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Organizational innovation, leading change, customer service management in professional service firms.

Advanced undergraduate, MBA/executive education.

This case describes the human resource (HR) dilemma faced by BDO Hungary in 2010, an international audit and tax consulting partnership, operating in the country since 1989. In order to continue its past growth story and to reach closer to “Big Four” BDO has to enter new business segments, offer more services to its existing customers and seize higher value-added business potentials. The new strategy, however, is challenged by its incumbent, traditional core business: auditing, which is highly regulated by ethical, legal, and professional standards including non-advertisement regulations to which the resulting organizational culture and HR routines are congruent. The case is described from the perspective of the Equity Partner, HR Director and Executive MBA student, who is tasked with a new HR plan for training and development and is charged with implementing it successfully. How best to adjust current training and development policies to the best meet new strategic growth goals? How to develop existing human capital? How to make employees more commercially oriented in such a conservative, risk averse, and highly regulated environment? How to improve their customer service and the sales skill?

Exploring the importance of training and development in improving customer service levels in professional service firms operating in emerging markets. Understanding the limitations and the possibilities of transferring international HR policies and standards across borders and cultural differences.

Teaching notes.

Andrea Seid is responsible for tourism marketing in a destination management organization in Colorado. In her position, she faces a difficult decision of whether to promote marijuana-related businesses on her website and in the local welcome centers.

Primary research took place through interviews with Andrea Seid and John Mace, a local business owner. All other data were collected from secondary sources.

This case would help students to apply concepts from courses such as: services marketing, tourism management, destination management and tourism development.

The decision at the root of the case is a real-world application of stakeholder theory.

This case is to familiarize students with the peculiarities of social enterprises (SEs). They would be able to recognize that SEs are hybrid organizations that merge a social purpose with the managerial logics of business ventures. Because of this dual nature, social entrepreneurs need to balance their social aim and the financial viability of the project when analyzing different ways to grow the business, as well as understand and address internal tensions that arise because they have to deal with diverse stakeholders. At the end of the analysis, students would have clear that social and commercial ventures respond to different logics, and therefore, require different managerial models.

Andrea Meoño was the founder of Hope Home, a center for early childhood education in San José, Costa Rica. The goal of the center was to provide education and daily care to children of disadvantaged families, especially single mothers for whom it was a real challenge to maintain a permanent job to sustain their children, and at the same time, provide them with adequate care and attention. After five years of operating the center, Andrea had to figure out the best way to grow her business, ensuring financial sustainability while keeping true to her original purpose of helping vulnerable mothers by providing their children with excellent educational opportunities.

Master’s and Master of Business Administration students taking a course on social entrepreneurship.

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

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

This case describes the process that entrepreneur Paul Farrow went through to establish his kayak company between 1992 and 1996. After being laid off from a more traditional corporate position, Farrow came across an idea that suited his business skills, experience, and values. The case chronicles the steps he took to be the first in the industry to design and produce an inexpensive, high-performance recreational kayak from recycled plastic materials. Key to Walden Paddlers' $1-million sales in 1995 was the company's ability to forge close alliances with key suppliers and customers while keeping fixed costs down by managing a virtual corporation.

Andreas Stihl AG is the world's leading manufacturer of chain saws and other outdoor handheld power equipment. Based on marketing challenges in its high-volume retail channel—mass merchants such as The Home Depot and Lowe's—Stihl's U.S. unit has narrowed its distribution system to a single channel: independent retail dealers specializing in yard maintenance equipment. This risky and highly publicized decision has proved extremely successful, raising profits, attracting more dealers into exclusive relationships with Stihl, and strengthening the brand's top-quality positioning. But Stihl management are concerned that this channel system may not fit tomorrow's demographics, dominated by homeowners from the so-called Generation X and Generation Y. The case outlines Stihl's business and channel systems and customer needs, then poses a series of questions that management believes must be answered to determine whether to maintain or move away from reliance on its specialty retailers and how to adapt its system.

To understand issues related to retail channel strategy development in fast-changing consumer markets, as well as the challenges of adapting legacy routes-to-market systems to changing consumer service output demands.

Managing non-profit organizations, social enterprises, strategic management for small entities and tourism.

Useful for graduate students enrolled in courses with development aspects. Undergraduate students learning about non-profit organizations can also benefit.

