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This case explores the nature of the relationship between Uber Technologies, Inc., and its driver-partners. Uber touted itself as a technology company that licensed an app to independent contractors acting as drivers. However, some Uber driver-partners were unhappy and their lawyers filed lawsuits seeking class action status. The driver-partners believed that Uber should have treated them as employees and should have given them benefits (e.g., workers' compensation and reimbursement for their expenses). They complained that Uber unfairly denied them gratuities. The case provides a brief history of Uber Technologies, its competitors, and the taxi and limousine industry, discusses the requirements for working as an Uber driver-partner, and delves into litigation related to Uber's labor practices. It raises substantial questions about how to classify workers (employee v. contractor) and how to develop human resource practices in the sharing economy.

Namal College, Mainwali - Pakistan, was the brainchild and dream project of Imran Khan-world-renowned cricketer, philanthropist, and one of the most popular politicians of Pakistan. Namal's case opens at a critical juncture in the fall of 2012 when the board meets to discuss the organization's impending challenges, vision, and future. On one hand, Namal's leadership saw commendable achievements in a very short span of time while on the other there were major logistic, financial, infrastructural, and human resource related challenges. In the midst of this, the VC began to openly disagree with Mr. Khan and the board's dreams and ambitions for Namal. This conflict in the perspective of the college's leadership began to instill despair and confusion in the minds of the faculty as well as the students. The question that many were asking was "Where is Namal heading towards?" Namal's vision that had served as the bind¬ing force throughout its history was now being questioned by some. There were rumors that the VC and some of the faculty members were thinking of resigning from the college. Mr. Dawood, the chairperson, felt that it had become extremely important to rethink and clarify Namal's vision for the next 10-20 years. He believed that a well-articulated shorter term vision would enable the Board to address the existing challenges and take the institution forward.

For over five years, the third generation (G3) of Valley Pulp & Sawdust Carriers, Ltd. had been laying the foundation for the professionalization of the family firm. However, it was met with resistance from the second generation (G2). G3 had no ownership in the family business, and no true leadership role. At the management meetings, only four votes counted-the four votes of G2 members who were shareholders of the business. G3 members needed a commitment and clarification regarding their roles and future in the company. The question was how to approach G2. The G3 cousins knew that the challenge for them to garner G2's respect and to have G2 understand G3's roles and contribution to the family business would be nothing short of daunting.

In 2014, the chief executive officer (CEO) and owner of Pak Sweets was worried about diversity issues in his organization. The sweets-making factory, once a one-room business and now a full-fledged factory in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, was highly dependent on blue-collar workers. Each production process required workers with diverse skills, so the company hired employees from different provinces of Pakistan, representing multiple ethnicities. The ethnicities were fundamentally diverse with different languages, cultures, and codes of conduct. As the company grew, conflicts increased between employees of different ethnicities. This everyday minor problem turned into a major challenge when it caused property damage, financial losses, and a decline in productivity. Pak Sweets was unable to meet demand, and the company's reputation was at stake. The CEO believed that firing the troublemakers was not an option; it would only address the problem temporarily and might result in union strikes and lockouts. The CEO needed a plan to resolve the ethnic-based conflicts in the factory and their negative impact on the company.

In 2010, the recently appointed chief executive officer of VOSS Water (VOSS), a Norwegian luxury bottled water company, had been given an opportunity to take the brand in a new direction. He knew that take-home retail markets represented a huge opportunity for growth for a company that was used to selling its water in on-premises, luxury locations such as resorts and restaurants; however, the company's past attempts to grow into the retail space had produced dismal results. VOSS's new leader understood that he would have to work hard to unite his team behind his vision. How could he learn from the steps of his predecessors and use hindsight to create an opportunity for the luxury water brand?

