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In early 2014, recent Stanford University graduate Tyler Shultz was in a quandary. He had been working at Theranos, a blood-diagnostic company founded by Elizabeth Holmes, a Stanford-dropout wunderkind, for almost a year. Shultz had learned enough about the company to realize that its practices and the efficacy of its much-touted finger-prick blood-testing technology were questionable and that the company was going to great lengths to hide this fact from the public and from regulators.

Theranos and Holmes were Silicon Valley darlings, enjoying positive press and lavish attention from potential investors and technology titans alike. Just as companies like PayPal had revolutionized the stagnant payments industry and Uber had upended the for-hire transportation sector, Theranos had been positioned as the latest technology firm to substantially disrupt yet another mature sector: the medical laboratory business. By the start of 2014, the company had raised more than $400 million in funding, and had an estimated market valuation of $9 billion.

Shultz's situation was exacerbated by the fact that his grandfather, the highly respected former US Secretary of State George Shultz, was on the Theranos board and was one of Elizabeth Holmes's biggest supporters.

But Tyler Shultz worried about the customers he was convinced were receiving highly unreliable and often inaccurate blood-test results. With so much at stake, Shultz wondered how he should proceed. Should he raise his concerns with the firm's investors? Blow the whistle externally? Report to industry regulators? Go away quietly?

This case and its subsequent four brief follow-up cases are based largely on interviews with Tyler Shultz, and outline the dilemma he faced and the various steps he would take both to extricate himself from his unsavory position and let the public know the full extent of the deception at Theranos.

Five optional handouts are available to instructors to further discussion after the case has been debriefed. The handouts serve as additional decision points for the students if your class time permits.

The impact of mankind on the environment and the usage of natural resources might be influenced by spirituality, through the consciousness of creating an improved moral sense regarding the consequences of human activities and the necessity to alter these to achieve sustainable development. However, the spiritual element in the form of ecospirituality (ES) has not been sufficiently considered in pro-environmental studies as it relates to the influence of green training (GT) on voluntary workplace green behaviour (VWGB) in the construction sector. This study aims to determine the effect of GT on VWGB and the mediating effect of ES on the relationship between GT and VWGB on construction projects.

This study’s data were gathered through a questionnaire survey of construction site managers and project managers by adopting the probability sampling method. 249 appropriately completed questionnaires were returned. The data obtained were analysed by means of the partial least squares structural equation modelling technique (PLS-SEM).

The outcomes of the study show that GT has a significant positive impact on VWGB, while ES has a significant mediating effect on the relationship between GT and VWGB, both supporting the study’s hypotheses.

These findings point to the fact that the hitherto conflicting results reported in earlier studies on the GT–VWGB relationship can be attributed to the lack of consideration given to ES. Hence, special attention should be given to ES.

This research presents actions to enhance the transformation of GT into VWGB by giving due consideration to ES, which was not taken into account in previous studies.

The PRCA December 2020 census tells us that, in the United Kingdom, the public relations (PR) industry continues to be predominantly female, with 68% of respondents ticking that box. It also highlights a ‘gender pay gap’ of 21%, an increase of 7% from March 2020 and states that ‘this can be explained by the fact that the respondents … are largely in senior roles which tend to be more male dominated’ (PRCA, 2020), thus demonstrating a leadership gap as well as a pay one. Both of the leading PR professional membership bodies in the United Kingdom – the PRCA and CIPR – acknowledge the gender pay and leadership gaps, made starker in an industry dominated by women, and have committed to tackle the disparity.

In this chapter, I build on Liz Yeomans' (2020) work, in which she suggests ‘new avenues for researching neoliberalism and postfeminism in PR’ (p. 44) to examine the ‘apparently progressive moves’ (Yeomans', 2020) by women's networking organisations. I analyse website texts from two women-only PR networking organisations – Women in PR and Global Women in PR – to explore the ways in which they construct their function, purpose and role, and to examine their position vis-à-vis the contemporary postfeminist media culture (Gill, 2007). The research takes a feminist, discourse analytic approach and sheds light on the reality of women in PR as constructed by organisations whose stated goal is to: ‘improve equality and diversity across the industry by increasing the number and diversity of women in leadership roles’ (Women in PR, 2022).

