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Roger Cagle, the co-founder and deputy CEO of SOCO International, watched the dreary London rain outside his office window one February morning in 2015. Never had SOCO, the oil-and-gas exploration and production player that ranked among Britain’s top 200 companies, experienced such a public backlash against its operations. For nearly 20 years, Cagle had helped steer his company’s projects around the world—often in volatile regions where others feared to tread, such as Vietnam, Russia, and Yemen—while delivering significant returns to investors. But the international uproar surrounding SOCO during the past year had been nothing short of mind-boggling.

The Constitution of India guarantees freedom of speech and expression to its citizens. This freedom is not absolute and the State can impose reasonable restrictions. Of late, certain incidents have shown this freedom to be under threat. The case highlights some of such events. It makes the readers think about the importance of this right, reasonableness of restrictions, and the measures needed to protect it.

Winner of the 2014 EFMD competition for best African Business case.

In the 1990s, two entrepreneurs made daring, early entries into mobile telecommunications in Sub-Saharan Africa, both seeing great market opportunities there. One firm, Adesemi, would ultimately go bankrupt. The other firm, Celtel, would ultimately succeed and make its founder, Mo Ibrahim, a star of the global business community. Why the difference in outcome? Emerging markets often present weak rule of law, bringing many challenges to business success—from the demand for bribes to regulatory obstacles, hold-up problems, and even civil war. This case explores strategies that can limit these critical non-market risks in foreign direct investment and entrepreneurship. Students will step into the shoes of both companies by exploring their entry strategies, wrestling with the challenges they faced, and diagnosing the reasons why a shared insight about a new business opportunity turned out to be prescient—and led to extremely different endpoints.

• Identify key challenges to successful entrepreneurship in emerging markets

• Evaluate government officials or competitors that might trigger regulatory obstacles or hold-up problems

• Evaluate potential allies that can help avoid these problems

• Assess strategies to avoid paying bribes

• Understand the importance of incentive alignment in directing investment success, even in the face of difficult challenges

• Identify and appraise the strategic value of partnerships with development agencie

Identify key challenges to successful entrepreneurship in emerging markets

Evaluate government officials or competitors that might trigger regulatory obstacles or hold-up problems

Evaluate potential allies that can help avoid these problems

Assess strategies to avoid paying bribes

Understand the importance of incentive alignment in directing investment success, even in the face of difficult challenges

Identify and appraise the strategic value of partnerships with development agencie

Aramex PJSC: carving a competitive advantage in the global logistics and express transportation service industry.

Entrepreneurship, International Business, Strategy.

Post-graduates, Practitioners.

This case chronicles the Aramex PJSC story of entrepreneur Fadi Gandhour. The case looks at the new start-up, its growth and financing plans for expansion and how it got a competitive advantage in an industry dominated by big players. Aramex, as of 2012, was the only Arab company to have successfully listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange. After 30 years at the helm of the company, Fadi Ghandour, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), was stepping down and was being succeeded by regional head, Hussein Hachem, the CEO of Middle East and Africa. Aramex had a competitive edge in emerging markets, and Fadi and Hussein knew that the route to sustainable growth was to capitalize on this opportunity using organic growth, acquisitions and strategic alliances.

Strategy included looking at gaining a competitive advantage in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and other emerging markets. Lessons are provided on capitalization of opportunity, funding and creating an organization culture that is sustainable and reflects the Founder's ideal.

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

Entrepreneurship, Corporate sustainability, CSR, Supply chain.

Master's courses: Entrepreneurship, Strategic management.

In 2002, potential risks deriving from emerging normative demands in the CSR debate prompted Axel Springer (AS) to rethink their supply chain strategy for Russian wood. Being one of the first movers in CSR in the publishing business, AS realized that current practices could spark future public discussion that might put pressure on AS, a key player in these supply chains. In early 2002, AS and one of their main suppliers, Stora Enso, started a joint initiative to redesign the supply chain processes in two of the major Russian logging regions to improve their social and ecological performance. Sometime later, other major players in the publishing sector as well as critical reviewers from several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were invited to participate in the design of the new voluntary sustainability initiative called “Tikhvin Chalna project”, the second phase of which was accomplished by the end of 2006.

