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1. Analyze the concept of disruptive change and its impact on organizational learning and development; 2. Develop the ability to identify and implement effective behavioral training interventions; 3. Understand the learning and development process; 4. Evaluate the challenges associated with online learning and explore strategies to overcome them; and 5. Recognize the significance of online learning in the current era and acquire knowledge and skills using online tools and applications for different job roles.

This case focuses on the new challenges that Shazia Zaheer, who is Head of the Learning and Development Department, is experiencing as a consequences of COVID-19 in her department. As her learning and development department has been focused primarily on traditional learning modes since the inception of Pakistan Telecommunication Limited (PTCL), she is facing additional challenges in adopting online learning because PTCL has undergone significant structural change. Since 1947, PTCL has been a state-owned enterprise. In 2005, the Pakistan Government privatized PTCL. This privatization resulted in numerous structural changes in management, hierarchy, chain of command, pay structure, product lines, technology and other factors. Employees were reduced from 90,000 to 23,000 as part of a volunteer separation plan, and a new scheme was introduced to streamline the process and improve efficiency. However, the employees at PTCL reacted to this transformation with union strikes and behavioral changes. Hence, this became a daunting challenge for Shazia Zaheer to change employees’ mindsets and instill corporate culture values. Nonetheless, she successfully won the half battle by changing the mindset of employees, and then she faced another challenge, COVID-19. This new normal brought new challenges for Shazia to implement online learning as her department relies solely on traditional modes of learning (classroom-based learning).

This case will be a good teaching aid if included in any courses on “Training and Development,” “Human Resource Management,” “Change Management” and “Online Learning” It would be better at the undergraduate (specialization courses) or graduate level.

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CSS 6: Human Resource Management.

After reading the case study, the students will be able to analyze the impact of post-pandemic “new normal” customer behavioral change on a start-up aggregator operating virtually. Recognize the need for the service marketing strategy to prepare a service provider/aggregator to sustain a dynamic and volatile consumer environment. Understand the importance of competitors’ analysis as a primary step of service marketing strategy in influencing “new normal” consumer behavior. Examine the utility of customer engagement through website blogs, social media posts, videos and continuously updated information on the mobile application in influencing the “new normal” customer behavior, from skinner operant conditioning behavior and Rusbolt’s investment model perspectives.

Rafeeg is a mobile application-based home maintenance service providing company, conceived and founded in 2017 by Khamis Alsheryani – who, as an Emirati entrepreneur, has a prior record of accomplishing successful mobile applications and business ventures since 2004. The unique selling proposition of Rafeeg in the Abu Dhabi market is its functioning as the home maintenance services aggregator bringing its suppliers and consumers under-one-roof alongside maintaining ensuring high quality, punctuality and security at competitive prices. Rafeeg has collaborated with approximately 1,000 licensed suppliers using nearly 5,000 technicians and maintenance workers with a customer base of about 70,000 households. Although it is formally situated in Al Salam St, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), the company communicates with its consumers virtually. However, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UAE in March 2020, Rafeeg witnessed a considerable decrease in service requests. Consumers’ psychological fear of the pandemics spread into their houses through the technicians and maintenance workers and the degree of hygienic practices the latter follows before their service provision acted as the major reason behind the fall in requests. Despite Alsheryani’s assurance on the provision of only those suppliers who are verified of their hygienic practices, negative COVID-19 test reports and their availability to the consumers as proof and regular temperature checks of the technicians, the consumer apprehensions remained stagnant and the loss of new service requests, as well as revenue, continued. The pandemic’s spread and consequent lockdown of services in the UAE affected Rafeeg’s business operations gravely, as projected by its sudden drop-in service requests – from 53,638 average monthly customer requests in January and February to approximately 10,000 in March and April. The sudden drop of 81% in new requests drove Alsheryani to develop a service marketing strategy in May to boost consumer behavior, encouraging them to resume their requests without further apprehensions. However, with the continuous rise in the pandemic and vaccines still under trial and research, Alsheryani contemplates the viability of the new marketing strategy. Alsheryani took measures in supplier training programs, excommunicating with suppliers who fail to comply with his strict safety regulations, developing the app with clearly stated, uniform, safety procedures and bearing the additional safety-related costs small suppliers provide quality work as part of the strategy. Despite so, will there be an increase in new requests? Will the bearing of additional costs on the suppliers’ behalf jeopardize its competitive advantage in UAE? Should he consider an alternate business model to adapt to the new normal environment?

