Search results

Hewlett-Packard (HP) had a long history of engaging in corporate citizenship, dating back to its founding. By 2009, however, under the leadership of its latest CEO, Mark Hurd, the company had lost its focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR). Hurd instead focused on undertaking a financial turnaround and overcoming other reputational challenges; he viewed CSR and philanthropic efforts as costs rather than as strategic levers. He instituted widespread cost-cutting measures to get HP back on track, including reducing CSR expenditure. The HP board, however, did not want to let CSR go by the wayside; in fact, it wanted HP to reorganize and restrategize its approach to corporate citizenship.

The case focuses on this strategic transformation from traditional, cost-center CSR to business-aligned social innovation. It outlines the details of the board's approval of the new strategy, and then discusses how HP employees worked to reorganize their CSR activity. The new team, the Office of Global Social Innovation (OGSI), had to devise a pilot project to demonstrate the new approach. The project under consideration was an engagement that would improve the early infant diagnosis process for testing infants for HIV in Kenya—an area virtually unknown to HP. The case asks students to assess the work of the OGSI team thus far, and to put themselves in the shoes of one team member who had to justify the project to HP's leadership.

The case is especially important for demonstrating the most recent shifts across some leading companies regarding how they position CSR, as well as how for-profit leaders can structure partnerships for impact.

After reading and analyzing the case, students will be able to: understand current shifts from traditional corporate social responsibility work to social innovation; understand the challenges facing leading companies as they seek to do well (enhance the company's bottom-line performance) by doing good (making social impact); identify best practices for developing partnerships for impact; articulate a project's social impact and how it aligns with a desirable business impact.

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.

This case study concerns self-managed teams (SMTs) and high-performing work stations.

This study is applicable to training, employee satisfaction and developing economy in the society at large.

High-performance work systems (HPWS) are processes in which organizations utilize a fundamentally different approach for managing work in place of the traditional hierarchal approach. HPWS uses an approach that is fundamentally different from the traditional hierarchical or bureaucratic approach otherwise known as the control-oriented approach. The fundamental difference between control-oriented and involvement-oriented approach is in organizing and managing at the lowest level in an organization. The basic purpose of HPWS is to create an organization based on employee involvement, commitment and empowerment. In these kinds of highly involved organizations, employees demonstrate more responsibility and commitments because of high empowerment and have access to information/knowledge and awareness to perform at the highest level. In this case study, the authors make a complete study about the ten pillars of SMTs in Dr Reddy's Laboratories Private Ltd. and the situation of FTO-4 at the Yanam plant and FTO-7 at the Visakhapatnam plant post-implementation of the SMT concept. This paper attempts to demonstrate how SMTs differ from conventional teams, as well as how effectively they contribute to the organization objectives.

To understand HPWS and concept of SMT; to understand how the concepts of HPWS and SMT were implemented in Dr Reddy'S Laboratories in *FTO-4 AND *FTO-7; to understand the key difference between traditional hierarchical systems and SMTs; to find out how continuous process improvement has made SMT initiative an evolving one (from 2002 to 2011); to understand how involvement of different stakeholders has made SMT initiative a sustainable one; and to understand the importance of SMT in this twenty-first century as they lead to a better and brighter future for everyone.

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 reading and discussion on case will enable participants to appreciate importance of reward management in performance management system for both employee and organizational good; to develop insight on the effect of perceived discrimination on the motivation of employees; to internalize the effect of perceived unjust, subjective, non-communicative, non-transparent policies on the behavior and productivity of employees and overall organizational culture and climate; and to comprehend the importance of HR and OB issues with respect to performance management system for the benefit of employee morale, motivation and organizational culture.

