager remained keenly interested in an exclusive partnership. The co-founders faced additional pressure following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the uncertainties of the pandemic and its economic impact, the co-founders gravitated towards the Eager partnership. However, they must decide whether to cancel the auction, and whether Eager has the stability to withstand the pandemic.

In May 2020, Juno co-founders Chris Abkarians and Nikhil Agarwal decided to hold the annual auction for their student loan assistance startup. Five lenders submitted bids, and the co-founders ultimately opted to select Eager Bank as their partner for the 2020-2021 academic year for fixed-rate loans. However, a significant portion of Juno's membership expressed interest in variable-rate loans, prompting them to seek out another partner for the variable-rate product. They secured a deal with a major private lender through an intermediary, but are forced to quickly adapt their strategy when the lender refuses to pay for Juno's loan volume. The case concludes with the co-founders considering whether Eager Bank might be a potential long-term partner, and once again wondering whether they should make changes to their auction-based strategy for the coming year.

Toyota Argentina (TASA) and the union representing automotive industry workers in the country had been working together since 2011 to address the challenges faced by Toyota's manufacturing plant in Zárate (Argentina). The strategy for moving forward was built on an agreement signed by both parties called the "Reborn Plant." In 2015, with slow progress at Zárate plant and the macro-conditions rumbling on, Daniel Herrero, TASA's CEO, reflected on what to do next.

This is a follow-up to case A, which describes Operation "Lava Jato" (Car Wash) in Brazil, one of biggest anti-corruption investigations in the world. It laid bare the shady relationships between government contractors, political campaign agencies and high-profile politicians in what were known as 'pay-for-play' schemes - bribes and campaign contributions paid by major corporations to officials and political parties in exchange for lucrative government contracts that were over-invoiced to 'cover the costs'. Case B describes the latest developments until the end of 2020, including how former Judge Sergio Moro joined, then resigned from President Bolsonaro's government, corruption scandals related to Covid-19, and discusses the changes that Operation Car Wash brought to companies in Brazil, namely Petrobras and Odebrecht.

Updates (A) case by describing the early impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the art market, the renaming of the gallery as the Krakow Witkin Gallery, and the response of its partners and staff to the pandemic.

In 2010, multibillionaire George Soros offered to donate $100 million to Human Rights Watch (HRW) - this would be both the largest donation ever received by HRW and the largest ever made by Soros. Soros, a long-time supporter of the organization, had set several stringent conditions to the offer extended via his Open Society Foundations. HRW had to commit to (1) increasing its international presence, (2) increasing the proportion of donations coming from outside the U.S. to fifty percent of total contributions within five years, (3) diversifying the geographic origin of board members, and (4) raising additional funds to match Soros's donation. While Part A of the case focuses on the original offer, Part B is set in 2020 and summarizes what happened at HRW after it accepted the donation.

Dick's Sporting Goods were one of the top five retailers of a range of firearms in the US. Over the last several years and specifically following the Parkland shooting of 2018, Ed Stack the CEO and chairman, had wrestled with the question of their role as a leading firearms retailer and the inconsistent patchwork of laws, often times right after a tragic shooting.

In case B, in late summer 2020, the founder has decided to prioritize the company's rating agency, advocating for robust and standardized impact assessments for all firms. He felt confident about his company's new strategic direction and focus during the pandemic. But how could he ensure impak Finance Inc. grew toward its mission and attained financial sustainability?

In case B, in late summer 2020, the founder has decided to prioritize the company's rating agency, advocating for robust and standardized impact assessments for all firms. He felt confident about his company's new strategic direction and focus during the pandemic. But how could he ensure impak Finance Inc. grew toward its mission and attained financial sustainability?

mPharma pioneered electronic prescriptions in Ghana, and aimed to increase drug affordability and accessibility in Africa, but the company remained unprofitable. Following investor concerns about mPharma's business, CEO Gregory Rockson considered alternative business models and services that could increase mPharma's profitability and impact.

Aptiv's board must decide whether a joint venture with an auto maker is the right next step in the company's efforts to develop and commercialize a production-ready autonomous driving system. While many commentators believed that Aptiv's self-driving technologies had the potential to revolutionize vehicle use and generate enormous financial returns, the company was in a high-profile and increasingly capital intensive race among some of the world's technology giants to achieve that goal - and much more investment would be needed. As the management team began exploring the possibility of working with a partner to share the costs and accelerate their research and development activities, they turned to the board for strategic guidance. The case describes the role of the board and its Innovation and Technology Committee (ITC) in the company's transformation from a traditional auto parts supplier to a high-technology firm focused on the future of mobility and lays out the factors directors are weighing as they consider the possibility of forming a major joint venture with a vehicle manufacturer.