This case is written for undergraduate students majoring in consumer behavior, consumer engagement approaches, digital marketing approaches using websites, mobile applications, social media communities and service marketing strategies. Students, through this case, can relate the importance of virtual space in engaging consumers and the importance of the latter in addressing the dynamicity of consumer behavior, especially affected by sudden environmental change, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The case study also subtly highlights the importance of collaboration with suppliers in an aggregator business model to capture the essence of changing consumer behavior. This case study is appropriate for students having previous knowledge of Rusbolt’s investment model and skinner’s operant behavioral model of consumer behavior and their application in service marketing. Besides, students must be aware of the online business model and aggregator businesses in the service industry of the UAE. The case study purports to motivate critical analytical thinking among students and build their understanding of the importance of consumer behavior for business sustenance.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CCS 8: Marketing.

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.

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CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The case would be specifically useful in courses related to Corporate Governance, Board Dynamics, Leadership, Organizational Behaviour, Corporate Ethics and Strategic Management.

For Post-graduate/Doctoral and Executive Programme/Management Development Programme level courses in Corporate Governance, Board Dynamics, Leadership, Organizational Behaviour, Corporate Ethics and relevant areas of Strategic Management.

The case relates to the imminent departure of Raamit Pell, the founding CEO of Xcelent Services, an educational service provider, to his parental organization at Kozerton after completing his current five-year term. Raamit had moved from Kozerton to become CEO of Xcelent Services. Many of Raamit’s senior executives at Xcelent were not happy about his decision to return. They felt that his departure at this moment might, on the one hand, slow down the ongoing major expansion plans and on the other aggravate a mutiny, under covert Board patronage involving a powerful clique of certain senior executives. The parental agency finally agreed to release him. On the day of Raamit’s farewell, where surprisingly even the clique members were present, many executives appeared sad. Observing the mood, Raamit wondered whether his decision to return to Kozerton was the right one.

To understand the internal governance, leadership and behavioural environment of a company. To understand the impact of internal power equations of a company on the morale of its people. To analyze both the inconsistency between the stated goals of the organization and the revealed actions of its top decision-makers; and the lack of restraint on the power struggle among the top actors of the organization. To identify effective strategies for addressing such issues in future so that their fallouts would be minimized. To relate the behaviour in an organization to the organizational behavioural theories related to leadership, corporate governance, corporate ethics, managerial behaviour and agency problems.

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 11: Strategy.

The learning outcomes are as follows: identify and evaluate the impact of risk factors for health-care organizations during crisis; evaluate the role of different organizational factors in building resilient health-care organizations; define organizational resilience in a health-care context; and apply the effect-strategy-impact resilience framework.

September 2022 found Ranjan Thakur, the Hospital Director at Manipal Hospital, Jaipur (MHJ) reflecting on MHJ’s resilience toward future health-care crises. MHJ was established in the capital city Jaipur of the Indian state of Rajasthan in 2014, as a 225-bed multispecialty unit of the nationally renowned Manipal Health Enterprises Ltd. As the Hospital Director, Thakur had been responsible for navigating his team and the hospital through the multiple health-care related challenges exacerbated by the multiple waves of the Covid-19 pandemic in a large Indian state with a sizable rural and semiurban population. Though Thakur and his team of doctors had worked through the vulnerabilities of their health-care ecosystem, mapping the risks and mitigating the same, Thakur asked himself if they had done enough. He wondered how a health-care institution such as theirs could sustain effective health-care delivery during future crises situations to deliver high-quality health care to the vulnerable communities. Had they effectively mapped MHJ’s vulnerabilities and built resilience into the hospital’s functioning? The backdrop of the case is public health in the state of Rajasthan (Jaipur), and the case is rich in detailing social factors such as behavior issues of patients, doctors and nurses; operational factors such as standardization of treatment and standard operating procedures, availability of resources, clinical concerns; leadership and management of the hospital through the pandemic. This case can be used by instructors to teach organizational resilience building in the health-care context.

Graduate- and executive-level courses in managing change during crisis in health-care context; health-care management/leadership.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 7: Management Science.

The case illustrates the application of the prospect theory to risk-seeking investor behavior. It also provides an example that standard valuation methods such as discount cash flow), discount divided model and price multiples are not always applicable to value a stock. The students are exposed to a real situation where investors turn risk-seeking. The case offers insights into why irrational investors are attracted to risky assets and their probable socio-demographics.

This case illustrates a case when investors become risk-seeking and how the prospect theory explains the investors’ risk appetite. Energy Earth PCL is a coal importer and distributor incorporated in Thailand. Its shares had been suspended for trading before the Stock Exchange of Thailand allowed temporary trading in July 2019. A series of unfavorable events leading up to the temporary trading period suggest that the company’s financial health was severely distressed. Its book value was presumably negative and its going concern was threatened. However, investors still bought the shares with the hope of hitting the jackpot. The case presents an example of the psychological aspects of humans when investing in a stock market. With an application of the prospect theory, irrational risk-seeking behavior explains the motivation to invest in risky stocks.

Introductory finance course.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 1 Accounting and Finance.

Social Marketing, Entertainment Education Program.

Postgraduate program. Master in Strategic Marketing and Master in Business Administration.