The writing of this case study was triggered by the numerous media reports in 2020 that talked about the EU nations losing its solidarity. EU being a very appropriate example of economic, monetary and customs union while teaching theories of economic integration and international relations, the post-pandemic approach of EU leadership to rebuild the crisis-ridden member nations seemed an excellent material for developing a teaching case study.

The case study was written based on secondary data and published information available. Enough desk research was undertaken to build the characterisation of the protagonists and due diligence done to chronologically report all facts of the case as the story developed. It was decided to build the epilogue into the case study so that the case analysis had enough depth.

The case is set in 2020 when the global economy was reeling under the massive impact of a lockdown and the aftermath. The case study examines the model of economic union in international business and the various challenges that governance of an association of nations such as the 27 member EU can throw up. It examines the conflict of interest that can arise among member nations during critical circumstances such as the pandemic and its massive tolls.

EU had established itself as a critical international trade player and had already proven their might as a united entity to the world trade partners, given the fact that they were not only a customs union but also a monetary union. In this scenario when the pandemic threw them into the whirlwind of lockdown-induced crisis, the united front of the mighty EU all but crumbled. As the worst-hit economies of Italy and Spain struggled to pull themselves back to normalcy, EU experienced one of its worst solidarity crises.

EU’s president Angela Merkel and ally French President Emmanuel Macron with support from the EU Council’s President Charles Michel stepped forward to resurrect the badly hit economies. They viewed this as the best opportunity to bring about a united front by coming together at Brussels for a summit when lockdown eased up in July 2020. It was to be a show of unity to jointly bail out the severely affected member nations by grants rather than loans. The summit, however, snowballed into bitter arguments and open bickering between the wealthy and not-so-wealthy members, and they could not agree upon the issue of debt vs aid. The fact that the EU was an agglomeration of 27 nations, which were far from homogenous in socioeconomic status, not to speak of divided political ideologies, only added dimensions to the dispute. Negotiations repeatedly hit roadblocks. Can the EU leaders lead their bitterly divided house to a consensus?

The case is suitable for graduate and post-graduate levels. Management courses where international business studies, international trade blocs and global leadership are part of curriculum can use the case to teach concepts of “Regional economic integration”, “Economic and Political union” and theories of “International relations” and “Negotiation”. It can also be ideally used in an executive management programme on “Global Leadership” to highlight the complexities of “governance of international associations” and “consensus building amidst diversity”.

The COVID-19 pandemic and technological advancements have enabled employees to telework. Referring to this emerging phenomenon, the authors aim to examine how employees' levels of trust in management mediated by psychological well-being impact their performance as they telework. Deploying the theoretical lens of person-environment misfit, the authors also explore the role of technostress in the trust-wellbeing-performance relationship.

The data was collected from 511 full-time service sector employees across Indian organizations through a structured survey questionnaire. The proposed moderation-mediation model for this study was tested using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping method.

Structural equation modeling results indicate that trust in management significantly impacts employee performance while teleworking. While psychological well-being was observed as a significant mediator, technostress played the moderator role in the trust-performance relationship. The moderated-mediation effect of psychological well-being in the trust-performance relationship was stronger when technostress was low and weaker when technostress was high.

The authors extend the person-environment misfit theory in the context of telework, highlighting the role of technostress that may impact the trust-wellbeing- performance relationship in such work settings.

The study informs leaders and managers on balancing delicate aspects such as employee trust and well-being that significantly impact performance as they telework. The authors also highlight the critical role of managers in respecting employees' personal and professional boundaries to alleviate technostress.

The authors make a novel theoretical contribution to the emerging literature on teleworking by examining the trust-psychological wellbeing-performance link and the role of technostress in this relationship.