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<p align="justify">This case examines the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) hiring- and retention-related challenges encountered by Amazon.com’s FAR1 location in Fargo, North Dakota, at the end of 2021. John Sabo, FAR1’s general manager and hiring team leader, had one main goal: to hire and train a diverse team of 1,446 Amazonians by the facility’s opening date in December 2021. However, there were many barriers to achieving this goal, including potential candidates’ negative perception of Amazon’s workplace environment due to its negative track record of employee safety and well-being, especially with regard to under-represented groups. To complicate matters, there was a limited supply of qualified, under-represented candidates in Fargo. Could Sabo and his team find a way to meet Amazon’s DEI goals while also ensuring adequate staffing? Were there solutions they had overlooked? Should they develop separate strategies for managers and employees? Further complicating the team’s decision, DEI initiatives were not universally embraced, and there were questions on the efficacy of DEI programs. The success of FAR1 and its potential to serve as a blueprint for future warehouse expansion hung in the balance.

On a day in early June 2017, Fadi Kanaan, a member of the organizing committee of the Beirut International Model United Nations (BEYMUN) conference at the American University of Beirut (AUB), sat in front of college hall feeling very excited yet worried. He had just received an email informing him that he would be the secretary-general of the annual Model United Nations conference at AUB in the spring of 2018. BEYMUN invited students from universities worldwide who were interested in addressing global concerns and prevailing world topics in a real-life simulation of the United Nations committee sessions. This conference was the perfect opportunity for participants to tackle such topics as regional conflicts, women and children, human rights, peacemaking, disarmament, economic and social development, and the environment while working in committees for Disarmament and International Security, Economic and Financial, Social Humanitarian and Cultural, and Special Political and Decolonization. But Kanaan was worried how BEYMUN would manage the overwhelming application process. Previously, the BEYMUN team had experienced issues with organizing large events, and Kanaan realized the existing system that received applications was inadequate for processing the hundreds of applications he expected the conference to receive. He knew that within two weeks of announcing the conference dates, applications would start to pour in. Kanaan and the team had to respond to each application before a deadline. Now was the time for BEYMUN to develop a system that would efficiently manage and process the applications to help organize a successful conference.

In February 2007, Diego Papalia, founder and owner of Ottawa Pianos, was getting ready to meet with his daughter, Carmen, to discuss the strategic future of the company. Five years prior, the father–daughter duo had started separate projects within the business. Diego had launched the digital music centre and Carmen had started a piano school, with a plan to reassess which might be the more lucrative endeavour in five years’ time. The DMC sold guitars, amplifiers, drum kits, and various other electronic musical equipment; however, there was a high turnover requirement as music technology was constantly evolving. Carmen’s piano school had grown to over a dozen instructors and 300 students. The downside was that it took up a lot of space— in this case, the entire basement that could otherwise be used for stock storage—and yielded low profit margins. Diego and Carmen had to decide which of the two projects to retain.

Since its beginning in 2018, Jane Win LLC, a nimble and lean start-up selling amulet jewellery pieces, had seen immediate success. From the company’s inception, its founder, Jane Winchester Paradis, assessed the advantages and disadvantages of an expansion strategy. Paradis also assessed the viability of expanding beyond amulet pieces to achieve substantial growth. Although the young company already enjoyed strong brand recognition and offered a meaningful unique selling proposition, there were still many questions about the company’s next steps, including which growth strategy would be the most suitable. Did the company have the resources and skilled management team necessary to adequately support and monitor its growth? What legal and financial issues must Paradis consider? What marketing and operational issues were the company likely to encounter during expansion?

<div style="font-size: 0.95em; line-height: 1.4;"><p align="justify">In September 2024, the board of governors of the Indian Institute of Management, Visakhapatnam was holding a meeting to review, discuss, and deliberate on various experiences and learnings from phase 1 of the project to build a new permanent campus in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India. The first phase of the project had successfully achieved various objectives in terms of energy innovation, water and wastewater management, solar energy efficiency, rainwater harvesting, and other sustainability measures. It had made great strides toward achieving net zero carbon levels for the fight and adaptation against the challenges of climate change. The head of projects, was tasked with highlighting the importance of sustainability and innovation in energy efficiencies in the upcoming board meeting. He planned to demonstrate how the institute could benefit from and apply the five-star rating received by the Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment to future phases of the project. He also wanted to emphasize how the institute could expand the scope of its sustainability strategies into future projects, considering the impact of potential changes in regulations, technology, finances, and other challenges.

In August 2023, Kurma Vedic Village, located in the Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh, India, was steeped in Vedic culture. The 70 residents in the village embraced minimalistic life and achieved self-sufficiency through land, cattle, and Krsna consciousness. They renounced modern conveniences such as electricity, internet access, and cooking gas in favour of traditional agricultural methods, village technologies, clothes made from handloom, and barter systems for transactions, which led to a simple life of sustainability and self-sufficiency. Kurma Vedic Village relied on funding from devotees and guests to the village for its continuing service. It also provided traditional Vedic education to students in Vedic Mathematics, Mahabharata, English, Telugu, Sanskrit, and life skills such as carpentry, animal husbandry, weaving, and traditional constructions. However, it was facing various challenges related to funding, scaling, and geographic expansion. How could Kurma Vedic Village overcome the challenges and promote Vedic culture and lifestyle across India?

