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After reading and discussing this case, students will learn to identify the content and context of enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation that is important from an operations standpoint. Through this case, student will discuss and evaluate the scenarios of ERP implementation arising from different deployment alternatives. Students will also learn to comprehend the case organization’s unique operational context and explore the challenges of introducing change into workplace environment and stakeholders’ overall expectations.

This case introduces students to the dilemmas of managerial decision-making that large companies face while implementing organization-wide technological upgrades, such as ERP. The case is set at a time point where ABC Mining Company – a large public-sector mining company – was trying to identify the most optimal ERP option based on its organizational structure and organizational processes. The information related to ABC’s organizational context included their business, structural and operational scenarios at the time. The information related to ABC’s stakeholders’ expectations reflected their perception about ERP and future implications. The information related to managerial conflicts reflected the understandings of the managers, in terms of need for ERP, needed skill to handle ERP and different types of ERP implementations that others have adopted. The case calls students for extensive analysis of the gathered information to identify and evaluate impacts and risks of all possible ERP alternates, and finally pick upon the most optimal ERP alternate. The case assumes a live 90-min class session conducted by an instructor. The instructor is recommended to assign the case to students for mandatory pre-reading before coming to class. The instructor is provided with a teaching plan to navigate the case.

The case is designed as an introductory case for an undergraduate or a graduate course pertaining strategic decision-making of ERP systems implementation.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

In late 2019, Dr. Hiroaki Kitano, the president and director of research at Sony Computer Science Laboratories (Sony CSL), had decided he would be stepping down from his position soon. Sony CSL, a small blue-sky fundamental research facility funded by Sony, had always operated on the strength of the trust between Sony's CEO and the lab's director. Sony had been hands-off in its management, leaving Kitano to hire, fire, fund, and evaluate the lab's researchers and project portfolio at his own discretion. Now that he was stepping down, however, he worried that Sony CSL could not withstand his departure. Kitano wanted to make a transparent plan for the organization's future before he handed off Sony CSL to his successor. That plan involved three key decisions. First, what should be the optimal structure and governance of Sony CSL? Should it maintain its independence and autonomy, or should it align more closely with Sony's business priorities? Second, how could Sony CSL scale its impact on Sony and society at large, given its small size? Finally, should Sony CSL establish some standard methods of measuring project success and strength of the portfolio? In making these decisions, Kitano wanted to ensure that he preserved the unique culture that had allowed Sony CSL to pursue path-breaking research and innovation.

This case presents some of the entrepreneurial challenges faced by a female leader in the technology sector who conceived a new product based on her passion to help others especially those most disadvantaged.

Upon completion of this case study, students should be able to prepare supply chain and distribution analysis that considers ethics and sustainability, integrate philanthropic efforts as part of an organizational strategy and recognize strategies to promote equity within and beyond an organization.

Connie Stacey (she/her) is an entrepreneur and president of Growing Greener Innovations, an award-winning battery energy storage company based in Alberta, Canada, with a mission to end energy poverty globally. With the emergence of COVID-19 as a global pandemic in 2020, Stacey turned her attention to an innovation called Project Rescue, a ventilator that uses non-identifying patient vitals to track data. It serves as a pandemic early warning system, addressing two key challenges: pandemic data are prone to error, and real-time information is non-existent after the pandemic has spread. This new product was conceived based on her passion to help others, especially those most disadvantaged. This multi-faceted case focuses on the many challenges that Stacey and her team needed to address. The dilemma in this case centres on establishing supply chains amid a pandemic, as well as prioritizing the corporate social responsibility elements of philanthropy and equity within her organization (and beyond).

This case is appropriate for third- or fourth-year undergraduate or graduate-level students.

In addition to “call out boxes” throughout the case and teaching note, additional readings/links/videos are outlined below. (These supplementary materials, “Teaching Tips”, are included in the teaching notes as well.)

CCS 11: Strategy.

T Education is a leading educational science and technology enterprise in China with technology-driven, talent intimacy and quality leadership as the core development objectives. Since its inception, it has been committed to creating better learning experience for children. As the predecessor of T-education, X-education was founded in Beijing in 2003. At first, it mainly provided after-school math counseling for school-age children. Over the past 10 years, its business has been expanding, covering almost every aspect of school-age education. This case studies accounting issues and business ethics challenges that firms may face when they transform from a single (traditional education) line of business to a multiple channel business.

