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The case highlights the initiatives that can be taken by the management of a large organization to bring more objectivity in promotion policies and to make the process of succession management more scientific. After completing the case, the following teaching objectives should be achieved. Students should be able to comprehend the industrial structure and the key challenges faced by oil and gas industry in an emerging economy – India; students should understand how a large organization can bring objectivity and transparency in its promotion policy by focussing on merit; students can analyse the challenges faced by a large organization in implementing changes in its promotion policy; and students should be able to understand the mechanism of alignment of assessment centres with the promotion policy.

The case deals with bringing change in the competency planning in a large organization. The focus of the case is to explain how a large organization can bring about a radical change in promotion policy especially for employees at the senior positions. The key issue highlighted in the case relates to building competency and linking rewards with merit. The case also highlights the kind of resistance by the stakeholders while enforcing the changes in the organization.

MBA and other similar programmes at the post-graduation level.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human resource management.

On a fine afternoon in January 2015, Divakar Kaza, President, Human Resources, at Lupin Ltd., took a sip of coffee from his cup, and shared the good news he had just received, with Rituraj Sar, head of Learning & Development. Lupin had just won the ‘Outstanding Company of the Year’ Award at the CNBC-TV18 India Business Leadership Awards, 2014-15¹. The accomplishment was heartening, given that it reinforced similar recognitions in the recent past. Lupin had won the NDTV Business Leadership Award for the Indian Pharmaceutical Company of the year in 2012, backed up by the same acclaim in 2010 by Frost & Sullivan².

After attempting the case, users are able to: analyse issues and problems faced by a call centre in Malaysia. Determine the root causes of the problems faced by call centre employees and generate alternative solutions to solve the problems faced by the company and to ensure the sustainability of the business.

This case was about the challenges faced by Daniel, the General Manager of an integrated security protection system company, Secure First (SF). Despite investing in the latest security technologies, conducting a major overhaul of the procedures, introducing an enhanced digital system at the call centre and providing training to the call agents, it was on the verge of losing its important long-term client due to its substandard performance. The client experienced major losses due to break-ins. After a thorough investigation, the problem surfaced in their call centre. Most of the staff were not familiar with the newly adopted system. The circumstances worsened when many of the call centre’s senior employees were tendering their resignations. The case discusses the aspect of employee satisfaction, staff performance that led to the turnover issue amongst employees in a call centre. The case explores what short-term and long-term strategies could Daniel suggest to change the call centre’s course to retain SF’s key account in times of desperation.

This case has a moderate level of difficulty and may be used in undergraduate students.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human resource management.

After completion of the case study, the students would be able to identify and evaluate organizational culture as a critical element of organizational resilience and assess its fit to the business context, evaluate different elements of organizational resilience and their contribution to business adaptation and develop leadership approaches that help adapt and leverage organizational culture to foster individual, team and organizational resilience.

This teaching case covers topics of organizational leadership, including organizational culture and organizational resilience. This case study is appropriate for the postgraduate and executive education programmes. This case study covers the approach to organizational leadership and resilience of the OKKO, a Ukrainian retail petrol station network. The dilemmas considered by top managers of the company emerged in February–April 2022 amid the unfolding Russian invasion of Ukraine. The case study protagonists solved multiple business and organizational dilemmas to continue efficient business operations while allowing the organization to adapt to a complex and fast-changing environment. They leveraged a distinct corporate culture, strong employee engagement and established business processes and management practices to ensure the viability of the business.

This case study is appropriate for postgraduate and executive education programmes. The level of difficulty is light to medium. Recommended pre-requisites are understanding human resources management terminology and reviewing preparation materials. The case study is suitable for teaching courses in leadership, people management and organizational development that cover corporate culture, leadership and organizational resilience.

CSS 6: Human resource management

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

This case describes the talent management practices of Kaivalya Education Foundation (KEF), a social sector organization that works in the domain of school education. The two year Gandhi Fellowship (GF) program run by KEF takes urban youth from the best graduate colleges in the country and creates a cadre of change leaders that will work to bring about social change in the nation. The GFs undertake a rigorous, hands-on journey through the two years that is transformational in many ways.

Laura Green, Director of Event Planning at the Nova Waterfront Hotel in Baltimore, had been through the hiring process many times. She was comfortable with Nova's selection and behavioral interviewing processes. They had only interviewed two candidates for the open senior event manager position, yet they had been discussing what decision to make for two and a half hours. Normally, these kinds of meetings wrapped up in 30 minutes with a clear consensus. Today, they were gridlocked, unable to agree on a path forward. Green suggested that they all “sleep on it.” They would get together first thing in the morning, when they were fresh, and decide what to do.

The data for this case were collected via personal interviews with employees of the hotel and from information on the company's website, other company resources, and publicly available information about the company. Only the hotel's name, parent company's name, and people's names have been disguised to protect the confidentiality and anonymity of the individuals. The author has no relationship to the host organization or protagonist.

