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The case centers on Shilling & Smith's acquisition of Xteria Inc. and the resulting need to quickly scale the company's IT infrastructure to accommodate the acquisition. The case is based on a real leasing problem faced by a major retail firm in the Chicago area when it purchased a small credit card processing firm and scaled the operations to handle the retail firm's credit card transactions. The CIO of Shilling & Smith needs to determine which lease option is the best means of providing the technical infrastructure needed to support the firm after the acquisition of Xteria. Several issues will drive this decision, including the value and useful life of the equipment, as well as the strategic context of the firm. This case examines how to evaluate different lease options when acquiring data center information technology infrastructure. Specifically, the case addresses software vs. hardware leasing, different lease terms, and choosing between different lease structures depending on the strategy and needs of a company. This case enables students to understand the different types of technology leases and in which situations these leases would be employed.

The Shilling & Smith case examines how to evaluate different lease options when acquiring data center information technology infrastructure. Specifically, students learn software vs. hardware leasing, different lease terms, and how to choose between different lease structures depending on the strategy and needs of the company. A secondary objective of the case is to teach students the important components and relative costs of information technology infrastructure.

BP has interest in both upstream and downstream segments in over 100 countries worldwide. The United States subsidiary of BP is the nation's largest producer of oil and gas. This case focuses on the upstream procurement activities in the Gulf of Mexico.

Data Services provides flexible, scalable data processing and information storage to the fast-food industry. Sales have grown steadily, but the company has operated at a loss since its founding five years ago. Data Services management is enthusiastic about the company's prospects. The chief executive of Armistead, the insurance company that owns Data Services, is under pressure from corporate officers to slough off the subsidiary. A business analysis is done not only to help the CEO decide whether to continue investment in Data Services, but also to determine if the company is well managed. Information includes the day-to-day operations of Data Services, its sales process, profit and loss statement, revenue and expense analysis, and cost allocations.

Social entrepreneurship/social innovation.

This real case targets license and master’s students as part of an ongoing course on social entrepreneurship, social innovation, in one word, on entrepreneurship.

Mlouma is a platform based on Web, SMS, USSD, mobile application and call center. This social enterprise keeps farmers in contact with food buyers by displaying real-time market prices and localizations. The service will improve the efficiency of the agriculture supply chain, helping farmers to get a better price for their product. By introducing information and communication technology, Mlouma provides innovative solutions to the market failure by creating more value for producers and consumers.

This case shows the importance of the entrepreneurial orientation of social enterprises to adapt to its context and discuss theory of social entrepreneurship.

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CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

Dick Mayo, one of the most celebrated value investors in America was puzzled by the New Economy's continuous bias toward growth investment strategies. He examines the basics of his philosophy versus that of a growth orientation by evaluating the long-term expected returns of several value and growth stocks. This case can be used to pursue several objectives: (1) to define value and growth investing-where the differences lie and whether one approach is superior to the other or whether both have merit; and (2) to discuss issues related to consistency of one's investment philosophy. Should one stay true to one's philosophy even when the market seems to run counter to it for a prolonged period of time? Can value investing deliver value in this New Economy or is it only an Old Economy concept? The students are instructed to perform basic valuations of Cisco Systems (a growth company), CVS, R.R. Donnelley, and Manor Care (value companies) and compute their long-term expected returns. The case comes with an Excel spreadsheet containing the data and relevant valuation ratios for the above firms. The valuations are straightforward, but they tell an interesting story: the expected returns of glamorous stocks in reality may not be so glamorous.

Launched in 2014, Amazon's Echo and Echo Dot smart speakers led the category's rapid adoption by households and enabled the penetration of artificial intelligence (AI) voice assistants into the everyday lives of millions of people. By 2019, Alexa the virtual brains behind Amazon's smart speakers was able to play music, create reminders, get weather reports, control lights and other home appliances, shop, and do much more in response to voice commands. Amazon had developed significant new capabilities for Alexa, developed an entire ecosysgtem around it, expanded Alexa's user base to more than 100 million users, and made significant progress in monetizing its digital voice assistant. However, Alexa's progress also created new challenges for Amazon, its Alexa-enabled customers, and society at large. Amazon needed to identify and address these challenges in order to encourage continued consumer acceptance and preclude detrimental government or regulatory action.

