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This paper aims to first, identify the external and internal factors that a company needs to analyze when formulating its digital platform strategy. Based on the framework of PESTNPG (political economic social and culture technological population and globalization) and internal analysis a company should analyze both internal and external factors to formulate its digital platform strategy. For companies from emerging markets the institutional-based market created by national or local governments is important for digital platform strategy. Second dynamic capability theory and its linkages to digital platform strategy. The dynamic capabilities view is considered as a primary theoretical lens in the strategy literature to analyze a company’s strategies to achieve sustainable competitive advantages. To carry out a successful digital platform strategy companies need to build strong dynamic capabilities to capture or create opportunities and reconfigure their resources simultaneously. Third the advantages and disadvantages of different digital platform strategies (i.e. an independent digital platform and online–offline integration platform) and the possible consequences and risks of different strategies. It is important to evaluate different types of digital platform strategies that require different capabilities in terms of business structure product structure revenue structure organizational structure and technology architecture. A company needs to link these capabilities to a digital platform strategy to enable the integration (or separation) of online business with offline business. It also increases the accuracy and efficiency of online business. Fourth key points of digital platform strategy implementation. Companies need to identify key profit models for their digital platform to promote business growth and financial returns. It is equally important to increase customer value by leveraging its digital exhibition platform and to learn to use digital technology to foster organizational dematerialization.

Zhejiang Meorient Commerce & Exhibition Inc. (hereinafter referred to as “Meorient”) was a leading company in the exhibition industry in China. The unexpected outbreak of COVID-19 plunged Meorient into a state of emergency that forced it to fight for survival. Further, China had launched a national strategy of Digital China, which created new market opportunities for Meorient. As a result, Meorient gradually developed and launched its digital exhibition services in 2015. Meorient suffered significant losses in 2020 due to COVID-19 and had to formulate a new strategy based on a digital exhibition platform in 2021. Chairman Pan Jianjun had two options. One was a purely digital platform strategy without the original offline exhibition business. The other one was an online and offline integration strategy. Which option was the best way forward for Meorient? Pan had to make a choice. Some of the top management team members believed Meorient should completely transform into a digital platform company and provide comprehensive online digital exhibition services. Over the previous 20 years, Meorient had accumulated a large amount of data from domestic and foreign exhibitors and professional buyers and had gradually developed a digital exhibition platform. It was one of the companies that pioneered digital transformation within China’s exhibition industry. More conservative thinking held that Meorient's strategy should focus more narrowly on the integration of online and offline exhibition businesses. Toward the post-pandemic era, China’s national strategy of “Digital China” accelerated the development of digital infrastructures. During such critical transitional period, Meorient had to choose wisely if it was to sustain its profits or even survive.

The case is aimed at students in undergraduate, MBA, short course executive, EMBA or other executive education programs, especially where digital transformation is featured subject matter.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy

We have used data mostly from published sources like The Economic Times, Forbes, The Times of India and the annual reports of Nestlé India Ltd. Because we classify it as a Teaching Case Study as per the guidelines of Emerald Publishing, we have ensured that any data presented in the case has been acquired only from published sources and is not internal company data. Citations have also been provided wherever necessary.

On 6 June 2015, Nestlé India’s top product Maggi instant noodles was banned nationwide for an unspecified period. The ban was imposed due to allegations of Maggi containing high amounts of lead and message, and consequently violating the food safety standards. What followed was the destruction of massive stocks of Maggi which had been taken off from shelves of stores countrywide. Furthermore, the company faced a huge blow financially as its sales plummeted. This case delves into how Nestlé India adopted relevant strategies to successfully avert the Maggi crisis. Some remedial measures included appointing a Managing Director who understood the market, improving the communication channel and boosting the churn out of new products along with greater emphasis on marketing and advertising.

This case is aimed mainly at undergraduate level students in the field of management studies and public relations management. This case is also relevant for students pursuing a specialization in Crisis Communication, Public Relations, Marketing and Organizational Change.

At the end of the course, the participants are expected to be able to: understand and explain what is bridging leadership (BL); understand stakeholder, stakeholder engagement and stakeholder management; conduct a stakeholder analysis based on the details of the case; evaluate the BL processes based on the details of the case; and communicate how BL was used in Dumingag.

