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On April 4, 2007, Don Imus, one of the company&s most popular talk show personalities made comments on the air regarding the Rutgers women&s basketball team. According to the transcription from Media Matters for America, Imus said, “ That&s some nappy-headed hos there. I&m gonna tell you that now, man, that&s some … woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like … kinda like … I don&t know.” At first, the comments did not seem out of the ordinary for one of radio&s “shock jocks.” However, as the public reaction grew, the situation changed considerably. Under pressure from the public, Moonves reluctantly suspended Imus. But it was too little too late. By the end of the day on April 11, analysts estimated that $2.5 million in advertising revenue was lost. On April 12, Moonves terminated Don Imus& contract.

After Moonves fired Imus, there was still a lot to consider. He really wanted a way for the company to meet the demands of the company&s stakeholders. In addition, he wanted to avoid any more distractions from the firm&s normal day-to-day operations.

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

This case focuses on ethics issues arising from the tobacco trade. Government as regulator of that trade and guardian of public health faced complex political, financial and ethical issues in discharge of its responsibilities. The harms resulting from tobacco use were well-known and had generally attracted adverse decisions from governments everywhere. The company offering tobacco products for sale, Carreras Ltd., had generally continued to do well financially despite those adverse decisions. Government, in the present case, had introduced legislation to penalize tobacco use in public places, and in so doing, raised several ethical issues such as punishing smokers for using a legal, widely distributed product; classifying cigarettes as harmful to health yet allowing its wide distribution and sale; continuing to derive substantial tax revenue from sale of a harmful product; enabling Carreras to profit from sale of said harmful product; offering little help to smokers to break their nicotine addiction. Students should be asked to identify and recommend solutions to the ethical issues faced by: the government and its “point man”, the Minister of Health as they sought to reduce the public’s use of a harmful product. The smoker who may be even addicted to a product is known to cause or contribute to a host of serious diseases. Students were to identify and recommend solutions to ethical issues faced by the players in the case. One of these players was Carreras whose operations were facing severe regulatory and public relations headwinds. Another was the nonsmoking public whose health was put at risk even though they did not use the product. The sentences could be reworded to read; Carreras, in its continued efforts to justify selling a harmful product. Nonsmokers who, despite not using the product, suffered adverse health consequences because of its use by others.

Cigarette smoking has been linked to a long list of serious diseases including several cancers, cardio-vascular disease, pulmonary ailments and stroke. Despite several government actions over the years to reduce cigarette smoking, it remained widespread and continued to take a heavy toll on public health. The government’s latest gambit, the Public Health (Tobacco Control) Regulations introduced in 2013, represented the first legislation specifically designed to restrain smoking in “public places”. Carreras Ltd., a subsidiary of British American Tobacco (BAT), had been the only significant provider of cigarettes in Jamaica for several decades and in the period allocated for public feedback, mounted a fierce assault on the Regulations, and galvanized other private sector interests to join in that effort. The case addresses the interaction between government’s roles as guardian and financier of public health, the public’s right of choice, and a company’s right to sell a legal product, albeit one deemed harmful to public health. That government derived substantial tax receipts from trade in that product added another layer of complexity to the matter. The Minister of Health, Dr Fenton Ferguson, was the government’s point man and our protagonist.

Final year University students of Management would have been exposed to ethics theories. Many management courses do not devote enough effort to the study of the interplay between the ethical, financial, and legal and the issues that can arise therefrom to complicate decision-making. The case was structured to invite exploration of this interplay.

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

The case highlights the ethical dilemmas people face in various business situations. The case throws light on the causes and consequences of violation and the problems related to enforcement of shared organizational values/code of conduct.

This case can be used in courses on human resource management, OB and corporate ethics and is suitable for the postgraduate and undergraduate students of business schools.

