Search results

This case was based on both primary and secondary data. In-depth semidirected interviews were conducted in 2021–2022 after receiving the institutional research board approval. The interviews took an approximate time ranging from 90 to 120 min. They were recorded and transcribed. A thematic analysis was undertaken to identify the most relevant themes for the case. The secondary sources used included various websites, scholarly and trade journals, as well as specific databases, such as Statista.

The case exposes students in multiple disciplines to the challenges created by the COVID-19 crisis at Yale School of Medicine (YSM). It describes its remarkable effects on organizational and community members as they struggled to reimagine more inclusive and supportive spaces. As one of the most severe crises humanity has ever witnessed, COVID-19 exacerbated the existing struggles of the underrepresented communities, creating a double pandemic. It has also amplified inequities among marginalized groups including black, indigenous and people of color; women; immigrants; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning; people with different abilities; working parents; single parents; religious minorities; and people with low income. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, Yale University School of Medicine (YSM), like other pioneering schools in the field of health care, doubled their efforts to face both the public health crisis and the substantial social turmoil (racial tensions after the death of George Floyd, food insecurity, vaccine resistance, social inequalities, etc.). Professor Marietta Vazquez, MD, who was the first Latina to be named Associate Dean for Medical Students Diversity at YSM, launched with Dr Latimore (Chief Diversity Officer) and her other colleagues many strategic initiatives aiming at improving the diversity, equity and inclusion of organizational and community members.

The case is an invitation to graduate students and students in executive education programs to reflect on the grand challenges leaders faced at YSM as well as in other institutions across the nation and the globe. It is also a call to reimagine ways leaders can accelerate the pace of change in their organizational ecosystems.

This case was written for use in graduate-level courses, including executive education dealing with Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, Leadership and Change, Health-Care Equity/Policy, Health Sciences, Human Resource Management, Organizational Behavior, Crisis Management, Sustainability, Business and Society, Social Issues in Management, Strategy, etc. Faculty members can easily adapt the case to fit the content of the course they teach, the students’ context as well as the specific learning outcomes to be achieved.

This case was designed not only for MBA and executive education but also undergraduate courses in human resources (HR), leadership development, HR metrics and change management. It is ideal for introducing the concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I), the balanced scorecard and talent retention.

The case deals with initiating and integrating DE&I programs into a company. It highlights how and when to start, change management issues during roll-out and convincing senior leadership why a program such as the one the protagonist started adds value to an organization.

In early 2018, Kate McKinnon, AVP of HR for CareerStaff Unlimited (CSU), a temporary staffing company and division of Genesis HealthCare, reflected on the late 2016 decision to develop women for leadership roles at the company. With a rather unconventional implementation of the Women’s Leadership Group (WLG), Kate successfully developed fifteen female individual contributors, many of whom were promoted to leadership roles by early 2018. Kate was concerned about maintaining the momentum necessary to continue (and expand) the program of identifying, developing, promoting, and retaining women and other diverse employees across the company. She also wanted to measure a clear correlation between the WLG and CSU’s financial and customer outcomes. It was time to plan phase two of the program, including further improvement of the DE&I efforts at CSU.

The learning outcome of this paper are as follows: focused programs, led by courageous and committed leaders, improve gender equity. DE&I is a business imperative, as much as a legal/risk challenge. To be understood, approved and communicated, HR Initiatives must add value and be aligned with the company strategy along with financial and customer outcomes. People development and growth contribute to top talent retention.

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

Given the issues the USA is encountering after the George Floyd death and protests, this is a good way to demonstrate how courageous leadership can start to facilitate change in organizations.

CSS 6: Human Resources.

Entrepreneurship; Social entrepreneurship.

Graduate level.

This paper, The Brownies & Downies case study, aims to examine a social enterprise that provides employment, training and job placements for people with intellectual disability within a trendy artisanal coffee shop in Cape Town, South Africa. The business is based on a similar establishment (same name) in The Netherlands and was brought to Cape Town by Wendy Vermeulen, a Dutch national who completed a social development internship in Cape Town. The case is located within the field of social enterprise with a particular focus on the tension between purpose and profit and the pressure and challenges of replication, growth and scale/expansion. The protagonist in the case is Wade Schultz, Wendy’s business partner, who is grappling with how to not only remain true to the social purpose of the business but also turn a profit in the pressured and competitive coffee industry. He is further challenged by deciding whether to expand the existing training business into other sectors or seek a replication model in other South African cities as a means of growing revenue and increasing the social impact.

