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As founders of First Interstate BancSystem, which held $8.6 billion in assets and had recently become a public company, and Padlock Ranch, which had over 11,000 head of cattle, the Scott family had to think carefully about business and family governance. Now entering its fifth generation, the family had over 80 shareholders across the US. In early 2016, the nine-member Scott Family Council (FC) and other family and business leaders considered the effectiveness of the Family Governance Leadership Development Initiative launched two years earlier. The initiative's aim was to ensure a pipeline of capable family leaders for the business boards, two foundation boards, and FC.

Seven family members had self-nominated for governance roles in mid-2015. As part of the development initiative, each was undergoing a leadership development process that included rigorous assessment and creation of a comprehensive development plan. As the nominees made their way through the process and other family members considered nominating themselves for future development, questions remained around several interrelated areas, including how to foster family engagement with governance roles while guarding against damaging competition among members; how to manage possible conflicts of interest around dual employee and governance roles; and how to extend the development process to governance for the foundations and FC. The FC considered how best to answer these and other questions, and whether the answers indicated the need to modify the fledgling initiative.

This case illustrates the challenges multigenerational family-owned enterprises face in developing governance leaders within the family. It serves as a good example of governance for a large group of cousins within a multienterprise portfolio. Students can learn and apply insights from this valuable illustration of family values, vision, and mission statement.

This case presents the history and recent governance challenges of Carvajal, S.A., a Colombia-based, family-owned, billion-dollar-plus holding company that had offered printing-related (e.g., Yellow Pages, notebooks) and other products and services across and beyond South America for more than a century. Specifically, the case details the company’s state of affairs in early 2011, a time by which Carvajal’s flagship businesses had matured rapidly with the emergence of digital technology and diminished demand for paper/print-based products. Though profits and growth remained positive, Carvajal’s leaders knew that upholding the business’s legacy of returns, dividends for all family members, and extensive philanthropy would take significant strategy and execution.

Compounding the strategy issues, Carvajal faced these market challenges with new leadership: the first non-family CEO since the company’s inception. Well-established Colombian executive Ricardo Obregon had been hired in 2008 over two family candidates to lead the business. Obregon was to oversee a complex governance network that included a holding company with seven operating companies, their management and respective boards, a family council, and 280 members (including spouses) of a shareholding family in its sixth generation. Carvajal’s business and family leaders had to face market issues and decisions that included the possibility of taking public the operating companies and/or the holding company while maintaining the business’s long traditions of unity, respect, strong ethics, and philanthropy. That meant optimizing several crucial relationships: between the family and the new CEO; between the family and the board; between the operating companies and the holding company; and between members of the large Carvajal family, many of whom now resided outside of Colombia and Latin America.

Understand general and specific challenges associated with carrying on a longstanding family business facing multiple market challenges; explore the process of engaging a complex family-business governance network to handle business challenges while maintaining family values; consider the effects of culture on a multi-generation family business.

Carris Reels, a reel-manufacturing company headquartered in Vermont, had long-standing goals of being employee owned and governed. They also had a strong organizational (ownership) culture. The Corporate Steering Committee (CSC), a committee composed of representatives from management and non-management employees, and the board of directors had a decision to make about adding two new members to the board. With these new members, the board of directors would be made up of both members of management and non-management employees. Was Carris forfeiting wiser outside counsel in favor of company insiders? What about for the future of the company?

The data for this case were collected from discussions and informal interviews with Carris Reels employees, and archival data from the company intranet which includes an archival of company newsletters, meeting minutes and announcements. Information on the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), board of directors, the CSC, and ESOP trustees from these sources were also used.

This case is suitable for strategic management, and social responsibility and social enterprise-focused courses for upper-level undergraduates and MBA students.

The sources, development, and outcomes of a strong organizational culture are important to this case. Schein (1989) and others (Harris and Ogbanna, 1999) address the role of a company’s founder in development of the company’s culture. Research addressing ownership and participation in the context of an ownership culture indicates positive outcomes to employees and to their companies (Logue and Yates, 2005; Ownership Associates, 1998).

On March 7, 2013, ThyssenKrupp Group CEO Heinrich Hiesinger was shocked to receive a resignation letter from Gerhard Cromme, chairman of the company's supervisory board.

Hiesinger had been CEO since 2010. Early in his tenure, ThyssenKrupp incurred massive losses from disastrous steel investments and faced allegations of colluding with other companies to fix prices in its railway steel operations. As a result, Hiesinger had been forced to dismiss three executive board members, one for violating company policy. After a supervisory board member also was dismissed for violating company policy, the company's offices were raided in an investigation of price-fixing in steel contracts to the automotive industry.

