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Judy was a high-performing professional manager who was with her company for 15 years and was a manager for six. She was a confident, positive, and happy person but recently lost her confidence in herself and her abilities. She dreaded going to work because she never knew what she would face from her boss, Dennis. Dennis was a brilliant man who was recently promoted to Senior V.P. He was condescending, and he humiliated people in public. Complaints to the CEO and a harassment claim produced no results. Dennis did the CEO's dirty work and served a role needed in a fast-paced and profit-driven corporate culture. Judy enrolled in an MBA program to build her resume and her self-confidence. She faced a critical juncture in her career. Should she quit, transfer, complain to HR, or confront Dennis?

An instructor could link the case to lean production principles and Kurt Lewin’s change management model, key reading materials on these theories are, namely,  Lewin, K (1947) Frontiers in group dynamics: concept, method and reality in social science; equilibrium and social change. Human Relations 1(1): 5–41  Stewart, J. (2012). The Toyota Kaizen continuum: a practical guide to implementing lean. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Wickramasinghe, V. and Wickramasinghe, G. L. D. (2020). Effects of human resource management practices, lean production practices and lean duration on performance. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 31(11), 1467–1512.

This case was developed from both primary and secondary sources. The primary source included three face to face meetings with Mr CK in University Putra Malaysia (two meetings) and WSAE factory (Rawang, Malaysia – one meeting), respectively. Interviewed three workers at Rawang factory. The secondary source was taken from the company website and company reports.

Dr Wan, the Chief Executive Officer of WSA Engineering Sdn Bhd (WSAE) accepted the invitation from Small Medium Industries Development Corporation to participate in a Malaysian-Japanese Industry Cooperation program that focused on Lean Production System (LPS). Dr Wan was worried about Malaysia’s culture incompatible with Japanese-originated LPS. The case shares how the organization and behavioral change took place, for LPS buy-in. Successes and challenges WSAE faced in the 10-year journey of implementing LPS were elaborated.

This case was written for use in an operations management course, on the topic of lean production. It can also be used as a training material targeting the operation managers of a manufacturing company aiming to implement lean production or any change management process.

Human resource management

This case is suitable for use for advanced-level undergraduate students (e.g. in their third or fourth year of study) and graduate-level students enrolled in human resource management, industrial relations, organizational behavior and legal courses (e.g. business law and ethics, employment law). It can be used also in training courses and sexual harassment workshops for employees, particularly those with supervisory responsibilities or who are involved in personnel, training, or industrial relations activities. The case has been class tested with MBA students enrolled in a course on organizational behavior.

In March 2014, William Wong, the CEO of Zejaya Corporation faced a dilemma. He had just been told some disturbing news about Larry Pang, his executive director, which may or may not have legal implications for the company in relation to sexual harassment. Two of his managers had confided in him that Linda Tan, one of his managers who had recently resigned, had asked them to tell him about Pang's repeated attempts to court her in the past several months. He was undecided on how he should handle the problem.

This case was developed for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a management situation. The case provides students the opportunity to learn about the potential ethical and legal issues surrounding workplace romance and sexual harassment at work.

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 describes what happened when three Boston area hotels, the Hyatt Regency Boston, the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, and the Hyatt Harborside, decided, during the 2009 recession, to layoff all their housekeepers and replace them with employees from an outsourcing company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The action created a public relations nightmare for the company. In 2009 many other organizations had implemented layoffs with little reaction from the public. Students are asked to think about why the Hyatt Hotels had been singled out. Was the main problem their decision, or the communication and implementation of their decision, and what could they have done differently?

This case focusses on management and customer service issues at a historic hotel, the Hawthorne, in Salem, Massachusetts. By 1999, when Juli Lederhaus was hired as the new general manager, the Hawthorne had a reputation of being well past its prime and customers were dissatisfied with the quality of service and outdated physical facilities. This case describes the actions she took, up to 2012, to improve service. The case ends with Lederhaus contemplating whether more changes are needed given that she had just heard a rumor that a company was considering building a new hotel just a few blocks away. The case gives students the opportunity to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the Hotel in relation to customer service, and propose recommendations for future improvements.

A qualitative, interview based, methodology was used. The researchers held numerous, face-to-face interviews with the owner and employees of various ranks. Information was also gathered from archival data and traveler review sites such as TripAdvisor.com and Yelp.com.

The case is targeted to undergraduate business and hospitality students at a sophomore or junior level. Classes in which this case could be used include: Organizational Behavior, Human Resource Management, and Hospitality Management.

The case revolves around a critical incident that took place at an Indian pharmaceutical company, in which various stakeholders had very different perspectives regarding the nature, causes and consequences of the incident. By illustrating the contrasting perceptions of the same event, the authors have shed light on the nature of perception and perceptual processes, including cognitive biases and errors in human judgement. The case provides insights into how these manifest in the organisational context and how managers could be made more aware of them to avoid errors in judgment and make choices that are more informed.

