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The cofounder of Compass Records, a small, independent music-recording company, must decide whether to “produce and own” the next album of an up-and-coming folk musician or simply “license” her finished recording. This case presents information sufficient to build cash-flow forecasts for either investment alternative. Discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis reveals that licensing will be the more attractive alternative unless the student assesses the value of the options for follow-on albums included in the “produce-and-own” contract.

Human Resource Management

Postgraduate business students, particularly MBA students.

This case examines the working environment of Fritz Publishing, a small independent South African publishing company. Fritz Publishing was established in 1960 by Nick Fritz. After his retirement, ownership passed to his son, Martin. In 2011, Martin Fritz decided to sell the company to the Prys Group, an international publishing house headquartered in Germany. February 2011 saw the arrival of a newly appointed CEO for Fritz Publishing, Vadim Arshavin, who had already experienced excellent financial results as the head of another publishing house. In the wake of his arrival, the company experienced several changes. The case highlights the challenges at Fritz Publishing that have resulted in a growing sense of dissatisfaction. After Martin Fritz sold Fritz Publishing, the organisational culture shifted quite drastically which created challenges for managers, employees and customers alike. Employees, including some members of management, are de-motivated, disengaged and frustrated because of the leadership style and behaviour of the new CEO Vadim Arshavin and consider their psychological contracts to have been breached. The case explores factors that have helped create this situation. It considers challenges to the sustainability of the organisation given recent events including an internal employee engagement survey and feedback from key customers. The case further examines the potential dangers that toxic leadership creates within organisations and encourages discussion on ways this form of destructive leadership can be handled.

The learning objectives to be drawn from the case are: to assess the impact of leadership on organisational culture; to analyse how leadership impacts the psychological contract; to identify the cross-cultural factors at play in an emerging market organisation and to understand the way a toxic leadership style can detrimentally affect a high-performance workplace. In addition, there are further learning objectives that can be explored. These are: to examine the change process and associated challenges with the introduction of new leadership into a family-type organisational culture; to understand how breach can be avoided and/or how the psychological contract can be reconstructed.

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 6: Human Resource Management.

An employee&s husband made violent threats to the store manager of a Las Vegas shop specializing in skin care, makeup, fragrance, and hair care products of an international company. The manager wanted the employee terminated. The employee confessed that her husband also threatened her. The employee's personnel file contained no performance problems, but the store manager admitted that she had kept a separate file with such documentation. The Executive Director and the Director of Human Resource Management wondered what they should do.

This case examines a set of expansion options for a successful Internet luggage retailer, with a particular emphasis on the operational complexities.

Describes how UPS created UPS Supply Chain Solutions, an entirely new business, with carefully selected target market segments for which unique and extensive value offerings were designed. To build this business UPS made numerous acquisitions and successfully resolved post-acquisition integration challenges in compensation, information systems, personnel policies, and organizational culture.

This case study is based on an MBA team's experience in analyzing a scrap metal recycling business and developing recommendations to improve the performance of the business. The company, Steel City Salvage, has three locations which are managed as separate business entities. The case focuses on the business repercussions of the poor integration across the three locations, and the team's choice of options to improve the integration. These options include changes in organizational structure, processes or culture/leadership style. The case allows students to see how their own experience and education may bias their selection of a preferred option.

This case explores the turnaround and corporate renewal of the Chicago Blackhawks professional hockey team, which transformed from one of the worst-run organizations in all of professional sports in 2007 to one that won the Stanley Cup (the National Hockey League championship trophy) in 2010. W. Rockwell “Rocky” Wirtz was faced with making critical decisions shortly after inheriting the team from his father, who was the individual most associated with the organization's decline. The team faced financial trouble and had narrowly avoided missing payroll; the previous customer relations strategy (which included refusing to televise home games or to conduct effective marketing) had resulted in significantly diminished brand value; and management and player personnel were devoid of effective leadership. At its nadir, the team was named “The Worst Franchise in Professional Sports” by ESPN in 2004. After assuming control, Rocky embarked on an ambitious corporate renewal strategy that included the following components: leadership: install a new management team with clear goals and creative ideas about how to turn around the organization; culture: reward players for accomplishing their goals and establish a performance-based culture; financial: seek new corporate sponsorships and increase ticket prices once the team established a winning record; and brand and marketing: send a clear message that the team was intent upon winning the championship and design a customer-focused marketing strategy.

After analyzing the case, students should be able to: recommend strategic, financial, and operational changes needed to turn around the organization, and identify key leadership qualities that enable execution of a turnaround plan.

In June 23, 2016, voters in the United Kingdom have just approved a referendum calling for leaving the European Union. The case describes the motives for European integration, the rise of separatist movements in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and the referendum process itself.

The purpose of this case is to provide a contemporary counterpoint to a discussion of the economic and political motivations for the American Civil War. Dominant themes highlighted here are economic nationalism, political nationalism, cultural centrism and ethnocentrism, and populism.

The Women’s US Soccer team in 2016 entered into the summer Olympics with a dark cloud over their heads, the lack of pay equity in the sport of soccer. Despite being heralded as the best female team in the world, the team’s compensation does not reflect their winning record or average work performance. Complex contractual negotiations and compensation intricacies surround this situation and the legal proceedings with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that include discrepancies between gender preferences for compensation, benefits packages and terms of the overall collective bargaining agreement in a monopsony. The financial impact of lost wages and the role of the fan base are also examined.

This case has been created through the eyes of past and current members of the US Women’s Soccer team using scholarly and periodical sources.

This case is designed for upper level, undergraduate human resource management, labor economics and employment law courses, specifically, principles of human resource management, gender equity courses, business law, labor economics, law & economics.

This case discussion will enable learners to: demonstrate how the adoption of entrepreneurial leadership could aid the overwhelmed youth to successfully bounce back. Summarize various events and challenges faced. Demonstrate mindful entrepreneurial qualities to be effective. Identify various coping strategies in balancing a commercial viable model with a compassionate approach. Establish a roadmap for a healthy sustainable business model.

Ms Rahaf Raef Kobeissi was a 33-year solopreneur, mental health coach and personal development trainer who resided in Dubai. She encountered dilemmas while attempting to offer commercial, as well as empathy and compassion-based services. She tried to strike a balance between her own broken past life challenges and managing her clients’ healing journey. Another challenge was to assess whether she should adopt inductive counseling or deductive counseling principles, especially during a Covid-19 scenario. She needed to ensure a healthy work/life balance to prevent herself from suffering from burnout. Her personal journey to becoming a solopreneur was filled with grief and hardship over the years, which she endured with little support. She had the arduous task of dealing with a series of shocking incidents and events, which pushed her down through the cracks, leading to her attempting to take her own life three times when overwhelmed by tragedy. At the age of 23, Rahaf lost her father to suicide – they found him hanging in his apartment. Her abusive mother had several breakdowns due to severe depression and her drug addict brother accidentally killed his friend in her apartment with an overdose injection. The challenge before her was to strike a reasonable balance between managing the highest levels of clinical depression with suicidal tendencies and finding the right path and purpose for her own life. This was the very reason she chose to battle depression through therapy and bounced back as a stronger and more resilient woman.

This case has been focused on undergraduate and postgraduate-early stage level students pursuing business or psychology programs. Particularly those specializing in entrepreneurial, organizational behavioral and positive psychology courses.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.