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Strategic and Business Management.

Sophomore level.

This case is about unexpected incident at a Snow Festival, Plearn Park Thailand. Despite a great number of visitors, many serious concerns were raised, particularly the health and safety of people and the environmental impact of the fake snow. Mr Sun and his team tried their very best to address and solve the concerns. But no matter what actions were taken, the concerns and anxieties still remained. As the founder of Plearn Park, Sun decided to end the event. But still he could not get over it. He thought over and over, “what really went wrong with the Snow Festival?”

This case offers a rich context for examining the situation, analyzing the cause of the problem, evaluating the decision and exploring the potential problem with an aim to enhance students’ skills in problem-solving and decision-making through an actual incident in a larger environment.

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 5: International Business.

Entrepreneurship.

The portable solar cooker case is appropriate for upper division undergraduate and graduate students in entrepreneurship, international, strategy or sustainability courses.

xCRUZA, a small industrial design studio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, has experienced limited success and expansion since the company was founded in 2005. Focusing on eco design principles, xCRUZA has maintained an eclectic design mix pertaining to product development in children's toys, medicine, and cleaning products. Challenged by a struggling Argentine economy, a population not focused on environmental concerns, and a general lack of capital availability, the founders of xCRUZA chose to design, develop, market and sell a portable solar cooker. The cooker was originally designed by two of the founders while studying engineering at university. While innovative and award winning in design, xCRUZA's solar cooker has proven to be a challenge to the founders' success both in getting their product to market and fulfilling the mission of the studio.

The learning objectives for the case include: to explore the challenges of an entrepreneurial start-up dedicated to eco design and sustainability principles, to examine market opportunities and consider approaches to selling in dissimilar markets, generate a discussion on strategies that xCRUZA has and can employ, to analyze the mission and direction of xCRUZA. Are they on the right track?

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

You are the CEO of an e-cigarette company that has just been acquired by a major tobacco company. Your company operates in the European market. The July 2013 draft of the EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) recently has been crafted by the European Commission, but it has not yet been examined by the EU Parliament and its Council. The draft proposes that all e-cigarette products be classified as medical devices, regardless of nicotine content. This is the strictest available mode of regulation. If the directive goes into effect as written, e-cigarettes would have to undergo costly and lengthy clinical trials to receive approval and face much stricter marketability restrictions.

The case details the state of the e-cigarette industry in 2013, including consumer data, distribution, competition from similar products, and public health concerns. Students will analyze the current regulatory environment, determine what outcome would be most favorable to the e-cigarette industry, and identify the ways to achieve that goal.

The learning outcomes of this study are as follows: use advanced frameworks and tools to convey complex ideas related to corporate social responsibility and ethics; apply relevant concepts and theories of ethics and corporate governance to a practical situation while making decisions; demonstrate understanding of the importance of stakeholders when developing socially responsible thinking; and analyze ethical and legal conflicts that need to be considered by employees in situations of whistleblowing.

Sara Khan was a Pakistani-American who had moved to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2015 to pursue her Bachelor’s degree in accounting. After graduation, she started working for a baked products manufacturer, Dough Fresh, which was a business unit of Dubai-based Fresh Foods Co. Three years later, she enjoyed her work in the company that embraced strong ethical values and socially responsible practices. She was recently given the task of delivering a financial statements’, investment projections’ and cost-cutting presentation to the senior management of Dough Fresh. Her performance at completing this task was of critical importance for her obtaining the eagerly awaited promotion to the senior accountant position. One day, while Sara was looking through some files to update the financial statements’ records, she came across a deleted purchase order of poppy seeds that amounted to AED 680,000. While poppy seeds were widely used as ingredients in baked products in other countries, they were illegal in the UAE. After approaching her colleague from the purchasing department, she realized that the purchasing manager, who was the grandson of the chairman, was closely involved in the matter. Moreover, it appeared that poppy seeds were used unwashed, which triggered deleterious health consequences and made them highly dangerous to consume. As Sara spent more time researching about poppy seeds and whistleblowing laws in the UAE, she questioned whether she should divulge this information or keep it for herself. Making this decision was extremely challenging. Because the UAE laws regarding whistleblowing were not comprehensive and constantly evolving, she was not certain whether her identity and reputation would be protected in case she decided to blow the whistle. Even more, she worried immensely about the prospect of her colleagues losing their jobs if this information became public, as many of them needed the money to support their families back home and to finance expensive health-related treatments of their relatives. At the same time, she was also aware that if poppy seeds were consumed by people unknowingly, this could lead to serious and even fatal health consequences. All things considered, Sara was caught between deciding what was the right thing to do.

