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Familiarize with the retail operations of handicrafts, facility location problem, apply multi-criteria decision through the goal programming approach and solving the same with MS Excel.

The case portrays a dilemma in the context of retail operations of a small-scale handicraft company known as Odisha Craft. Located in Odisha, Susanta Mohanty, the owner, was finding it a challenge to decide on the most promising location for his new retail outlet in the neighbouring city of Kolkata. He had five choices for the locations. Odisha craft was established by his father-in-law in 2009 with an objective to preserve and promote the rich culture of the handicrafts designed by the local artisans and ensure sustainable rural livelihood. The company had been facing numerous challenges and the pandemic has given a very formidable blow to the monthly revenues. The case brings out the multi-faceted dilemma of deciding on the facility location in 2020, involving a set of conflicting criteria. The case unfolds a systematic solution approach resolving the dilemma using MS Excel.

Courses such as operations research, operations management, service operations and retail operations for MBA students and trainings for junior-middle level executives.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 09: Operations and Logistics

The learning outcomes are to remember the overall context of global supply chain management from a stakeholder perspective, to understand the context of material handling movement in a mining industry, to apply the overall knowledge of linear programming in a supply chain context, to analyze the different constraints with flow of goods at different nodes in various location hubs and convert the same into the optimization problem and to evaluate carefully the different costs associated at different levels and then finding the optimal solution that minimizes the total cost.

This case proposes a mixed integer multi-echelon analytical model integrated with the scenario tree analysis. The integrated model is used to optimize the allocation of volumes at various stages of the supply chain of exporters of bulk materials like iron ore from Goa, India, to various countries in Asia. The scenario tree analysis is then used to evaluate decisions under certainty with demand as the stochastic parameter. The proposed integrated model has potential for collaboration in the supply chain and facilitating network design, inventory and transportation planning and policy analysis.

This course is suitable at the MBA level for the following courses: Operations Research (Focus/Session: Applications on Supply Chain Management), Supply Chain Management (Focus/Session: Global Supply Chain Management, Logistics Planning, Distribution Network), Logistics Management (Focus/Session: Transportation Planning) nd Operations Strategy (Focus/Session: Location Node Strategy).

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 9: Operations and Logistics.

This compact case study was developed from secondary sources readily available in the public domain. These included company websites, videos, social media and news articles.

Hallmark had a strong history of supporting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. During the 2019 holiday season, Hallmark Channel was suddenly caught in the middle of a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) ad controversy that attracted media attention. Critics of the ad claimed it went too far and was “inappropriate” to air. LGBTQ advocacy groups quickly rebuked that argument. Ultimately, the media frenzy was short-lived and Hallmark Channel continued to dominate the holiday programming landscape. This case evaluates the marketing aspects of the dilemma including customer segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) strategy issues. Culture and industry analysis is also provided as a way for the reader to understand the complexity associated with marketing strategy. One underlying question is what role does STP play in understanding how to develop marketing strategies that build customer loyalty and help organizations compete in the marketplace?

This case should be used in marketing and management classes at the undergraduate level. Applicable concepts include segmentation, targeting, positioning, advertising, brand strategy and DEI issues. This case could also be taught in a DEI course or a segmentation special topics class that discusses the differences between customer groups.

Razorpay is a four-year-old Indian B2B fintech startup in digital payments which is venturing into digital lending. It aims to simplify digital payment flows involved in acceptance, processing, and disbursement of payments through superior technology and automation. This case details how Razorpay creates value for businesses by offering service convenience in B2B space. Razorpay started as a payment solutions provider, primarily known for their payment gateway. Over time the market for digital payment in India has matured, with multiple providers offering similar products making it difficult for Razorpay to sustain its growth by using technological leadership and service differentiation. To maintain its growth trajectory, Razorpay has launched multiple new products in the digital payment space as well as announced a foray into creating a marketplace for digital lending through launch of Razorpay Capital. The case provides details of the growth of Razorpay and its move from its core strength of payment gateway

Agricultural Trade, Farm Management, Economics of Food Safety

Both undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Agribusiness and Agricultural Economics.

The pineapple production sector plays a very significant role in the Ghanaian horticultural industry. Production and export of fresh pineapple has been Ghana’s most developed high-value supply chain. However, the introduction of the GlobalGAP food safety standard in 2007 resulted in a fall in smallholder farmers’ participation in exportable pineapple production and subsequently led to declining trends in pineapple exports. The Ghanaian horticultural industry received quite a number of interventions over the years aimed at revitalizing the horticultural export sector and enhancing international competitiveness. However, the pineapple export sub-sector is still constrained with production and market access challenges meaning the sector struggles to survive.

The GlobalGAP standard compliance case is an appropriate way of explaining how smallholder farmers make informed decisions concerning the adoption of new farm practices. The case presents a careful evaluation of technical, institutional and socio-economic factors influencing a farmer’s decision to comply or not to comply with the GlobalGAP standard. Students should be able to apply farm management decision-making concepts and tools such as profit maximization and binary choice modelling techniques to explain a farmers’ final decisions on GlobalGAP standard compliance. This case should enable students to appreciate key factors constraining agricultural export trade performance in developing countries. The case should also contribute to students’ understanding of smallholder farmers’ decisions on food safety standards compliance, particularly GlobalGAP, and the challenges associated with the entire compliance process. Moreover, this case should provide students with possible policy considerations geared towards making food safety standards compliance easier, effective and sustainable in developing countries so as to enhance market access while ensuring food quality and safety along high-value food supply chains.

