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In early 2004, residents of Inglewood, California, a working-class community just outside Los Angeles composed primarily of African- and Hispanic-Americans, were preparing to vote on a referendum that would change the city charter to allow Wal-Mart to build a supercenter on a huge, undeveloped lot in the city. Walmart had put forward the measure after the city council refused to change the zoning of a sixty-acre plot on which it held an option to build. Numerous community and religious groups opposed Wal-Mart's entry and campaigned against the referendum. Walmart promised low-priced merchandise and jobs, but these groups were skeptical about the kinds of jobs and compensation that would be offered, the healthcare that would be provided to employees, and the broader impact Walmart would have on the community. Inglewood was a pro-union community, so there was also opposition based on Walmart's anti-union position. On April 6 Inglewood residents voted to reject the referendum by a margin of 60.6 percent to 39.9 percent. Though smaller, less organized, and with fewer resources than Walmart, this coalition of community and religious leaders had defeated the global retailing behemoth.

After students have analyzed the case they will be able to (a) appreciate the importance of nonmarket factors to execute growth and market entry strategies, (b) understand how the decisions of political institutions depend on the issue context and the alignments of coalitions of interest, (c) formulate and assess strategies to overcome nonmarket barriers to entry.

Management fundamentals, public management, social responsibility, strategy.

This case may be used in undergraduate courses on management fundamentals, public management, social responsibility, or strategy. Also, it is useful for strategy courses in MBA level and MA in development practice.

In 1997, Corporación Picacho con Futuro (Picacho), a second-tier community organization created with the support of Fundación Social (FS) at Medellín's Comuna 6, stands at a crossroads. After promoting community development in the area for over ten years, FS announces that it will be withdrawing its financial support in the following year. As a result, self-sustainability mechanisms and strategies must be sought and formulated in preparation for FS' departure. The Corporation's accomplishments over its collaboration with FS were noteworthy: 16 grassroots organizations working together in one of Medellín's most violent districts proved the social fabric woven by Picacho. The young people who engaged in its projects had become examples of cohesion and civil resistance to armed groups' and drug-dealing networks' recruitment efforts. The Corporation's communication projects safeguarded these youths, providing them with a means to escape conflict. Would that all go down the drain without FS' support?

The intended focus of the case is to help students to understand: third sector organizations' complexity and structure; the notion of social value (how this value is created and measured); sustainability challenges facing social ventures, and, particularly, how to manage tensions between social and economic value creation in social organizations; support ecosystems for social ventures, and management strategies associated with base-of-the-pyramid businesses, introducing the concept of inclusive business.

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 was developed to explore what social entrepreneurship looks like in an emerging market context. It tells the story of Neil Campher, a self-identified social entrepreneur working in South Africa, a country that has recently been awarded middle income status by the World Bank despite sharing a ranking with Syria on the Human Development Index. In environments of deep market failure, what does social enterprise look like? and can you sustain change in communities of extreme poverty? The case looks at the academic characteristics of social entrepreneurs and applies them to Neil to see if he “qualifies”. It has a particular focus on the bricoleur social entrepreneur. It explores concepts of poverty, and looks at sustainability, achieved through asset-based community development. It explores the need for organisations to transition in response to the environment and provides a tool to assess sustainability. The value of the paper is in exploring what social entrepreneurship looks like in an emerging market context. It also raises important questions on sustainability in environments which are inherently constrained.

This case study is aimed at students of social entrepreneurship, development studies, sustainable livelihoods and asset-based development. It is written at an Honours level and is therefore appropriate for use in customised or short programmes. The case study is a good introduction for students with a background in business (e.g. Diploma in Business Administration/MBA/custom programmes) who are wanting to understand social enterprise and blended theories of social and economic change.

The case study follows self-identified social entrepreneur Neil Campher in the grime and crime-ridden township of Helenvale, outside Port Elizabeth, in South Africa. Campher has given up his glitzy career as a financier in the economic hub of Johannesburg and returned to his home town, drawn by a need to give back. Helenvale used to be where he and his school friends would hide from the apartheid police, but as an adult, his friends are focused on strengthening and progressing the community. Campher’s entry point to change is a small waste recycling project, and the case study looks at how he uses this as a lever to achieve deeper structural change in the community. The teaching case exposes several questions around social entrepreneurship and change: what is social entrepreneurship in an emerging context and is Campher a social entrepreneur? What is community led change and can it be sustainable? Campher’s dilemma is around sustainability – has his extensive involvement of the community been enough to achieve progress in Helenvale?

The case study gives insight into social entrepreneurship in a developing country context. It highlights the nuances in definition and introduces the importance of context in shaping the social entrepreneur. The case is an opportunity for students to interrogate ideas on poverty and classical interpretations of social entrepreneurship and relate them to a small community that mirrors the macro country context in South Africa. The case study shows how asset-based approaches to development are interlinked with basic principles of social entrepreneurship. It shows that sustainability is more than a secure and predictable income stream and the need for community engagement and commitment to the solution. In tackling these issues, the case questions sustainability potential and the need for the organisation to transition to respond to opportunity and the changing environment.

Video X1 5minute video interview with Neil Campher 5min: YouTube Video of Campher from Interview 1 www.leadingchange.co.za (live from 01 April 2016) Video News report of gang violence in Helenvale 3min: YouTube. This is a quick visual introduction to Helenvale. It is a news clip, so is particularly focused on the angle of the story. It includes interviews with residents. The site www.youtube.com/watch?v=TluLpTuEq8I Northern Areas burning 2min: YouTube is a collection of video footage from a local reporter which shows Helenvale and its surroundings. The site www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCW-Hp24vMI shows the Text Global Competitiveness Report: South Africa; the first page gives additional information on social and economic development in South Africa, highlighting developed/developing country attributes. It also highlights how Helenvale is a microcosm of the negative social development indicators in South Africa (http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-report-2014-2015/economies/#economy=ZAF). 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.

Human resource management, business ethics, public policy.

The case can also be taught in MBA/postgraduate in management programmes in general management or HR classes to give a lesson in organizational conflict and resolution, negotiation skills (strategies, tactics and power in negotiation) towards the middle or end of the course. The course can also be taught in MBA/postgraduate in management programmes in business ethics classes to make students appreciate the various approaches to ethics – end-results, duty, social contract and personalistic ethics. It also helps students learn how to institute ethics into the cultural fabric of the organization. In public policy programmes, it could be taught to illustrate the crucial role and at times unintended outcomes of actions of street level bureaucracies in policy implementation. The course can also be taught in refresher training programmes for executives to give lessons in conflict management, mediation strategies, union negotiations and ethics.

This teaching case is based on a real incident that took place in a defence production factory of India in the year 2009. It succinctly unfolds a small showdown between two officers that acquires a disproportionate size and explosive dimension and vitiates the environment of the entire organization. The case is a narration of a small row that in no time became a full-blown organizational dispute with layers of issues. Two officers, one very senior and the other influential, got entangled in a conflict, unfortunately in the presence of a large audience; dissatisfied workers and officers fanned the sentiments and encouraged them to unethically leverage legal privileges by gaming in the name of caste and sexual harassment to gain power in the messy dispute. The protagonist Ram Sharma, the General Manager (head) of the factory, is in a precarious situation as the conflict not only puts his managerial skills but also his moral standards and ethics to test.

After discussion and analysis of this case, the students should be able to: appreciate and evaluate the complexities and multiple facets of an organizational conflict including ethical challenges faced in a real life situation, recommend the options and course of action a manager could resort to in a high stake and time bound situation, learn to develop a basic framework for analysing, negotiations and strategize to resolve a conflict as a manager-mediator in such a situation, learn to handle difficult negotiation bound by complexities of unethical and legal disputes, answer to themselves the criticality of ground level bureaucracy's role in implementation of public policies (optional if the faculty decides to discuss the part provided in the teaching note). For international students, this is a case to learn dynamics of “negotiations in Indian context”. Overall development of critical thinking and analytical skills.

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 reviews the development of Dianping. After seeing Zagat's unique business model in the United States, founder Zhang Tao found that he could bring it to China and bring about local innovation. At the beginning of its establishment, the collection and promotion of comment content was the major challenge for Dianping. At the same time, Dianping faced legal issues. To solve these problems, the review mechanism of Dianping was designed to a certain extent to ensure the fairness of the review. With the advent of the mobile Internet era, Dianping began to develop a new business model. Relying on its high-quality “word-of-mouth” content and mass basis, Dianping launched group buying, online restaurant ordering, and other businesses. Dianping has always been open to strategic partners. Since 2015, Dianping has undergone historical changes, merging with Meituan. Since then, Dianping has continuously adjusted its business and organizational structure to maintain its competitiveness. Gradually, Dianping has changed from an independent business entity into a business unit of Meituan.

A successful, multigeneration manufacturing family business, with progressive human resources policies, weighs the pros and cons with family owners and company employees of selling the business to meet the challenge of global competition.

