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Management and leadership.

Undergraduate and graduate.

Mr Lionel Thibaud, the General Manager, was highlighting the achievements and challenges faced at Impression et Enregistrement des Résultats (IER) within the Middle East region over the past four years in relation to the various cross-cultures and multi-nationalities. IER is a world-leading supplier of printing terminals and IT solutions for the air transportation industry. The problem facing the decision-maker is how to do business with the Middle Eastern countries and handling and striking a balance with all the varying cultures and customs. In addition, to meet the needs of the customers, a long-term mission is to establish long-term relationships and collaborations.

On completion of utilizing the case study as an exercise, students should be able to: case-specific skills – critically examine the importance of the cross-cultural management, decision-making, managing in multinational companies and leadership and management in the Middle East and demonstrate this by analysing real regional/world examples using complex theoretical frameworks; identify examples of best practice (including ethical “best practice”) and explain the dynamics towards cross-cultural management, decision-making, managing in multinational companies and leadership and management with reference to a range of theoretical models and apply these in a meaningful way to the MENA region; discipline-specific skills – synthesize and critically evaluate a corpus of academic literature and government reports on cross-cultural management, decision-making, managing in multinational companies and leadership and management; link cross-cultural management, decision-making, managing in multinational companies and leadership and management concepts and theories to real regional/world examples; personal and key skills – reflect on the process of learning and undertake independent/self-directed learning (including time management) to achieve consistent, proficient and sustained attainment; work as a participant or leader of a group and contribute effectively to the achievement of objectives in the field of cross-cultural management, decision-making, managing in multinational companies and leadership and management.

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

Marketing - value proposition and value delivery, switching cost, customer acquisition and retention, positioning, pricing, distribution and retailing, role of trust and transparency to build sustainable relationship in B2B context, and efficient service delivery.

Undergraduate and graduate students in marketing, business administration, strategy, retailing, B2B marketing, services marketing and general management courses. Also, it can be used for executive management/training programmes.

The case focuses on an existing scenario of a natural gas business in Gujarat, India, in order to provide understanding of marketing challenges, especially in the B2B context, faced by organisations in this evolving business environment. The case examines the strategies and policies implemented by the company and their impact on the customer. The case presents reactions and responses from the concerned customers. The case illustrates the criticalness of understanding customer expectations and designing and delivering customer centric strategies to sustain market leadership in an evolving and competitive market.

The case study enables the students to understand and analyse: the current business environment; the important factors impacting natural gas business; economic analysis of energy; opportunity and challenges for doing cleaner and greener business; role of cleaner fuel to reduce carbon footprint; and carbon credit impacting top line and bottom line of a customer. The case provides students the opportunity to understand and analyse the importance of switching costs to acquire a new customer; and devising and implementing marketing strategies to expand customer base and enter into new territories.

Teaching notes.

This case describes the challenges faced by Amul in organising dairy farmers into a co-operative and creating continuous opportunities for value addition. Participants in the case discussion are required to review the developments in the organisation and recommend a strategy for the future.

The following are the learning objectives of the case study: to address the problem of urban food insecurity. To facilitate the generation of more employment opportunities and women empowerment through self-help groups (SHGs). To understand the transition from the founder to new leadership provided by Ms J Jayalalithaa. To understand consumer perception and preferences for “Amma canteens”. To appreciate how the case study has added to the historical role of soup kitchens. To address the challenges faced by the government on the sustainability and viability of “Amma canteens” post the death of its founder Ms Jayalalithaa.