Learn that organizations (specifically high-brand owners) are responsible for practices within their entire supply chains (social as well as environmental performance).

Explore proactive corporate sustainability, CSR strategies are market but also institutional driven; Strategizing involves forming and transforming the rules, norms and standard models of customers as well as institutions such as NGOs or governmental bodies. Whether the initiator of such strategy is successful in increasing or manipulating demands is dependent on its resources and capabilities as well as on its network position. The case supports students in understanding resources being used to successfully transform or create institutional arrangements.

Discover that the value of a business' relationships and its network position.

Teaching note, Video files

In 2011, Sherry Hunt was a vice president and chief underwriter at CitiMortgage headquarters in the United States. For years she had been witnessing fraud, as the company bought billions of dollars in mortgage loans from external lenders that did not meet Citi credit policy and sold them to government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). This resulted in Citi selling to GSEs such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pools of loans that were considerably defective and thus likely to default. Citi had also approved hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of defective mortgage files for U.S. Federal Housing Administration insurance. After reporting the mortgage defects in regular reports, notifying and working closely with her direct supervisor (who was subsequently asked to leave Citi after alerting the chairman of the board to these issues) to stop the purchase of defective loans, leaving anonymous tips on the FBI's and the Department of Housing and Urban Development's websites, and receiving threats from two of her superiors who demanded that she change the results of her quality control unit's reports, the shy and conflict-avoidant Hunt had to decide who she should tell about the fraud, and how.

The case gives students the opportunity to recommend how Hunt should proceed based on their analysis of the stakeholders involved. To aid instructors, the case includes Kellogg-produced videos of Hunt—the only on-camera interviews she has ever given—explaining what happened after she reported the fraud to Citi HR and, later, the U.S. Department of Justice. Within the case, students are also briefly exposed to legislation and bodies pertinent to whistle-blowing in the United States, including the Dodd-Frank Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the SEC Office of the Whistleblower.

This case won the 2014 competition for Outstanding Case on Anti-Corruption, supported by the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), an initiative of the UN Global Compact.

• Analyze stakeholders' motivations to prepare counter-arguments to the resistance one might encounter when reporting unethical behavior

• Write a script for who to tell, how, and why

• Discuss how incentive structures, management, and culture play roles in promoting or hindering ethical behavior in organizations

• Identify behaviors that help a whistle-blower be effective

• Gain experience resolving ethical dilemmas in which two values may conflict, such as professional duty and personal ethics

Analyze stakeholders' motivations to prepare counter-arguments to the resistance one might encounter when reporting unethical behavior

Write a script for who to tell, how, and why

Discuss how incentive structures, management, and culture play roles in promoting or hindering ethical behavior in organizations

Identify behaviors that help a whistle-blower be effective

Gain experience resolving ethical dilemmas in which two values may conflict, such as professional duty and personal ethics

Expected learning outcomes: To respond to the case question, students would analyze macro- and microeconomic differences to determine HC Securities’ preferred global strategy and appropriate market entry mode. The case demonstrates how instability in a local market, in this case Egypt, can force a company to go global. It also demonstrates how two superficially similar markets, Singapore and Hong Kong, provide different opportunities for HC Securities and require different global strategies: Singapore provides a jumping-off point to its predominantly Muslim neighbors Malaysia and Indonesia, whereas Hong Kong gives access to China and could provide a new customer base of Asian investors willing to invest in Africa and the Middle East.

Brief overview of the case: The case introduces the Egyptian investment company HC Securities, which is facing challenges related to Egypt’s political instability and economic slowdown. HC Securities’ CEO, Mr. Choucri, feels expansion to one of the Asia-Pacific countries could help with the company’s growth and stability. He identifies Hong Kong and Singapore as the most compelling locations because of their sophisticated economies and growth potential in the investments industry. This case provides information about each market, allowing students to respond to the question “What should Choucri do to assure a market-based solution for his company?”