This is a case of a small non-profit organization that is struggling to formalize its operating systems to generate sufficient surplus to plough funds back to the community that it envisioned to serve. The protagonist has to make a decision of whether to invest large sums in a health center for permanent visibility or to implement health services on a smaller scale given its current level of operations. Whether the protagonists’ operations are scaleable or not is also in question, as its main activity – slum tours – is not a widely accepted concept.

1. Students will understand the challenges of starting and growing non-profit organizations. 2. Students will recognize the need to make operations efficient and to establish control systems to manage enterprise resources. 3. Students will realize that decision-making requires the balancing of interests of multiple stakeholders. 4. Students will learn to analyze the options of financing social projects considering marketing, operations and financial data. 5. Students will gain better appreciation of the merits and demerits of slum tourism.

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

CSS 11: Strategy.

This case looks at the design and implementation of a risk management strategy. It reviews the early moves by Great Plains Energy (GPE) to establish a corporate-wide Enterprise Risk Management program. The corporate Chief Risk Officer is Andrea Bielsker. Andrea appointed Jana Utter to take charge of coordinating the design and implementation of the ERM program. Utter faces a number of challenges. She has had to first conceptualize the program given the charge by the Board of Directors, then design a process by which she identifies the risks that the corporation faces, assist in designing measures for the risks, and work with the various divisions and functional areas to put processes in place to mitigate the identified risks.

This case presents the staffing problem of Manuel Garcia, president of Saint Catherine School (SCS). He needed to incentivize quality teachers to stay with the school but he faced three challenges. First, the school is located in a far flung city in Mindanao, Philippines. Second, the city is economically depressed and the parents are price-sensitive. Third, the school is dependent on tuition revenue and collections barely cover school expenditures. Manuel would have to find creative solutions and defend his decision to the teachers and the Board of Trustees.

The researchers relied on primary data to write the case although the Chairman opted that the school name and all the characters names be disguised. The researchers interviewed individually the Chairman of the Board, President, Vice Chancellor for Academics, University Registrar, Finance Director, and Human Resource Manager of the school. The researchers also interviewed faculty members as a group. The information on the exhibits were culled from reports presented by the administrative team.

The short case is a learning tool for students taking a degree in educational leadership and management. It can be used as part of an integrating module for graduate students. By this time, students would have had prior lessons in financial, trend, and ratio analysis. The case can also be used to reinforce lessons in the following courses at the undergraduate or graduate level: human resource management, data-driven decision making, financial resource management, educational policy, and even communication. Further, the case is suited for school administrators attending executive development programs. Running a school is more than managing the curriculum. There is a business side that has to be considered. This case helps teachers-turned-administrators consider the financial implications of human resource management decisions. In this instance, salaries and benefits.

The purpose of this study is to use design thinking principles to understand the failure of the ‘new’ European Super League, and also understand how it could be redesigned.

This case has been developed from secondary sources, including news reports, social media sites, annual reports and websites of the Union of European Football Associations and the European football clubs. This case was classroom-tested with post-graduate management students in a design thinking course in May 2021 at an Indian business school, S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, in Mumbai, India.

In April 2021, a new football league – the European Super League, is announced as a breakaway rebel league, in direct competition with United European Footballers Association's Champions League. It is backed by the top 12 European clubs and officials in European football, besides the US investment bank, JP Morgan. The new league is touted as one intended to save football. It is, however, denounced by fans and shunned almost universally. The league, which has been planned for the past three and half years, faces collapse. Why did the European Super League fail? How could the founders design a new league?

This case could be used in an undergraduate or MBA classroom or an executive education programme in a design thinking course. It can also be used to teach marketing courses such as marketing strategy, new product development and consumer behaviour.

With Method standing at number seven on Inc. magazine's list of the 500 fastest-growing companies in 2006, cofounder Adam Lowry is searching for a biodegradable cleaning cloth to expand Method's line of “green” household products. Sustainable design principles have been a guiding force in Method's strategy, and being biofriendly is critical. So is sourcing in the United States. But only China can manufacture the corn-based cloth Lowry has in mind, and there is no way to certify that the product is free of genetically modified organisms. Lowry has to balance his firm's fundamental commitment to environmental sustainability against the fact that some retailers refuse to carry products containing GMOs.