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 7 Management Science

East Texas Oxygen (ETOX) delivered high-pressure cylinders of gases such as oxygen and nitrogen to twelve wholly-owned branches scattered throughout East Texas and Louisiana. Employees loaded and unloaded individual high-pressure cylinders off of and onto trailers manually and the firm had never had a related accident. Robert Jenkins had been challenged to decrease the cost of supplying the branches with cylinders and other supplies. He was considering recommending the palletization of delivery operations which required numerous changes within the organization. This case required students to determine the best routing for the delivery truck(s) and to determine whether or not the number of trucks and drivers could be reduced under palletization. Students were then required to do a capital budgeting analysis and make a recommendation of whether or not to palletize.

Social entrepreneurship, Social enterprise.

Masters Programme in Social Entrepreneurship, Social Work, Business Administration; Management Development Programme for Social Entreprenuers.

Organisation for Social Change, Awareness and Responsibility (OSCAR) Foundation is a non-profit organisation registered in 2010 under the Bombay Public Trust Act, 1950. Born and raised in the slum colony of Ambedkar Nagar, Cuffe Parade, Ashok, the founder, grew up seeing his friends becoming a victim to many socially inappropriate behaviours due to dropping out of school. Inspired by the thought of breaking this vicious cycle, Ashok used football as a mechanism to instil essential life skills among children and youth and encouraged them to continue their education. The success of his pilot motivated him to set up OSCAR. Presently, through its various programmes, the organisation has reached out to more than 3,000 marginalised children and 500 youths and aims to reach out to 20,000 children by 2020. The case highlights the struggles of Ashok’s entrepreneurial journey and maps the new challenges in scaling up his enterprise.

The expected learning outcomes are as follows: to identify the characteristics of a social entrepreneur and ascertain the leadership skills required by a social entrepreneur; to scrutinise the life cycle of a social enterprise and develop insights to examine the unique risks and challenges faced at the start-up phase of the social enterprise; and to enhance the understanding of interrelationship between passion, mission focus and challenges to attain financial sustainability for a social venture.

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 paper aims to present an opportunity to explore the opportunities and challenges involved in running a business with a strongly ingrained social vision in the complex, multi-dimensional environment of an emerging economy. Key learning areas are as follows: How the concept of inclusive innovation applies to the real-world difficulties faced by businesses operating in informal economies. By exploring the tensions between growth and inclusivity in Silulo’s development, students will grasp the challenges entrepreneurs face as a business starts to gain momentum and change, and gain appreciation for the trade-offs that occur when choosing between franchising and organic growth. The challenges of a rapidly evolving technological environment, the need to adapt service offerings at pace, and the importance of balancing financial considerations with deeper social values will find application far beyond the informal economy context of the Silulo story.

This teaching case looks at Silulo Ulutho Technologies via CEO Luvuyo Rani and the challenges he faces in balancing expansion and profitability with its mission of empowering disenfranchised communities – challenges exacerbated by a changing telecommunications environment, with more widespread internet availability, mobile phones and online training courses encroaching on Silulo’s traditional service offering.

This case focusses primarily on the processes of inclusive innovation and is suitable for graduate courses in social entrepreneurship, business model innovation, sustainability, business and society, strategic management, emerging markets, business in Africa and organisational studies in general. The case is suitable for Masters of Business Administration (MBA) and Executive MBA academic programmes and delegates on Executive Education programmes.

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, along with its B case (UVA-QA-0865), is an effective vehicle for introducing students to the use of machine-learning techniques for classification. The specific context is predicting customer retention based on a wide range of customer attributes/features. The specific techniques could include (but are not limited to): regressions (linear and logistic), variable selection (forward/backward and stepwise), regularizations (e.g., LASSO), classification and regression trees (CART), random forests, graduate boosted trees (xgboost), neural networks, and support vector machines (SVM).

The case is suitable for an advanced data analysis (data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence) class at all levels: upper-level business undergraduate, MBA, EMBA, as well as specialized graduate or undergraduate programs in analytics (e.g., masters of science in business analytics [MSBA] and masters of management analytics [MMA]) and/or in management (e.g., masters of science in management [MScM] and masters in management [MiM, MM]).

The teaching note for the case contains the pedagogy and the analyses, alongside the detailed explanations of the various techniques and their implementations in R (code provided in Exhibits and supplementary files). Python code, as well as the spreadsheet implementation in XLMiner, are available upon request.

Financial derivative and risk management.

The case is intended to be used for MBA and BBA programs in the elective courses such as derivatives and risk management, financial engineering, financial risk management and portfolio management, and for executives aspiring for the fund manager position in industry. The case could also be used in management development programs on financial risk management.

The case was based on the real life experience of a portfolio manager who was entrusted with the responsibility of maximizing return of the portfolio. With the backdrop of dismal performance of the portfolio, the portfolio manager is looking for opportunity in the context of declaration of result by Infosys Ltd, one of the constituents of the portfolio. So the team headed by Nirakar Chaulia was thinking of development and application of option strategies to exploit the result day (i.e. January 14, 2016) opportunity to improve the performance of the portfolio and also reduce the potential of stock price risk. Moreover, the case was designed to help the students develop and assess different option strategies based on their market intuitions. Also, students would be able to apply the option contracts for managing price risk associated with the underlying asset.

The case would prepare students to develop different strategies to be exploited in different market conditions and assess their performance. Especially, this case was designed to enable the students to understand options as a special kind of derivative in terms of trading and its payoff, how to initiate directional and volatility trading with options, how to apply options to generate income to enhance the portfolio performance and how to develop option strategies for different market conditions and assess their performance.

Teaching note is available for instructors only.

CSS 1: Accounting and Finance.