“Amma Unavagam” is a food subsidisation programme operated by the State Government of Tamil Nadu in India. Under the scheme, municipal corporations of the state are required to run canteens that serve subsidised food. The canteens were first launched by the then Chief Minister of the state Ms Jayalalithaa, who was widely acknowledged as “Amma”. These low-cost canteens will be announced as part of government schemes aimed to support economically disadvantaged sections of society. The scheme had been able to generate employment for thousands of women. However, the success of the scheme lies in the low prices and the cooperative management of all the outlets by the SHGs. The SHGs have been able to run the canteens based on self-governing norms, mutual reciprocity and shared responsibilities. This case study evaluates the role of state-sponsored mechanisms to ensure food security, alleviate food inflation and empower more women in the workforce. Yet, several concerns continue to remain unaddressed. Considering the huge amount of subsidy provided by the state government, the sustainability and economic viability of the scheme are uncertain.

This case study can be used for management students studying the basics of management such as teamwork, motivation, leadership and good governance. They may also study government policies and community intervention programmes for the benefit of society. The present case study will help the students to analyse the concept of women empowerment and social inclusion. The students, before discussing the case, may study and read the socio-economic theory of “community engagement and participation”, the “self-help model” and the related “theory of reasoned action/planned behaviour”.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human resource management.

After completion of the case study, the students will be able to examine the service failures faced by Nykaa; propose a resolution to the service failures faced by Nykaa through service recovery strategies; analyse the service quality gaps faced by Nykaa and propose strategies to bridge the gaps; learn and comprehend more about business models in e-commerce; and evaluate the e-commerce business models for deciding the best fit for Nykaa.

“Nykaa” was the brainchild of Falguni Nayar, who was an IIM alumna and had worked with the Kotak Mahindra Group for nearly 20 years as a venture investor and merchant banker. After representing the group’s global operation in the UK and the USA, she became the head of the institutional equities division. In 2005, she was the Managing Director of Kotak Mahindra Bank’s project. Nayar had reached the pinnacle of her career, but something was troubling her. In 2012 when Nayar noticed anomalies in India’s beauty and personal care market, her goals were realised. Unlike in other nations such as Japan or France, the availability of beauty products in India was limited, despite significant demand, owing to product unavailability in many areas. Nayar founded “Nykaa”, an online portal for multi-beauty, personal care and well-being items that also later branched out into fashion. However, after 10 years of its establishment, Nykaa was facing challenges regarding services outages, casting doubts over Nykaa’s business model practiced by it for the past 10 years.

This case is intended for discussion in the undergraduate, postgraduate management courses and executive MBA courses with marketing specialisation, services marketing and strategic marketing.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy

It was early 2015 and executives in iShares' Factor Strategies Group were considering the launch of a new class of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) called smart beta funds. Specifically, the group was considering smart beta multifactor ETFs that would provide investors with simultaneous exposure to four fundamental factors that had shown themselves historically to be significant in driving stock returns: the stock market value of a firm, the relative value of a firm's financial position, the quality of a firm's financial position, and the momentum of a firm's stock price. The executives at iShares were unsure whether there would be demand in the marketplace for such multifactor ETFs, since their value added from an investor's portfolio perspective was unknown. Students will act as researchers for iShares' Factor Strategies Group and conduct detailed analysis of Fama and French's five-factor model and the momentum effect, smart beta ETFs including multifactor ETFs, and factor investing with smart beta ETFs to help iShares make its decision.

Case can be taught at the undergraduate or postgraduate level, including executive Master of Business Administration programs.

This case is intended for courses in strategic management, entrepreneurship and innovation at the undergraduate or postgraduate level.

