Search results

Learning outcomes are as follows: students will discover the importance of process orientation in management; students will determine the root cause of the problem by applying root cause analysis technique; students will identify the failure modes, analyze their effect, score them on a scale and prioritize the corrective action to prevent the failures; students will analyze the processes and propose error-proof system/s; and students will analyze organizational culture and ethical issues.

Purpose: This case study is intended as a class-exercise, for students to discover the importance of process-orientation in management, analyze the ethical dilemma in health care and to apply quality management techniques, such as five-why, root cause analysis, failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) and error-proofing, in the management of the health-care and service industry. Design/methodology/approach: A voluntary reporting of a case of “radiation overdose” in a hospital’s radio therapy treatment unit, which led to an ethical dilemma. Consequently, a study was conducted to establish the causes of the incident and to develop a fail-proof system, to avoid recurrence. Findings: After careful analysis of the process-flow and the root causes, 25 potential failure modes were detected and the team had assigned a risk priority number (RPN) for each potential incident, selected the top ten RPNs and developed an error-proofing system to prevent recurrence. Subsequently, the improvement process was carried out for all the 25 potential incidents and a new control mechanism was implemented. The question of ethical dilemma remained unresolved. Research limitations/implications: Ishikawa diagram, FMEA and Poka-Yoke techniques require a multi-disciplinary team with process knowledge in identifying the possible root causes for errors, potential risks and also the possible error-proofing method/s. Besides, these techniques need frank discussions and agreement among team members on the efforts for the development of action plan, implementation and control of the new processes. Practical implications: Students can take the case data to identify root cause analysis and the RPN (RPN = possibility of detection × probability of occurrence × severity), to redesign the protocols, through systematic identification of the deficiencies of the existing protocols. Further, they can recommend quality improvement projects. Faculty can navigate the case session orientation, emphasizing quality management or ethical practices, depending on the course for which the case is selected.

MBA or PG Diploma in Management – health-care management, hospital administration, operations management, services operations, total quality management (TQM) and ethics.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 9: Operations and Logistics.

Organisational behaviour; Leadership; Organisational development; Public–Private partnership; Health care management; Public health.

Masters students in Business Administration, Post Graduate Diploma, Clinical Training of Medical Professionals, Health Leadership Programme.

Prof Jannie Hugo, the protagonist in the case, was considering his dilemma of aligning the multiple partners involved in public health care. A high level of collaboration was required of a multitude of stakeholders in developing the Daspoort clinic into a pilot site for the Tshwane district’s implementation of the National Health Insurance system. In addition, the re-engineering of primary health care with the focus on the patient and community orientated approach were launched on this site.

Gaining insight into international and national landscapes and principles of health care systems. Critically analyse the role of technology in delivering innovative health and social services. Present judgment of Prof Jannie Hugo’s contextual leadership effectiveness in enhancing collaboration between the multiple stakeholders and recommend next steps.

2 × DVDs on Vimeo, Slides and teaching plan with discussion or exam questions with model answers.

CSS 7: Management Science.

This case allows students to engage with classical marketing tenets of branding, media and communications decisions and content marketing within a management framework.

This case is appropriate for an undergraduate or graduate-level programme in marketing management.

Suzanne Stevens was part of a group of four former senior employees of a large life insurance firm that decided to establish a new and innovative South African insurance company, BrightRock. They identified a gap in a large and highly competitive (albeit generic and opaque) insurance market and developed a distinctive positioning within the market. There was low consumer understanding of the technical aspects of life insurance products, and no existing life insurance product provided an individualized offering. Stevens developed the company’s brand and marketing strategy by drawing on reputation drivers, traditional advertising and a content marketing approach. BrightRock focused on change moments in consumers’ lives, including getting married, having children or getting a new job, and changed the standard insurance product model by launching an individualized flexible product that could adapt with the consumer through their various life stages. The case study documents the first three years of BrightRock’s operations, with a strong focus on brand and product development, distribution and communication. The case dilemma involves choices Stevens faced at the beginning of 2015 about marketing investments across paid, earned and owned media.

This study enables to critique the development of a services brand; integrate paid, owned and earned media to increase communication effectiveness and efficiency; and critique a content marketing strategy.

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 8: Marketing.

One of the major issues present in this case is whether there is significant industry pressure to internationalize. Yip’s (1989) global strategy drivers are a helpful approach for examining this issue. This case also applies two important marketing concepts – the product life cycle and diffusion of innovation theory – and how differences across international markets impact these concepts. Finally, there are significant cultural issues at play in this case as well. Theoretical models of national culture, such as Hofstede, Hall and others, can be used to examine cultural influences on an industry that is not often associated with culture.

The case is based upon a combination of secondary research and primary research. The lead researcher and a team of graduate students conducted interviews with Louisiana-Pacific Corporation (LP) executives in the USA and Chile in 2017.

This three-part case examines the internationalization of LP into South America. Case A begins in 1999 as LP attempts to decide whether to take its oriented strand board product international. The reader is asked to consider where LP should go in South America. Case B examines the factors LP used to decide to enter Chile and then outlines the key decisions that led to its impressive growth between 2000 and 2015. Case C begins in 2015 as LP now considers whether to expand its markets into Argentina or Colombia.

Given the complexity of issues raised in the case and the need to narrow these issues down to an implementable decision, this case is most appropriate later in the schedule of a graduate or executive-level business course in international business or international marketing.

Learning outcomes are as follows: Students will be able to demonstrate the need to understand the uncertainty faced in a crisis; demonstrate how dynamic capabilities allow an organisation to respond effectively in a time of crisis and deep uncertainty; explore how strong dynamic capabilities are required to maintain continuity of operations by enabling a shift in the current business model; and evaluate methods of mobilising resources to address needs and possible opportunities presented in a crisis.

Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), a South African-based business school and the one of the top ranked business schools in Africa, faced a crisis in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the announcement of a national lock down, under strict conditions, and the immediate closure of the GIBS campus, the Academic Programmes had to radically shift their mode of delivery to enable students to continue with their respective programmes. When the situation was further exacerbated by the breaking of the undersea cable, the Executive Director of Academic Programmes, Professor Louise Whittaker faced the difficult decision on what to do next. The case illustrates the need for strong dynamic capabilities to foster organisational agility and to respond effectively in times of deep uncertainty or crises.

The case is positioned at a postgraduate level and would be ideal as a teaching case for business students on a Master of Business Administration programme, a specialised Master in Philosophy programme or selected executive education programmes for general managers or senior executives.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 11 Strategy.

The reading and discussion on case will enable participants to appreciate importance of reward management in performance management system for both employee and organizational good; to develop insight on the effect of perceived discrimination on the motivation of employees; to internalize the effect of perceived unjust, subjective, non-communicative, non-transparent policies on the behavior and productivity of employees and overall organizational culture and climate; and to comprehend the importance of HR and OB issues with respect to performance management system for the benefit of employee morale, motivation and organizational culture.

The effectiveness of an employee is the key factor for the employer. All the profit that the company or the organization makes depends on the employees’ productiveness. The case needs to be understood in the overall context of performance management system (Ferreiraa and Otley, 2009) with focus on elements of appraisal and compensation via rewards and recognition as per objective standards. Performance management systems (PMSs) is a more general descriptor if the intention is to capture a holistic picture of the management and control of organizational performance. Performance management policies and practices refer to the processes of setting, communicating and monitoring performance targets and rewarding results with the aim of enhancing organizational effectiveness (Fee, McGrath-Champ and Yang, 2011). PMS includes both the formal mechanisms, processes, systems and networks used by organizations, and also the more subtle, yet important, informal controls that are used (Chenhall, 2003; Malmi and Brown, 2008). Otley (1999) proposed a framework which highlights five central issues which need to be considered as part of the process of developing a coherent structure for performance management systems. The five areas addressed by this framework include identification of the key organizational objectives and the processes and methods involved in assessing the level of achievement under each of these objectives, formulating and implementing strategies and plans, as well as the performance measurement and evaluation processes, process of setting performance targets and the levels at which such targets are set, rewards systems used by organizations and the implications of achieving or failing to achieve performance targets and types of information flows required to provide adequate monitoring of performance. While the case touches upon all the aspects of the PMS framework, it revolves round the reward episode and elaborates on the way it affects all stakeholders, those who got the benefit, those who felt discriminated and those were mere observers to the episode. Objective performance appraisals are needed to ensure that every employee produces the best performance and that the work performed is rewarded with reasonable increases in pay scales or special additional allowances or incentives. This system carries crucial importance as it helps managers to decide which rewards should be handed out, by what amount and to whom. Additionally, performance appraisals may increase an employee’s commitment and satisfaction (Wiese and Buckley, 1998) The case readers need to notice that when organizations fail to follow objective appraisal or reward standards, the same rewards become a cause of contention. The reward which was handed over to the employees in this case was in addition to the annual appraisal. Though the role of rewards has been well-recognized in motivating the employees to continue performing at high level and encourage others to strive for better performance, what needs to be recognized that rewards’ per say does not serve purpose. They need to be dealt within the context of performance management system. Using rewards to favor or discriminate a few employees by using subjective standards backfires and does no good as the person who is favored cannot take pride in it and is not motivated to perform better or equally well as he/she also knows that the work has no relation to the reward, it is personal favor, on the other hand, the one who is discriminated feel discouraged and demotivated to perform. Rewards have the potential to both help and harm the organization if dealt in a callous and careless manner. Use of rewards to favor or discriminate certain people due to subjective preference can be suicidal for the organization and irreparably damage the trust of the employees in the management. It has been well stated that fairness and objectivity are the core principles using an assessment of the nature and size of the job each is employed to carry out (Torrington et al., 2005). If any organization decides to include rewards as a motivating mechanism, it needs to cull out unambiguous and transparent criteria for rewarding. If employees perceive procedural or distributive injustice from the management, it is not only detrimental for the employee’ relations and teamwork, it also tarnishes the reputation of the organization and jeopardizes the culture of the organization. Reward management needs to be closely related to performance appraisals, job evaluations and overall performance management systems. The current case elaborates on one such instance where unjustified inequity in reward system not only disturbed the employees concerned but it had bred a negative image of the organization among other employees too, organizational citizenship was replaced with contempt and feeling of apathy.

Post graduate students and working professionals can benefit from this study.

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 management.

After reading and discussing the case study, students should be able to identify the reasons why the company needed to digitise and how this links to the company’s strategy around technology and innovation, analyse the digitalisation implementation process followed in the case study by using an organisational change management model and make recommendations and propose a solution for the protagonist to consider for the successful roll-out of the digitalisation project.

DRA Projects is part of the DRA Global business based in South Africa. The company is known locally in the mining and engineering industry for its project development, delivery, execution and operations capabilities. Digital transformation is a key strategic focus in the industry, as clients seek digitised integrated systems. For this client offering, J.C. Heslinga, managing director of DRA Projects, was tasked with leading the digitalisation of the project delivery system. From July 2020 until July 2022, Heslinga led the implementation team through different organisational change stages. As the next phase included rolling out digitalisation to pilot projects and engaging employees and clients in the new process, Heslinga wondered if enough was done to ready the business for this change. The end users would be executing the changes, so their adoption will be imperative for successfully rolling out digitalisation. The case study concludes with Heslinga pondering the approach needed for the next phase. The case study focuses on the digitalisation implementation process through the lens of organisational change. The case study presents an opportunity to analyse and identify the theories and models used in organisational change within a real-life business context. The organisational change learnings can be adapted to help students with any transformation changes in similar business scenarios.

Postgraduate- and master’s-level students and business executives attending short courses will benefit from the learnings. The learnings can be applied to improve decision-making, organisational behaviour and strategic implementation using the fundamental principles of organisational change.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human resource management

In 2006, four successful entrepreneurs decided to establish a world-class mega university. Initially, the project progressed slowly until Vineet Gupta was able to locate a small plot of land in Sonipat, Haryana. Forty-eight hours before the payment deadline, Ashish Dhawan and Sanjeev Bikchandani agreed to invest in their personal capital to kick start the project. They however suggested a pivot in favour of a smaller private liberal arts college. Meanwhile, Pramath Sinha, with prior experience in establishing the Indian School of Business launched a pilot through the Young India Fellowship (YIF). Dhawan and Bikchandani, through their extensive entrepreneurial networks, raised scholarships for the first two batches of the fellowship in the hope of attracting other donors to the board and getting a buy-in for Ashoka University. The team faced a number of challenges: managing the new model of collective philanthropy, recruiting faculty and finding jobs for the first undergraduate batch. At Ashoka University's first graduation ceremony in 2017 they wondered whether this model could revolutionise the higher education space like the IITs and IIMs had done for the country.

The case covers several topics such as social entrepreneurship, social innovation, green startups, their marketing and growth. The learning outcomes are as follows: identify the characteristics of social entrepreneurs; learn about the concept of social innovation, its challenges and opportunities; apply the concepts environmental sustainability to possible growth strategies; and evaluate the different growth opportunities available to the company in the region.

The case tells the story of a recently established technology and agriculture startup, Schaduf, founded in Egypt. Their concept mixes tradition with technology to improve the quality of life for city dwellers. Research and development (R&D) plays a big role in this company’s success. Schaduf uses the concepts of soilless farming to grow rooftop crops for low-income households. The company also provides aesthetic solutions for businesses and homes to increase their green spaces. Driven by a desire to transform the monochrome city to a green paradise, two Egyptian entrepreneurs founded Schaduf, an urban micro-farming and eco-friendly venture. The founders of the startup, brothers Sherif and Tarek Hosny, are in the process of expanding their business. They are faced by the dilemma of staying true to their original business concept in developing markets or pursuing other lucrative ventures in more affluent economies. This case offers learners insight into the growth strategy of a social enterprise that relies heavily on R&D to stay ahead of the game. Learners should evaluate the different growth strategies available to the company.

The case can be used for senior undergraduate students and at the graduate level in MBA, management, innovation, entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship programs.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

GE Healthcare was on a continuous lookout for investing into new and innovative super value products for the Bottom of the Pyramid markets in India. After launching its first successful super value ECG machine Mac 400, GE had recently launched its twenty-fifth super value product a PET CT machine. Serving the BOP markets has its own unique challenges that may be different for each product that is placed in the market. However, GE has so far successfully sailed through all the challenges and developed a steep learning curve about BOP markets. However, it is now facing the challenge of ensuring sustainability of product pipeline. The company is also keen to exploit the opportunities for reverse innovation that super value products have provided. The company also wants to assess the disruptive impact of these products in domestic medical device markets as well as markets outside India.