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The learning outcomes of this paper are as follows: to uncover the social innovation in the peacebuilding model of the Children for Peace Initiative (CPI); to identify the key success factors of the CPI model; to discuss the sustainability of the model of CPI-Kenya; and to apply the contact theory and personal transformation theory to CPI model.

The case is written to address the issue of intercommunity peacebuilding between the Pokot and Samburu. It focusses on social innovation in peacebuilding implemented in seven villages among the Pokot and Samburu. The activities revolve around the involvement of children as key actors in peacebuilding and the exchange of heifer between the communities to sustain the peace. The heifer is one of the sources of conflict. In this case, this powerful cultural symbol is used to create bonding and friendship between the conflicting communities. While there were many peacebuilding attempts in the pastoralist communities, CPI-Kenya introduced a model that focusses on building a new human relationship between the communities. It includes all the social groups of the communities, making it more successful and sustainable than other previous attempts.The two co-founders, Monica Kinyua and Hilary Bukuno, narrated the story of how the CPI-Kenya started, highlighting the uniqueness of their peace-building approach and the strategy they adopted to build a new relationship between the communities. They shared powerful stories of how CPI managed to bring a peaceful living between the Samburu and Pokot in Baragoi, particularly in Amaya and Longewan villages.In the beginning, the main challenge for the CPI-Kenya team was finding the right approach to implement their peace innovation by making children become the catalyst of peace in their communities. With children at the centre of the CPI model, the best approach was getting entry through schools. The school is an accepted social system that has over time gained trust from all parents who send their children there.The case provides the students with the element that is essential for social innovation in the community. The students can learn from the case the importance of collaboration for social initiative, community engagement and inclusive peacebuilding. It portrays a unique strategy in community leadership and management. Further, the students will learn one concrete application of the human contact theory and personal transformation theory. The case highlight how cultural symbols that are sources of conflict can be turned into the symbol of peace. Starting with one group of people in a community and growing into other groups in the same community through a ripple effect.

The case can be used for Master’s and Doctorate.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

This case study aims to expect the following learning outcomes. A better understanding of the nature of a psychological contract being developed by employees in non-profit organizations, especially working in the areas of social development and the impact of this contract on employee commitment. Enhanced understanding of conflict of interest (personal versus public) in social development organizations and its implications. Identification of issues of task conflict versus interpersonal conflict and its impact on organizational functions. Identification of dynamics of exclusion of internal stakeholders from organizational strategic decision-making process along with its impact on organizational performance and sustainability. Devising a mechanism to avoid such conflicts in social development organizations, in particular, and organizations in general.

This case highlights five issues as follows: it identifies and discusses conflict of interest between privileged class possessing decision-making positions in the board of directors and implementers working at the grassroots level at ANMOL (a non-governmental organization working for poor girls education in Baluchistan-hub of China–Pakistan Economic Corridor); it discusses the basis for formulation of psychological contracts and impact of its violation on stakeholder’s commitment and motivation; it discusses the implications of difference of opinion of both stakeholders regarding organizational vision and possible drawbacks of converting task conflict into interpersonal conflict on individuals, organization and end-users; it explores implications of exclusion of key stakeholders from organizational decision-making and its impact on organizational smooth working and sustainability; and it suggests a mechanism to avoid conversion of task conflict into interpersonal conflict and smooth functioning of an organization. Hence, this case discusses theories of conflict of interest between top-leadership and workforce, psychological contract and implications of its breach on employee motivation and organizational sustainability in the context of social development organizations.

This case provides sufficient material to be discussed at master level courses (management sciences – master of business administration (MBA) level) such as human resource management (dynamics of psychological contract and conflict resolution), leadership and change management in social development organizations (social enterprises).

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 7: Management Science.

This case study draws on interviews conducted with officials from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM), City of Woonsocket and Town of North Smithfield. Additionally, it pulls from relevant legal documents, recordings and minutes from meetings of the Woonsocket City Council and North Smithfield Town Council, City Council resolutions, state legislation and local press coverage.

From 2012–2017, the communities of Woonsocket and North Smithfield engaged in a protracted dispute concerning wastewater disposal. For 30 years, the two jurisdictions had maintained a signed service agreement. Following its expiration; however, Woonsocket imposed a new host fee on North Smithfield. Woonsocket needed to upgrade the facility to comply with mandates from the RI DEM. Over the next five years, leaders from both jurisdictions vociferously fought over the new fee. At the same time, leaders within communities experienced their own divisions. This case study highlights the challenges that decision-makers faced in both communities.

This case is appropriate for graduate and executive level courses in environmental policy, communication and leadership.

The learning outcomes are as follows: understanding issues involved in the employee motivation, particularly those engaged in social change and development in emerging economies; develop insights into how to motivate team members by drawing on relevant theories of motivation; and orient students towards the application of these theories in the organization.

Resource cell for juvenile justice (RCJJ) was initiated as a field action project at the centre for criminology and justice, Tata Institute of Social Sciences with the objective of working on issues of children with a special focus on juveniles in conflict with law (JCL). RCJJ aimed at highlighting the socio-legal issues of juvenile children who were in conflict of law providing aid to these children and their families, and working towards their eventual social reintegration. RCJJ also trained stakeholders in the juvenile justice system and facilitated rehabilitation and social integration of JCLs as directed by the juvenile justice boards (JJBs). RCJJ had teams at six places within India. These teams worked with various government institutions, parents and JCLs to eventually effect change in the conditions of JCLs. The social workers engaged by RCJJ had a challenging task of facilitating social integration of the children, in coordination with the police, JJBs, families and lawyers. They had to actively manage help desks at the judicial observation homes where JCLs were housed. The social workers were under great stress because of antagonism from lawyers and police. The JJBs were prejudiced against them for being “outside watchdogs”. This resulted in high demotivation and attrition among employees. Jyoti Mhatre, project manager, interviewed past and present field workers to gauge the extent and reasons for demotivation. This intervention highlighted the positive and negative aspects of the organizational culture and the stress points that were causing demotivation. The situation was alarming and Jyoti had to develop an action plan to improve the motivation of the social workers to bring down the attrition.

Courses in human resource management, organizational behaviour and general management as part of masters-level programmes in business administration and management, and executive development programmes on employee motivation for middle/senior management.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human resource management.

Human resource management, business ethics, public policy.

The case can also be taught in MBA/postgraduate in management programmes in general management or HR classes to give a lesson in organizational conflict and resolution, negotiation skills (strategies, tactics and power in negotiation) towards the middle or end of the course. The course can also be taught in MBA/postgraduate in management programmes in business ethics classes to make students appreciate the various approaches to ethics – end-results, duty, social contract and personalistic ethics. It also helps students learn how to institute ethics into the cultural fabric of the organization. In public policy programmes, it could be taught to illustrate the crucial role and at times unintended outcomes of actions of street level bureaucracies in policy implementation. The course can also be taught in refresher training programmes for executives to give lessons in conflict management, mediation strategies, union negotiations and ethics.

This teaching case is based on a real incident that took place in a defence production factory of India in the year 2009. It succinctly unfolds a small showdown between two officers that acquires a disproportionate size and explosive dimension and vitiates the environment of the entire organization. The case is a narration of a small row that in no time became a full-blown organizational dispute with layers of issues. Two officers, one very senior and the other influential, got entangled in a conflict, unfortunately in the presence of a large audience; dissatisfied workers and officers fanned the sentiments and encouraged them to unethically leverage legal privileges by gaming in the name of caste and sexual harassment to gain power in the messy dispute. The protagonist Ram Sharma, the General Manager (head) of the factory, is in a precarious situation as the conflict not only puts his managerial skills but also his moral standards and ethics to test.

After discussion and analysis of this case, the students should be able to: appreciate and evaluate the complexities and multiple facets of an organizational conflict including ethical challenges faced in a real life situation, recommend the options and course of action a manager could resort to in a high stake and time bound situation, learn to develop a basic framework for analysing, negotiations and strategize to resolve a conflict as a manager-mediator in such a situation, learn to handle difficult negotiation bound by complexities of unethical and legal disputes, answer to themselves the criticality of ground level bureaucracy's role in implementation of public policies (optional if the faculty decides to discuss the part provided in the teaching note). For international students, this is a case to learn dynamics of “negotiations in Indian context”. Overall development of critical thinking and analytical skills.

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

This case study exposes students to conflicts with distributors, escalated scenarios of a trade association and the possible repercussions of such a scenario. Upon completion of this case study, the students will be able to understand the critical success factors for a distribution setup and alignment of channels for driving growth; understand and manage the power dynamics with a stakeholder, like trade associations, distribution reach, fallacies in managing the distributors and identifying the gaps; critically evaluate negotiation opportunities when a trade association is not directly related to the principal organization.

This case study showcased a conflict between the distributor and Universal Heater Industries (UHI), a leading player in the water heater business in India. In 2015, the global leadership of UHI identified India as an emerging market and undertook a complete management overhaul to implement a new growth plan. Several measures were put in place that leveraged the global product portfolio and new people were appointed to push the agenda. Manish Singhal, the national sales head of UHI, selected Kerala as the pilot state to implement the new plan. However, the projects failed, as the distributor escalated the treatment meted out by UHI to the Electrical Trade Association (ETA). Trade associations have had a history of playing truant with players like UHI, and because of this, business came to a complete halt. The UHI and ETA teams met once; however, the suggested closure by ETA needed to be aligned with UHI’s interests. Singhal’s dilemma deepened, and they had to decide the next steps.

This case study is suitable for a postgraduate marketing course in a segment on managing channels, intermediaries, distribution management and channel conflicts. The uniqueness of this case is in the dimension of the trade association and managing the stakeholders.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS8: Marketing.