The effectiveness of an employee is the key factor for the employer. All the profit that the company or the organization makes depends on the employees’ productiveness. The case needs to be understood in the overall context of performance management system (Ferreiraa and Otley, 2009) with focus on elements of appraisal and compensation via rewards and recognition as per objective standards. Performance management systems (PMSs) is a more general descriptor if the intention is to capture a holistic picture of the management and control of organizational performance. Performance management policies and practices refer to the processes of setting, communicating and monitoring performance targets and rewarding results with the aim of enhancing organizational effectiveness (Fee, McGrath-Champ and Yang, 2011). PMS includes both the formal mechanisms, processes, systems and networks used by organizations, and also the more subtle, yet important, informal controls that are used (Chenhall, 2003; Malmi and Brown, 2008). Otley (1999) proposed a framework which highlights five central issues which need to be considered as part of the process of developing a coherent structure for performance management systems. The five areas addressed by this framework include identification of the key organizational objectives and the processes and methods involved in assessing the level of achievement under each of these objectives, formulating and implementing strategies and plans, as well as the performance measurement and evaluation processes, process of setting performance targets and the levels at which such targets are set, rewards systems used by organizations and the implications of achieving or failing to achieve performance targets and types of information flows required to provide adequate monitoring of performance. While the case touches upon all the aspects of the PMS framework, it revolves round the reward episode and elaborates on the way it affects all stakeholders, those who got the benefit, those who felt discriminated and those were mere observers to the episode. Objective performance appraisals are needed to ensure that every employee produces the best performance and that the work performed is rewarded with reasonable increases in pay scales or special additional allowances or incentives. This system carries crucial importance as it helps managers to decide which rewards should be handed out, by what amount and to whom. Additionally, performance appraisals may increase an employee’s commitment and satisfaction (Wiese and Buckley, 1998) The case readers need to notice that when organizations fail to follow objective appraisal or reward standards, the same rewards become a cause of contention. The reward which was handed over to the employees in this case was in addition to the annual appraisal. Though the role of rewards has been well-recognized in motivating the employees to continue performing at high level and encourage others to strive for better performance, what needs to be recognized that rewards’ per say does not serve purpose. They need to be dealt within the context of performance management system. Using rewards to favor or discriminate a few employees by using subjective standards backfires and does no good as the person who is favored cannot take pride in it and is not motivated to perform better or equally well as he/she also knows that the work has no relation to the reward, it is personal favor, on the other hand, the one who is discriminated feel discouraged and demotivated to perform. Rewards have the potential to both help and harm the organization if dealt in a callous and careless manner. Use of rewards to favor or discriminate certain people due to subjective preference can be suicidal for the organization and irreparably damage the trust of the employees in the management. It has been well stated that fairness and objectivity are the core principles using an assessment of the nature and size of the job each is employed to carry out (Torrington et al., 2005). If any organization decides to include rewards as a motivating mechanism, it needs to cull out unambiguous and transparent criteria for rewarding. If employees perceive procedural or distributive injustice from the management, it is not only detrimental for the employee’ relations and teamwork, it also tarnishes the reputation of the organization and jeopardizes the culture of the organization. Reward management needs to be closely related to performance appraisals, job evaluations and overall performance management systems. The current case elaborates on one such instance where unjustified inequity in reward system not only disturbed the employees concerned but it had bred a negative image of the organization among other employees too, organizational citizenship was replaced with contempt and feeling of apathy.

Post graduate students and working professionals can benefit from this study.

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

Human resource management.

Human Resource Management

Postgraduate business students

The learning objectives to be drawn from the case are as follows: To discuss the challenges of a leader within a resource-constrained environment. Students are required to highlight aspects of transformational leadership and assess the leader against those criteria. To highlight the connection between employee mindset, actions, and organisational performance. Students need to identify the key issues underlying the personnel challenges facing the leader. To explore the influence of leadership on employee engagement. Students should identify the actions taken by the leader to engage employees and analyse the intention behind them, as well as the actual outcomes. To discuss the potential solutions that the leader may institute to achieve the overall transformational objective for the organisation.

This case puts students in the shoes of Siya Zwane, the newly appointed principal of Green Acres Primary School in the South Africa’s Eastern Cape. Having recently completed her PhD in education after 10 years of teaching, Zwane is well versed in the best practices for organisational development and eager to apply them in a public school setting. Her leadership is particularly relevant in the context of a struggling school system that faces, among other issues, an economically disadvantaged population, overcrowding in classrooms, poor infrastructure, and a general lack of resources, including qualified staff. As a newcomer to this school system, Zwane learns quickly how these systemic issues manifest in her teaching team and realises that her first priority must be to empower her staff and enhance employee engagement.