The case is about challenges faced by Linda Portnoff, the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Riteband, a Sweden-based fintech startup. In March 2020, Portnoff was conducting beta testing of Riteband’s app, which experts considered the world’s first stock exchange for music trading. After completing a PhD, Portnoff who was working as a Research Analyst, left her job to pursue entrepreneurship. Through Riteband, Portnoff helped to resolve pain points of artists who were forced to give the copyright of their music tracks or albums to distributors, in lieu of funds or promotional campaigns that distributors arranged for them. Portnoff invested in developing a patent-pending machine learning-based algorithm that based on several parameters could predict the likelihood of a music track or an album to become a success. Based on this prediction and royalty that artists were interested in sharing with fans, shares were issued to investors, who were also fans of the artists. As Portnoff identified an innovative business opportunity to trade music on a stock exchange based on Riteband’s machine learning algorithm, competition in Riteband’s strategic group was also becoming intense. Consequently, Portnoff was facing challenges of establishing competitive advantage of Riteband. Furthermore, as women in general faced challenges in raising funds for their startups, and even though Portnoff obtained some funding for Riteband, but overall, funding was a challenge for her as well. Moreover, as machine learning was a technical aspect for artists and potential investors, Portnoff also faced challenges to monetize on its machine learning algorithm.

By the end of the case study discussion, students should be able to: understand the principles of cross-industry innovation and explain the creation of new business opportunities based on cross-industry innovation; differentiate between direct and indirect competitors through strategic group analysis and further critically analyze the competitive advantage of business over other direct competitors; determine ways of reducing gender biases in venture capital funding; describe how machine learning works and further formulate ways to monetize a business through machine learning; and demonstrate the application of the value proposition canvas and business model canvas.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship; CSS 11: Strategy.

The case is directly related to courses on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the Management of Business Administration (MBA) Programme.

Courses like “International Business/Marketing”, “Strategic Planning” and “Business Ethics” of the MBA Programme. Management Development Programmes for working executives, on the Topics “Corporate Social Responsibility”, “Manpower Planning”, “Growth of Business Clusters” and “Social Accountability”.

The labour-demanding industry of Tirupur knitwear exports is facing both happy and sad situations. While orders from importers are piling up, lack of manpower planning proves a stumbling block. The industry employs more than 300,000 workers. After hours of toiling, workers still lead a pathetic life; have no access to good housing or quality education for their children. Highlighting on this situation, the case brings forward the questions, why is it that firms have not realised their CSR to provide commendable standards for their employees? what situations would provide the drive or compulsion to adapt social responsibility? and how far is fulfilling the social responsibility a direct answer to solving the labour issue faced by the export firms?

The case serves to help students to understand the theoretical concept CSR. It brings to the students understanding: the drivers of CSR; challenges that would make the business units to honour their social responsibility; what lies as the practical situation on awareness of CSR; and to have a wholesome practical view of CSR in the context presented in the case.

Teaching note.

Zyne is a mid-sized Delhi-based firm engaged in the home linen business under the company’s brand name. Raman was the Managing Director of Zyne. In 2019, Prashanth the head of the second-best region (West) quit abruptly without grooming a successor. Prashanth’s team consisted of greenhorn executives whom he recruited from colleges. Raman has options of selecting a replacement for Prashanth from within the organization. Two candidates are in the reckoning, namely, Amit and Neha. Amit was 48 years old, a veteran in the business and associated with the Zyne group for over 15 years. He was a top sales performer in the Central region and was interested in relocating to the West. Twenty-seven-year-old Neha was industrious, talented and creative. Within three years of joining Zyne, she had proven herself as a go-getter with remarkable ability to develop strong channel partner relations. Raman had to decide whom to select from among the two or go for an outsider from the industry. Raman has to contend with selection issues related to insider vs an outsider. If one of the internal candidates is chosen how could he motivate the other to continue to perform and deliver? The case focuses on the challenges of recruitment of a Sales Manager (SM) in a small home furnishing business. Use of competency framing to validate the candidates is the high point of the case

By the end of case discussion participants should be able to understand the following: differentiate skills required in a sales leadership role as compared to that of a sales executive; evaluate the pros and cons of internal promotions versus hiring an outsider; apply the concept of competency framework to evaluate different candidates vying for the same position; and understand how a candidate not selected for the position understands the reasons thereof to enable improvements.