In the midst of the many TV shows that do not provide enlightenment, Kick Andy TV Show appeared to provide answers to the public unrest. In the spirit of “Watch with Heart” Kick Andy serves Entertainment-Education and Social rarely glimpsed by the television station. Success of Kick Andy TV Show made this brand doing brand extension such as Kick Andy Foundation, Kick Andy Magazine, Kick Andy Enterprise and others. Challenge for this program is to maintain the right balance between social, entertainment and education.

This Case Study illustrates that Kick Andy TV Show filled the value gap that viewers experienced from existing TV show. This show is similar to the offer of Oprah Winfrey Show in the USA. Student is expected to understand social marketing primarily related to entertainment-education TV show.

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

Upon completion of the case discussion, students will be able to: identify the enablers of a mental skills coaching process and the broad outcomes as a result of a coaching intervention; understand the contributing factors towards creating greater psychological safety in a team and the impact this has on team performance; and identify positive leadership strategies to create an environment in which meaningful work and goal achievement increase engagement.

Leanne Redding was the mental skills coach for Maccabi, a professional league soccer club in Johannesburg, South Africa. Redding had worked with the club’s players using mental techniques, the ultimate aim being to improve performance. Redding’s work was based on the premise of trust, lived values, self-respect and reflection. She believed that a strengths-based approach grounded in sports psychology and aligned with mental contrasting enabled resilience. Her process of holding individual and team sessions helped with sustaining motivation, overcoming limiting fears and encouraging focus on the greater good of the team. The result was Maccabi’s promotion to the professional league of soccer. However, not all of her broad stakeholder group had bought into the value of sports psychology coaching. The case explores Redding’s process and her belief of the importance and buy-in from all players of the team values which should inform behaviour. The case concludes with Redding contemplating what she should do to gain greater acceptance from the rest of the coaching staff for her work.

This case can be used in graduate and postgraduate level courses such as an MBA, in management development programmes or in short executive education courses focusing on organisational behaviour, leadership and human capital development and sports management.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 7: Management Science.

This case study attempts to sensitize the impact of restructuring on the organization’s employer brand. The students shall learn to appreciate the criticality of maintaining a balance between being an employee-centric organization and building a sustainable business model, to analyze the alternative people management strategies in emerging start-ups.

This case study illustrates the innovative human resource (HR) policies adopted by the start-up Meesho. Meesho was started as “Fashnear” by two Indian Institute of Technology graduates Sanjeev Barnwal and Vidit Aatrey in the year 2015, with the headquarters located in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. It was a social commerce platform wherein the local apparel sellers or manufacturers could register themselves on the app and sell their products online to nearby consumers and the product would be delivered to their homes. Later, it was renamed Meesho (Meri E-Shop) with an improved business model. The innovative people-centric policies got Meesho recognition as one of the most employee-friendly start-ups and an innovative employer. However, later as part of the restructuring exercise, it had to lay off employees, which had a counter impact on its reputation and image as a desirable employer. This case study captures the dilemma faced by start-ups like Meesho who were in the process of sustaining their growth and optimizing their workforce and, at the same time, have to manage their employer brand in the process.

This case study can be used at the postgraduate level of management and in executive management programs.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS6: Human resource management.

After reading and discussing the case, the participant would be able to: comprehend the ethics in marketing strategies that were displayed by an entrepreneur in the challenging times of the Covid-19 pandemic; appreciate how the marketing was executed in a socially responsible manner through digital means when there was a conflict between the business and the social interest; and understand how the innovative services or products can be developed that turn the trouble into an opportunity. The case shall also enlighten the students on how to create suitable marketing messages in digital times. The purpose of this paper is to let the students appreciate how they can carry out marketing efforts for a business while keeping customer needs and aspirations at the core, how the marketing campaigns can be designed and executed in a socially responsible manner and how the product portfolio can be suitably altered to make it more valued to the customer. After reading and discussing this case, the students will also be able to appreciate that it is important to identify and address the customer’s pain which may be stated or unstated by the customer. The case intends to teach students how to identify and reap the opportunities that get created from time to time and to make them appreciate that businesses can contribute significantly towards societal gains by committing minimal resources.

The mainstream marketing discipline focuses on excessive consumerism as opposed to the concept of “socially responsible marketing” which advocates that business initiatives should be supported by ethical considerations. The coworking industry was one of the worst affected industries by the pandemic since their customers started working from their homes during and post the lockdowns, leading to a loss in revenues. The protagonist in the case had a strong belief that the business interests would be secondary to the overall interest of society, and therefore, he advised the customers on how they could work productively, safely and stress-free from their homes. As the lockdown was un-eased, the marketing campaigns were launched and executed in a very ethical manner, while designing innovative service offerings were designed.

The case is relevant for the students pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies in the field of business and management.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.