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This case discussion will enable learners to: demonstrate how the adoption of entrepreneurial leadership could aid the overwhelmed youth to successfully bounce back. Summarize various events and challenges faced. Demonstrate mindful entrepreneurial qualities to be effective. Identify various coping strategies in balancing a commercial viable model with a compassionate approach. Establish a roadmap for a healthy sustainable business model.

Ms Rahaf Raef Kobeissi was a 33-year solopreneur, mental health coach and personal development trainer who resided in Dubai. She encountered dilemmas while attempting to offer commercial, as well as empathy and compassion-based services. She tried to strike a balance between her own broken past life challenges and managing her clients’ healing journey. Another challenge was to assess whether she should adopt inductive counseling or deductive counseling principles, especially during a Covid-19 scenario. She needed to ensure a healthy work/life balance to prevent herself from suffering from burnout. Her personal journey to becoming a solopreneur was filled with grief and hardship over the years, which she endured with little support. She had the arduous task of dealing with a series of shocking incidents and events, which pushed her down through the cracks, leading to her attempting to take her own life three times when overwhelmed by tragedy. At the age of 23, Rahaf lost her father to suicide – they found him hanging in his apartment. Her abusive mother had several breakdowns due to severe depression and her drug addict brother accidentally killed his friend in her apartment with an overdose injection. The challenge before her was to strike a reasonable balance between managing the highest levels of clinical depression with suicidal tendencies and finding the right path and purpose for her own life. This was the very reason she chose to battle depression through therapy and bounced back as a stronger and more resilient woman.

This case has been focused on undergraduate and postgraduate-early stage level students pursuing business or psychology programs. Particularly those specializing in entrepreneurial, organizational behavioral and positive psychology courses.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

This case was written using primary data through various channels, including in-depth structured interviews with the CEO and other individuals at the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay (CCTB), as well as exchanging email messages and phone conversations with employees at CCTB. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. In addition, one of the authors took a tour of the main offices of CCTB and took notes on the physical facilities as well as the information provided by the tour guide. Public information from CCTB was used to enhance the information and provide background. All accounts presented in this case are real, and no information was altered or fabricated.

Clara Reynolds had been CEO of CCTB for over eight years. The agency had almost tripled its budget in the time she had been there. Her leadership style had positively impacted the culture of the organization. Employees valued her open and transparent leadership style. Employees saw her commitment to training employees, creating work–life balance and helping employees be exceptional at their jobs. There was an issue, however, with Transcare, the organization’s ambulatory service. The performance of the business was declining, and Clara wanted to update the board within 60 days at the next quarterly board meeting. She was not sure what she could do to increase engagement with Transcare’s staff, which would show the board that the staff was fully willing to do what was necessary.

This case is appropriate for teaching undergraduate or graduate-level courses in leadership, organizational behavior or principles of management. It is designed to be discussed during one class period. It will save time and improve the flow if the students read the case before class and are prepared when they arrive. Any information needed for the case discussion has been presented in the case; no further research by the students is necessary. Students should think about the role of leadership in a nonprofit. They should put themselves in the protagonist’s shoes throughout the reading of the case.

This study aims to particularly focus on undergraduate and postgraduate early stage level students pursuing business, educational, social work programs. Particularly those studying organizational behavior, leadership and change, curriculum design management, social literacy and courses on 21st Century Skills.

Social entrepreneurship, developmental studies, education, organisational behavior are the subject areas focused in this study.

Purpose – The present case study is an empirical account of the gender perspectives on leadership styles and entrepreneurial mind-set demonstrated by Jigyasa and Gaurav, the co-founders of “Slam Out Loud” (SOL) – an Indian for mission non-profit organisation established in 2017. The authors intend to highlight the challenges faced by SOL during COVID outbreak, to establish community connect in the virtual domain and deliver hyper-personalised socio-emotional learning (SEL) frameworks. Will SOL’s Creatively Omnipresent and Versatile Inclusive Design framework transform Indian child education in the wake of New Education Policy 2020 of India while being sustainable as well as globally competitive?

This case study is based on primary data collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with the founders of SOL. It follows the deductive approach of methodology. The data has been complemented by documentary analysis, including videos, descriptions of internal processes and articles.

SOL has been strengthening the transformative power of performance and visual arts to help build creative confidence (CC) among children from disadvantaged communities below five years of age. The co-founders have focused on imparting life skills such as communication, critical thinking and empathy in children. The framework adopted by SOL is a combination of six 21st century and SEL skills including creativity, communication, critical thinking, collaboration, self-esteem and empathy.

A novel Sinha’s 5 × 7 SEL- COVID Matrix.

