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This case study covers different concepts related to leadership. It should help students analyze business situations from a leader’s perspective. By the end of this case study, students would be able to understand the role and the characteristics of leadership during a crisis using the 11 dimensions of character framework, map leadership personalities using the HEXACO model to understand the effectiveness of certain traits in crisis management and apply theories of change management using the Satir and Switch models, in addition to Kotter’s theory of change.

Elsewedy Electrometer Group (EMG) was owned and operated by Emad Zaki Elsewedy as the sole founder and chief executive officer (CEO). EMG was a leading company in the meters industry in Egypt. The time span of this case study covered the period from November 2011, when Elsewedy’s health was deteriorating, to his early retirement in September 2012, and his comeback, two years later, in September 2014. In November 2011, against the backdrop of Elsewedy’s deteriorating health and subsequent early retirement in September 2012, EMG faced several challenges in achieving its vision that hindered its business growth. These arose after Youssef Salah, the former export director of EMG, was appointed as the company CEO. In Elsewedy’s absence, EMG faced liquidity problems, as the banks demanded that it repay all its debts. At the same time, the business suffered severe losses owing to its inefficient operations. Elsewedy decided to return to EMG in September 2014 to find a solution and help the business recover to ensure its continuity and sustainability. After taking a holistic view of the crisis at hand, he was faced with a dilemma and several questions: Was the company leadership effective? Would a change in leadership be required? How could he lead effective change in light of the current crisis? How could he ensure that EMG did not end up in a similar predicament in the future? This case was designed to teach leadership in crisis and change management in the metering industry.

This case study is intended for graduate and undergraduate students studying a leadership or management course. It can help students comprehend the challenges that arise when a large business undergoes a management transition during a crisis. The case study also considers how leaders are shaped by crises. This case study can be considered as level 1 on a 1–3 scale, as the full description of the situation is given in the case study and the task of the students is to analyze the leader and his decisions using various academic concepts and theories (Erskin et al., 2003).

Teaching notes are available for educators only

CSS 7: Management science

This study aims to propose a new method to predict retail store performance using publicly available satellite imagery data and machine learning (ML) algorithms. The goal is to provide manufacturers and other practitioners with a more accurate and objective way to assess potential channel members and mitigate information asymmetry in channel selection and negotiation.

The authors developed an open-source approach using publicly available Google satellite imagery and ML algorithms. A computer vision algorithm was used to count cars in store parking lots, and the data were processed with a CNN. Linear regression and various ML algorithms were used to estimate the relationship between parked cars and sales.

The relationship between parked cars and sales was nonlinear and dependent on the type of channel member. The best model, a Stacked Ensemble, showed that parking lot occupancy could accurately predict channel member performance.

The proposed approach offers manufacturers a low-cost and scalable solution to improve their channel member selection and performance assessment process. Using satellite imagery data can help balance the marketing channel planning process by reducing information asymmetry and providing a more objective way to assess potential partners.

This research is unique in proposing a method based on publicly available satellite imagery data to assess and predict channel member performance instead of forward-looking sales at the firm and industry levels like previous studies.

Discovering opportunities is a key entrepreneurship competence for those who want to start their own business and who choose to enter the workforce. In this study, the authors focus on the antecedents of the ability to discover entrepreneurial opportunities by uncovering how and when students' personal initiative (Frese and Fay, 2001) leads to an increase in this key competency. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of risk-taking and creativity in the interplay between personal initiative and opportunity discovery competencies among university students.

Data were collected with a self-assessment tool in two moments in time, using a sample of 103 university students from Portugal enrolled in an entrepreneurship course. The authors measured personal initiative and entrepreneurial risk-taking at the beginning of the entrepreneurship course (Time 1). Two months later (Time 2), by the end of an entrepreneurship course, the authors measured creativity and opportunity discovery abilities.

The results of this study showed that risk-taking mediates the effect of personal initiative on opportunity discovery and that creativity interacts with risk-taking and opportunity discovery. Specifically, the authors found that the relationship between entrepreneurial risk-taking and opportunity discovery is positive and statistically significant when students display average or above-average creativity. The indirect effect of the personal initiative on opportunity discovery through entrepreneurial risk-taking seems to increase when the student's creativity increases, as the index of moderated mediation is positive.

As with all studies, there are limitations to work of this study. First, data of this study is restricted to a sample of students from Portugal. As such, the authors should be careful about generalizations concerning students from other cultural settings; entrepreneurship competencies can differ across countries. Second, the findings of the present study are based on students’ self-reports regarding their own entrepreneurship competencies.

This work can inspire entrepreneurship educators to look at the entrepreneurship competencies models holistically and inspire future work to explore the relationship patterns between entrepreneurial competencies.

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the effects of active political engagement in port-of-entry jobs and employment pathways for graduate students in a post-communist context which is characterized by clientelism. The data are derived from a structured survey of a small local labour market where political clientelism is pronounced due to the strong network ties. Controlling for both demand and supply factors, the authors identify a profile for those who are more prone to engage politically in exchange for public sector jobs, which are in turn vulnerable to regime changes.

The authors use data from a sample of 191 students that records month-to-month employment states for three consecutive years (2012–2014). The method attempts to replicate an experimental design with repeated measures before and after the June 2013 government elections. The data is analysed using sequence analysis with optimal matching and difference-in-difference methods.

The analysis provides evidence of links between political engagement and selection onto different employment pathways under conditions of political clientelism. The pathways themselves are also shown to be differentially impacted by the 2013 election (positively or negatively). Together, these results are supportive of claims that jobs in Albania, particularly those in the public sector, are linked to the short-term presence of vote-buying. This is shown to be the case even for this sample of educated members of the labour force (i.e. university graduates). The analysis also finds evidence of accumulative disadvantages over time, in relation to subjective perceptions of life satisfaction, migration intentions, employability and success in life, as a result of active political engagement.

The study uses a unique data set and a novel methodological approach, sequence analysis. Occupational history calendars were used to capture quantitative information recording detailed work histories. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this innovative method has not been used before to measure the temporal effects of political engagement on employment pathways.

This article aims to examine the impact of multiple suppliers on competitive advantage by exploiting digital capabilities.

The author propose a structural equation model with the adopted measure from the literature. Hence, the study conducted an online survey in Indonesia with 450 qualified respondents involving managers and owner-managers.

The results indicate multiple suppliers help the firms to exploit digital capabilities, which foster them to achieve competitive advantage. Hence, different level of market turbulences determines the impact of numerous suppliers on competitive advantage. Specifically, the multiple-suppliers approach is more effective in supporting buyer firms to gain a competitive advantage during high market turbulence than low market turbulence.

This study offers empirical evidence with unit analysis of buyer firms that seek competitive advantage by exploiting digital capability. However, this approach focusses on a single unit analysis, which is buyer firms. Hence, there is an opportunity to adopt qualitative approach to explore the suppliers and end-users from different perspectives from other supply chain players.

This article contributes to the growing literature on the resource-based theory by examining the relationship between the multiple-sourcing model and competitive advantage. The authors also discuss the intersection between resource-based, dynamic capability and stakeholder theory.

This study aims to explore how individual personal growth initiative (PGI) mediates the relationship between a positive error orientation and job crafting. Furthermore, it explores the moderating role of the feedback from the leader in this relationship.

Data was collected through a survey conducted on 209 international employees from multiple occupations.

A positive error orientation is indirectly related to job crafting through its relationship with PGI. Also, feedback from leadership has a negative effect on the relationship between a positive error orientation and PGI. Indeed, the mediation effect of PGI on the relationship between a positive error orientation and job crafting loses significance when the leadership feedback is high.

As far as job crafting is concerned, it is essential to develop an error management culture to promote proactive behaviors among individuals.

Although the literature tends to highlight the positive effects of receiving feedback from the leader on employee’s professional development, this paper highlights the potential detrimental effects of leader feedback on PGI, therefore opening a new interesting area that demands attention.

Police training is in a period of transition, requiring new recruits to already have, or work towards, a policing degree. However, recruitment procedures have not significantly changed in the past few decades. With psychometric testing commonplace in North America and Australasia to help ensure the right recruits are selected, this research seeks to understand if police trainers feel there is scope for a similar process in the United Kingdom (UK).

Twenty-five police training staff across four different police forces took part in a total of six focus groups to discuss views on this and other areas of recruitment.

Results indicated that police trainers are concerned about the quality and aptitude of recruits. Support was given for the introduction of formal psychometric testing to prevent unsuitable candidates from successfully joining and/or to give trainers better insight into the personalities of their students.

There was general concern from female trainers that the police environment new recruits entered still bore elements of covert sexism. Trainers' views on reforms to police recruitment, the implications of this and areas for future study are discussed.

Artifacts are rarely used today to visualize thoughts, insights, and ideas in strategy work. Rather, textual and verbal communication dominates. This is despite artifacts and visual representations holding many advantages as tools to create and make sense of strategy in teamwork. To advance our understanding of the benefits of visual aids in strategy work, I synthesize insights from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and management research. My analysis exposes distinct neurocognitive advantages concerning attention, emotion, learning, memory, intuition, and creativity from visual sense-building. These advantages increase when sense-building activities are playful and storytelling is used.

The study aims to develop an in-depth understanding of challenges faced by Indian women professionals during the pandemic and the human resource (HR) initiatives like effective communication, taken by the organizations to mitigate the plight of these professionals.

A mix of two qualitative research methods namely focus groups in-depth and one-to-one in-depth interviews was used. A total of 32 females working with different organizations participated.

The thematic analysis revealed themes related to challenges faced by working women-gendered burnout, mental health issues, increased household responsibilities, job insecurity, work-life conflict, gender inequalities, reduced internal communication and financial independence, domestic violence and exploitation. The major themes that emerged for the organizational initiatives were flexible working hours, equal women representation in response to planning and decision making, driving transformative change for gender equality, paid leaves for family care, caregiving bonus, leadership development seeds, increased female recruitments, transparent communication and counseling sessions.

The study establishes a holistic understanding of the plight of Indian women professionals and the consequent organizational interventions accompanied by transparent communication. It adds rigor to the evolving literature on COVID-19 and enriches the theoretical narrative of policy adaptations by industry practitioners for aligning them with employee needs. This helps in routing the policy design and implementation in light of the challenges faced.

The study presents an in-depth understanding of challenges faced by women employees; and provides a foundation for identifying human resource management (HRM) interventions customized for working females. It also proposes a framework implementable in the recovery phase, deploying critical strategic shifts like reflection, recommitment and re-engagement of the women workforce in order to maximize their efficacy for rapidly evolving organizational priorities.

This paper offers a story-based/narrative inquiry rooted in qualitative methodology, portraying a millennial entrepreneur in Uganda, a low-developed country that has successfully demonstrated entrepreneurial behaviors at work. The study of entrepreneurial behavior at workplaces by millennial entrepreneurs formed the basis for the real-life trials that entrepreneurs go through in their businesses. Besides, the produced empirical content gives a solid linkage between the story and the enterprise's work setting.

In this study, the authors used storytelling to get a clear view of reality and obtain a real-life experience of entrepreneurial behavior at work. The experiences and perceptions of the millennial entrepreneur were assessed by conducting in-depth interviews while focusing on the context, actions, results and lessons to generate a coherent story.

This paper reports that demonstrating entrepreneurial behavior at work by the millennial entrepreneur resulted in better performance that ultimately benefited the enterprise. Additionally, findings reveal that story-based narrative inquiry is appropriate for demonstrating the true reality at workplaces, especially in the context of exhibiting the behaviors of entrepreneurs. Other entrepreneurs can emulate what the actor did and benchmark on the findings to improve their performance and that of their enterprises.

This study is unique in its use of a positive story showing a real-life experience of how entrepreneurial behaviors are exhibited at workplaces in micro and small enterprises in a low-developed country like Uganda. The paper also offers evidence and insights into the use of a positive story to demonstrate a practical experience of how millennial entrepreneurs demonstrate entrepreneurial behaviors at work. Additionally, the study used multiple theories that best explained the current practice of entrepreneurial behavior among millennials at workplaces in micro and small enterprises.