Quality control in the automobile industry. Supply chain management. Brand reputation. Decision making. Civil responsibility.

MBA.

In 2004 a Toyota Hilux was involved in a traffic accident in Japan because of a defective rod which cracked. The driver lost control of the vehicle. In Japan, the problem was regarded as negligence, and Toyota implemented a recall program. Toyota's CEO needs to inform to the public how the issues related to the recall were not detected in the design and production process.

Understand how a problem in quality control occurred and to analyze all the possible causes and solutions. To identify the stakeholders that were involved in the problems, and to evaluate what was at stake for each one of them.

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

Human resource management.

Postgraduate and graduate management programs.

Watson and Lilly (W&L) Berhad is the subsidiary of Wanger Group of Company, established in 1822 by Wanger Watson Group, and engages with transportation and logistics, communication and media, and electricity storage activities. The company provides freight forwarding by air, sea, and land, warehousing and distribution, industrial logistics, and stevedoring and port services. The case is all about the issues related to operations and human resource management in W&L Berhad, company in Malaysia. The company management observed that there has been an increasing trend on the number of mis-shipment. The investigation report was too worrisome to the Managing Director. The mis-shipment recorded in September 2011 was 5.91 per cent and by the end of first quarter in November 2012, the mis-shipment increased to 6.71 per cent. On the second quarter starting from December 2012, the mis-shipment continues to increase to 6.99 per cent and by February 2013, the mis-shipment was at 7.56 per cent. An independent consultancy was assigned to analyze the root causes of the issues. The agency found that the business having high operating cost due to operational inefficiency, documentation issues and human resource issues. The case study proposed several solutions to enhance the manpower efficiency, operational effectiveness, and achieving customer's satisfaction.

Learning the nature of business: to explain the nature of freight and forward business and the base of W&L Berhad, Malaysia. Nature of business operation issues: the case can be used to examine the issues of business operations due to mis-shipment in freight and forward companies. Nature of manpower issues: the case can be used to examine the issues of manpower in correlation with a mis-shipment of freight and forward companies. Integrating business and operational issues with customer delight and business loss. Strategic intervention: instructor can explore varied strategic interventions that curb the operational and manpower issues that may lead to business growth and development in freight and forward companies, achieving customer's satisfaction.

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

CF Industries’ products nitrogen fertilizers are a crucial input to making agriculture productive enough to feed the world. However, its products are undifferentiated commodities. Throughout parts of its history, CF has struggled to be consistently profitable, yet over the last decade it has been very profitable. The case provides an opportunity to examine how CF manages to create value and capture it as profits despite being in a commodity business.

Subject area information and communication technology (ICT) for development.

Master of Business Administration Program’s Management Information Systems courses. Or introductory courses in Masters in ICT for Development.

The paper aims to highlight the endeavour of public distribution system (PDS), a food security scheme for under-privileged people in India, towards excellence, using ICT in the state of Chhattisgarh. It presents two important roles of ICT: one, as a system improvement tool, through supply chain integration (in Phase 1) and, the other, as tool for empowerment, by providing choices through computerized online real-time electronic (CORE) PDS (in Phase 2). CORE PDS was intended to provide choices of retail outlets to poor beneficiaries for collecting their food entitlement, breaking the retail outlet’s monopoly. The project was successfully implemented in some urban areas of Chhattisgarh, providing motivation for its mass scale roll-out. But, the contextual differences between rural and urban settings were raising questions on the ultimate value expected to be delivered by the project in rural areas.

Two major learning outcomes of the case: students will appreciate the multi-faceted role of ICT in improving the performance of a system meant for a financially poor section of the society; students will understand the role of contextual settings in a developing economy in the endeavour of ICT projects for societal development.

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 10: Public Sector Management.