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Post-graduation.

Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship.

By July 2021, the curve of COVID-19 second wave started flattening. Hetika Shah, the founder of Sanctuary Innovative Safety Equipment, was unsure whether her business would survive in the long run. The company manufactured 4S Shield N99 masks. The business was doing well when the COVID curve was at its peak; however, the sales wobbled with the flattening of the curve. As the company had manufactured the product, especially for doctors who need protection from COVID, the demand showed a sudden fall after the second wave. She was certain that the business would not survive only on 4S shield mask. Diversification of this business seemed to be a suitable idea, where she could manufacture other safety equipment for the manufacturing industry. At that time, she had neither done market research nor had any prototype for such equipment. This variety of products required a huge investment of funds and time. But, as per the market demand of the existing product, it was crucial to make quick decisions for business survival. She had options in front of her, but the uncertainty of the market deterred the decision-making. She was at a junction with three possible choices: One option was to stay in the business of masks and expand it in medical devices market under health-care industry. The masks could be used by doctors engaged in the treatment of other diseases. She planned to distribute masks to doctors treating tuberculosis and cancer. Another option was to shift her attention to diversification of the business and enter the market of safety equipment under manufacturing industry that demanded more investment and a lot of market research. The main idea was to come up with innovative safety equipment. Though, this opportunity came with its array of risks. The last option was to shift towards her underdeveloped chiller prototype for industrial use. By that time, the prototype was 75% complete. Still, it required a lot more time and attention to be brought at the commercializing stage.

The case study can be used in the Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management course. It would be suitable for students at the post-graduation level. Discussion would be on the appropriate teaching method. Though there is no prerequisite, it would be better if students had a basic understanding of entrepreneurship and strategic management. It discusses the entrepreneurial dilemma of starting a business. Furthermore, the case explains the decision dilemma of the entrepreneur about the continuance of existing business, expansion and diversification. Students will be able to understand the following concepts: business plan, business development, strategic decision-making in business, entrepreneurial opportunities, sustainability of an enterprise and challenges faced by entrepreneurs. After this case study, students will be able to understand the following models and theories: uncertainty-bearing theory of entrepreneurship, porter’s generic strategy, porter’s five competitive forces, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis, scenario planning, Ansoff’s growth model and social role theory.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

Women entrepreneurship.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

This case helps students to analyze non-financial and financial aspects of a company and observe quantitative and qualitative aspects of decisions and decide whether to invest or not and give suggestions to sell, buy or hold stocks. The case is expected to help the students understand and analyze the following points: the overall performance of the company and industry, how fundamental and technical analysis is applied to reach investment decisions, the areas where Jet Airways occupies the top position compared to peer group (competitor analysis), the company’s financial position and valuation with the help of tools and techniques and suggestions and observations to shareholders whether to buy/sell or hold shares.

This case can be used for MBA (Finance) students on equity research and valuation. Students are introduced to the fundamental procedures of equity research and analysis – evaluating sector desirability, financial modeling, equity valuation methods. To enhance research skills, students are required to acquire basic knowledge on macro and micro economic indicators. This case helps students to analyze non financial and financial aspects of a company and observe quantitative and qualitative aspects of decisions and decide whether to invest or not and give suggestions to sell, buy or hold stocks.

Mr Rahul, a consultant in Karvey brokerage house was about to leave the office on the evening of March 24, 2015 when the phone rang. It was Mr Srirag, one of his clients and close friends who was passionate about investing in shares. Mr Rahul with his two decades of experience in monitoring and advising various investment plans has been continuously advising Srirag on different investments in shares. Srirag said “Rahul! You know that I bought many shares in Jet Airways. While studying the annual reports of Jet Airways 2014-2015 about its business profits and losses, I came across a January to March, 2013 business quarter analysis report that wrote about Jet Airways facing a net loss of 4.95 billion rupees due to over debt burden and interest costs. It also stated that the company sold a 24 per cent stake in 2013 to Etihad for 332$ million which is an Abu Dhabi based airline. The news said that the deal would help the company overcome financial challenges, raise cash, cut costs and gain access to the global flight network. I am worried about whether this deal would allow the company to continue its operations from India or not. I am also concerned about the downfall of Kingfisher, a major setback in the aviation industry in India that owes 8,000 crores to its employees, banks, airports, oil companies. I am worried that either my investment in Jet Airways might bring huge losses or the partnership with Etihad airways would result in the reduction of costs and due to joint sales efforts, sharing resources and network integration thereby leading to a valuable share price. Since your guidance has helped in many issues, I would like to know the present condition and future prospectus prevailing in Jet Airways”. With a lot of ambiguity in his mind, he asked Rahul to recommend if he should hold or sell the shares in Jet Airways.