The key learning from this case study are as follows: First, intellectual disability is a hidden form of disability, often misunderstood and subject to prejudice and discriminatory hiring practices. Intellectual disability exists on a scale – some individuals are able to work outside of pretexted or sheltered workspaces. Greater effort is required within open workplaces to sensitive staff to working with/alongside intellectually disabled people. This case illustrates a social enterprise model that seeks to bridge the gap between sheltered workspaces and open workspaces. Second, most social enterprises grapple with the tension between profit and purpose; this case presents a company that is living this dilemma. The importance of remaining true to purpose needs to be balanced carefully against becoming economically self-sufficient; however, the pursuit of profits should not happen at the cost of social mission. Alternate business models are a mechanism to building revenue to support the social objective.

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: 3: Entrepreneurship.

Data for the case came from public sources, including legal proceedings, court filings and Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The authors perused hundreds of court documents and identified 28 that were most relevant to this case. The authors also used press interviews with the women highlighted in the case. The authors have no relationship with the company and no one from the company has reviewed the information presented in this case. As the case is drawn from sworn legal testimonies, interviews and related documents in the public domain, the authors did not have to seek approval for publication.

Pinterest touted itself as “the nicest place on the Internet.” It had an almost 80% female user base and purported to have an inclusive culture that embraced diversity. However, in June 2020, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, two former female employees of color violated their non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to publicly accuse Pinterest of racial and gender discrimination. In August 2020, Pinterest’s former Chief Operating Officer, Francoise Brougher, filed a lawsuit charging the company with gender discrimination, retaliation and wrongful termination, and authored a public blog post titled, The Pinterest Paradox: Cupcakes and Toxicity, detailing her own experience with the company’s discriminatory culture. Three days later 236 of Pinterest’s 2,545 employees staged a virtual walkout and 445 employees signed a petition in an attempt to change Pinterest’s policies and culture. The case provides a brief overview of Pinterest, including its mission, values and organizational culture, and details several incidents and complaints by female and minority employees. The case questions whether employee complaints are a relatively narrow issue involving disgruntled former employees who did not fit at the organization or a much broader issue involving discrimination and managerial neglect in creating and maintaining a nondiscriminatory, inclusive culture. Students are encouraged to evaluate the situation in which Co-Founder, Board Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Ben Silbermann finds himself, evaluate the actions taken and decide if Silbermann should take any additional actions to address the discrimination claims and ensure a positive culture for all employees.

This case is appropriate for graduate and advanced undergraduate level courses in organizational behavior, human resource management and business law or any course where discrimination and workplace culture are discussed.

This case is designed to enable students to understand the role of women in artificial intelligence (AI); understand the importance of ethics and diversity in the AI field; discuss the ethical issues of AI; study the implications of unethical AI; examine the dark side of corporate-backed AI research and the difficult relationship between corporate interests and AI ethics research; understand the role played by Gebru in promoting diversity and ethics in AI; and explore how Gebru can attract more women researchers in AI and lead the movement toward inclusive and equitable technology.

The case discusses how Timnit Gebru (She), a prominent AI researcher and former co-lead of the Ethical AI research team at Google, is leading the way in promoting diversity, inclusion and ethics in AI. Gebru, one of the most high-profile black women researchers, is an influential voice in the emerging field of ethical AI, which identifies issues based on bias, fairness, and responsibility. Gebru was fired from Google in December 2020 after the company asked her to retract a research paper she had co-authored about the pitfalls of large language models and embedded racial and gender bias in AI. While Google maintained that Gebru had resigned, she said she had been fired from her job after she had raised issues of discrimination in the workplace and drawn attention to bias in AI. In early December 2021, a year after being ousted from Google, Gebru launched an independent community-driven AI research organization called Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research (DAIR) to develop ethical AI, counter the influence of Big Tech in research and development of AI and increase the presence and inclusion of black researchers in the field of AI. The case discusses Gebru’s journey in creating DAIR, the goals of the organization and some of the challenges she could face along the way. As Gebru seeks to increase diversity in the field of AI and reduce the negative impacts of bias in the training data used in AI models, the challenges before her would be to develop a sustainable revenue model for DAIR, influence AI policies and practices inside Big Tech companies from the outside, inspire and encourage more women to enter the AI field and build a decentralized base of AI expertise.

This case is meant for MBA students.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CCS 11: Strategy

This case is based on primary and secondary sources of information. These sources include interviews with senior executives as well as documents provided by Mondragon and Eroski. The interviews were conducted on-site. In addition, the authors researched the literature on both organizations.

Eroski is the largest of Mondragon Corporation’s coops. Since its founding, Eroski has faced numerous challenges. It has responded to each challenge with out-of-the-box thinking. In response to the pandemic, Eroski become an e-commerce supermarket as well as selectively continuing bricks and mortar stores. As the pandemic is winding down, Eroski is considering how to respond to the “new normal,” which is largely undefined. The question posited at the end of the case is, “Will Eroski be able to hold to its social principles, maintain its unusual governance model and other unusual practices, and survive this latest challenge?”

