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This case features a county planning director as he approves or turns down a permit application for the Harvest Wind Farm Project, located in Klickitat County on the Columbia Plateau in Washington State. The utilities involved and Klickitat County stood to benefit through new revenue generation and a favorable federal construction grant associated with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and certain landowners stood to make substantial royalties. However, other landowners were also worried about declining property values, environmental groups had raised objections to the effect of turbines on the pristine Columbia River view, and uncertainty about health effects had recently become more of an issue. Nationally, “wind turbine syndrome” and “shadow-flicker” effects had been linked to wind farm operations. Given these concerns and the uncertainty, would the gains to stakeholders justify signing off on the project?

1. Probabilistic calculations of cost, and profit/loss using standard probability functions

2. Decision tree to find the expected monetary value (EMV) of different options.

3. Monte Carlo simulation for risk analysis.

4. Risk analysis in project management.

Learners will be able to understand and apply the following: how to approach uncertainty in business decisions using probabilistic calculations of cost, and profit/loss using standard probability functions; how to address uncertainty in business decisions by looking forward and reasoning backward, using the decision tree technique and the EMV of different decisions; how to analyse the risk inherent in business decisions by incorporating probability distributions for all critical variables in the form of Monte Carlo simulation; and appreciation of strategic considerations in risk analysis as it applies to project management

The case describes the challenge facing Vilas Birari, the owner and chief executive of Harsh Constructions, a construction company headquartered in Nasik, India. Birari had to decide on the bid for a construction project in September of 2021, during the COVID-19 (COVID) pandemic. Due to successive waves of the pandemic, the state and federal governments announced lockdowns intermittently, causing uncertainty in costs related to labor, material and project completion. The dilemma before Birari was how to set a bid price that was not so low as to incur a loss and not so high as to lose the bid to competitors. The uncertainty made Birari’s decision-making complex. The case invites students to help Birari find an optimum bid price by using various quantitative techniques, such as Monte Carlo simulation and decision trees.

This case is intended for students of management at a master’s level, in an elective course on management science, which is often also known as decision science. This compact case can be positioned in the second half of the course, when exploring risk management using computer simulation as a tool. The case serves both as an introduction to using simulation to manage uncertainty as well a contrast with simpler methods that are covered earlier in the course.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 7: Management Science.

This case is suitable for graduate-level quantitative analysis, business and government, environment and sustainability, and global economics courses. Students must consider the tradeoffs between continuing to run an old coal-burning plant and purchasing emissions allowances (EAs) versus upgrading to emissions-reducing wet or dry scrubbers. Reducing emissions creates the possibility of selling the plant's surplus EAs (which are likely to increase in price). Choosing a wet or dry scrubber requires considering installation cost and construction time, variable cost, and SO2 removal efficiency. Ideally, the investment should pay back over time, but management believes some net investment could also be justified. For that, however, complete analyses from both economic and environmental perspectives are required. A supplemental spreadsheet is available to accompany the case (UVA-QA-0726X).

Mr. Sajjan Jindal, MD of JVSL (nos JSW) wanted to bring the latest technology of iron making into India. His project went to several cost overrun and time overrun due to several foreseen and unforessen circumstances. This case discusses the issues new technology introduction in iron making area, problem faced by inexperienced contractor. It shows the need for proper risk management is required. It also shows the criticality of the project does not mean time cost trade off, but many other factors like reliability of the equipment, process and reliability of the equipment and plants.

In the early months of the 2007-08 financial crises, a loan manager faces a real estate financing decision. Should he approve a bullet structure three-year loan to a longstanding client, a legendary Texan developer? The developer, who near retirement downsized his business, is seeking financing for his only project: residential or commercial development on an attractive piece of land in suburban Houston. The loan manager considers the decision in light of the mortgage market turmoil, seeing commercial projects as safer, but also factoring that the residential market could bring higher returns if the market stabilizes soon. The manager collects the data and asks an analyst to assess the risks; that ultimately requires assessing the economics of both projects from both the bank's and the developer's perspectives. The bank could still change the interest rate on the loan to receive adequate compensation for the risk it carries, but the loan manager knows that doing so will change their long-term client willingness to take on the loan.

This case study deals specifically with the issue of manufacturing strategy, and business strategy.

The case can be used in a number of course contexts, including undergraduate and MBA programs. The focus is on both business strategy and manufacturing strategy issues. The case can be assigned as an opening vignette, during the initial phases of business strategy, since the case situations and concepts are both simple and clear. It can also be assigned for an in-depth treatment of manufacturing strategy.

The case focuses on Capital Mills Limited (CML), a flour milling company, and concentrates on whether the company should refurbish its two 40-year old flour mills at a cost of US$6 million or if the company should invest US$15 million in the construction and installation of a new, fully-automated “Lights out” flour mill. This decision is viewed as a “make or break” decision for CML, since for the first time in the company's 40 year history will it face significant direct competition, in the form of the impending entry of a second flour milling company.