The case presents a significant amount of information on the outbreak of COVID-19 and the expected impact on the economy. Although the case is necessarily concise, several links are given to the online articles and video material on which the case is based. This allows participants to deepen their knowledge of the virus and their understanding of its likely economic impact. To frame the discussion, several philosophies, ranging from Libertarianism to Marxism, are lightly expounded. Readers will need to consider divergent ideas; the sanctity of human life versus the monetary value of a life; the hysteria evoked by COVID-19 deaths versus the placid acceptance of an annual 66,000 deaths by another disease – TB; and the differential economic impact of the virus across extremes of inequality. Perhaps, the key issue relates to the skewness in the death rate: Should young people’s livelihood be sacrificed for a few old people about to die anyway? The case also illustrates the essence of a dilemma – a situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two or more alternatives, especially ones that are equally undesirable.

In March 2020, South African President Cyril Ramaposa ordered a 21-day national “lockdown” to enable and enforce social distancing in an effort to slow the spread of the COVID-19. Many other countries had already taken similar steps, but in a country with 43,000 murders annually, South Africa’s response to only 11 COVID-19 deaths and 1,071 cases was both rapid and harsh. Schools, businesses, social areas and parks were closed. Medical emergencies, essential services and weekly grocery shopping were the only permissible activities. Two weeks after lockdown, there were 1,845 cases and 18 deaths, a far cry from the predicted 30,000 cases and 300 deaths, estimated on the basis of the three-day doubling rate at the start of lockdown. Many businesses, pulverised by closure, daily wage earners and those fearful of losing jobs were hopeful that the lockdown would not be extended. In a country with immense inequality, how would the masses under the age of 65 years, already in poverty and now with their lives pulled apart by an imported disease of the wealthy, respond to extended social and economic deprivation followed by bailouts for business?

MBA and Executive Education

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 11 Strategy.

This case examines the merger of two nonprofit organizations from the point of view of the board of directors and senior staff leaders.

The case is designed to teach students about the complex issues in nonprofit mergers and to stimulate thinking about the role of the board of directors in mergers.

This case study was intended for MBA/postgraduate level courses, or for high-level executive courses. It provided a complex international business context to analyse the intricacies and dependencies between emerging regions, wherein a company (Grupo M) established an entire manufacturing cluster and invested all its assets in a place that has never hosted any industrial activity – in a country whose culture and traditions differed significantly from those of the neighbouring country that provided the investment. The case included a discussion of the negotiations that a private company undertook with two governments (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) to secure access to the free-zone facilities granted by the importing countries.

The case could be seen as a stimulating international business context to examine central tenets around “shared value creation” (Porter and Kramer, 2011): the practice of creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges. As per these authors, there are three ways to create shared value: by reconceiving products and markets, by redefining productivity in the value chain and by enabling local cluster development. The latter is the one best exemplified in this case. Additionally, the case brought intriguing insights on international business that can be related to ethics, corporate social responsibility and its many facets (Banerjee, 2007), as well as concepts around “responsible lobbying” (Anastasiadis et al., 2018).

This case presented the expansion challenges of CODEVI, a Dominican company, which established and operated an industrial (free zone) park in Haiti. Grupo M decided to move its operations when The World Trade Organization eliminated the quota system for apparel imported from the Far East Countries, and its CEO, Fernando Capellán, foresaw that the Dominican Republic would soon become non-competitive. At the time, an agreement between the US and Haiti, which gave preferential access to production from this extremely poor country, was being negotiated. In 2003, there were two sleepy towns at the Haitian-Dominican border: Dajabón, with about 18,000 inhabitants in the Dominican side, and Ounaminthe in Haiti, with about 40,000 inhabitants (with 90 per cent unemployment and over 80 per cent living below the extreme poverty line) on the Haitan side. These two locations were at the heart of a case that narrated how a complex international business operation resulted in an industrial park that has enjoyed considerable economic success, while simultaneously improving dramatically the living conditions of both border towns: Dajabón now has about 35,000 inhabitants and was a booming town, with a prosperous middle class; Ounaminthe now had 170,000 inhabitants (17,000 work directly at CODEVI), and was a city that essentially remained outside the chaos that often plagues the rest of Haiti. Additionally, a major impact of CODEVI was that it stopped the area’s illegal emigration of Haitians to the Dominican Republic, one of the Dominican Republic’s most pressing problems. But as the CODEVI industrial park has no area to expand, a decision must be made to either expand next to the present park, or at one of the three sister towns along the border. Such a park would have to be built from nothing, as was the case for CODEVI almost two decades ago.

MBA, executive and postgraduate.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 5: International Business.

This case presents a series of decision points along with a simple process for ascertaining underlying source(s) of disagreement, which represents an important managerial tool. The president of First Mates' Wholesale Boating Supply Company is faced with the reality of missing year-end earnings projections and breaking a 30-year streak of successive earnings increases. He has asked all his direct reports to meet with their teams and brainstorm about ways to finish the year in strongly and successfully. The case presents a number of those ideas for students to debate and discuss as they decide which ones the company should pursue.