Search results

The case includes theoretical references to family business, organizational culture, resource-based value and leadership.

The case combines primary and secondary data. There is ample public information about Martin Guitar including histories of the company and its instruments. These were used for background. Primary data were provided by the company in the form of customized data and interviews.. The case writer has served Martin Guitar as a consultant and also plays Martin instruments. The case writer had numerous opportunities to interview Chris and his key lieutenants.

In 2019, C.F. Martin IV (Chris) was in his fourth decade leading one of the America’s oldest family-owned companies, C.F. Martin & Co., Inc. Martin Guitar is a globally known maker of fine guitars that are prized by collectors, working musicians and amateur musicians. Chris was raised in the family business and took on the CEO’s position at the age of 30. The case describes the company’s management practices and the culture that has emerged from them. In 2019, at age 64, Chris confronted issues faced by his predecessors over multiple generations: how to prepare the company for succession, and maintain its strong performance as a family-owned company in a dynamic industry environment.

The case is designed for a management course for upper-level undergraduates.

Leadership, organizational behavior, entrepreneurship.

This case study is intended for undergraduate and graduate levels.

This is a leadership case about Agnes Jean Brugger, founder of the A.J. Brugger Education Project (also known as the A.J. Brugger Foundation (AJBF)) in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. It is the story of how and why she and Chris Berry co-founded this unique non-profit foundation in tandem with Piedras Y Olas: Pelican Eyes Resort (PEPO) in the late 1990s. The case focuses on how her identity and values shape the origins of AJBF and how the organization evolves in the context of the Nicaraguan and Anglo-American cultures. “Devoted to assisting Nicaragua through education and development of one of the country's most valuable and treasured resources: its young people”, the vision for AJBF was a cutting edge socially conscious venture that grew to meet the needs of the community that had captured Jean's heart and mind. The case ends in early 2009 on the precipice of the biggest economic down-turn the US economy has experienced in recent history. Standing at the edge of this cliff, Jean contemplates the numerous successful accomplishments of the foundation, while reflecting on the many leadership and organizational problems she, as Founder and Chair of the Board, faces.

The case will help participants to: evaluate and discuss leadership effectiveness, identifying responses to opportunities and challenges; explain cross-cultural identity from the Globe Study model and how it impacts organizational interactions; explore successful models of cross-cultural leadership through the lens of gendered theory; explore the ways in which social entrepreneurship can be seen as an extension of socially-minded leadership; describe how socially-minded entrepreneurship is different from traditional forms of entrepreneurship; describe social identity and evaluate its impact on leadership; and discuss the rich historical and community context that influences interpersonal and organizational dynamics.

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

Managing non-profit organizations, social enterprises, strategic management for small entities and tourism.

Useful for graduate students enrolled in courses with development aspects. Undergraduate students learning about non-profit organizations can also benefit.

This is a case of a small non-profit organization that is struggling to formalize its operating systems to generate sufficient surplus to plough funds back to the community that it envisioned to serve. The protagonist has to make a decision of whether to invest large sums in a health center for permanent visibility or to implement health services on a smaller scale given its current level of operations. Whether the protagonists’ operations are scaleable or not is also in question, as its main activity – slum tours – is not a widely accepted concept.

1. Students will understand the challenges of starting and growing non-profit organizations. 2. Students will recognize the need to make operations efficient and to establish control systems to manage enterprise resources. 3. Students will realize that decision-making requires the balancing of interests of multiple stakeholders. 4. Students will learn to analyze the options of financing social projects considering marketing, operations and financial data. 5. Students will gain better appreciation of the merits and demerits of slum tourism.

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.

This is the sixth in a series of articles about case research, writing, teaching, and reviewing. In this article, the protagonist, Prof. Moore, consults experienced case reviewers and learns several different approaches to reviewing cases for journal publication. The article is written as if it were a case; it is fictitious.

Strategic management

Undergraduate/postgraduate modules in strategic management.

The case portrays a Chinese surrogate manufacturer – Cool-Comfort Shoes International Co. Ltd. (CCS) – which attempted to build its own brand, Ace-of-Biz (AoB). The surrogate manufacturing business had accumulated the funds needed to develop its AoB brand for sale in the domestic market. The 2007 world financial crisis and subsequent world recession caused exports and, thus, surrogate manufacturing to plummet. CCS was hoping that their loss in export of surrogate products would be more than compensated for by the gain in the domestic sales of AoB. However, despite 10 years of commitment, AoB's sales still had not grown sufficiently to counter the slowdown in exports, and the leaders at CCS were wondering what the future would hold for the company and its AoB brand.

This case study provides students with an ideal context to develop an appreciation of how changes in the domestic and international business environment affect the corporate and business strategies of a small- to medium-sized enterprise and the differences between corporate and business strategies, and to demonstrate their ability to apply a number of strategic management tools and techniques for the critical appraisal of a strategic situation and justify their recommended course of action.

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

Steel Corp has a large production capacity but a shrinking steel market in Europe. Reaching growing markets like China and U.A.E will be important to sustaining and growing revenue but is tough due to higher transportation costs. In this case, users must identify and use logistics data; logistics customer segmentation and related cost analysis.

The case is a continuation of the series of articles, written in the form of a case, that focus upon various issues relating to case research, writing and teaching with cases. In this article Professor Moore and the other fictitious characters, confront the difficulties that he had experienced grading student case analyses. In discussing the situation with his department chair Gloria Gorham he learns much about the origins of grading and the various methods of evaluating student work. At a later date other colleagues, Chris Anderson and Dave Berger, are brought into the discussion expressing their views and providing rubrics for use in grading student case analyses.

An employee&s husband made violent threats to the store manager of a Las Vegas shop specializing in skin care, makeup, fragrance, and hair care products of an international company. The manager wanted the employee terminated. The employee confessed that her husband also threatened her. The employee's personnel file contained no performance problems, but the store manager admitted that she had kept a separate file with such documentation. The Executive Director and the Director of Human Resource Management wondered what they should do.

Whole Foods and Wild Oats were both natural- and organic-food stores that competed for similar customers on values such as high-quality and healthy products, excellent customer service, knowledge of products, and an enjoyable shopping experience. In February 2007, Whole Foods announced that it would purchase a smaller but formidable competitor, Wild Oats. There was tremendous geographic complementarity involved: The merger would give Whole Foods the largest footprint within the natural- and organic-grocery industry in North America.