The case is expected to help the students understand and analyze the following points: the overall performance of the company and industry, how fundamental and technical analysis is applied to reach investment decisions, the areas where Jet Airways occupies the top position compared to peer group (Competitor analysis), the company’s financial position and valuation with the help of tools and techniques and suggestions and observations to shareholders on whether to buy/sell or hold shares.

The link to the following videos to be sent to participants in advance to help them prepare for the class. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3XJXTmILyk, Equity Research Presentation: Coca-Cola, www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5pEK_2uItg Write Equity Research Report, format, process, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMLJccgiSTk Equity Valuation and Analysis-Part I.

CSS 1: Accounting and Finance.

This case is based on primary and secondary sources of information. These sources include interviews with senior executives as well as documents provided by Mondragon and Eroski. The interviews were conducted on-site. In addition, the authors researched the literature on both organizations.

Eroski is the largest of Mondragon Corporation’s coops. Since its founding, Eroski has faced numerous challenges. It has responded to each challenge with out-of-the-box thinking. In response to the pandemic, Eroski become an e-commerce supermarket as well as selectively continuing bricks and mortar stores. As the pandemic is winding down, Eroski is considering how to respond to the “new normal,” which is largely undefined. The question posited at the end of the case is, “Will Eroski be able to hold to its social principles, maintain its unusual governance model and other unusual practices, and survive this latest challenge?”

Eroski of Mondragon is a complex and unusual organization. To appreciate the challenges and how they were overcome by its unique business model, a student must have a minimum background in management, corporate finance and marketing. Thus, this case would fit well into a senior or graduate class on strategic human resource management. It is also recommended for the strategy capstone course usually offered during the last year of a business bachelor’s degree (senior level) to ensure that students are introduced to what Paul Adler refers to as an alternative business model. It can also be targeted for an advanced management course or a strategy course at the MBA and executive levels.

This case is based on primary data collected via interviews with the CEO of the company. The authors obtained the case release form to publish this case.

Various stakeholders, regulators, environmental activists and public awareness have increased companies’ pressure to contribute to environmental issues. However, the pressure seems to be more on large-scale companies to make progress and have an elaborate vision and goals related to environmental issues than small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

This case deals with the sustainability focus of the CEO of Ruscombe Artisan Food & Drink Ltd. (Made for Drink), an SME in the UK with a voluntary environmental impact investment proposal under consideration while having losses since 2017.

The case integrates the financial aspects and environmental considerations into this strategic investment evaluation process for making a capital investment decision. The case provides the actual financials of the company, including the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement of the company since its inception in 2017.

The case information enables students to comprehend and evaluate the consequences of doing a voluntary environmental capital investment project. The students will have the opportunity to apply simple capital investment methods and consider the external and less tangible environmental benefits in their final decision-making.

The case is suitable for undergraduate accounting or management modules, mainly introductory modules such as Managing Financial Resources, International Accounting, Finance, Introductory Corporate Finance, Basic Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship.

This case is suitable for MBA, EMBA and advanced undergraduate students.

Noah Wealth Management was founded by Ms Wang Jingbo, a lady in her mid 30s with a team of less than 20 members in 2005. Exploiting market opportunities offered by a lack of good wealth management products and services, Noah grew rapidly from one branch office in 2005 to 59 branch offices in 2011, reaching a staff size of 1,031. Noah listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange in November 2010. In 2011, Noah was ranked No. 38 among the 100 Top Potential Enterprises in China. Nonetheless, Noah faced several problems of internal management during the course of its fast expansion. In the first quarter financial report of 2012, Noah suffered a 52.6 percent decrease in net income over the corresponding period in 2011. Faced with a rapidly declining share price, Noah announced on May 22, 2012 a US $30 million share repurchase program.