The case narrates the dilemma faced by the Vice President of human resources (VP-HR) of a company when he discovered a major violation of the company's code of conduct by the Vice President of research and development (VP-R&D). The VP-R&D is almost indispensable to the company given his unique expertise and criticality of the new Design Centre which he is spearheading single-handedly. Sacking the VP-R&D has the potential of delaying commissioning of the new centre and putting new business wins in jeopardy. On the other hand, not taking any action may erode employees faith in code of conduct and company values. The VP-HR must decide fast whether and how to take action on gross violation of company's code of conduct.

The students will gain understanding of shared organizational values, code of conduct and ethics, know about the causes and consequences of violation of shared values, discover ways to institutionalize shared organizational values and resolve ethical dilemma.

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

Business-to-business (B2B) marketing, microeconomics and strategic management.

Target audience can be MBA students who are taking B2B marketing, microeconomics and strategic management courses.

On 1 January 2015, Hamza joined Hisham Packaging, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) as the CEO. Hisham Packaging specialises in production of corrugated boxes of various sizes, both in plain and printed forms. Most of Hamza’s experiences have been in the automobile industry, where his focus was on Lean operations rather than marketing. After joining Hisham Packaging, he learnt that in service industry like printing and packaging, the business focus is more customer-oriented than process-orientated. In the packaging industry, each customer’s requirement is unique and customised with variety and small volumes. What was shocking to him was that there is an informal cartel arrangement among major corrugated box suppliers in the country and without the consent of the cartel members, he cannot take any major decision like expanding the business or accepting or dropping a customer. Hamza discussed the scenario with his sales manager Ahmad to see what strategy to adopt for the growth of the company. He was trying to figure out what next? Like any other newly joined CEO, Hamza also had plans to increase the market share and make the operations Lean. He quickly found that it would be difficult for him to make any major impact on the existing business due to the constraints and he needed a different strategic move to grow the company.

The outcomes include understanding of market dynamics, cartelization of companies based on market structure and strategy building. Students learn that an organization’s performance is just not dependent on how the managers plan, organize and control but it also depends on the competitors and customer’s strategies. Students learn how to apply strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis, Porter’s Five Forces analysis and PESTEL analysis in developing business strategy.

Teaching note is attached.

CSS 8: Marketing

Using this case, the students will be able to: understand the ethical issues such as “Management by Trust”, and having specific “Code of Conducts” in an organization; analyse the unethical behaviour that can occur inside the organization based on ethical theories such as egoism, utilitarian, deontology and virtue theory; discuss elements that promote fraudulent behaviour using the fraud triangle framework; explain how internal control contributes in deterring fraudulent employee behaviour; and analyse strategic approach to handle employee misconduct to reduce the risk of fraud.

The owner of Fortune Weddings, Anis, realized that his business was not as profitable as it used to be in the early years. He was suspicious of his employee Samera, for the sudden change of her luxurious lifestyle, but he did not inquire her as she was a hard working employee and customers were fond of her friendly attitude. Nissa, the wife of Anis, received message from customer to confirm the payment, but when she checked the bank account, the money was not there. Further investigation by Nissa revealed that it was Samera who was stealing money from the company. She used to give her personal bank account to customers to transfer their payment. Anis must decide the appropriate course of action to resolve the issues as soon as possible. Failing to do so will incur more incidences of stealing.

The intended audience for this case study are both undergraduate (BBA) and postgraduate students (MBA, MSc) who are taking the Business Ethics course.

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 7: Management science.

After studying this case, students should be able to: explain how strategic management relates to the areas of innovation, operations, technology, entrepreneurship and emerging markets; analyse strategy implementation and execution at the operational level, in contrast to strategy formulation at the strategic mission, values and vision level; discuss innovation, entrepreneurship and new technologies in emerging markets; and assess the impact of technology-driven entrepreneurship on significant socio-economic change that is on transformational entrepreneurship, in emerging markets.

This case outlines key global challenges facing higher education in the African context. It discusses the African Leadership University (ALU) as an innovative higher education institution, including its origins, establishment, strategy and purpose, curriculum, technology and operations, student support network and funding. It also describes ALU’s ongoing challenges and future prospects. ALU was launched in 2015 by Fred Swaniker, founder and chief executive officer and Khurram Masood, co-founder and chief operating officer. ALU’s vision was to transform Africa by developing and connecting three million high-calibre, ethical and entrepreneurial leaders by 2035. In August 2019, Swaniker and Masood considered how to ensure ALU’s sustainability and its vision. They had already changed ALU’s operational strategy by establishing micro-campuses instead of universities to scale rapidly and avoid regulatory barriers. However, would that be enough to uphold ALU’s vision for 2035?

