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The case can be used in the subject areas of marketing, strategy, business model innovation, and general business growth, particularly those with a focus on emerging markets.

This case can be used in postgraduate and post-experience business courses such as Master's degrees in Business Administration, postgraduate diplomas, executive education, or specialist Master's degrees.

This case looks at craft beer business Jack Black's Brewing Co. started in 2006 in Cape Town. After humble beginnings, protagonist McCulloch grew the company rapidly with a focus on the strategic “tap” market across the country. After systematically working with a number of contract brewers the company finally invested in their own, industrial-scale brewery and brewpub. The dilemma facing McCulloch and Jack Black's Brewing Co. is one of cash flow. In order to generate cash flow, the management team needs to drive sales so that the brewery operates at full capacity. While it strives to attain this goal, there are considerable cash flow and liquidity challenges.

The development of an understanding of an effective marketing mix to position a niche and young brand.

An understanding of the concept “co-opetition” and how it works in a growing market.

The ability to assess the various growth stages of a business.

The CFO of a diversified baking company must decide whether to issue convertible debt rather than straight debt or equity. In evaluating the proposed terms of the convertibles offering, the student must value the securities by valuing the call option (using option pricing theory) and the bond component. This case introduces the topic of convertible securities. Student and instructor worksheet files are available for use with the case and teaching note.

The Home Depot case is a great story. It's about entrepreneurship, growth, CEO leadership, and the dramatic impact, good and bad, a CEO can have on a company's growth culture, strategy, and performance. Home Depot had faced market growth challenges for the last seven years as it tried in numerous ways to reignite its growth engine. The case explores the growth strategies of CEOs Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank, and Blank's successor Bob Nardelli, a former GE executive. After examining Home Depot's growth history, the case challenges students to devise a growth strategy for the company under a new CEO.

Information was obtained in interviews with Richard Nagel in Winter/Spring 2022. This information was supplemented by material from secondary sources. The only information that was disguised were the real names for Bob Crater, Tim Landy, Jane Tolley and Mary Nagel.

The case was classroom tested in Summer 2022. The responses from students helped to shape the writing of the case.

Richard Nagel, the owner of the RE/MAX Elite real estate agency in Monmouth Beach, New Jersey, has just learned that one of his agents, Tim Landy, quit and left the industry. Tim was a young real estate agent and Richard had spent considerable time training him. Tim was motivated and he worked hard to prospect for business, but he showed that he was experiencing difficulty closing on his sales. Richard decided to recommend that Tim work with another agent, Bob Crater, as Bob was an experienced salesman but was not doing the up-front prospecting that Tim was doing. Richard suggested two different strategies to the two agents – a pairing up arrangement and peer-to-peer learning. The outcome that Richard envisioned was that both of the struggling salesmen would benefit from either of these strategies, but Bob refused to collaborate.

Tim’s quitting was characteristic of an ongoing problem with employee retention that Richard had been experiencing as a manager in recent years. This problem caused Richard to think about how he recruited his real estate agents, how he developed them through coaching and how he motivated them so that they would stay happy in their job and not leave. He recognized the importance of thoroughly examining his retention strategy within the next 12 months so that he could better manage the problem and strengthen the productivity of his real estate agency.

The case is intended for an undergraduate course in human resources management, as it deals directly with recruiting, coaching and retaining employees.

This case is focused on the allegations of corrupt practices within the strategic leadership at the board level of an international sports organization – the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). The theoretical premise is that the practices and decisions of the AFC’s leadership will have a profound impact on the AFC’s performance. However, because the AFC is the continental governing body, the impact is theorized to be far larger, across an entire industry. In writing the case, the authors were guided by upper Echelons theory (UET) (Hambrick and Mason, 1984; Hambrick, 2007; Hambrick et al., 2015), which argues that an organization’s strategic direction is directly influenced by its leader’s values. The authors selected UET for the theoretical framework, as it considered a spectrum of factors from industry, leader characters (values), their choices and the results of their actions. Such a comprehensive theory aligned with the complexities of the AFC and its leadership. In constructing the case roadmap using UET, the authors first adopted an ethnographic methodology. This was motivated by the fact that one of the authors had been embedded for many years as part of the leadership team at the AFC. His career work notes based on direct interactions and observations of these leaders helped in two ways: to identify the complex set of personal characteristics of these leaders (i.e. background, their careers outside football and financial standing) as they originated from 47 different nationalities. UET refers to these as observable factors to better theorize the hidden intentions of their alleged corrupt behaviors. UET identifies this second set of non-observable factors as psychological factors. These two different sets of observations combined helped to theorize their drivers, intentions and strategic decisions (options). For the second methodology, the authors accessed archival, publicly available media news and reports to understand the consequences of their actions to the AFC and the Asian football industry. This completed the final parts of the UET framework (Yamak et al., 2014).

This case relied on information that was widely reported within international media, press announcements by various organizations, published decisions by tribunals and publicly available information on the AFC. All of the names and positions in this case are actual persons.