This case is appropriate for an undergraduate or graduate course in Human Resources Management, Organizational Behavior, or Recruiting and Selection.

This case may be used to illustrate, analyze, and evaluate the selection process and interviewing approaches (e.g. behavioral interviewing). The importance of selection, best practices for selection, candidate assessment methods, best practices for candidate interviews, and common biases which affect the fairness of selection processes are reviewed.

This case focuses on organizational development, leadership and HR management questions.

This case is mainly aimed at students specialized in leadership, organizational development and HR, or in MBA and executive education. However, undergraduate students can benefit from it as well and learn about key terms related to organizational development and HR.

Loxon Solutions is a Hungarian technology startup founded in 2000 that develops various software solutions for the banking industry to improve processes such as retail and corporate landing, collateral management and monitoring, among others. The company grew significantly since being founded, and from a small IT company it became a significant player in the banking software industry all around the world. However, with rapid extension comes a drastic internal transformation as well: Loxon now employs 252 people, has 5 physical offices in 2 different countries and is trying to balance an effective organizational structure and a friendly startup environment. It is clear that the company needs to adapt its previously informal structure to fit the now middle-sized organization while maintaining the current benefits of their culture. Also, they require stability and maturity which the current team consisting of mostly junior employees and the significant fluctuation cannot provide. Tamas Erni, the CEO and Kristof Farkas, the founder of Loxon are now working on these pressing issues with the company’s HR department to rethink the company’s organizational structure and policies as well as their hiring and employer branding strategies.

Students should get familiar with typical organizational structure models, the meaning of Employee Value Proposition and main KPIs related to hiring and employee retention.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: HR Management.

Entrepreneurship.

MBA level – entrepreneurship courses, MA level – women empowerment issues, MBA – thriving in unstructured environments.

Saundarya Rajesh, was the founder-president of AVTAR Career Creators (ACC) a talent consulting firm that offered solutions in training, hiring, selection process outsourcing and human resource information studies to over 400 clients. The case describes the progressive journey of Saundarya as an entrepreneur in discovering and exploiting opportunities as they arise at different points of her career. Saundarya did pioneering work for creating flexi-career opportunities that included tools for Flexidizing® and Unbundling® of jobs. She has won many accolades for her work that included Tie Stree Shakti Awards 2011 for excellence in entrepreneurship, Cavinkare's Chinnikrishnan Innovation Award for Outstanding Entrepreneurship 2011 and India Today's Business Wizards of Tamil Nadu, 2011. Saundarya was happy with the fact that there were 23,000 women currently on the AVTAR I-WIN network and there were 13-15 lakh more women whose talent could be harnessed. She dreamt of ensuring that 1.2 million Indian women, who had dropped out of the workforce in the past 10-15 years, could be brought back to contribute productively. While there appeared to be an acceptance of the flexible working concept among the potential employees and employers, several questions about the future potential of such a work-force needed to be answered.

To understand the factors that constitute entrepreneur's alertness such as personality traits, social networks and prior knowledge. To understand the importance of entrepreneur's alertness for identifying business opportunities. To understand types of entrepreneurial opportunities. To understand the opportunity identification triad: recognition, development and evaluation. To understand how to develop a business model in under-defined contexts.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

The case describes the internal growth workshop initiative at Vedanta Group. Anil Agarwal in 1976 founded Vedanta as a scrap-metal dealership in Mumbai (then Bombay). Over the years, Anil pursued a very aggressive growth journey with a vision to create a leading global natural resource company. The principal objective of discussing this case is to understand how Vedanta introduced this initiative and how it fits within the strategic human resource management at the group.

To understand how the external culture of an organization affects the internal decisions; to explore how employment stereotypes are used in recruitment; to grasp the general understanding of how line managers give more value to the bottom line than “non-discrimination statement”; to understand the challenges while managing a diverse workforce; and to critically analyze hiring decision and recommend practical solution.

Asma Malik was hired as a management trainee around five years ago. After successful completion of her one year as a management trainee, she was placed in the finance department. She outperformed all of her targets and received multiple rewards of a star performer. However, Malik was passionate and eager to work in the field and to work with the sales team. It was her dream to be an outstanding salesgirl. Based on the company’s policy of equal opportunity employer, she quickly got herself promoted to the position of wholesale manager and she was the first one to be provided such a challenging position. However, the market dynamics and market acceptability in a country like Pakistan were quite thought-provoking for a girl to be a wholesale manager. And it was observed that sales were constantly declining, as she had assigned this role. Now Country Manager (CM) had to make a decision, whether to transfer her to any other position or to retain her in the same position.

Bachelor of Business Administration and MBA.

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CSS 1: Accounting and Finance.