In June 2020, XP and Itaú faced intensified competition and tension in their partnership, with the latter owning a minority stake at XP. Two years earlier, in May 2017, Itaú had announced it would acquire 49.9% of XP for $1.8 billion, followed by three additional stages leading to company control. Yet in August 2018, Brazil's Central Bank, partially barred the deal, stating Itaú could become a minority shareholder. Tensions surfaced as soon as the deal was formalized, with both companies engaging in public attacks across several marketing campaigns, with Itaú estimated to lose around $27 million a day to XP from client migration. Moreover, XP faced increased competition from emerging investment platforms that were gaining ground in Brazil´s market. By mid-2020, XP´s financial results had skyrocketed, taking in $190 million in net income and $743 million in total revenues. As Guilherme Benchimol, XP´s CEO, looks ahead, he must define what strategies they should pursue to achieve further growth, considering competitive forces and market opportunities at hand.

Following the March 10, 2019, crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, en route to Nairobi, Kenya and the October 29, 2018, downing of Lion Air flight 610 as it took off from Jakarta, Indonesia, Boeing's 737 Max jet, the model flown in both instances, was grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration and regulators all over the world. During its 20-month grounding, airline customers cancelled or put in question more than 1,000 orders for the Max. By the time regulators allowed the 737 Max to fly again, in November 2020, Boeing faced challenges due to the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on air travel in 2020 and the negative medium and long-term outlook for the airplane manufacturing industry. This case examines the challenges faced by Boeing and CEO David Calhoun as the company sought to recover from the financial consequences of the grounding and the pandemic and to re-gain the trust of passengers, airlines, regulators, investors, employees, and the media.

Case Supplement for Case A00301

Thorough analysis of various nonprofit business models requires an understanding of each firm's economic characteristics. The relations between various financial statement items provide evidence of many of these economic characteristics. Providing further practice beyond Nonprofit Business Models and Financial Statement Relationships (A), this case presents the "common-size" condensed annual balance sheet, income, and cash flow statements for eight nonprofit firms in the U.S. for the 2018 or 2019 fiscal year (compiled from either audited financial statements or Form 990s).

Via (a) captures the early days of the data analytics startup as founders Gounden and Ravanis considered which markets offer the right opportunities for their firm and what kinds of experiments will help them narrow their choice. Supplement Via (b) reveals the experiments they ran, and what they learned. Via (c) explores the strategic choices they face about product and service offerings once they determine which market(s) to target.

In 2011, Michael Ku became Pfizer's Vice President of Global Clinical Supply (GCS) after the company had undergone three large-scale mergers and acquisitions. As Ku and his new leadership team set out to build a proactive, end-to-end, digital and physical clinical supply chain, they put in place a "Patients First" culture, developed their digital capabilities, and built out their global footprint. By 2019, GCS had made significant progress toward becoming the agile, innovative organization necessary to support Pfizer's new ambition to focus exclusively on developing innovative medicines and vaccines. Ku and his leadership team felt the time had come to implement a new cross-functional decision-making hub. They also decided to pilot a 24-hour, 5 day a week workforce model with a team of clinical pharmacists in Manila. Just as they were beginning to onboard their first hires, COVID-19 struck. GCS found itself on the front lines, having to supply Pfizer's vaccine candidate and investigational antiviral studies, while also ensuring continuity of clinical supply to hundreds of other trials across the globe. By July 2020, the five-person Manila team-all of which had been on-boarded virtually-had come to play a critical role in GCS's productivity. With Phase 3 of the vaccine candidate trial looming, Ku and his leadership team had decided to double the size of the Manila team by the end of 2020. The question was, who would lead the team?

This case is part of the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum. To see other material in the GVV curriculum, please visit http://store.darden.virginia.edu/giving-voice-to-values. In this case, Timothy Brennan is the founder and CEO of technology company Northpointe, Inc. (Northpointe), and the creator of its flagship software program, COMPAS, an artificially intelligent software tool for US court systems that predicts a defendant's likelihood to reoffend and informs bail, parole, and probation sentencing decisions. Brennan originally created COMPAS in order to standardize decision-making within the criminal justice system and to reduce the likelihood of human error or bias impacting court rulings. However, years after COMPAS's public release and widespread adoption within the US court systems, an investigative journalism report claims that COMPAS is more likely to mislabel Black defendants as higher risk and White defendants as lower risk of recidivism. To complicate the matter, any coding adjustments that Northpointe would make to uncover or address the bias-causing programming might reduce the software's performance or reveal sensitive operational information to competitors. In the A case, Brennan's challenge is to organize a response to investigate bias within the COMPAS software, while still protecting the complexity and intellectual property of the product. In this B case, students read a synopsis of Brennan's actual response and review its implications for Northpointe and the US criminal justice system. They are encouraged to consider how Brennan could have responded more creatively and constructively.