Started in 2010, Zyne Furnishings headquartered at Delhi, was in the business of selling home furnishings. Raman, a second-generation entrepreneur was Zyne’s Managing Partner. With help from his father Rajesh Gupta, Raman worked toward expanding Zyne’s business operations in India. Raman was facing a challenge because of the abrupt resignation of Prashanth, the Western Region SM. Prashant had done well in the region and assiduously built Zyne brand’s presence there. As Raman pondered over the ways of filling up the SM position, questions confronted him for which he did not have immediate answers. He had 30 days in which a replacement must be finalized. Raman looked at the file containing the applications of the two internal candidates, namely, Amit (Southern region) and Neha (Western region) who had applied for the position. What evaluation process should he adopt to ensure an objective assessment is done before deciding on which of the two candidates fit the bill? Given that it was the first week of January 2020 and the year-end targets had to be met by March, Raman knew time was running out. He had to take a quick call. Use of competency mapping to evaluate candidates is a high point of the case. This case can be used to enhance the participants understanding of the challenges of identifying the right candidate for a senior position and weigh the pros and cons associated with the selection. Motivating the rejected internal candidate through the procedural justice system adds value to the case.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

The learning outcome of this study is to bring to the table of a wider intellectual audience, a unique model of community-based entrepreneurship, which is working wonders with its unique selling points (USPs) in promoting sustainability and conserving the ethos of villages and, at the same time, generating livelihoods through traditional farming techniques adopted by the rural population residing in the Himalayan region of India.The proposed case study can be used as a replicable model in other parts of rural India and other emerging economies to start and scale up a similar “integrated rural development model” through effective policy advocacy and public–private partnerships and to develop sustainable farmlands and livelihoods for rural India. It has a definite potential to be used as a pedagogical tool in postgraduate programmes offering courses in microfinance, financial inclusion, social and community entrepreneurship, sustainability, entrepreneurship, community development finance and rural immersions and public policy.

This case study is set in the backdrop of 2023 having been declared by the UN as the International Year of Millets and India being the homeland for millet cultivation. The objective of the case study is to bring to the table of a wider intellectual audience, a unique model of community-based entrepreneurship operating in the Himalayan region of rural India. The community-based entrepreneurship model works on the USP of promoting sustainability and conserving the ethos of villages and generating livelihoods through traditional farming techniques. This case study traces the journey of Roopesh Rai (protagonist and the founder of Bakrichhap), the community-based entrepreneur and his challenges in setting up the enterprise. The narrative is built in the light of a series of interviews with Rai, the main protagonist and the founder of Bakrichhap, as well as the people of Goat village by Komal, a post-doctoral fellow in the area of community-based enterprises (CBEs). Through this narrative, the case writers’ endeavour was to understand how CBEs such as Bakrichhap were providing a means of integrated rural development in the hilly region of Uttarakhand, India. Also, how such enterprises were thereby curbing distress migration, unemployment and a large-scale erosion of the cultural heritage and traditional and indigenous farming techniques of the land. In the first seven years of the operations of this uniquely curated CBE, Rai endeavoured to iron out many bottlenecks. This case study also highlights the gamut of challenges faced by community-based entrepreneurs like Rai in designing strategy for growth and expansion. What strategy should Bakrichhap follow for expansion to the other regions of the country? Should all the three existing verticals of the enterprise be scaled up parallelly or should each individual vertical be expanded one after the other in a phased manner? Stemming out from the main dilemma of strategic expansion were the related issues of funding (finance) and the formation of an effective team (HR).

This case study can be used in undergraduate, graduate and executive programmes offering courses in microfinance, financial inclusion, social and community entrepreneurship, sustainability, entrepreneurship, community development finance and rural immersions and public policy.

This comprehensive case study is written by using the triangulation of data collected through a series of personal interviews, website information, news articles, personal observation and field visits. The research design used is single case (holistic; Yin, 2003, 3rd edition). The timeline of this case study is 2021 to 2022 and place is Nag Tibba, Uttarakhand, a Himalayan state in North India.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.