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Pete Anderson, the general manager of Mumbai Dairy Company, is facing several difficult but related challenges. Revenues and profits at the Mumbai, India–based joint venture are in decline. At the same time, worker strikes and disruptions across India have become a major issue. Internally, employees seem to be unmotivated and many—particularly Anderson’s direct reports—appear to be taking him for granted. Employees blame seasonal conditions as the cause of waning performance. Others are complaining that their compensation is too little given the contributions they are making. Anderson needs a plan of action for his upcoming meeting with his Singapore-based boss.

Makena Wanjiru, chair of Kiri Mount Kenya Conservation Network and Resource Centre (Kiri), wondered whether turning Kiri’s loans business into a co-operative bank would be in the group’s best interest. The challenge was to convince the rest of the board members of the idea. The board of directors would meet on July 18, 2019. Wanjiru had to draft a report before then explaining how the idea was consistent with the group’s current strategy and would benefit Kiri for years to come. Wanjiru also needed to consider strategies to grow Kiri’s agribusiness beyond the Mount Kenya community.

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continued worldwide in 2021, and health experts were aware that the virus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 [SARS-CoV-2]) could be transmitted between humans and mink. In light of this, Denmark had controversially ordered the killing of 17 million mink out of concern that mutations to the virus posed a risk to the effectiveness of any future COVID-19 vaccines. In early 2021, mink farmers across multiple countries were left wondering whether a mass cull was likely to also take place in their countries. In Canada, for example, mink farmers affiliated with the Canada Mink Breeders Association wondered if it was necessary to do the same in Canada. Was there another way? Or was culling mink the only way to protect the health of human populations?

In June 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the vice-president of sales and marketing at Priority Management, a hotel and resort management company, was overseeing the operations of two hotels. New England Hotel was a large corporate hotel that had successfully cultivated much of its business from corporations in the nearby corporate business park. After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, hotel occupancy plummeted, and the hotel’s general manager was resisting changing strategy to address heightened fears amid uncertainty from the hotel’s staff. A “business as usual” strategy would inevitably result in the hotel closing and all staff members being laid off. Midwest Hotel was a major branded full-service hotel located outside the downtown area. The hotel had undergone several changes in leadership and rebranding, which the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated. The hotel manager was forced to drastically reduce the hotel’s staff and implement a new strategy before the hotel became unsavable.

Like the society of which it is a part, the work world has not been immune to the plight of intolerance. Recognizing that while systemic changes are necessary, this case offers a powerful way to combat bias by empowering employees to speak up in order to share their concerns, discomfort, and frustrations with intolerance and bias in real time, as they see it happening. An organization is more than the sum of its policies, procedures, and other initiatives. A company is made up of many thousands of personal interactions, and much of the intolerance that marginalized employees experience occur within these moments. Learning to break the silence in these moments is key.

An actuarial intern at World Reinsurance Company was casually checking his e-mail and noticed that he had received a request from his manager to develop a quote for an upcoming request for proposal from one of World Reinsurance Company’s larger clients, Ontario Life. The request for proposal would have to contain a quote for an excess-of-loss policy to reinsure Ontario Life’s 10-year-term life insurance policy, consisting of 100 high-risk policyholders, for retention limits over CA$250,000 on a per-loss basis. The quote was to be submitted for review by the end of the day, so the intern had to get started on it immediately.

Clarke Building and Supplies Limited was a multi-generational family-owned building supply and contracting company headquartered in the western region of the island of Newfoundland, Canada. After the death of the company’s founder and chief executive officer, it fell to the founder’s son to take the helm of the company. With his engineering background, this son noticed inefficiencies and lax controls within the company. He was especially worried about the possibility of a more tightly run national store entering the market and outcompeting his family’s business. Complicating any decision to tighten operations was the community culture of the business, which included many long-time employees, friends, and family members. He could see that there were issues in the company, but he lacked the business acumen and distance to separate symptoms from causes and develop a plan to keep the company healthy and strong for generations to come. He knew he needed to achieve buy-in from the managers so he could implement any solutions he devised.