Learning outcomes can only be achieved using case-based pedagogy. Students are encouraged to dive deep into the dilemma. After the case discussion students will be able to define Creative Confidence (CC) with its importance in social development, comprehend the impact of developmental interventions such as Jijivisha Fellowship during COVID 19 and post COVID 19, understand servant leadership and its impact in the management, analyse how servant leadership accelerates social efficacy in the social enterprises, illustrate the novel 5 × 7 SEL-COVID framework for educators, create and evaluate their hyper-personalised SEL framework curriculum.

The SOL initiative is well aligned with the National Education Policy introduced in India in 2020. It will address the issues of not only providing equitable and inclusive education but also enhancing enrolment ratio and reducing dropout rates. Adoption of Arts-based education will also develop Creative Confidence (CC) and improve emotional well-being of children in primary education.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

This case uses concepts from Korten’s strategies of development-oriented four generations of non-government organizations (NGOs) and social psychology such as stereotypes, prejudices and actions to explain the social phenomenon. In furtherance, the case presents Aristotle’s approach to creating a message for masses that include use of ethos, pathos and logos. Stood’s (2017) narrative, engagement and technology (NET) model of social leadership was used to analyse the characteristics of social leaders.

Prima facie the case was developed from primary sources i.e. interviewing with Ashish Thakur. Literature from secondary sources was obtained to make teaching notes. List of references is presented towards the end that depicts the use of textbooks, research papers, websites and blogs. This case was tested in the classroom with MBA students learning business communication.

The case dealt with the challenges of an NGO that included conducting respectful last rites of unclaimed dead bodies. As the NGO grew, Ashish Thakur, the initiator of Moksh started facing resource management challenges, namely, volunteer induction, fundraising and managing non-human resources. These issues are deeply embedded in several social stereotypes about dead bodies. Learning covers strategies of four generations of NGO development, a NET model of social leadership, breaking social stereotypes related to dead bodies and last rites (necrophobia), designing social communication and opportunity to assess faulty rationalizations and do critical thinking around the socio-religious practices.

This case is intended to be used for the students of the social leadership or social entrepreneurship, social psychology, business communication or communication skills, organizational behaviour, advertising and social media.

At the end of the case study discussion, students will able to state the importance of outsourcing with comparing pros and cons in business decision-making; review the value bestowed to the community in using sustainable raw material while at the same time conserving the ancient style of artwork particular to the area; discuss the utility of the products manufactured by “Flying Colours,” especially for the lockdown period which was because of the pandemic; and demonstrate and interpret the use of shark and mosquito bite matrix.

Arun Kumar Patni, 47, and his wife Neelima Patni, 43, are co-founders of Flying Colours, a start-up company based in Jaipur, in the state of Rajasthan, India. Their enterprise was engaged in the manufacturing and marketing of bird products and accessories, including bird feeders, bird houses, earthen water bowls, etc. In July 2020, post-lockdown, they were desperate to hire carpenters to restart their factory. However, COVID-19 posed a serious challenge, making it very difficult to replace their skilled carpenters, who had returned to their native places and had not come back. This disrupted production and order fulfilment. Keeping this situation in perspective in anticipation of the continuing pandemic crisis, Neelima was in favour of outsourcing basic production and designing the birdfeed decoration and artwork in-house. Meanwhile, Arun instead favoured continuing full in-house production as before, by hiring replacement carpenters. Yet for an in-house full-scale production, procuring raw material was a difficult task because of the lockdown. The situation had earlier taken a turn for the worse when Arun had advertised an exchange marketing policy to let customers return their old bird feeders for a 20% discount on a new one. This campaign was a huge success and resulted in a sales spike but unfortunately it caused a huge stock of returned products in their warehouse. Arun initially planned to repair and resell them as refurbished products. It now seemed impossible, because local carpenters demanded higher labour charges than the regular carpenters did. Flying Colours had provided skills workshops and hired external trainers to train unskilled carpenters prior to lockdown, so now all the training investment was in vain. Cash liquidity, sales, marketing, etc. were almost at a standstill.

This case particularly focuses on undergraduate-level students pursuing business or commerce programs, especially those studying core course: Entrepreneurial Strategic Management.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

This case is designed to enable students to understand the role of women in artificial intelligence (AI); understand the importance of ethics and diversity in the AI field; discuss the ethical issues of AI; study the implications of unethical AI; examine the dark side of corporate-backed AI research and the difficult relationship between corporate interests and AI ethics research; understand the role played by Gebru in promoting diversity and ethics in AI; and explore how Gebru can attract more women researchers in AI and lead the movement toward inclusive and equitable technology.