Sprint Corporation, a major U.S. wireless carrier, had been losing customers and suffering financially since its merger with Nextel in 2005. Sprint was also ranked the lowest among major U.S. carriers in terms of network speed and data performance. But a new opportunity emerged when the SoftBank Group acquired Sprint in 2013. The new chief executive officer (CEO), appointed in August 2014, publicly gave himself three to five years to turn around this major telecommunication company. The new CEO had a plan; however, he faced many challenges. Sprint had national brand recognition, but customers demanded improvements in network quality and service reliability, and the turnaround plan needed to be implemented in a capital-intensive industry with a saturated market. The optimistic CEO admitted that he faced the biggest challenge of his career. Would he be successful in turning around Sprint's fortunes in this competitive industry?

In 2014, the general manager of the established and successful Hong Kong-based company Hung Fook Tong, which produced and sold herbal teas, wondered how his company could profitably expand to mainland China. After Hung Fook Tong's recent initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, its shareholders' equity had tripled. The initial public offering committed Hung Fook Tong to expanding its business in mainland China; however, that market posed many challenges, in part because it represented a far larger market. The general manager knew it was critical to determine a suitable and successful expansion strategy.

Nissan's resilience strategy had been considered an exemplary response to the triple disaster in Japan in March 2011. The Japanese automobile industry made their respective recovery efforts to resume production and delivery of vehicles after suffering damage from an earthquake, tsunami, and a nuclear crisis, but it took months before they could reach pre-disaster levels of operations. Nissan's resilience practices and supply chain disruption management were acknowledged as superior to those of their peers and were appreciated by experts and analysts. Nonetheless, it took Nissan more than a month to resume production, and each day of lost production cost Nissan $25 million.

In May 2015, a managing partner in an Australian venture capital firm faced a major dilemma. As one of five partners, he held the deciding vote on whether his firm, KTN Capital, would take an entrepreneur's idea for a solar-powered water filter and build a new company around it, or instead, invest in the entrepreneur's company. The venture capital firm would not be doing anything illegal by taking the entrepreneur's idea because the entrepreneur had not properly protected his intellectual property through patents, but the decision-maker was struggling with the ethics of that choice. To further complicate the situation, the entrepreneur was very difficult to deal with, and the investment firm was facing pressure from the fund's investors to find investments that would yield big returns. The managing partner had many business and ethical considerations to factor into his decision, and it seemed there would be no easy choice.

In April 2013, Procter & Gamble (P&G), the world's largest consumer packaged goods (CPG) company, announced that it would extend its payment terms to suppliers by 30 days. At the same time, P&G announced a new supply chain financing (SCF) program giving suppliers the ability to receive discounted payments for their P&G receivables. Fibria Celulose, a Brazilian supplier of kraft pulp, joined the program in 2013, but was re-evaluating the costs and benefits of participating in the SCF program in the summer of 2015. The firm's treasury group and its US country manager must decide whether to keep using the program and, if so, whether to keep their existing SCF banking relationship or start a new relationship with another global SCF bank.

Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, had been a source of wealth, pride and prestige for the Bancroft family for much of the 20th century. From 1928 to 2007, the family lived off company dividends and left the day-to-day management of the publishing business to senior journalists who had worked their way up through the ranks of the WSJ. But in 2007, when Rupert Murdoch - whose global media empire dwarfed that of the Bancrofts - offered to buy Dow Jones at a generous premium, the family was split down the middle. To sell or not to sell? The case explores the events that led up to the dynasty's exit and the grandiose entrance of an Australian-American media mogul onto the US media scene.

Henry Tam, the logistic director at 7-Eleven's Combined Distribution Centre (CDC), is considering how to tackle a high employee turnover rate. This challenge is partially the result of a shortage of labor in Hong Kong. Over the years, Henry has taken several steps to address the issue. These include collaborating with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to train and employ disabled workers; adjusting the use of cold storage for perishable goods; how to handle bakery products; how bulk goods are packed and distributed; and adopting new technologies to improve employee productivity. Moreover, Henry offers the staff three hours of overtime per day, allowing them to earn more. Henry doesn't know what else he can do to decrease the high turnover and retain his employees.