Eroski of Mondragon is a complex and unusual organization. To appreciate the challenges and how they were overcome by its unique business model, a student must have a minimum background in management, corporate finance and marketing. Thus, this case would fit well into a senior or graduate class on strategic human resource management. It is also recommended for the strategy capstone course usually offered during the last year of a business bachelor’s degree (senior level) to ensure that students are introduced to what Paul Adler refers to as an alternative business model. It can also be targeted for an advanced management course or a strategy course at the MBA and executive levels.

After working through the case and assignment questions, students should be able to develop an understanding of how to identify female leadership competencies; analyze social and psychological barriers to developing female leadership; and consider various solutions to build trust in rural settings by overcoming social and psychological barriers.

In 2022, Mrs Anjaria, the Managing Director, and Mr Anjaria, the Chairperson of the Rangoli Group of Institutions in Gandhinagar, Gujarat (India), were facing the challenge of how to empower thousands of females in the preschool venture in the rural area as they could see the impact of their female edupreneurs in the urban area. Both had worked up the ladder in the preschool venture after quitting their professional careers in the corporate world. They now wanted to create female edupreneurs to empower women and bring about social and educational change at the grassroots level. They needed to make an informed decision about how to scale the preschool offerings at rural sites to bring educational change and increase revenue simultaneously; however, they were unsure how to execute this vision into a tangible profit-making social edupreneurial reality. Government preschools (Anganwadis) and social structures in rural Indian contexts were a major consideration. It was important to increase their hiring efforts to empower women with their franchise model. However, issues such as leadership competencies, psycho-socio-cultural barriers, and creating trust in rural economies challenged their vision.

The case is suitable for MBA students or postgraduate-level courses on development communication, business communication, entrepreneurial communication and gender communication seeking to develop female competencies through communication models. This case illustrates how to create trust through communication among female eduprenuers by overcoming social and psychological barriers in rural settings.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CCS 3: Entrepreneurship

Human resource management, Training and development, Competency development and team spirit.

The case is intended for MBA/PGDM level students as part of a human resource management curriculum. The case is more diagnostic in nature and should be discussed in the same spirit. The case is suitable for developing conceptual thinking and community orientation of professionals aspiring or pursuing a career in the area of human resource management.

The case examines the imperatives behind Sterling Tools Limited (STL), a leading fasteners manufacturing Indian company's decision and strategy adopted to inculcate team spirit through outdoor experiential training (OET). The case explores in detail the process undertaken to execute the OET at STL. The case also briefly mentions the tangible benefits of OEL. The case is structured to enable readers to: understand the basic objectives of OET; understand the innovative approach adopted by STL; and understand how an organization responds to changes and challenges in the external environment.

This case is structured to enable students to: understand the meaning and significance of outdoor experiential training (OET); analyze the challenges faced by HR managers in modern day organizations; learn the conceptual framework and understand the principles of OET; examine the measures that can be taken by management to ensure a smooth induction and socialization process of employees; and understand the need of inculcating team spirit among employees.

Teaching notes are available.

Business, management.

This case is suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying topics related to human resources, decision making, managing in multinational companies and crisis management. In addition, the case is useful study for practitioners in non-governmental organizations (NGO).

Dr Manal Taryam, the Chief Executive Officer, was discussing with Ms Shurooq Al Banna, Marketing Specialist, the achievements and challenges faced at Noor Dubai over the past three years. Noor Dubai is an international charity for the prevention and treatment of blindness. The problem facing these decision makers is the prioritization of their resources to support logistics management, operations, human resources, funding and educational issues. In addition, to meet the needs of the visually impaired, a long-term mission is to establish permanent eye centers in areas of most need.

Students will be able to:

• Describe the problems facing Noor Dubai in relation to logistics management, operations, human resources, funding and educational issues.

• Explain how the management strategies of Noor Dubai prioritize logistics management, operations, human resources, funding and education.

Describe the problems facing Noor Dubai in relation to logistics management, operations, human resources, funding and educational issues.

Explain how the management strategies of Noor Dubai prioritize logistics management, operations, human resources, funding and education.

Teaching notes.

This case is about Kija Kim, a Korean born founder and CEO of Harvard Design and Mapping Inc. (HDM). Founded in 1988, HDM is a cutting-edge GIS firm with $5 million in revenue and 35 employees in their Cambridge, MA and Washington D.C. offices. Through Kija Kim's leadership, HDM has become a significant niche player in homeland security and disaster relief. The case ends in fall 2005 just after HDM provided Hurricane Katrina mapping support, and Kija is nominated for the SBA Small Business Person of the Year. This case explores the intersection between cultural heritage, leadership effectiveness and organizational behavior. It particularly notes Kija's ability to turn her immigrant female minority status into a business advantage. This strength coupled with her ethos of care and ability to network in all walks of her life contributes to her distinctive and integrated leadership style. Definitions of leadership success and implications for decision making are also highlighted.