The case discusses how Timnit Gebru (She), a prominent AI researcher and former co-lead of the Ethical AI research team at Google, is leading the way in promoting diversity, inclusion and ethics in AI. Gebru, one of the most high-profile black women researchers, is an influential voice in the emerging field of ethical AI, which identifies issues based on bias, fairness, and responsibility. Gebru was fired from Google in December 2020 after the company asked her to retract a research paper she had co-authored about the pitfalls of large language models and embedded racial and gender bias in AI. While Google maintained that Gebru had resigned, she said she had been fired from her job after she had raised issues of discrimination in the workplace and drawn attention to bias in AI. In early December 2021, a year after being ousted from Google, Gebru launched an independent community-driven AI research organization called Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research (DAIR) to develop ethical AI, counter the influence of Big Tech in research and development of AI and increase the presence and inclusion of black researchers in the field of AI. The case discusses Gebru’s journey in creating DAIR, the goals of the organization and some of the challenges she could face along the way. As Gebru seeks to increase diversity in the field of AI and reduce the negative impacts of bias in the training data used in AI models, the challenges before her would be to develop a sustainable revenue model for DAIR, influence AI policies and practices inside Big Tech companies from the outside, inspire and encourage more women to enter the AI field and build a decentralized base of AI expertise.

This case is meant for MBA students.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CCS 11: Strategy

Dr. Lawrence Frazier was an emergency room physician who was an employee of Honore Staffing Services of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He worked at Methodist Health System hospital in Grant, Georgia. He had recently added the title of ER Medical Director and served as liaison between Honore staffing and the Methodist hospital. His additional duties included overseeing the other physicians which staff the emergency room. Methodist had a bonus system in place based on obtaining 31 patients’ satisfaction surveys each month. Dr. Frazier believed that the small sample lead to erroneous results and created problems for the physicians under his supervision. He wanted to change the data collection process (e.g. sample size collected, instrument), but encountered obstacles when he broached the subject with his hospital administrators.

The Congregation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (CBVM), a Catholic order founded in the early 1800s, was faced with a series of strategic concerns, including an aging clerical population, a changing laity, reduced finances, very limited vocations, and an evolving mission. Some of these concerns faced the Catholic Church in America as a whole (including sexual abuse, not discussed in this case) and several of these issues were also facing the Catholic Church worldwide. The serious matters facing them were threatening the continued viability of the order in America, and the guidance they were receiving from Rome - instruction to decide which of three suggested models for restructuring they would adopt - seemed to back them into a corner, requiring selection from among several strategies not devised by their membership and commitment to the selected strategy going forward. Change was necessary, but one of the major concerns of the order was that it remain consistent with its stated mission while adapting to a new environment and “operating system.” Their decisions were driven by Rome, but the decisions were not made by Rome; the CBVM was as autonomous in its decision-making as any decentralized international organization.

This case was based on secondary data that included various websites, news and academic articles, social media posts and press conferences before, during and after the World Cup. Multiple sources were examined to ensure the accuracy and credibility of the information presented in this case. The goal was to gather relevant information on the Moroccan soccer team, its performance in the FIFA World Cup and the leadership strategies used by Walid Regragui.

“We are the dreamers, we let it happen: Morocco’s soccer team leadership story” explores the transformative journey of Morocco’s soccer team in the 2022 World Cup, highlighting the exceptional leadership of coach Walid Regragui and the power of shared values deeply rooted in Moroccan culture. The instructional manual provides faculty with a compelling case study to inspire discussions on leadership, followership, team dynamics and cultural identity. The case emphasizes the importance of harnessing cultural roots, building trust and unity within a diverse team, strategic vision and tactical brilliance. It demonstrates that with authentic leadership, belief in shared dreams and the strength of cultural values, extraordinary achievements can be realized. The case aims to inspire and educate students, encouraging them to embrace their own cultural heritage, foster teamwork and pursue their dreams with unwavering determination.

The academic level of this case can vary depending on the specific course or program in which it is being used. It is suitable for graduate levels in various fields such as leadership studies, sports management, organizational behavior, cultural studies, or international business. The case provides a comprehensive analysis of leadership, team dynamics and cultural identity, including faith and spirituality, making it adaptable for different academic levels and disciplines. Instructors can adjust the depth of analysis and additional readings or activities to align with the specific educational level and learning objectives of their course.

Social entrepreneurship, sustainable development and emerging economies.

Advanced undergraduate students and Graduate students (MBAs).

We present the case of Marli Medeiros, a community leader in the city of Porto Alegre (south of Brazil) who has been working with the local government, local firms and local inhabitants over the last 40 years to build an organization that has been changing the reality of the slum Vila Pinto. The case highlights three main dilemmas faced by Marli Medeiros. Part 1 addresses whether to start a social entrepreneurship project in an environment surrounded by household violence and drug influences. Part 2 examines how to organize a community to develop this social project and challenge the context (local drug dealers). Part 3 considers how to work with different social players to innovate and manage a self-sustained social entrepreneurship that brings social change for an impoverished community.

Understand the five main characteristics required by social entrepreneurs to achieve social change by economic, self-sustained activities: social vision, sustainability guidelines, social networks development, search for innovation and search for financial returns. Understand the social entrepreneurship model from the point of view of a female leader in a local impoverished community. Understand and analyze the social and economic context of an emerging country.

Teaching note.