Analysis of public sources.

The bank named “Novo Banco” (New Bank in Portuguese) was created because of an emergency intervention by the Bank of Portugal to save the “good” assets of the once great but bankrupt Banco Espírito Santo (BES) on August 4, 2014. The toxic assets remained in BES (dubbed “bad bank”). BES was one of the biggest private banks in Portugal, with origins mounting back to the year 1869. In 2013, it was headed by the founder’s great-grandson, Ricardo Salgado, when an external audit revealed several problems with the bank’s accounting and concluded that BES had a severe financial problem (the risky credit represented 11.1% of the bank’s accounts). The bank underwent a public capital increase (endorsed by several public figures, including the Portuguese President at the time, Cavaco Silva) of €1.045m to reposition itself, which was 100% successful (demand of about 160%, with a significant part of foreign investors). However, continued amounts of suspicions led Ricardo Salgado to be replaced by Vitor Bento (via a settlement between BES’s shareholders and the Bank of Portugal) in July 2014. At the end of that same month, BES announced imparities totaling the amount of €4.2535m. This led the European Central Bank to suspend BES’s access to the financial operations, forcing it to reimburse its credit to the Eurosystem in the value of €10.000m. In two days, the stock prices dropped by 80% to around €0.03 per share. It was later proven that the administration led by Ricardo Salgado had disobeyed the Bank of Portugal 21 times between December 2013 and July 2014, apparently acting against the institution’s best interests. Some carousel schemes with companies within the Espirito Santo Group were also detected in BES’ financial movements to improve the bank’s financial statements.

Finance Valuation, Strategy

Students learn to evaluate a firm’s growth strategies with the aim of establishing long-term business sustainability. Students will examine the impact of external macro-environmental factors that influence firm growth in an emerging market context. Using this case, students will learn how to apply a resource-based view to a firm’s offering by comparing and identifying the competitive advantage of the internal resources of the firm. Using this case, students can apply the principle of strategic fit by strategically analyzing the opportunities and threats in the external environment, while taking into account the firm’s internal strengths and weaknesses.

This case outlines the strategic, macro-environmental and marketing challenges that the Cape Town-based private higher education institution, Red & Yellow Creative School of Business, faced as it entered its 25th year of existence. In 2019, Red & Yellow had its roots in industry and had done well historically to cement that bond through the creation of successful alumni and the constant innovation of its higher education offering. Two weeks before having to present a detailed five-year growth strategy plan to the board of directors, Rob Stokes, the Director and Chairman of Red & Yellow, was faced with a multitude of decisions pertaining to the sustainable growth of the school. Recent growth patterns showed that programs with lower profit margins, such as classroom-based full-time programs, had experienced double-digit growth while student numbers for higher gross profit offerings, such as online and executive education programs had started to decline. Another challenge that the school faced was the need for its students to future-proof their careers in a world where artificial intelligence and machine learning threatened their careers and jobs. As such, Red & Yellow was confronted with one central strategic problem: How to grow strategically in the short term while developing a sustainable and scalable growth strategy for the school in the long term.

This case could work well as part of an executive education course, as well as a strategic management course for master’s degree or Master of Business Administration students.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

The primary focus of this case is on group dynamics, including group development, interpersonal conflicts, and team effectiveness. Appropriate theories and frameworks are drawn upon from the literature on group dynamics and conflict management to discuss and address these issues.

This case is completely based on real-life events and the information was attained from interviews with the case characters. Name of the organization and all characters in the case have been disguised.

This case deals with a student work group facing intragroup conflicts while pursuing Master of Business Administration (MBA) at a prominent Indian B school. Three members of the group approached Hemant Patel, Organizational Behavior Faculty, and Suhas Shah, Program Chair, for seeking help to resolve the conflict. Patel and Shah conducted interviews with group members and organized a workshop on group dynamics at the larger, class level. However, a few members informed them that dynamics were still poor. Patel and Shah are contemplating what to do next.

This case can be used in courses on organizational behavior, human resource management (with a focus on group and team performance) or general management (with a focus on group and team effectiveness). The primary focus of this case is on group dynamics and conflict management. This case was written keeping in mind graduate course/MBA students but it should do well with undergraduate students and executive education participants as well.

The case was created via an interview of the protagonist.

The case describes the dilemma a young leader, Captain Bryson, faces after a few months in his new organization. Amid a routine meeting, two of CPT Bryson’s direct reports get into a verbal (and nearly physical) altercation over a relatively benign issue. CPT Bryson must decide how to handle the conflict at that moment. Further, the organization is resource constrained, so the personnel will be working in the same organization for at least the next six months. Therefore, CPT Bryson must try to diagnose the types and sources of conflict so that he can decide on how to manage the conflict in both the short and long terms.

This case is designed for use in undergraduate and graduate level courses on leadership and management. The case is useful for teaching lessons (or electives) on conflict management, developmental communication (counseling), emotional intelligence and power and influence.