Shen Peng founded Beijing Zongqing Forward Technology Co (Waterdrop) in Beijing, China, in 2016. After more than three years of development, Waterdrop began to provide health-care funding solutions and insurance services to the public through three business subsidiaries: Waterdrop Mutual Aid, Waterdrop Medical Crowdfunding, and Waterdrop Insurance. Waterdrop had become a leading domestic insurance and health-care service platform in China. However, a potential business risk emerged for Waterdrop Mutual Aid. The increasingly stringent regulatory policies of the mutual aid sector in China could impact profits. At the same time, Waterdrop Medical Crowdfunding was unable to generate revenue, and profits from Waterdrop Insurance were struggling to support the Waterdrop parent company. The profitability of Waterdrop’s three subsidiaries was weak and the company found itself in a challenging financial position on December 31, 2020. The company reported a net loss of US$90 million for the year, reflecting its ongoing financial difficulties. In the face of this combined crisis, Shen considered closing Waterdrop Mutual Aid and expanding into the clinical trial patient recruitment industry. The idea had received mixed reactions from the company’s executives. Given Waterdrop’s financial difficulties, should Shen proceed with closing Waterdrop Mutual Aid and venture into clinical trial patient recruitment?

Sparkle-Clean Institutional Housekeeping (Sparkle-Clean), which serviced the Taradevi Institute of Science, Commerce and Arts (TISCA), suffered a drop in performance ratings following numerous complaints about its subpar housekeeping services at TISCA. This was a concerning trend, as Sparkle-Clean had been a reputable brand in the competitive market, providing a high level of interior cleaning services. Such quality challenges and the threat these posed to the company’s reputation called for close monitoring of Sparkle-Clean’s services. The operations manager at Sparkle-Clean recognized the gravity of the issue and realized it could jeopardize the company's long-standing engagement with TISCA. It was thus imperative that Sparkle-Clean swiftly identify and address the underlying issues that had led to the uncharacteristic decline in service delivery quality, to regain its customer’s trust and restore its reputation as a high-quality service provider within the academic sector. To get to the bottom of the issue, the operations manager asked his team to collect, organize, and collate all the data for the current year pertaining to specific complaints and the ratings given by the faculty, staff, and students who used the buildings at TISCA.

In March 2024, Olivia Hicks, clinical manager of the cancer centre at Blackburn Regional Hospital (Blackburn), was working to resolve arising issues surrounding the amalgamation of Blackburn’s cancer centre with the Lakeview Hospital (Lakeview) cancer centre. Nursing staff members and patients were taking issue with numerous aspects of the merger and were voicing their displeasure. Hicks understood that in her new role she would need to be proactive in her management of the situation. The two cancer centres would be merged in six months, and Hicks needed a focused staff to ensure patient care was not sacrificed.

Aimee Schulhauser, a serial entrepreneur in Regina, Saskatchewan, was contemplating how best to regrow her original trio of culinary businesses to their pre-COVID profitability levels. Her early successful entrepreneurial business decisions were led by a combination of gut instinct, watching trends, and seizing opportunities, but her more recent start-ups in 2018 and 2020 were more calculated business decisions that ultimately failed. In June 2023, the original trio of “sister businesses,” as she referred to them, were improving in both sales and profitability, but it had not been easy. Customers’ buying behaviours had changed significantly, and with six months before the federal government’s Canada Emergency Business Account loan was due to be paid, Schulhauser’s focus had shifted from growing through new businesses to how best to regrow the core businesses.

Two years had passed since Jazwares Limited Liability Company (Jazwares) acquired Squishmallows—a plush toy business—and Jeremy Padawer, the chief brand officer of Jazwares, was challenged in how to ensure that the Squishmallow plush toys would be more than a passing fad. As Squishmallows expanded, so did its leadership team. In November 2022, Padawer promoted Crystal Pizzullo to the role of vice president of the brand’s Global Business Unit. Pizzullo’s role was paramount to ensuring the ongoing success and protection of the brand identity of an extraordinarily successful business. Squishmallows enjoyed strong brand recognition and offered a meaningful unique selling proposition, but there were still many questions about the company’s next steps, including which growth strategy would be the most suitable for Jazwares.

This case addresses the challenges surrounding residential long-term care (LTC) in Ontario, Canada, through the lens of a fictional Chinese Canadian family coming to terms with placing their family member in a LTC home. The case protagonist is Henry Chan, a middle-aged health-care executive who is determined to ensure his mother, Kimberley (Kim), who has late-stage Alzheimer’s disease, is placed in a LTC home that is medically and culturally appropriate. The case follows Henry as he navigates Ontario’s complex LTC system with his father, Joshua, and Kim’s care coordinator, Omar, and addresses the important context of the LTC sector in Ontario, including the sector’s current state, its history, and the policy choices that have led to the challenges it faces today.

