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Human resource development/management and change management.

The case is suitable for final year undergraduate human resource development/management or specialist HRM Master's programs (strategic HRM/HRD).

The case study highlights the challenges of managing change and growth in India's dynamic business process outsourcing sector. The choice of a large and complex organisation brings to the fore the complexity of decision making and how various factors shape the development of critical organisational capabilities and training provision.

Depending on the level of the class and the emphasis, one or more of the following learning outcomes can be achieved from this case study. Following thecase analysis, students should be able to: discuss the key challenges faced by BPOLAND; identify and analyse the various influences of internal and external factors on training provision; understand the importance of forging partnerships with key functional groups for shaping training and organisational capabilities; analyse the dynamic interactions between the various factors and training provision; analyse the relationship between BPOLAND's competitive strategy and its training choices (make versus buy); evaluate the role of training in developing organisational capabilities; and strategise a way forward for the person responsible for learning and development.

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

Entrepreneurship, Strategic Management, Organizational Change Management.

Postgraduate and undergraduate students.

Restoran Minang Plus is a self-styled family-owned and managed restaurant featuring a gamut of Malaysian Negeri Sembilan and Indonesian Padang dishes. The eatery establishment has sailed the food industry waters successfully since 2004 and currently has five branches. However, there are certain imperatives they have to institute to integrate their entrepreneurial challenges with organizational change management. The nature of the forces in the competitive restaurant landscape requires a continuous rethinking of current strategic actions, organizational change, communication systems, motivation, asset deployment and strategic flexibility to respond quickly to changing conditions and thereby develop and maintain a competitive advantage. The question is how do they integrate this organizational change management to their entrepreneurial challenges with a view to achieve and maintain competitive advantage?

The expected learning outcomes are as follows: understanding managing diversity by looking at the different categories of diversity, that is, generic characteristics and learned characteristics that influence work attitudes; explaining how fostering learning and reinforcement can help in increasing job satisfaction; describing the basic motivational needs of the employees and how it can help in increasing job performance; understanding how an entrepreneurial firm can maximize its firm performance through effective change management; and understanding the importance of strategic management in an entrepreneurial firm.

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 development/management and change management, leadership, entrepreneurial development and indigenous innovation.

The case is suitable for final year undergraduate human resource development/management, change management, indigenous innovation, or specialist HRM Master's program (strategic HRM/HRD) students.

The case study highlights the challenges of managing change and growth in India's dynamic business process outsourcing sector. The choice of a small organisation brings to the fore the impact of the strategic decisions owners of capital place on managers as they address issues of sustained growth to support short-term expectations of shareholders. The case highlights India's indigenous approach to frugal innovation or jugaad (finding a creative and improvised work around); how a group of managers consistently reinvented the business model and human resource management practices to stay afloat and meet shareholder expectations.

Depending on the teaching programme and the emphasis of this case in the class, one or more of the following learning outcomes (LO) can be achieved from this case study. These LO have been developed using Bloom's taxonomy and they progressively move from simple to complex LO. Following the case analysis, students should be able to: discuss the key challenges faced by Transcribe and Tally (T&T); identify and analyse the various influences of internal and external factors on training provision; understand the importance of an external network of service provision and identify the key training and organisational capabilities; analyse the dynamic interactions between the various factors and training provision; analyse the relationship between T&T's competitive strategy and its strategic choices (make versus buy) towards investing in training; evaluate the role of training in developing organisational capabilities; and strategize a way forward for Roy Thakur.

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

Nina, a 30-year old Asian Indian female, joined Morris University in the fall 2006 semester after completing her doctorate. She was an instructor and course designer at this historical black institution in a rural town in the southern part of the US. Ninety percent of the students and staff of Morris University (MU) were African-American. MU was committed to the objective of educating African-American youth and the concept of “students first” was one of its core institutional values. Nina's experience teaching an organizational learning course was very unpleasant. Her student evaluations were poor with harsh comments about her and the course. Nina was asked by the department head to prepare a teaching improvement plan for herself.

After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to do the following: • Analyse the aspects of strategic leadership and evaluate effectiveness of the leadership in the case study. • Identify stakeholders in a large-scale project and differentiate between their needs and sources of power. • Establish what behavioural mechanisms can be used by leaders to gain support from stakeholders with seemingly divergent pro-poor and pro-growth development orientations for expansion in an emerging market context. • Generate recommendations to communicate the benefits of expansion plans.

On November 8, 2019, Jack van der Merwe, the chief executive officer of the public rapid rail organisation, Gautrain Management Agency (GMA), was considering how to influence stakeholders to support the pace of the expansion planning phase, without alienating the surrounding communities and balancing the various and sometimes opposing stakeholder interests. The case highlights the background to this dilemma in offering the financial background of the Gauteng province and the evolution of the Gautrain project in the context of an emerging market country characterised by institutions at different development levels and how the unique characteristics of the protagonist could influence stakeholder orientations. The case illustrates how the Gautrain is at the centre of a complex transport conflagration in the South African transport ecosystem. Specific stakeholders and their needs are exposed in the case to enable students to analyse their several levels of influence on the project and proposed expansion. The differences between pro-poor and pro-growth development orientations are also highlighted in this case as input to describe the dilemma Van der Merwe faced in his influencing role in this particular South African context. Students will gain insight into how to manage the tensions between pro-poor and pro-growth orientations.