The case examines the effectiveness of the advertising strategy used by the Unilever brand Axe to enter and gain market share in the deodorant segment in India. The highly attention-grabbing, sexually-themed ads, accompanied by the high growth potential of the deodorant market proved very successful for Axe, initially. However, the controversial nature of the ads also offended many. With the entry of the new Indian deodorant brand FOGG, positioned as a value-for-money brand, Axe's market share quickly started eroding. Axe's failure to evolve appropriately its positioning to sustain its initial growth left it vulnerable to competition. In light of these developments it was time for the brand to take a step back and re-think its positioning strategy.

It is August 1, 2015, and the 32nd InnovAstra Convention, an annual competition meant to showcase and recognise the innovation achievements of individuals, teams and business units in the Indonesian conglomerate PT Astra International Tbk (Astra), was just a fortnight away. Ekuslie Goestiandi is the head of the Corporate Centre that organises the InnovAstra Convention, and manages development programmes for facilitators to promote InnovAstra's standards and values in the company. Astra's employees have been inculcated with a spirit of striving towards continuous innovation from very early on in the company's history. Over the past two decades, Astra has expanded the scope of innovation across all group companies to encompass all employees, including the top management. Despite initiatives such as the InnovAstra Convention, Astra's leadership team is aware that much more is needed to be done for the group to successfully manage the challenges of the future. The business climate in Indonesia is expected to become far more volatile and demanding, influenced by intensified competition and rapid technological advances. In addition, the younger generation of employees and consumers will have different sets of needs and preferences that need to be understood and met. To manage these challenges, Astra has to plan for the 'next level of innovation' in the company, and that requires clear direction from the top. A key element of Astra's future direction is establishing a "synergistic business chain" that enables different activities within each business and across businesses to become mutually supportive. The question Ekuslie is mulling over is: what would it take to bring Astra to the next level of innovative capability?

Ed Williams Mens Wear, a family-owned retailer of high-quality men's clothing, had a single location in Calgary, Alberta. The store had been very successful for over 20 years. The founder's son was planning to take over the business, but he had concerns about the company's aging market and was looking to grow and/or diversify the business. Available options included opening another location, expanding the store, or changing the product offering. Competitive conditions in the Calgary marketplace were heating up with the entry of a number of higher-end American retailers. The founder's son needed to evaluate all the alternatives in order to carry Ed Williams Mens Wear into the future.

In 2010, when India opened up its defence sector to private manufacturers, Armada India set up a factory in West Bengal. However, the factory faced issues of low productivity, delivery delays, and high rejection rates. A quirky new general manager of maintenance applied Buddhist philosophy to his human resource management practices. The workers, who until then had felt unimportant, now felt happy and engaged as they adopted the manager's ideas, which appealed to their local psyche. Strong results were seen in terms of improved production, productivity, and morale. However, senior managers had significant global expansion plans and were wary of this general manager's unorthodox management style. They hired a highly qualified, U.S.-educated human resource (HR) executive who scoffed at the "unsophisticated" practices of the manager and sought to change them, despite their success. What was the manager to do? Was the new HR executive justified in trying to impose more traditional business methods?

The Hach subsidiary of global science and technology leader Danaher Corporation was about to introduce an innovative handheld water quality testing device: the SL1000 Portable Parallel Analyzer. There were, however, some critical decisions left regarding how best to bring it to market. Olaf Boettger, the Business Unit Director of Hach's Laboratory Solutions division, needed to decide on the exact timing of the launch and how the PPA would be priced and promoted. Boettger's decisions would impact a wide range of stakeholders inside and outside of the company, and he must carefully weigh a series of tradeoffs and concerns. Danaher's Business System, a culture emphasizing continuous improvement as well as a set of tools or structures that drive performance, provides him with the structure to frame these decisions. This case was used successfully as an introductory case at the start of the Darden Business School MBA program and would be useful in any class to emphasize the need for an "enterprise perspective."

Due to an increase in the number of wealthy individuals the demand for artwork had increased, and artwork was considered an investment asset. Artwork was listed as a "treasure asset" or an "investment of passion" by investment industry publications, recognizing its importance in the portfolios of the wealthy. The financialization of the art market went hand in hand with a growing understanding of the investment properties of art. Developing this knowledge took time because measuring the returns to a heterogeneous and illiquid asset like art-or real estate-was challenging.