The case supports a basic lesson on the entrepreneurial cycle, including assessing a business opportunity, resource mobilization, identifying a business model, growth of the venture, listing on the stock market, and subsequent growth challenges. Students can learn about some of the typical dilemmas faced by founders of entrepreneurial ventures, including how to maintain the corporate culture while growing fast and how to prevent members of the founding team from becoming bottlenecks to the development of the organization. The case can also provide management students with an overview of China's wealth management industry.

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

Strategic marketing, Downturn, Optimal utilisation of minimal resources, Consolidating profitability, Focus shift from features to benefits and cost savings.

Management students who have knowledge of basic concepts of management discipline to derive the maximum benefit and understand the applicability; budding entrepreneurs; middle- and senior-level executives in an executive development program; people running family-owned businesses.

In 2008-2009, the Indian manufacturing sector was facing stiff competition from China on account of the latter's ability to provide cheap labour and handle large volumes. The 2008-2009 economic down turn saw consumers cut down on their requirements with manufacturing companies getting fewer orders. Manufacturing companies therefore adopted the principle of optimal utilisation of minimal resources. Millennium Company Ltd (MCL) also succeeded in overcoming the 2008-2009 downturns through a shift in focus during the recession of 2009 from achieving pure revenue to consolidating its profitability. MCL is probably the only company in the world to have extensive expertise in both steam and control instrumentation. The dual expertise allows them to engineer industry-specific systems that focus on energy efficiency and utilities management for sectors as diverse as textiles, food processing, paper, power and chemicals etc. The company shifted its attention from features to benefits, cost savings, and profitability. MCL trained its people as to what to talk to whom. Today, MCL is a leader in India in process efficiency and energy conservation through technology tie-ups and focused investments in manufacturing and research.

The purpose of this case is to enable student managers to evaluate effectiveness of corporate strategies; make the student managers understand the resources–businesses–systems framework and the need for focused connection between these three through appropriate coordination and control mechanisms for a corporate strategy to deliver value; encourage students to apply their knowledge of Turnkey Projects, BCG/Porters/SWOT/Mackensys Model; encourage the students to research and find out how other companies in this field fared and what were the strategies adopted by them to overcome the recession and compete with MCL in a highly competitive market like that of India; and encourage student managers to go on field visits with the institute's help to similar organisations within the same city and if possible get live projects.

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

Decision-making seems simple, but, in reality, it is not an easy task to decide the cause for its profound result or consequence, leading to inevitable failures. Therefore, a leader must recognize whether there is something incorrect so as to avoid bad results. A good leader is a person who carefully reviews and analyzes aspects of a problem, knows the strengths and weaknesses of his organization and evaluates what the advantages or risks are. It cannot be denied that the appropriate options will reap many benefits to the business. For such important things, this paper will discuss the dilemma of Viettire, a tire distributor company in Vietnam. Accordingly, its CEO was worried about what strategic option he should adopt to approach the Myanmar market while ensuring a strategic fit to its company’s resources and capabilities and also to the overall market demands of the tire industry environment in both countries. However, with different ideas, the expansion strategies in this new market become controversial. The General Director and Founder of Viettire were wondering how Viettire could expand its existing business into Myanmar. To expand the company to new emerging market in Myanmar, Hoang Nguyen – CEO of Viettire – had conducted a strategic analysis of external environment factors to define the opportunities and threats when doing business in Myanmar by using Porter’s five forces model, S.W.O.T and competitive advantages analysis. The results indicated that Myanmar’s business environment is highly risky for foreign investors because of uncertain political, economic, social reforms in the process. Among three options, namely, exporting, licensing and wholly owned, however, Option 2 is illustrated as the best strategy for its dilemma.

Postgraduate/Graduate Business level.