Entrepreneurship, Strategic management, Management information systems.

Undergraduate and graduate capstone course in entrepreneurship, strategic management or management information systems courses.

This case study of a young technology firm, Codezin Technology Solutions, helps to analyze the challenges faced by such firms in emerging markets. Such markets are characterized by rapid turbulence in the market characteristics. The authors seek to analyze the role of disruptive regulatory changes, resulting in the growth of new startups, in affecting the growth and expansion of such young firms. Codezin was established in 2009 as a bootstrap company, to provide low-cost IT services to Indian small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs). Despite some initial success, it began to run into losses due to poor coordination and improper planning. After a period of struggle, the company stabilized its revenue from services business and expanded to mobile solutions, digital marketing, etc. But then the government of India announced the Startup India initiative at the beginning of 2016 to boost new ventures. Codezin did not qualify as per the government rules and thus failed to use the various incentives offered. Hence, it needs to determine a new strategy to compete with the onslaught of freshly funded startups but with a relative lack of market experience.

With the case discussion, the students will gain rich insights on technology businesses aimed at SMEs and the impact of changes in the regulatory regime in emerging markets like India. Further, they get to step into the shoes of the co-founders and choose between diversification vs new market development strategies, spurred by market disturbances and thinning competitive advantage.

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.

Rendering digital services have taken centerstage in the current ICT for development discourse. E-Government services are mostly under this discourse with the aim to provide citizen centric services in the public domain. Business and development organizations alike are also investing in developing their own digital infrastructure for rendering services to its stakeholders. This case describes scenario in which a cooperative organization wishes to use digital infrastructure and provide digital services to its farmer members. The cooperative continued investing in ICT since the last couple of decades and constantly upgraded it to ease the transaction and bring efficiency and reduce information asymmetry. This had greatly benefitted the members. However, the cooperative is aware that its communication network built on the wireless medium has its own limitations in introducing new services and integrating its databases and applications. The cooperative took note of “Digital India (DI)” initiatives to provide digital services to rural areas and build an ecosystem to empower the citizens in its governance set up. This DI policy has implicit provisions of better networking protocols with improved bandwidth. The organization has a dilemma to continue with investing its own resources or explore possibility of piggybacking on the DI initiative. The cooperative wished to examine the total cost of ownership in either case and assess the feasibility of converging with the infrastructure created by the government.

The Government Information Technology Policies are increasingly favouring citizens and in favour of shared infrastructure and services. It is worth the examination to evaluate strategies to deploy IT infrastructure and services with optimized cost and better returns in an enterprise. This is far more important for a social enterprise like AMALSAD cooperative (user-owned firm) that has deployed its own IT infrastructure and ITeS. AMALSAD cooperative deployed its IT assets long back and in the meanwhile, the Government policy is in favour of providing services over the internet.

The case serves to help students to understand the theoretical concept of Enterprise information systems infrastructure and services. It brings to the students understanding: the drivers of IT infrastructure to provide digital services; challenges that would make the social enterprise (in this case user-owned firm) to understand the opportunities and challenges of deploying the right digital infrastructure and get services on demand. The case presents the scenarios for the students to deliberate and find answers to the right approach for estimating the total cost of ownership (TCO).

The case situation presents a scenario for digital government services. Most of the customer-facing enterprises including social enterprises are also providing digital services. It is important that such services converge at an optimized TCO.

Masters in Business Administration with a concentration in Information Systems.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 7: Management Science.

This case explores the concept of crowdfunding by examining the background of the fundraising model in addition to the successful campaign, “Let’s Send Kids to Harvard: Vidal Scholarship Fund.” In this campaign, Brandon Stanton leveraged the large following of his photo blog, “Humans of New York,” to raise more than one million dollars for students in an inner-city middle school. The fundraiser received national attention and broke the record for the most contributors to a single campaign on the popular crowdfunding website, Indiegogo. Students are encouraged to think critically about what elements work together to create a successful crowdfunding campaign.

Secondary data were reviewed to provide a thorough review of the history of crowdfunding as well as to chronicle the events that led up to the successful crowdfunding campaign highlighted in the case study.

This case is appropriate for university marketing, social media, public relations, and entrepreneurship courses. This case has a difficulty level appropriate for sophomore-, junior-, or senior-level courses.

Students learn to evaluate a firm’s growth strategies with the aim of establishing long-term business sustainability. Students will examine the impact of external macro-environmental factors that influence firm growth in an emerging market context. Using this case, students will learn how to apply a resource-based view to a firm’s offering by comparing and identifying the competitive advantage of the internal resources of the firm. Using this case, students can apply the principle of strategic fit by strategically analyzing the opportunities and threats in the external environment, while taking into account the firm’s internal strengths and weaknesses.

This case outlines the strategic, macro-environmental and marketing challenges that the Cape Town-based private higher education institution, Red & Yellow Creative School of Business, faced as it entered its 25th year of existence. In 2019, Red & Yellow had its roots in industry and had done well historically to cement that bond through the creation of successful alumni and the constant innovation of its higher education offering. Two weeks before having to present a detailed five-year growth strategy plan to the board of directors, Rob Stokes, the Director and Chairman of Red & Yellow, was faced with a multitude of decisions pertaining to the sustainable growth of the school. Recent growth patterns showed that programs with lower profit margins, such as classroom-based full-time programs, had experienced double-digit growth while student numbers for higher gross profit offerings, such as online and executive education programs had started to decline. Another challenge that the school faced was the need for its students to future-proof their careers in a world where artificial intelligence and machine learning threatened their careers and jobs. As such, Red & Yellow was confronted with one central strategic problem: How to grow strategically in the short term while developing a sustainable and scalable growth strategy for the school in the long term.

This case could work well as part of an executive education course, as well as a strategic management course for master’s degree or Master of Business Administration students.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Participants will learn to analyze the basis of consumer segmentation in management education. It will specifically highlight the importance of positioning in influencing the marketing strategy of a firm and discuss the importance of a differentiated-low cost strategy to gain competitive advantage. The case will familiarize students with the business environment of rural India, and the applicability of the 4A’s and the 5D’s framework. Finally, the case will help participants understand the difference between a rural market and a Bottom-of-Pyramid (BoP) market.

A rural MBA institute for BoP students is grappling with the problem of low admissions, leading to an existential crisis. Two divergent options are presented to the protagonist. The first is to close down the B-school and use the infrastructure and facilities for a well-funded government skill development program which is vocational and intended for creating blue-collar workers. The second is to find ways to bolster the B-school to ensure that it gets adequate student enrollment, thereby leading to profitability.

This case is suitable for an undergraduate or MBA course in marketing management, rural marketing in India, South-Asian marketing or strategic marketing.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or e-mail support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. There is an accompanying spreadsheet with the case for studying the market. It contains relevant market data that would support analysis of the case. Comments are added for easy understanding. Instructors can access the separate spreadsheet that works out the break-even calculations for the fee structure of the institute. Instructions on calculations as well as comments are added for easy understanding.

CSS 8: Marketing.

Human resource management, Training and development, Competency development and team spirit.

The case is intended for MBA/PGDM level students as part of a human resource management curriculum. The case is more diagnostic in nature and should be discussed in the same spirit. The case is suitable for developing conceptual thinking and community orientation of professionals aspiring or pursuing a career in the area of human resource management.

The case examines the imperatives behind Sterling Tools Limited (STL), a leading fasteners manufacturing Indian company's decision and strategy adopted to inculcate team spirit through outdoor experiential training (OET). The case explores in detail the process undertaken to execute the OET at STL. The case also briefly mentions the tangible benefits of OEL. The case is structured to enable readers to: understand the basic objectives of OET; understand the innovative approach adopted by STL; and understand how an organization responds to changes and challenges in the external environment.

This case is structured to enable students to: understand the meaning and significance of outdoor experiential training (OET); analyze the challenges faced by HR managers in modern day organizations; learn the conceptual framework and understand the principles of OET; examine the measures that can be taken by management to ensure a smooth induction and socialization process of employees; and understand the need of inculcating team spirit among employees.

Teaching notes are available.