This case study can be used in a higher level undergraduate business course on Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Describes the history of the tobacco industry and its emergence as an extremely effective marketer and non-market strategist. After years of success, both publicly and politically, the leaders of the tobacco industry are faced with mounting political pressure and the financial threat of litigation from class-action lawsuits. The leaders face an industry-wide strategic decision of whether to acquiesce to government demands in exchange for immunity, focus on judicial success, or develop a new course of action.

To evaluate the formulation and implementation of non-market strategies in the context of regulatory, legislative, and legal institutions. To understand how various aspects of the non-market environment interact and how these environments not only change over time, but change market competition within an industry. Further, to formulate and decide between firm-specific and industry-wide strategies. Finally, to appreciate and reflect upon the potential conflict between non-market strategies and ethical concerns.

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.

The technical report released by the National Transportation Safety Board, along with the primary flight cockpit voice recorder data and archival interview data, were used as the basis for this case. Other available public data such as news reports were used to round out the synopsis of the case study.

United Express Flight 5925 was a scheduled commuter passenger flight operated by Great Lakes Airlines with a Beechcraft 1900 twin turboprop. It was a regularly scheduled flight from Chicago O'Hare International Airport to Quincy, Illinois, with an intermediate stop in Burlington, Iowa. Drawing from various first-hand accounts (cockpit voice recorder) and secondary evidence (news reports, archival interview data, and online sources) of the tragedy, the case provides a detailed account of the key events that took place leading up to the accident at Quincy regional airport. The case describes how the radio interactions, a jammed door and degradation of situational awareness all contributed to the accident. Through many of the quotes in the text and eyewitness accounts, readers gain an understanding of the impressions and perceptions of the pilots, including how they felt about many of the critical decisions in the last minutes of the flight and the situation at the airport.

When the authors teach this case, the students are required to read it as pre-reading before class. Various readings and materials (see supplemental readings below and Exhibit 3) are made available to students before class, and the instructor can choose to use some of these materials to further explore areas of interest. This case is best explored over a 90-min session but could be expanded to take up one 3-h session. This case can be covered in an undergraduate senior capstone organizational behaviour seminar, any general organizational behaviour class (including introductory in nature), an undergraduate communication theory class or an MBA class that focuses on applied organizational behaviour concepts. It works particularly well in the MBA class, as students with work experience can make the links between the behaviours explored in the case and their everyday workplaces.

Operations and human resourcing.

This case study is intended for use in graduate, executive level management and doctoral programs. The case study illustrates a combined IT and HR driven participative management control system in a flexible organization structure. It is intended for a class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation.

The case describes the situation of managing unskilled workforces (≥14,000 workers) during the construction phase of the 4 × 250MW power plants both for purposes of turnout as well as due compensation, in the event of an accident. The approved labour forces appointed for 45 × 8 h. Man-days after a rigorous fitness test and approvals of the safety officer are allocated housing and other necessary amenities and a commensurate compensation system.

These include: illustrating typical organizational responsibility structure at a construction site of a large power plant; illustrating the planning and administrative control mechanism in implementing strategy at a construction site of a large power plant; offering students the opportunity to understand and view a typical operational (project) structure; allowing students to speculate adaptations in the wake of an ever-changing business and company environment; and providing an opportunity to introduce a power scenario in India, Indian labour laws and radio frequency identification technology and to relate this to the case in context.

Teaching notes are available; please consult your librarian for access.