This case is appropriate for postgraduate-level academic programmes and executive education programmes in management.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

This case investigation used firsthand statements, reports, testimony and regulatory records. While widely publicized in the popular press, this case is based on primary documents. On their website, many documents were obtained from Wells Fargo’s Corporate newsroom, such as the internal audit report shared with shareholders and press releases. Most other sources were from US regulatory websites (.gov) or congressional testimony. In a few places, quotes and comments came from reliable journalistic sites that cite their sources and follow a journalist’s code of ethics and conduct, ensuring that the reported remarks and data were verified.

Since 2016, Wells Fargo Bank has faced multiple customer mistreatment investigations and resultant fines. Public outcry and distrust resulted from Wells Fargo employees creating hidden accounts and enrolling people in bank services without their knowledge to meet desired levels of sustained shareholder growth. Over the past five years, Wells Fargo has been fined and returned to customers and stockholders over $3bn. Wells Fargo executives spent the first year of the scandal citing improper behavior by employees. Leadership did not take responsibility for setting the organizational goals, which led to employee misbehavior. Even after admitting some culpability in creating the extreme sales culture, executives and the Board of Directors tried to distance themselves from blame for the unethical behavior. They cited the organizations’ decentralized structure as a reason the board was not quicker in seeing and correcting the negative behaviors of these ‘bad apple’ employees. Wells Fargo faced multiple concurrent scandals, such as upselling services to retirees, inappropriately repossessing service members’ vehicles, adding insurance and extra fees to mortgages and other accounts and engaging in securities fraud. As time has passed, the early versions of a handful of “bad apples” seem to be only a part of the overall “poison tree.”The dilemma, in this case, is who is responsible for the misbehavior and the inappropriate sales of products and services (often without the customer’s knowledge)? Is strategic growth year-over-year with no allowances for environmental and economic factors a realistic and reasonable goal for corporations? This case is appropriate for undergraduates and graduate students in finance, human resources, management, accounting and investments.

An active case-based learning pedagogical approach is suggested. The materials include a short podcast, video and other materials to allow the faculty to assign pre-class work or to use in the classroom before a case discussion.

The case focuses on the following theoretical basis: • conflict management and its resolution; • multiculturalism and workforce diversity through the lens of Hofstede model; and • the Policies, Legal, Universal, and Self model of ethical of building an ethical organization.

Field study with the leadership team as well as with the key talent (people).

Conflictorium, situated in Ahmedabad since 2013, is a museum which acknowledges and discusses conflict through various art forms. Since its inception, the museum has fostered values like diversity, transparency and care reflecting in how it deals with its people and finances. Now, as the museum plans to reach out to new audiences, it is confronted with a challenge to preserve its cherished values and still expand its activities.

This case study is intended for graduate and postgraduate management students.

This case on “Corporate governance: a farce at Volkswagen (VW)” is set in September of 2015. The precipitating events, which started with the Emissions scandal and tampering of the technology, unfold a history of threatening organizational culture, deliberate cheating, and failure of good governance. The case presents that though the outgoing CEO took the responsibility for the event but said that he was shocked by the event and stunned that the misconduct of such a scale could occur in the VW Group. Given the roles and responsibilities of board of management and the supervisory board, how could the scandal of such magnitude go unnoticed? Were robust corporate governance practices being not followed at VW?

The case is based on the material available in the public domain, records, press reports, published books, interviews published by key board members of Volkswagen and the company website.

This case can be used for undergraduate senior classes or graduate and executive education level courses in corporate governance and ethical practices. This case will sync best with the topics around Board Composition and size, Board Independence, fiduciary duties of supervisory board, board duality and leadership and its impact on organizational culture.