Cromme had been sharply criticized by shareholders and analysts as an impediment to the cultural, strategic, and governance changes Hiesinger was trying to make to address the scandals at ThyssenKrupp, but for months he defiantly had resisted calls for his removal. With no warning, he resigned without naming a successor or creating a plan to select one.

Now that he no longer needed to deal with the distractions created by Cromme's presence, Hiesinger was free to finalize a plan to address the defects in ThyssenKrupp's governance.

In January 2012, the Jane Addams Hull House Association—one of Chicago's largest and oldest social service agencies and arguably its most iconic—announced that it might have to close in the spring due to financial difficulties. Just days later, the 122-year-old organization stunned the philanthropic world when it laid off its employees without notice, declared its intention to liquidate in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and shut its doors forever. In the weeks that followed, more and more people began to ask: What had happened to the board? Had bankruptcy really been inevitable? This case chronicles the organization's final decade and enables students to step into the shoes of the chairman of the board, Steve Saunders, as he led the board through its last two years. Students will examine the roles and responsibilities of effective boards and determine how internal and external factors contributed to Hull House's demise.

After reading and analyzing the case, students will be able to:

• Describe the roles and responsibilities of nonprofit boards

• Determine when the board is not performing its job and what the implications are for the organization

• Evaluate ways in which the board might change in order to do a better job

• Diagnose when external environmental factors threaten the security of a nonprofit and how the board itself might diagnose and work with such threats

Describe the roles and responsibilities of nonprofit boards

Determine when the board is not performing its job and what the implications are for the organization

Evaluate ways in which the board might change in order to do a better job

Diagnose when external environmental factors threaten the security of a nonprofit and how the board itself might diagnose and work with such threats

Looks at the merger of two Chicago-based nonprofits that share similar missions and clientele, but have different strategies and capital structures. They also operate in the highly competitive job training/temporary work field, where organizational survival is at stake. Suburban Job Link is a fee-driven, largely commercial nonprofit, and STRIVE/CES is a philanthropic-based nonprofit dependent on grants and government for revenue. Explores alternatives to a merger and proceeds from merger discussions to post-merger outcomes.

To discuss strategic collaboration and alliances; how to get “more mission” through resource combinations; and how nonprofits compete in highly competitive industries.

This case examines the merger of two nonprofit organizations from the point of view of the board of directors and senior staff leaders.

The case is designed to teach students about the complex issues in nonprofit mergers and to stimulate thinking about the role of the board of directors in mergers.

A young international nonprofit social enterprise governed by friends of the founder grows rapidly and faces increasing demands for resources and key connections to major potential donors, expertise in going to scale, and managing expansion. The case presents this issue commonly faced by new nonprofits and details how the organization, led by the board chair, seeks to resolve it through redesign of the board and major changes in board membership.

Identifying issues boards of new organizations face, particularly when they are selected for their commitment to the founder rather than the expertise they would bring to the board; analyzing the range of options for revamping a board so it matches the growth and needs and sophistication of the organization.

Museum XYZ built a beautiful facility in a large, Midwestern city. However, after opening to much acclaim, attendance began to fall off, finances were in a shambles, and there appeared to be a leadership void. The board hired two consultants to conduct a review to pinpoint the issues. This case discusses what the consultants learned, and the teaching note discusses what the board decided to do with the information.

To showcase the sometimes difficult decisions that nonprofit boards of directors face, including: the importance of defining an organization's mission and its stakeholders, the value of strategic planning, managing large-scale financial issues, establishing professional and lay leadership, successfully raising funds for purposes that further the mission, and managing change and organizational transformation.

The impact of corporate governance on internal controls and quality of financial disclosures.

Analysis of a real financial fraud event for a non-US multinational corporation. The case relies on accessing and analyzing annual reports for the firm, both before and after the fraud. Additional information on industry governance characteristics are provided in the case itself so that students can compare the firm to the industry.

This business case is centered on the analysis of Schneider Electric, a French multinational corporation, which had to restate their financial statements in 2011 because of accounting fraud. Following this event, Schneider undertook major changes in their board structure to improve internal control mechanisms. This pedagogical business case familiarizes students with international differences in ownership and board structure and emphasizes potential corporate governance changes after financial statement fraud.

Managerial finance, corporate finance, international finance, auditing. This case is more appropriate for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses.