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The case begins in mid-2014 and provides an opportunity for students at the undergraduate and graduate level to complete several strategic assessments of an entrepreneurial department within a post-secondary institution. The continuing education department of a university in Canada has been transferred to the dean of an academic faculty. The department has had a history of budget deficits and the new dean and executive director (ED) were tasked to develop and implement a turnaround strategy.

The case is written by the dean who had firsthand experience with the turnaround strategy. The written case was reviewed for accuracy by two principal actors: the ED responsible for implementing the plan, and the vice-president academic who is the dean’s supervisor and was kept apprised of all developments throughout the turnaround. Some of the data were produced by staff within the operation of Professional, Applied, and Continuing Education and acknowledged in the case.

This case is suitable for courses in business strategy, operations management, and includes various implications for human resource management, organizational behavior, and entrepreneurship suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses. It has a focus on turnaround strategies and strategy implementation.

Theoretical underpinnings for this case include strategic visioning and communication: portfolio management and innovation; internal environment analysis and positioning; structuring and resource management; and monitoring and control systems.

The case was written to help students understand the value that a product or service can offer a consumer in terms of helping them accomplish important tasks and overcome obstacles. It is intended to help students understand the link between marketing strategy and different business models.

The case was written after two of the co-authors assisted the organization with developing a marketing strategy and communications plan. The details in the case were gathered through personal interviews with staff as well as document analysis, including marketing documents, financial statements and strategic plans.

This case is suitable at the undergraduate level in third and fourth year marketing courses or strategy courses where all students have completed, at minimum, an introductory level marketing course. It can also be used in graduate-level business administration courses that focus on marketing strategy and positioning.

Todd Wilson, manager of partner development at Educational Technology Corp., needed to determine the targeting, positioning, and selling strategy for its innovative Interactive Mathematics software for the college market. This required determining what types of colleges to target and which stakeholders to focus on within institutions. His task was complicated by the unclear objectives of nonprofit institutions and the differing motivations of teachers, students, and college administrators in adopting software-based learning technology. Highlights the difficulties in innovation adoption within large nonprofit institutions and the challenges in marketing to institutions with complex decision-making processes, multiple influencers, and conflicting motivations.

The learning outcomes are as follows: introduce the concept of the decision-making process, decision-making unit and hierarchy of effects and marketing strategy; identify the critical aspect of segmentation, targeting and positioning; and highlight the critical element of pricing and communication media.

In early January 2017, Mr Ashish and Mr Rahul, co-founders of Biziga, a company engaged in training through simulation for management education, was at crossroads. Keeping in view the challenges of the emerging Indian market, Biziga envisioned creating participant-centric business learning simulations. The initial responses and feedback received from several top B-schools were promising. However, the euphoria did not last long. Biziga retained only a few of its initial clients from the Tier-1 B-schools who had adopted the product. But the response received from other categories of B-schools was not very encouraging. Acquiring new clients from these institutes was the major challenge. The founders of Biziga had differences in their thought about the strategic path they should pursue to achieve future growth. There were several options to achieve the goal of a target revenue of INR 1bn in the next five years and be known as a virtual gamification company with a complete bundle of business simulation products. They had to finalize for the financial year 2017-18 the most feasible and promising option/s that would have a long-term impact on the company’s future growth and success in the upcoming meeting scheduled in the last week of February 2017.

Postgraduate students and executive students.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

The present case study would help readers to understand paternalistic leadership behavior with its underlying theory. Readers would be able to appreciate the nature of experiences employees may have while working with a paternalistic leader high on authoritarianism. This case study would motivate readers to work out appropriate strategies for working under paternalistic bosses. The teaching note sensitizes readers about the complicated relationship between paternalistic leadership and culture.

Pyramid Globe Management Institute (PGMI) is struggling to generate revenue. PGMI founder, Tugmanshu Lakhani, has to find out new sources of revenue to keep the institute functioning. He constitutes a team of three professors for starting a new academic program with a foreign university. The initial success of the team brings favor from the founder but jealousy from the colleagues reeling under job threat. High authoritarianism and interference of the founder create a problematic situation for the three professors. When the new program starts showing promising results, the founder gets apprehensive about whether the new course may hurt the enrolment in the flagship program of the institute. The authoritarian and erratic behavior of the founder had a demotivating effect on the team working for the new program. Some team members resign under pressure while three professors stay to ensure the launch of the program. The professors have to resolve the conflict between their commitment toward PGMI in a troubled time and a career uncertainty if they continue working for it. Anticipating no change in the behavior of the founder and an uncertain future with PGMI, three professors quit after the start of the new program. The founder may continue losing committed employees if he is unable to balance his authoritarianism with benevolence and moral behavior. It will create more problems for PGMI in the future.

This case can be used in organizational behavior, leadership and team-building courses in the regular Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs. The case can further be used in the executive development program, especially for analyzing the leadership problem in higher education organizations.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 7: Management science.

After completion of the case study, students will be able to learn, understand, examine and customize leadership styles per organizational culture; understand the conflict management styles of a female leader; and comprehend the organizational change process to devise an effective communication strategy.

Ever-changing business demands managers adopt organizational change in leadership styles, business processes, updated skill sets and minds. One must be ready to understand influential nurtured corporate culture and human resource resistance towards the inevitable change. This case study attempted to discuss the female protagonist dealing with an organizational conflict. The case study introduces one such protagonist from a century-old woman’s educational institution. Subsequently, this case study presents organizational change under the leadership of a female protagonist. This teaching case study gives the reader an insight into situational leadership, conflict management styles and the corporate change process by implementing an appropriate communication strategy. This case study describes the change process through the various decision-making scenarios that an academic institute over a century old faced during the post-pandemic crisis after adding a crucial protagonist. The employee union, followed by students and administrative employees, has challenged the dominating leadership position held by the college principal. Protests occurred due to the college administrator’s refusal to adjust her approach to leadership. This teaching case then provided different leadership styles of the current and old leaders. Finally, the case study lists the challenges a leader faces during turbulent times and the lessons a leader should learn from such situations while transforming the institute.

The teaching case benefits undergraduate students in business management subjects such as conflict management, leadership and organizational behaviour. Nevertheless, trainers can use this case study to teach seasoned managers and emerging leaders the significance of adopting and implementing change while understanding situational leadership.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 10: Public Sector Management.

This case involves an experience in large group visioning, specifically the processes of developing and building consensus around institutional goals and objectives. It takes place at a point roughly halfway through the process. The protagonist, Sally, is the project coordinator. At this point in the process, the participants have collectively invested hundreds of hours in the creation of widely diverse ideas for the future of the university. Her dilemma is the challenge of maintaining the commitment and support of the participants as the vision is reduced to a much shorter and more focused statement.

The case is based on archival data and interviews with 40 of the 300+ participants who were engaged in the process, including Sally, steering committee members, faculty, staff, and outside stakeholders (alumni and members of the board of directors). The Instructor's Manual provides key questions for future large group process consultants, OD professionals and students of organizational behavior and leadership, including references from the OD and visioning literature. An Epilogue provides the actual decision at the time of the challenge and its rationale.

Dean Adams was given notice to develop an online program with the School of Business Administration as a prototype of online education for the rest of the University. A major task which faced the Dean involved working with University information technology (IT) staff and faculty to choose a learning management system (LMS) to support the online program. After talking with the Chief Information Officer at Seacoast University and appointing a committee made up of IT staff and faculty, the Dean was presented with the committee's recommendation that focussed on two major decisions: first, choosing the LMS product for the University, and second, choosing to locate the LMS product and server either on-campus or off-campus. In the course of considering whether or not to accept the committee's recommendations, Dean Adams weighed the evaluations and justifications as outlined by the committee in the context of Seacoast University's IT situation.

Public Health; Leadership; Organisational Development; Organisational Behaviour; Public Administration Management.

Postgraduate level for honours or masters programmes in courses on public health; executive leadership and management programmes; MBA level.

The case unpacks decentralisation as a means to promote and improve local decision-making and accountability through community participation and engagements. Ayanda Nkele was a programme manager in a health district in South Africa. He was faced with many challenges when trying to implement his programme, most of which were related to local authority, responsibilities and decision-making abilities at his level. This case describes briefly the South African health system. and how it functions. It describes the proposed changes to the health system and its transformation towards Universal Health Coverage. The decision space analysis as discussed in the case illustrates the types of decentralisation in the country and how this also applies to Nkele’s level.

Understanding the concepts and principles of decentralisation within the context of strengthening district health services, the re-engineering of primary health care (PHC) and rolling out a National Health Insurance in South Africa. Applying the “decision space” approach to analyse the extent of decentralisation. Grasping the requirement of leaders to be “contextually intelligent” and identify the important contextual variables to take into account when analysing public health care.

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.

Corporate entrepreneurship; Intrapreneurship; Human Resources.

MBA students in Human Resource, entrepreneurship and/or PhD students in the areas of Human Resource, Corporate Entrepreneurship and/or on Intrapreneurship studies.

This case reveals that progressive change originated from individual’s positive deviance approaches, opportunistic sensitivity, ability to learn, evaluate and the ability to develop ideas on how to exploit or pursue identified opportunities (intrapreneurial behaviour).

The student will learn to deal with the complex nature of organisations and the tendencies of institutional processes to be uncertain, unpredictable, and uncontrollable; appreciate the internal workings of an organisation, the external environment; and understand the role of generative leadership, positive deviance, novelty ecosystems and intrapreneurial behaviour and the fact that connections and interactions in a social network are non-linear or non-proportional. This means that complex system predictions can be much more than simple regression predictions. They will be able to apply both bottom-up and top-down influences from proactive leadership or generative leadership events and benefit from positive results and the emergence of innovation.

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: 3 Entrepreneurship.