It had been ten years since M. V. (Raja) Rajamannar became the chief marketing officer of Mastercard in 2013, and set out to transform marketing at the company from transactional to transcendental. He built the framework for Marketing 5.0 and propelled Mastercard to one of the top 10 most valuable brands in the world and the world’s number 1 audio brand four years in a row. Rajamannar now must decide what Mastercard’s future marketing strategy should be.

In late 2019, the Mississauga, Ontario–based NetDynamic Consulting Inc. (NetDynamic) faced intricate challenges related to aligning and standardizing enterprise resource planning (ERP) processes on a global scale in a large multinational enterprise while simultaneously safeguarding the distinctive operational nuances specific to each of the company’s local subsidiaries. <br><br>NetDynamic had undertaken the challenge of integrating the operations of its client, SodaStream Canada, into a unified ERP system. SodaStream Canada was a subsidiary of SodaStream International Ltd. (SodaStream), headquartered in Israel. While SodaStream was part of the food and beverage multinational PepsiCo Inc. (PepsiCo), it was also a multinational in its own right, with 10 global subsidiaries under its purview. NetDynamic’s leaders needed to make crucial decisions regarding how to roll out the new ERP system, how to efficiently address end-user concerns, and how to learn from the ongoing integration to serve future clients better.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ganesh Thummer, chief executive officer of Friday Engineering, faced a daunting challenge. Friday Engineering, which is a multinational manufacturer of medical devices, had recently partnered with a European firm. But the Indian and European teams, collaborating for the first time, were encountering significant conflict. Thummer decided to intervene but was facing resistance from his Indian office staff who wanted to maintain their traditional practices and beliefs. Thummer had to figure out how to bring the teams together while respecting the values of both teams, encouraging collaborative efforts, and providing inclusive leadership to foster a harmonious and motivated workforce.

The Green IT Program was an initiative of Schneider Electric’s (Schneider) Enterprise IT department, which had proactively identified opportunities to contribute to the company’s sustainability program. Initiated in 2015, the program had made appreciable progress, first by identifying internal opportunities and then by devising a data-driven approach to measure the carbon footprint of Schneider’s information technology assets and enable year-on-year reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. It had grown into a global initiative, with an integrated communications program launched to build stakeholder awareness, collaboration, and commitment throughout Schneider’s organizational hierarchy. For Zach Nimboorkar, senior vice-president, Technology Services and Operations, who led the project, and core Green IT Program members, Austin Brunero and Jaroslaw Richert, the aim was to build the strategic blueprint covering the next three years; one that could further galvanize the large and complex global ecosystem of internal and external stakeholders and deliver results on the ground.

TTK Prestige (Prestige), the leading brand in the Indian pressure cooker market, was facing several challenges that threatened its dominance. After witnessing unprecedented growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, Prestige’s sales declined somewhat in 2023, although it showed a modest 5 per cent increase in 2024. Prestige’s long-standing reputation, safety credentials, and iconic advertising campaign had served it well, but it may not have been enough in this rapidly evolving market landscape. Managing director Chandru Kalro assessed the key issues facing Prestige: the Indian market was maturing fast and competitors both new and established were attacking both the low and high ends of the market; the organization had become complacent and had not responded swiftly to market conditions; and more importantly, it lacked a comprehensive growth strategy. Bold strategic moves were needed for Prestige to sustain its market leadership.

In December 2023, Ryan Mitchell, account manager at Prosperity Bank, was reviewing a request for an $80,000 long-term loan for the Château Lafayette (“The Laff”), the oldest tavern in Ottawa, Ontario. Jill Scott, president and CEO of The Laff, was seeking the funds to finance three investments that she believed would help the tavern increase its revenue from food sales during lunch hour: a kitchen update, a patio renovation, and point-of-sale (POS) software.<br><br>Mitchell knew The Laff had demonstrated strong financial performance and cash management historically, but she had reservations about this new strategic shift toward food sales and understood that the restaurant and bar industry was subject to significant risks.

In March 2023, the owner and managing director of PrintOxe struggled to find a way forward that would help the business recover from its declining profitability. PrintOxe was among the longest-standing e-commerce sellers of compatible printer accessories in Canada. For several years, PrintOxe reached millions of dollars in revenues and six-figure profits. But fierce competition due to the market’s ease of entry, coupled with the harsh supply chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, caused PrintOxe to see its first unprofitable year in 2022. As a result, PrintOxe considered replacing its floundering 3D printer filament product line with a new product and utilizing advertising to improve the company’s visibility and revenues.

日本花王集團（Kao）在2021年為了因應世界對於永續議題的重視，調整集團使命、願景以及行為準則。集團希望以「Kirei」（綺麗）為核心與利害關係人打造美好永續生活，因此設立許多願景目標，包含2030年前花王集團要100%使用再生能源，2040年集團要達到零碳排。花王（台灣）為了因應集團對永續的承諾，也訂立了2025年至少使用25%再生塑料的目標，並用生命週期評估的方式檢視花王旗下品牌可以改善的方向，本個案以Bioré和Attack（一匙靈）在台灣的營運為例，闡述子公司在海外執行與推廣永續議題會面臨的挑戰與機會。