This case focuses on the role and influence of the AFC as the Asian football governing body. The AFC is a member of the world football governing body – FIFA. With a US$1bn budget, the AFC has a strong impact on the future of football among Asia’s three billion people. Unfortunately, the AFC has been unable to create the value in its sports events or properties that attracts fans and investors. Central to this problem is the issue of corruption and corruption allegations within the AFC, especially with regard to its leadership. This case, therefore, attempts to highlight the various issues, discusses the circumstances around these challenges and brings forth the complexities of leading a truly international organization across 47 countries. Such factors are then tied to the value of the organization’s products or services in the marketplace.

The case is written and designed for a graduate level (MBA) class or an upper level undergraduate class such as corporate strategy, leadership, international management, international marketing, contemporary issues in management, cross-cultural management, sports management and sports marketing. In general, the case will also be a good fit for courses that discuss leadership, organizational strategy, organizational structure, organizational ethics and organizational behavior.

This case is meant for MBA students as a part of their leadership/information technology and system curriculum. It is suitable for classes in both offline and online mode.

Human resources management/information technology and systems.

The case discusses how Poppy Gustafsson (Gustafsson) (she), Cofounder and Chief Executive Officer of Darktrace plc, one of the world’s largest cyber-AI companies, is reinventing enterprise security by using artificial intelligence (AI) to detect and respond to cyberthreats to businesses and protect the public. Darktrace’s technology leverages the principles of the human immune system to autonomously defend organizations from cyberattacks, insider threats and AI warfare. In addition to leading a cutting-edge cybersecurity company, Gustafsson evangelizes gender diversity at Darktrace where 40% of employees and four C-level executives are women, a number nearly unheard of in the tech sector.The case chronicles the journey of Gustafsson and how she led the company to growth and success. Under her leadership, Darktrace has grown into a market leader in the AI cybersecurity space serving 5,600 customers in 100 countries, as of June 2021. Gustafsson not only redefined the cybersecurity space but also inspired women to pursue a career in the field of cybersecurity. She also collaborated with a social enterprise called WISE to encourage more girls to consider STEM careers.However, along the way, she faced several challenges including growing competition, procuring funds from investors, cybersecurity talent shortage and training personnel. Going forward, some of the challenges before Gustafsson would be to meet the changing cyber protection demands of customers; hire, train and retain highly skilled cybersecurity personnel; beat the competition in a saturated cybersecurity services space; sustain revenue growth; and post profits as Darktrace had incurred losses every year since its inception.

This case is designed to enable students to: understand the issues and challenges women face in the field of cybersecurity; understand the qualities required for a woman leader to lead a technology firm; study the leadership and management style of Gustafsson; understand the importance of transformational leadership in management; understand the role of Gustafsson in Darktrace’s growth and success; analyze the traits that Gustafsson possesses as a tech leader in an emerging cybersecurity space; understand the importance of gender diversity in cybersecurity; and analyze the challenges faced by Gustafsson going forward and explore ways in which she can overcome them.

CSS: 11 Strategy.

The saga of Market Basket took place over a period of months during which a significant upheaval occurred in the long-successful business. The turmoil drew in a broad range of stakeholders. In a rare chain of events, non-unionized workers and managers engineered a change in senior management of the company. Their willingness to sacrifice their livelihoods in support of one person exemplifies the impact that can be made by a single, authentic, leader. This case draws upon secondary sources which provide insight into broad panoply of business and organizational behavior issues. The primary focus of the case, however, is leadership.

This case was developed using secondary sources and court documents that reported on the events that precipitated the problems at Market Basket as well as the strike and aftermath.

Management principles, organizational behavior. All undergraduate class levels would be appropriate.

This case exemplifies these three major theories in a real-life situation: stakeholder theory, corporate culture theory, organizational commitment.

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.

Derived from field and telephone interviews, e-mail communications, and secondary sources, this two part case describes how Gerald Mahoney, a shoes salesman in a Foley's Department store, is faced with a problem - Macy's has bought out the Foley's chain and, in doing so, has upscale the product line of shoes and altered his commission-based compensation system. These changes have resulted in less sales for Mr. Mahoney and therein lower commission - a difficult situation since he, his wife, and his daughter were barely getting by on his currently salary. Part A of the case describes an opportunity that presents itself to Mr. Mahoney; to leave his current job with a guaranteed low salary with possible additional income from commissions for a job selling residential homes which becomes purely commission-based to start with after three months of a salary plus commission pay that includes job training. In Part B Mr. Mahoney has decided to take the sales job with ABC Home Builders and receives his assignment. He finds that the working conditions of the sales office are not conducive to selling. His office is located in the rear of a trailer that is extremely run down and is paired with a competitive, noncommunicative saleswoman. The case ends with Mr. Mahoney feeling hopeless and alienated.

This two part case has been written primarily for an undergraduate junior level course in career planning or sales management and deals with the issues of recruitment, placement, training, and compensation. The case may also be employed in a course dealing with human resource management (from an individual's perspective), salesmanship, and organizational behavior.