Student level and proposed courses: The case is appropriate for use in undergraduate courses in international business or strategic management.

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

International Business.

Leraning outcomes are as follows: demonstrating how companies in the Indian market are using competitive advertising; giving participants an overview of the regulatory framework for advertising in India; highlighting the complexities arising out of the multiplicity of advertising regulations and institutions in India; appreciating the legal and ethical perspectives of advertisements and self-regulation; and evaluating the stance taken by both the parties in this particular case to develop multi-stakeholder perspective.

A recent advertisement by international conglomerate Hindustan Unilever Limited was severely criticized for insulting Indian values by Baba Ramdev, promoter of India's largest Ayurvedic Company selling Indian indigenous and natural alternate medicinal products. It was in a complete reversal of the scenario between 2015 and 2018 when other Indian consumer goods companies complained against advertisements released by Patanjali. Indian fast moving consumer goods sector is witnessing a trend of competitive advertising in which companies are downplaying and criticizing the competitors. Though quite old, this trend caught momentum when Patanjali Ayurved Limited, a new player in the market, started advertising aggressively in 2015–2016. It resulted in many complaints by the aggrieved parties in the industry bodies and different courts of law in India. A part of the confusion comes from the diversity of advertising regulations across different Indian platforms and the absence of a clearly defined institutional framework for resolving such disputes. Consequently, most such disputes land up in the court of law in India. The case study builds an understanding of the legal framework within which companies are governed for brand promotions and creates a contextual ethical dilemma to drive the discourse on advertising through self-regulation in India.

This case is meant to benefit students pursuing a graduate or upper-level undergraduate degree in management or law/business law.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

We obtained information on China Gerui from secondary published sources, including annual reports downloaded from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) EDGAR database, news sites and newspapers, the company’s website and journal articles. One of the authors visited the China Gerui plant in Henan, China.

China Gerui, a Chinese metal fabrication company, enjoyed exponential growth because of its location, product innovation and ability to move up the value chain. At the height of its success, the company listed on the Nasdaq and had plans to raise capital to fund ambitious expansion plans. Unfortunately, four years after listing on Nasdaq, the company received a letter from the listing qualifications department notifying China Gerui that they were not in compliance with Nasdaq’s filing requirements because it had not filed its Form 20-F. Now, the company had only five days to decide whether to request an appeal of the letter.

This case is best suited for higher-level undergraduate accounting and finance courses such as intermediate accounting, auditing, international accounting, financial statement analysis, corporate finance and investments analysis. It is especially appropriate for graduate-level global accounting and advanced financial statement analysis courses. In these courses, the best placement is after coverage of SEC regulations and requirements for financial statement reporting and disclosure. Moreover, the case may be used as a tool to demonstrate the step-by-step process for searching and retrieving information from a public company’s filings through the SEC’s EDGAR database.

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

This case is based on Weatherford International’s settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ). Both the SEC and the DOJ were critical of Weatherford for its violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and for its “inadequate internal controls.” This case explores the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations and issues related to internal controls.

Case study.

This case is based on Weatherford International’s settlement with the SEC and the Department of Justice. Weatherford provided equipment and services in the oil and gas industry. Because international markets were growing faster than domestic markets, Weatherford made a strategic decision to pursue growth in international markets. The oil and gas industry has high levels of operating risk as did the countries that Weatherford decided to pursue operations in. However, despite the decision to take on additional risk, Weatherford failed to implement adequate systems of internal controls. The title of the case “A Perfect Storm” refers to Weatherford’s trifecta of operating in an industry with high levels of corruption risk, countries with high levels of corruption risk and failing to implement adequate internal controls despite those high operating risks (Department of Justice, 2013). Weatherford was ultimately assessed a $152m penalty for its violations of the FCPA that included bribery, volume discounts, improper payments and kickbacks.

Undergraduate and graduate auditing classes.