Anika, a new manager, is confronted by a dysfunctional organizational culture characterized by employee disrespect, insubordination, and low performance. Her charge is to “to turn the place around”. The case takes place in a service organization, a testing range run by the US Department of Defense. The staff is a combination of federal and contract employees who test clients’ high-tech systems in a sometimes dangerous, desert environment.

In addition, there are three vignettes that give a portrait of dysfunctional individual behaviors. Frequently, the response students want to make is “I'd just fire the guy.” Unfortunately, it is not so simple.

The case is designed to be used with the digital business model framework developed by Peter Weill and Stephanie Woerner of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Weill and Woerner, 2015) and is referred to as the W & W framework. This approach provides a useful structure for thinking through the strategic options facing environments ripe for digital transformation.

Research for this case was conducted through face-to-face interviews with the protagonist, as well as through a review of their business planning documents and other data and documentation provided by the founder. Some of the market and industry data were obtained using secondary research and industry reports. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed to ensure accuracy.

The case follows the story of Kurt Waltenbaugh, a Minnesota entrepreneur who shared the dream of using data analytics to reduce costs within the US health-care system. In early 2014, Waltenbaugh and a physician colleague founded Carrot Health to bring together their personal experience and expertise in both consumer data analytics and health care. From the beginning, they focused on how to use data analytics to help identify high-risk/high-cost patients who had not yet sought medical treatment. They believed that they could use these insights to encourage early medical interventions and, as a result, lower the long-term cost of care.

Carrot’s initial success found them in a consultative role, working on behalf of insurance companies. Through this work, they honed their capabilities by helping their clients combine existing claims data with external consumer behavioral data to identify new potential customers. These initial consulting contracts gave Carrot the opportunity to develop its analytic tools, business model and, importantly, to earn some much-needed cash flow during the start-up phase. However, they also learned that, while insurance companies were willing to purchase data insights for one-off market expansion projects, it was much more difficult to motivate them to use data proactively to eliminate costs on an ongoing basis. Waltenbaugh believed that Carrot’s greatest potential lay in their ability to develop predictive models of health outcomes, and this case explores Carrot’s journey through strategic decisions and company transformation.

This case is intended for either an undergraduate or graduate course on entrepreneurial strategy. It provides an effective introduction to the unique structure and constraints which apply to an innovative start-up within the health-care industry. The case also serves as a platform to explore the critical criteria to be considered when developing a digital transformation strategy and exposing students to the digital business model developed by Weill and Woerner (2015) at MIT (referred to in this instructor’s manual as the W&W framework). The case was written to be used in an advanced strategy Master of Business Administration (MBA) class, an undergraduate specialty health-care course or as part of a health-care concentration in a regular MBA, Master of Health Care Administration (MHA) or Master of Public Health (MPH). It may be taught toward the end of a course on business strategy when students are building on generic strategy frameworks and adapting their strategic thinking to the characteristics of specific industries or sectors. However, the case can also be taught as part of a course on health-care innovation in which case it also serves well as an introduction to the health-care payments and insurance system in the USA. Finally, the case can be used in a specialized course on digital transformation strategy in which case it serves as an introduction to the MIT W&W framework.

The case is particularly well-suited to students who are familiar with traditional frameworks for business strategy and business models. The analysis builds on this knowledge and introduces students interested in learning about the opportunities and challenges of digital strategy. Equally, the case works well for students with clinical backgrounds, who are interested in how business strategy can influence changes within the health-care sphere. Finally, an important aspect of the case design was to develop students’ analytical confidence by encouraging them to “get their hands dirty” and to carry out some basic exploratory data analytics themselves. As such, the case requires students to combine and correlate data and to experience the potentially powerful combination of clinical and consumer data. Instructors should find that the insights from these activities give students unique insights into the potential for of data analytics to move health care from a reactive/treatment ethos to a proactive/intervention ethos. This experience can be particularly revealing for students with clinical backgrounds who may initially be resistant to the use of clinical data by commercial organizations.

Production management and personnel management.

Production management modules of undergraduate business and management courses.

The case describes the implementation of 5S by a Polish production company, namely Bianor. It presents not only the literature base and benefits of 5S but, in particular, shows the specificity of the implementation process, taking into consideration attitudes of employees; moreover, the study devotes some attention to aspects of organizational culture.

The case shows how to implement the 5S method in a production company, and how effective communication of processes is essential to implementing business change.

Teaching note.

This case describes how eight entrepreneurs discover different opportunities for new businesses to exploit a single technological invention. The case focuses on the process of entrepreneurial discovery and its implications for the creation of new firms. Many of the teaching materials on entrepreneurship assume that entrepreneurs have already discovered an opportunity. While these materials provide useful information about the process of creating new enterprises, they miss the crucial first step in the entrepreneurial process: identifying an opportunity. The case illustrates the theoretical concept of the role of information in the discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities. It can be used in a class on entrepreneurship or management of technology.