The case has four primary learning objectives, namely to: illustrate the linkages between business level strategy and the functional level, manufacturing strategy; discuss the role of a company's history and internal resource structure in the decision making process; explore how operational issues influence capital expenditure decisions; and explore the perspective of managers in different functions in an organization that is facing a new competitive challenge.

Teaching notes are available – consult your librarian for access.

Students should be able to: identify the elements of business processes; analyze efficiency measures; identify and define causes of poor efficiency in business process; analyze the results of a simulation model; propose process redesign alternatives based on the analysis; and acknowledge the challenges for improving public service processes.

The process to get a passport seems to be very simple, but Jose Hernandez, a Manufacturing Plant Director, has had bad experiences the past three times he has visited the passport office. He and his family have spent more than 3 h to get the passport for his little daughter, Maria. In this case, the authors illustrate the process analysis performed by Jose to find effective and efficient solutions to the problems that he found. The case study guides students through the analysis of a business process in public service from the perspective of the users. The students participating in the case analysis will not only learn to diagnose and describe the process but also to redesign it to achieve significant improvements. Furthermore, the students will realize that adding more resources to the process may not solve the fundamental issues, but analytical and creative skills are needed. In addition, the teaching notes provide a discussion about the existing challenges to improve public service processes.

Management and engineering undergraduate programs, operations management and business process design in Master of Business Administration programs.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 9: Operations and Logistics.

The Waldorf property is a tract of land whose development value is uncertain. One acre must be preserved as wetlands: The seller claims that it is too small an amount, and the Corps of Engineers indicates that it could be large enough. The case offers students the opportunity to apply the tools of pro forma cash-flow forecasting, electronic-spreadsheet modeling, decision analysis, and discounted cash flow and to wrestle with risk aversion and develop creative alternatives for reducing the uncertainty.

The case provides an opportunity for participants to step into the shoes of Doshi and plan a way to expand Vardhman Envirotech (VE) business by either entering the government segment or by undertaking international market expansion. In doing so, participants should understand the existing strategy by taking into consideration the aspects regarding the manner in which VE’s Injection Recharge Well differs from the existing recharge well solutions. VE lack of experience in government segment, as well as international markets provides an interesting context for the case discussion wherein participants have to examine the positives and challenges of both expansion opportunities and decide the way forward.

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

CSS3: Entrepreneurship.

Human Resource Management and Public Sector Management.

The target audiences for the case study are BSc, MSc and MBA students and management trainees and executives who are interested in learning the human resource (HR) practices, policies and strategies adopted by the world’s largest commercial employer to ensure complete satisfaction and contentment of their employees and their employee’s family which, in turn, motivates them to contribute more efficiently and effectively for the organisation. Even senior management teams could be targeted in executive education programmes as this case discusses time-tested HR practices, policies and strategies which have been sparsely discussed so far and hence can be expected to provide insights to senior corporate managers.

India has and is undergoing sweeping economic changes lately. There are several organisations that have supported this positive change. Of these, one such organisation, which shouldered the infrastructural burden of the transportation sector in India’s growth story, was the 160-year-old Indian Railways (IR), the world’s largest commercial employer. IR’s profit over the past few years was a far cry from its loss-making days, which tempted the government of India to consider privatisation in 2001. The transformational turnaround would not have been possible but for IR’s employees. After celebrating IR’s 160th anniversary in 2013, the case organisation wished to revisit its HR practices to understand its recent economic transformations and to strategise how they can improve and sustain maximum efficiency in future. The objective of this case study is to understand the “people side” of IR by explaining its current HR practices and to investigate and identify changes over the years so that changes then can be implemented in the context of HR practices for the future. Hence, the case attempts to explain the role of HR management in IR’s turnaround strategies. Resistance exhibited by IR staff towards its recent initiative of enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation across India due to fear of job losses and insecurity is also discussed in the case. Teaching note for this case study explains existing people management frameworks published in the research literature to class participants by applying it to the case company. In addition, the teaching note also discusses how chief personnel officers (CPOs) of IR can pursue the change initiatives among the employees with least resistance. Changes/initiatives that can be imbibed by the CPOs in the existing HR practices to overcome the resistance exerted by the employees and to improve the existing system are also discussed.

This case study’s primary objective is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the HR practices being followed in IR, the world’s largest commercial employer. The case also attempts to assess the ERP system initiative by IR and analyse how it can be imbibed into the existing IR’s HR system. In short, the case study attempts to answer the following assignment questions which form the learning objectives of this case study: What are the HR practices that are being followed in the world’s largest commercial employer? How are the HR practices followed helpful in the retention of employees? How can IR pursue the change initiatives, especially ERP implementation, among the employees without any resistance? What are the changes/initiatives that can be imbibed in the HR practices to improve the existing system?

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 6: Human Resource Management.