In April of 2020, an Ivey Business School HBA graduate, and chief executive officer of automobile parts manufacturer MJD Manufacturing (MJD), recognized the potential opportunity to invest in new machinery and retool some of MJD’s operations to produce COVID-19-related supplies. Specifically, she was considering whether or not MJD should produce personal protective equipment. Aside from analyzing the financial viability of the potential investments, she had to consider three factors: First, how long the COVID-19 pandemic might last, as the timeline of the pandemic underpinned the potential investment decision; second, how an investment would be financed; and third, the qualitative aspect of the decision. Specifically, she had to consider how she could help her community at a time when many businesses were shrinking and furloughing employees.

Mathilde Johnsen was a highly motivated environmental systems engineer in the real property branch of Public Services and Procurement Canada. Johnsen advanced a job grade about every 18 months, and in 2016, she successfully applied to the management stream. In 2019, after completing an MBA, Johnsen pursued an opportunity in the executive stream of the civil service. Her past behaviour raised concerns for the selection committee, who decided that, rather than promote Johnsen, they would give her a one-year secondment in the executive position so they could assess her growth. Unfortunately, her inability to deal effectively with subordinates, peers, and superiors resulted in Johnsen’s effective demotion and transfer out of the department. Could this unfortunate career derailment have been avoided?

In April 2020, the business head and the human resources head at Apturja Power Limited (APL) were anxious about the rising levels of new-hire turnover across all five power plant locations. Out of 2,000 employees hired in the past two years, half had left the organization within a year of joining. High attrition posed an issue for APL's cost-competitiveness strategy by not only increasing hiring costs but also nullifying the time and energy spent in acquainting and training employees to APL's requirements. Both department heads wanted to identify reliable indicators so that they could develop an appropriate action plan to reduce new-hire turnover and thereby strengthen APL's human capital.

During the spring 2020 semester, Botsworth Business School had suddenly moved all classes to remote teaching due to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The school’s associate dean had to consider the implications of this new learning environment for academic integrity. She also had to manage the challenges of a new infrastructure and differing student and instructor needs. In May 2020, with urgency subsiding, and with the university confirming that classes would be taught remotely through the spring 2021 semester, the associate dean was considering the risks and benefits of what services had been—and what could be—implemented to support remote teaching and learning. Leading up to the remote fall 2020 semester, she was wondering how to best identify and manage risk from contract cheating—a form of academic dishonesty that occurred when a student submitted work for academic credit that was completed by a third party. The associate dean’s task would have been complex and difficult in normal times, but it had become an especially salient problem after moving to online remote instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In late 2020, an instructor at a Canadian university received an email from a concerned student about contract cheating (i.e., a student submitting someone else’s work for credit) in her class. As the instructor read the email, many questions without obvious answers came to mind. She wondered what her professional and personal responsibilities were in dealing with the issues raised in the student’s email. In particular, she was trying to come to grips with her responsibilities to her students, her colleagues, the program she taught in, and the university and society in general. She also wondered what she could do to make this type of cheating less prevalent and how she could better detect and discourage it. How could she and her colleagues support students to prevent them from seeking help from these types of companies, which promoted cheating under the premise of tutoring? Upon further considering the issues, the instructor wondered about potential risks to herself, her students, and the university that might result from various possible courses of action. She decided that, at the very least, she would talk to her students about contract cheating at the start of her next class, but she was not sure what she would say.

An investment manager at Glitz Investments, a firm based in the United States with a focus on the entertainment industry, wanted to identify potential blockbuster movies in the Indian film industry for the firm’s potential investment purposes. The investment manager received a report compiled by analysts at the firm indicating that Bollywood would be an attractive industry for investment. The firm’s analysts had collected data but could the manager determine a quantitative relationship between box office performance and the factors the team had identified? Could Glitz Investments choose movies based on this analysis alone? The investment manager's boss was looking for more specific data on which to base the firm’s investment decisions.

Juhi Warrier was a successful human resources (HR) professional with almost two decades of work experience across various industries. She had recently joined the Indian unit of Revital Pharma Inc. (Revital), a leading healthcare manufacturer based in the United States. Heading talent acquisition (TA), Warrier was hired to bring in a fresh perspective and drive change. As only the third female among the 200 leaders in senior management roles, gender diversity was among the top goals on her agenda. However, she was in for a shock, as not only did her ideas for revamping the TA process find no takers but she also had a hard time gaining acceptance as a woman who was a senior leader on the team. The case describes the challenges faced by Warrier in championing the diversity agenda at Revital, while navigating the personal battles of gaining acceptance as a leader. Various incidents described in the case reveal the gaps in the system and the ingrained biases in the company culture. As Warrier works through the system, she is often forced to compromise on her diversity goals. Warrier now faces the dilemma of whether she should re-evaluate her goals or keep striving for equal opportunities in the TA process. What can Warrier do to succeed as a leader and build an inclusive workplace?