The case is suitable for a graduate-level course on strategy; organisational behaviour; or leadership. The case is also suitable for a post-graduate-level course on an MBA or MPhil program on strategy and leadership.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 7: Management Science.

This case focuses on the steps taken by the Director of the Jaipuria Institute of Management, Jaipur, to arrive at a working definition of the problem of lack of student engagement and to initiate corrective measures. A key assumption made by the Director was that if students were engaged outside of the curriculum, they would be more engaged with the curriculum. This is consistent with research findings (see for example Kuh, Kinzie, Buckley, Bridges and Hayek, 2006) which show that students who are more engaged within the curriculum are more engaged with their institution's governance and student activities. It must be pointed out, however, that each institute, given its own context, should examine whether this assumption holds—activities outside the curriculum should not end up simply competing for valuable students' time.

International management strategy.

Graduate and upper undergraduate classes.

This case deals with an information technology (IT) outsourcing company based in Egypt which has ventured into the international market right from the start without establishing itself first in the local market. Its record of success was due largely to a group of young Egyptian entrepreneurs with an international orientation. Their strongly held values were translated into an organizational culture that was manifested in the company's relationships with its clients, whether multinational companies or regional governments. This mutual trust has generated work through referrals and has saved the company the need, at least initially, to adopt a proactive marketing strategy. In addition to culture the company's structure has shown considerable agility in dealing with the unexpected demands from clients through developing strong functional departments supported by numerous cross-functional teams. The case also presents the development of the human resource function which is considered the backbone of IT outsourcing companies.

Students are expected to learn the following: internationalization of business start ups in developing nations can take place even in the face of limitations of the local markets; the importance of leadership and culture in fostering trusting relationships with clients; the need to constantly reconfigure resources to meet challenges of competition and the needs of clients; the viability of a defensive strategy for newly established companies if supplemented by trusting relationships with clients; and the role of an evolving structure to fit the growth stages of the company.

Teaching note.

The case offers a unique opportunity to understand the market dynamics of a young luxury brand that aspires to empower women and pursue the broader goal of marketing sustainability in an emerging market. The discussion would enable learners to conduct environmental analysis and assess implications of crisis (current pandemic) on business, understand the marketing mix implications for a firm with societal orientation, learn to design effective brand positioning strategies and plan social and market driven brand strategies to ensure sustainable growth.

Gauri Malik, an investment banker-turned-social entrepreneur, forayed into the luxury home décor and furniture market with Sirohi, in 2019. In a market driven by exclusivity and design appeal, the brand had sustainability at its core. Malik worked with 200 women, from a conservative rural base in India to create traditional products that were hand-made with recycled natural fibres and upcycled plastic wastes. Driven by the goal of securing the livelihood for a larger group of women artisans, Malik wanted to scale up from 350 to 5000 products in the next five years. Hence, for materializing her ambitious plans she sought answers to- Could her home-trained women artisans deliver the promise of quality and finesse to support Sirohi scale up as a luxury brand? While it was extremely critical for Sirohi to have an articulated image-she wondered if the parallel focus on the up-market luxury brand image and sustainability-create competitive advantage or lead to diffused positioning?

Classified as MODERATE in terms of difficulty level, the case can be effectively used in post-graduate programmes for foundation courses on Marketing Management, elective courses on Brand Management or Sustainability Marketing.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

Optifit, an international brand of fitness equipment, had entered the Indian market in 2010 and had rapidly opened 45 stores in 8 years in the four metros (NCR region, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata). Jaiveer Roy was identified by Pravin Gupta (South Zone head) and Raghav Mehta (HR head) to join as Optifit's Store Manager for its Alwarpet branch, Chennai, a store that had leadership difficulties from the day it started in May 2018. Roy joined the store in May 2018 and did very well soon after his appointment to the store. However, in less than three months, both Roy's and his store's performance began to suffer and his relationship with Gupta began to crumble. This case highlights issues in people management, especially support for people selected for leadership positions and examines the performance indicators of an individual's performance at a broader level. The case also points towards the mistakes or errors leaders may commit vis-a-vis their own role as a leader and mentor.

The author used narrative research as a research methodology.

Winston Thompson is the new Residential Manager of Drayson Residential Complex at Sybel University. After meeting with staff in his area of responsibility and learning about the complexities of his new position, Winston needs to determine the best way to build positive relationships with each member of the leadership team in his complex. In this case, students are challenged to determine the best relationship building approach for each staff member using concepts from leader–member exchange theory while also taking into consideration issues of race, age and gender.

This case is written for undergraduates in either an upper level leadership or organizational behavior course. The case can be adapted for graduate courses and executive education depending upon the work experience of the individuals.