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The purpose of this case study is to outline the internal communication strategies, tools, techniques and messages that can help organizations to foster transparent, deliberate communication with employees.

The author synthesizes three years of learnings and internal research, including regular focus groups and surveys with employees at all levels, to identify the specific steps organizations can take to achieve open and regular communication – and engage employees across the organization.

The case study explains key areas to connect and communicate with employees.

The author believes that the lessons and tactics described in this case study can be applied in all organizations.

The case study provides a unique set of lessons and best practices the author has uncovered firsthand which organizations can use to shape their own internal communications strategies and boost employee engagement.

The original purpose of this study was not to focus on job satisfaction, but rather to conduct an exploratory investigation of how symphony orchestra players cope with the frustrations and disappointments of orchestra life. Symphony orchestra players report surprisingly low levels of job satisfaction given the perception held by many that life and work in symphony orchestras is glamorous and rewarding.

Job satisfaction data were collected in the form of interviews and surveys from 66 musicians in an élite, major orchestra and a non‐élite, regional orchestra.

Players in both orchestras were similarly satisfied with co‐worker relationships and experienced similar levels of intrinsic work motivation and job involvement. Despite better financial resources in the major orchestra, satisfaction with opportunities for growth and opportunities to exert influence increased with tenure in the regional orchestra, whereas the opposite was true for major players.

The article discusses context‐driven job satisfaction tradeoffs associated with careers in élite versus non‐élite organizations and the role organizations may play in facilitating or impeding workers’ participation in valued activities. It emphasizes the importance of participation in valued activities as a key driver of job satisfaction.

This case is designed to achieve the following learning objectives: recognize the impact of personality traits on leadership style; identify the key elements in a turnaround strategy; examine leadership best practices from a gender perspective; and assess the role of strategic decision-making on company growth.

The case study describes how Lisa Su (Su), the first woman CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, helped turn around the debt-laden semiconductor firm within a decade through her transformational leadership, vision and values. The case first touches upon Su’s early life and education and the influence of her parents in shaping her personality. It then focuses on the first half of Su’s career, during which she was working on semiconductor projects and was involved in research and product development, and how she made the gradual shift to a people management role in her stint of over a decade at IBM followed by a leadership opportunity at Freescale Semiconductor Inc. The case then describes Su’s move to AMD in 2012 as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the company’s global business divisions at a time when AMD was nearly US$2.5bn in debt and revenues had increased only once in the previous five years. There were also rumors of bankruptcy and spin-offs after the company lost more than US$1bn in the year 2012. The cas

This case is meant for MBA students as part of their Organizational Behavior, Leadership, and Strategic Management curriculum.

Teaching notes Student feedback details.

CCS 11: Strategy.

The purpose of this study was to assess particular student outcomes when design thinking was integrated into an environmental engineering course. The literature is increasingly promoting design thinking for addressing societal and environmental sustainability engineering challenges. Design thinking is a human-centered approach that identifies needs upfront.

In an undergraduate engineering course, Design for the Environment, students have begun to obtain hands-on experience in applying design thinking to sustainability challenges. This case study investigates the association between the use of design thinking and student creativity with sustainability design solutions. Student perspectives on their own creativity and future sustainable design practices as a result of the course were also investigated.

The findings were favorable for design thinking, being associated with a significant difference and medium-to-large effect with regards to solution novelty. A qualitative analysis showed a positive association between design thinking and students’ perceptions of their creativity and future anticipated sustainability practices. Using a content analysis of reflective writings, students’ application of design thinking was assessed for comprehensiveness and correctness. A two-week introductory design-thinking module and significant use of in-class active learning were the course elements that most notably impacted students’ use of design thinking.

This case study preliminarily demonstrates that application of design thinking within an environmental engineering course may be associated with beneficial outcomes related to creativity and sustainability.

A review of the literature did not uncover studies of the use of design thinking for undergraduate socio-environmental challenges to promote creativity and sustainable-practices outcomes, although the literature has been calling for the marrying of these two areas.

The challenge of connectivity in Texas, between libraries and between citizens, is complicated by the state's size—both geographic and demographic—and its diversity—ethnic, economic, and technological.

In China's urban context of labor retrenchment, women are faring poorly relative to their male counterparts. Is the same true in China's incipient, dynamic, and expanding legal profession? Findings from four sources of quantitative data suggest that gender inequality in China's private and highly market-driven legal profession is a microcosm of larger patterns of female disadvantage in China's evolving urban labor market. Although employment opportunities for women lawyers have greatly expanded quantitatively, their careers are qualitatively less successful than those of their male counterparts in terms of both income and partnership status. In the Chinese bar, women's significantly shorter career trajectories are perhaps the most important cause of their lower incomes and slimmer chances of becoming a law firm partner. Future research must identify the causes of this significant career longevity gap between men and women in the Chinese legal profession.

Work on the design and implementation for solar homes has been expanded to the community scale in several international projects. If low-carbon emission housing is to make an impact on citywide consumption of energy, we must move towards community-scale implementation of solar technologies, both in new housing developments and in existing ones. However, the uptake of solar communities requires new methods for implementation to promote innovation in the building industry, new policies and programmes on energy consumption and energy subsidies, as well as community-scale design guidelines for solar or other renewable technologies.

This research surveys the implementation process of selected solar community projects in Netherlands, United States and Canada. It looks at new policies and programmes that are promoting community-scale solar projects from the perspective of innovation in the building industry. It examines the various actors that are necessary for solar communities within an urban planning framework and identifies five main actor groups.

The purpose of this paper is to share personal observations regarding three trends that pose challenges for marketing doctoral programs and the development of B2B scholar-researchers.

The author raises questions and looks to the body of marketing and B2B scholars to seek answers – if they agree that these trends threaten to undermine the strength of marketing doctoral education.

The study has no findings, just observations and thoughts from a marketing strategy and B2B researcher who has been involved in doctoral education in various ways.

This paper represents only the author’s perspective.