PeopleFirst Inc. (PeopleFirst) was a management consulting company founded and run by Renee Janssen. Janssen had recently promoted a star employee, Marcela Lopez, to the position of manager. However, Lopez’s first foray into management was turning into a disaster. Lopez was suddenly aggressive and defiant toward Janssen. Worse, the results from a survey Janssen administered indicated that Lopez’s team lacked psychological safety—an important factor in their ability to work together and be successful.<br><br>Janssen’s efforts to learn more about the dynamics of Lopez’s team led to three findings. First, Lopez was not taking responsibility for her past actions. Second, Lopez was doing a disproportionate amount of work relative to the rest of her team. Third, Lopez was lying to Janssen about past events. Janssen was faced with the challenge of determining how to persuade Lopez to become a more effective manager and how to increase the morale of the members of Lopez’s team.

In 2017, the chief executive officer (CEO) and chair of the board for DSM Industrial (DSM), a family-owned business in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, was considering his retirement. The company had been started by his father in 1964, and the CEO had worked there since he was 20 years old. Now he was planning on retiring within the next few years. However, he needed someone to take over the top-level management of his family’s commercial and residential construction business along with his roles as CEO and board chair. The company had many highly capable senior people with unique skills and vision—some were members of his family and others were long-time senior staff. If he chose an outside successor, would morale at the firm be affected? Would long-time employees leave? His successor needed technical skills to lead the company and maintain the culture. The decision was complicated by changes in the construction industry, the differing visions of senior management for the future of the company, the need to placate the needs of other family members, and the recent interest from outside parties in the possible purchase of DSM’s related companies. How would his family react to a sale, and how would the culture that he had invested so much time and effort in creating fare in the face of new ownership? Did his two positions need to operate separately? How would they interplay with one another? How could he solve his succession dilemma?

The United States had recently experienced a recession, and a credit analyst with Gift Card Capital Inc. (GCC) needed to financially evaluate two troubled restaurant chains. GCC's unusual business model involved offering capital financing in exchange for gift cards that GCC then offered to individual customers and third-party loyalty programs. The analyst needed to weigh the benefits of increasing the size and diversity of GCC's gift card portfolio against the estimated viability of any gift cards received. It was critical to determine whether the businesses could sustain operations for the gift certificates' redeemable time period—roughly up to five years. The analyst was unsure of what to do. Should he offer a cash advance to one, both, or neither of the firms? If he chose to extend a cash advance, how large should that advance be? What specific terms or conditions should be associated with any cash advance? How were the companies adapting to their financial situation and their past performance? How likely was it that either of the companies would become insolvent and shut down overnight?

An effective and highly motivated executive at 3DP Incorporated, a company that specialized in manufacturing objects with three-dimensional printing, often told his friends that he thought he could be the next Steve Jobs. He wanted to take advantage of the “next great opportunity” to change the world by producing and marketing his own creations. However, his inability to deal effectively with his subordinates, peers, and superiors, as shown by instances of abrasive behaviour throughout the cases, contributed to his eventual downfall.

In September 2019, a marketing director at Multinational Beverage Inc. faced a dilemma: she needed to determine how to reverse the declining sales and market share of her Florida-based orange juice brand, Fresh Squeeze. While one potential solution was to move production to Brazil to take advantage of lower production costs, the marketing director also had to consider the effect this would have on Fresh Squeeze’s brand image. Given industry dynamics, would becoming a low-priced competitor lead to the right positioning for Fresh Squeeze, or were Florida oranges the heart of this business?

In August 2018, a recent Canadian business school graduate was excited about starting her dream job at a global financial consulting firm headquartered in the United Kingdom. However, on her first day, she learned from discussions with co-workers that newly hired women (including herself) were offered lower salaries than men who were newly hired for the same positions. She later learned, in an onboarding session, that the company had a strict policy prohibiting pay discussions among employees. The new employee faced a difficult decision in considering what to do next: What were her responsibilities and options? How could she expect the human resources department to respond? Could her choices possibly put her or her colleagues at risk?