As for a market mechanism, what produces, how and for whom, is not the business’s demand but the consumer’s demand. The business sells only what the market needs, not what it has. In the period of increasingly competitive conditions, stabilizing and expanding markets are a prerequisite for survival. If stability is seen as a “defensive” way, expansion is a “defensive attack” like trying to hold on the “pie” that the market gives to itself. This strategic action is to strengthen regular, close relationships with existing customers and establish new customers. As a result, the potential market is transformed into a target market. Hence, decision-making of which market, which method is the issue that a leader has to think the choice to avoid risks. Mr Hung, Viettire’s co-owner, suggests that Myanmar should be taken into account as a company’s new entry, thus exploring this potential market to increase the company’s growth and profitability. In the progress, Viettire’s marketing team had been doing a thorough tire market investigation in Myanmar. It was concluded that this emerging country, especially Yangon City, was the most suitable for those who were willing to embark on an overseas investment expansion. They believe this was a good opportunity to gain market share compared with other entrants and competitive rivals; if Viettire hesitated to invest, others definitely had jumped in with a first-mover advantage. However, the CEO, Mr Hoang, was worried about what strategic option he should adopt to approach this new market while ensuring a strategic fit to its company’s resources and capabilities and also to the overall market demands of the tire industry environment in both countries.

Understand the basic decisions that firms contemplating foreign expansion must make: which markets to enter, when to enter those markets and at what scale. Recognize the current strategic decisions an organization is facing: positioning, portfolio and market expansion approach. Learn how to develop an effective strategic plan. Be familiar with different strategies for competing globally and their pros and cons. Evaluate various strategic options and decisions in accordance with a company’s resources and capabilities.

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.

To understand the motivations for adopting RI practices for institutional investors and asset managers; to understand the different RI strategies available to institutional investors; to understand the impediments to adoption of RI at an organisational level; to debate how financial institutions can drive the growth and adoption of RI among the investment community; and to illustrate the complexities of organisational change and the strategies that institutional entrepreneurs can use to overcome resistance to change from key stakeholders.

The case is set in October 2017 against the backdrop of the pending unbundling of Old Mutual plc into four new independent businesses, and the subsequent relisting of Old Mutual Ltd on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in South Africa. The head of responsible investment at Old Mutual Investment Group and the main protagonist of the case, Jon Duncan, is considering what the subsequent relisting will mean for the responsible investing programmes that he has set up over the past six years. The case goes on to describe how responsible investment principles were supported through the implementation of ESG integration and active ownership strategies. It also examines recent developments in ESG product innovations and demonstrates another technique available to responsible investment practitioners in the form of best-in-class ESG screening. The case ends with Duncan contemplating the strategic priorities of the RI team moving forward, and how the managed separation might impact on the RI agenda. It provides prompts for students to discuss and formulate a strategy for advancing the aims of responsible investing.

The case is aimed at postgraduate-level students enrolled in a management-related degree programme such as an MBA, and covers both sustainable and responsible finance and institutional entrepreneurship theory.

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

Groupon, an online coupon company, was one of many companies that considered an initial public offering (IPO) during what might be a second technology/internet/social media IPO boom in 2011. Some companies chose to postpone their IPOs, while others took advantage of the media attention focussed on technology companies, and in particular, social media firms. Should investors hop on the tech IPO bandwagon, or hold off to better evaluate the long-term prospects of tech companies, and in particular social media companies? Would the valuation of Groupon justify an investment in IPO shares?

The case was researched from secondary sources, using Groupon's IPO filing information, news articles about the IPO and industry research sources, such as IBIS World.

This case is appropriate for an advanced undergraduate or MBA corporate finance or investment elective. Most introductory finance classes do not have the time to cover later chapters in a finance textbook, where information about IPOs is generally found. It could also be used at the end of a core finance course, where the instructor wanted to introduce this topic through a case study of a hard-to-value internet-based company to illustrate the difficulties in setting IPO prices. The case could also be used in an equity analysis class, an entrepreneurial finance class or an investment class, to spur discussion about valuing an internet company and choosing appropriate investments for pension fund investing. This case could also be used in a strategy class, focussing on the five forces question, and eliminating the valuation question.

There is a great deal of literature about IPOs and their long-term performance. An excellent source is Jay R. Ritter's research, http://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/ritter, which has a longer time period and more data than could be contained in this case. IPO puzzles include persistent undervaluing of IPOs; in other words, the offer price is lower than, and sometimes substantially lower than, the first day close price. A second issue is the generally poorer long-run performance of companies after their IPO when compared to similar firms that did not do an IPO.