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 1: Accounting and Finance

A consulting team to an international food packaging company (SDYesBox) is attempting to decide which algorithm is the most useful for selecting two national markets in Central America and the Caribbean. SDYesBox wants to work closely with its immediate customers – manufacturers in the dairy and food industry and their customers (retailers) – to develop and market innovative products to low-income consumers in emerging markets; the “next big opportunity for the dairy industry” according to SDYesBox.

New product development and market selection in emerging markets in Latin America.

Five algorithms are “on the table” for assessing 14 countries by 12 performance indicators: weighted-benchmarking each country by the country leader's indicator scores; tallying by ignoring indicator weights and selecting the countries having the greatest number of positive standardized scores; applying a conjunctive and lexicographic combination algorithm; and using a “fluency metric” of how quickly consumers can say each country aloud. At least one member of the consulting team is championing one of these five algorithms. Which algorithm do you recommend? Why?

Learners gain skills, insights, and experience in alternative decision tools for evaluating and selecting choices among emerging markets to enter with new products for low-income (bottom of the pyramid) products ands services.

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 teaching case covers aspects of leadership development, strategy, change management, organisational behaviour, and people management. The case explores the following themes:

• Workplace transformation and culture: the challenges and opportunities of remote/hybrid work in large government enterprises and maintaining the culture when moving remote

• Leadership and change: the different perspectives that a leader can take into consideration when leading the business during turbulent and uncertain times and managing the change process in large organisations

• Strategic decision-making: the application of analytical skills by senior management when making strategic decisions in a business

Workplace transformation and culture: the challenges and opportunities of remote/hybrid work in large government enterprises and maintaining the culture when moving remote

Leadership and change: the different perspectives that a leader can take into consideration when leading the business during turbulent and uncertain times and managing the change process in large organisations

Strategic decision-making: the application of analytical skills by senior management when making strategic decisions in a business

The primary audience for this teaching case is management education programmes including: Master of Business Administration (MBA), Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip), specialist Masters in Management, and certain Executive Education programmes.

This case deals with a public-sector entity that collects taxation revenue for the South African government. In 2020, the operations of this public entity are severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The mandatory shift of the workforce from in-office to a remote work-from-home set-up, results in the entity switching to a hybrid work model in order to achieve its goals as an essential service. Protagonist Dr Zanele Twazi, executive head of the public entity's research department, is tasked by the commissioner to conduct a review on the hybrid work model. As the commissioner is also in the process of reviving the organisational culture to regain public trust following multiple corruption scandals, the pandemic adds to this pressure. Dr Twazi must share employee feedback on the remote work option. Meanwhile, the leadership team has to decide if the work model will serve this public entity in achieving its strategy, and from an organisational culture viewpoint, if it is the best fit for the future.

The key learnings from this case include the following:

• Organisational work model: A suitable work model is dependent on the organisational mandate as well as its culture.

• Culture and organisational goals: An organisational work model additionally impacts the future sustainability of the organisation and its ability to achieve its short- and long-term goals.

• Change management framework: For teams to effectively adapt to a hybrid work model, managers have to be empowered to lead and be able to facilitate the change.

Organisational work model: A suitable work model is dependent on the organisational mandate as well as its culture.

Culture and organisational goals: An organisational work model additionally impacts the future sustainability of the organisation and its ability to achieve its short- and long-term goals.

Change management framework: For teams to effectively adapt to a hybrid work model, managers have to be empowered to lead and be able to facilitate the change.

Marketing, Sports marketing and Social media marketing.

Graduate level.

This case, based on field research and multiple secondary sources, documents the 12-month period since early 2014 during which Cricket South Africa (CSA) developed the Protea Fire brand for their national men’s cricket team, known as the Proteas. In mid-2014, Marc Jury, the Commercial and Marketing manager of CSA set up a project team to take the previously in-house Protea Fire brand public. With the 2015 Cricket World Cup in Australia and New Zealand less than a year away, Jury worked with a diverse project team of Proteas players, cricket brand managers and external consultants to build a public brand identity for the national team, to nurture greater fan affinity and to mobilize South Africans behind their team for the World Cup. The project team developed a range of Protea Fire multimedia content as the core of the campaign. These included video diaries, scripts which were written by the Proteas players themselves, player profile videos, motivational team-talk videos and good luck video messages featuring ordinary and famous South Africans. Having invested in creating this content, the project team faced the difficult task of allocating a limited media budget to broadcast and amplify the content. Another significant challenge was to ensure that the Proteas team values were authentically communicated across all content, including via the social media strategy using Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. As the World Cup tournament kicked off on February 14th 2015, South Africa was well placed to overcome their previous inability to reach a final, although Jury wondered whether another exit in the knockout round would weaken the strong and positive emotions the Protea Fire campaign had ignited. With the last two balls remaining in South Africa’s semi-final game against New Zealand on March 24th 2015, and the home team requiring just five runs to win, Jury joined 60 million South Africans hoping that Protea Fire was strong enough. The case concludes with South Africa losing the semi-final game and Jury turning his attention to how the #ProteaFire campaign should respond.

This study aimed to analyse the development of a sport team brand and a megaevent campaign; to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of a marketing campaign; and to consider appropriate brand responses to the team’s failure to deliver on expectations.

CSS 8: Marketing.

Firstly, leaders are assessed according to a wide variety of criteria. To be an effective leader, one should be aware of these criteria and perform accordingly. Secondly, there is an ongoing debate between scholars on whether leaders are lonely at the top or not. Leaders might feel lonely because of the great responsibility and exhaustion related to the role. Social support from the leader’s network helps to cope with the loneliness. Thirdly, work motivation and job satisfaction have an impact on employee performance. A leader should pay attention to these concepts for higher organizational performance.

In the early 2020s, the world of Turkish football met a new leader: Hakan Karaahmet, the club president who led Giresunspor’s rise to the Turkish Super League. In the summer of 2020, Karaahmet was elected as the president of Giresunspor, which is the most popular football club in Giresun, a small city in Turkey on the Black Sea coast. The club was founded in 1925 and re-formed in 1967 as three other small clubs merged. It played in Turkish Super League (Turkish first league) between 1971 and 1977 and was back in the top flight after a 44-year absence, with the leadership of Karaahmet in the 2020–2021 football season. Even though it was quite a difficult task, the president ensured that the club was not relegated from the super league in the 2021–2022 season. Although Giresunspor made a promising start to the 2022–2023 football season with two wins out of three matches, the team fell behind its rivals regarding squad depth because of financial difficulties. As of 1 February, the consecutive crushing losses pushed the team into the relegation zone. The team, fans and the president were devastated. Karaahmet was faced with the dilemma of resigning from the club or not.

This case study can be taught to undergraduate students.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human resource management.

The specific teaching and learning objectives are as follows: to help students manage virtual communication in cross-cultural settings and developing the trust in virtual teams. To have them assess their effectiveness in the virtual collaboration process. To design the strategies to combat the challenges involved in working collaboratively on a common computing platform.

Higher education institutions in India are facing intense criticism for failing to impart employability skills to the students. Despite being one of the largest education systems in the world, Indian universities are not listed in the rankings of best international universities. It is grappling with the challenges of adopting the right teaching methodologies that foster deep learning, which may lead to sustainability in higher education. To gain relevancy, the higher education institutions must discover the ways to transit from the knowledge-intensive to skill-intensive institutions. By introducing a virtual collaborative professional project for international business students, Professor Bose proposed a small step of moving from a rote teacher-centric to more hands-on, student-centric teaching methodology. While virtual projects are a common and successful way of enhancing cross-cultural competence in students, Professor Bose is unsure how receptive Indian students will be with this methodology. He visualizes many challenges related to the execution of the project and is worried whether he will be successful in achieving his goal of skill-based knowledge creation. While systems and institutions of higher education in India struggle to address the pressures created by globalization, Professor Bose knew that the one-size-may not fit all. “Flexible pedagogy” and personalizing the methods to suit the requirements of a majority of the students was the way forward. However, he needs to know if the faculty and students will be open to change.

This case is immediately valuable for the students and faculty who are the part of the courses such as “International Business” in which the global leadership challenges, managing virtual communication in cross-cultural settings and developing the trust in virtual teams are main features of the curriculum. The case could also be used effectively in the seminars conducted for the managers working in international organizations and managing the tasks in virtual teams located globally.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 5 International Business.