Mayor Nacianceno “Jun” Pacalioga’s journey towards the transformation of the municipality of Dumingag, Zamboanga del Sur in Mindanao, Philippines has been rooted in his daily interaction with its residents by way of morning walks around the town. He has always been involved in organizing people in his youth and as a public servant, improving the plight of the people of the 4th class landlocked and agriculture-dependent municipality has always been his primary concern. There are currently an estimated 50,000 people from forty-four (44) barangays (communities/villages) in the Municipality of Dumingag. In 2007, most farming households of the municipality earned US$ 60 monthly. By 2016, after Pacalioga’s 9-year stint as local chief executive or as mayor, the percentage of households with income below the poverty threshold have significantly decreased to 38%. Local health indicators have also become exemplary with only 0.77% of children between 0-5 years old recorded as malnourished, with maternal mortality death rate. When it comes to food, only 0.25% of households experience food shortage.

This case highlights the Bridging Leadership Framework as a paradigm to help address social divides and inequities in complex environments such as Dumingag. In realizing bridging leadership as a community of practice, Pacalioga employed participatory processes to develop the Genuine People’s Agenda, and the integrated Transformative Education to build the capacity of different stakeholders in the municipality. These processes mobilized different stakeholders to move towards the common goal of improving the plight of the Duminganogs. Now Dumingag is enjoying the broad-based benefits of the program; including recognition by numerous local and international organizations and civic groups on the efforts of Pacalioga and the people of Dumingag in transforming their once poverty-stricken town in Zamboanga del Sur, Mindanao, Philippines.

Masters Level/Executive Education.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 10: Public Sector Management.

This case study draws on interviews conducted with officials from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM), City of Woonsocket and Town of North Smithfield. Additionally, it pulls from relevant legal documents, recordings and minutes from meetings of the Woonsocket City Council and North Smithfield Town Council, City Council resolutions, state legislation and local press coverage.

From 2012–2017, the communities of Woonsocket and North Smithfield engaged in a protracted dispute concerning wastewater disposal. For 30 years, the two jurisdictions had maintained a signed service agreement. Following its expiration; however, Woonsocket imposed a new host fee on North Smithfield. Woonsocket needed to upgrade the facility to comply with mandates from the RI DEM. Over the next five years, leaders from both jurisdictions vociferously fought over the new fee. At the same time, leaders within communities experienced their own divisions. This case study highlights the challenges that decision-makers faced in both communities.

This case is appropriate for graduate and executive level courses in environmental policy, communication and leadership.

Agile software development, Knowledge workers and Lean thinking as a management system

The case lends itself to students of business management, or aspiring consultants, who have been exposed to operations management in general and Lean thinking specifically. It is an advanced case study, assuming prior knowledge in these subjects and approaches the subject matter from an organisational development point of view, rather than a pure operations point of view. It is thus well suited to an elective on operational excellence on an MBA or in executive education courses in Lean thinking

The case starts with Mark, manager of a software development team, hearing that he will have budget for two new developers who will join his team in the coming year. While the extra help could be useful, he was considering what the impact of new people would be on the productivity of the team, which he felt was already stretched. Mark continues to consider the entire development chain and how code changes were implemented to ACSESim’s (the company’s primary product) graphical user interfaces. Having recently been acquired by an American company, he was also under pressure to start to adopt some of the parent company’s systems, which would constitute a fairly disruptive, but necessary, change, particularly for future collaborations with other developers in the parent company. With two new developers, experience taught Mark that development could slow down owing to training efforts. To minimise disruption, he was wondering about how to get the new developers up-to-speed quickly and streamline their operations within a changing corporate environment. The case highlights the different mechanisms that were in place at ACSESim, including the use of issue trackers; Kanban boards; version control software; automated systems; stand-up meetings, etc. Each of these mechanisms is discussed briefly and shows the value they added to the development practices that were in place. This also allows students to understand Agile practices and what Lean thinking might mean in a knowledge work environment and then to consider what the proposed changes might mean and how they could be deployed.

To gain an understanding of how Lean and Agile principles can be applied in a software development environment and Lean knowledge work in general To consider the best way to manage new hires so that they can become productive in a Lean or Agile software development environment, whilst dealing with pressures to migrate to new systems.

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CSS: 9: Operations and Logistics.

This case focuses on the scaling up of the business. The students/the users of the case will be able to understand the following:1. to analyse the present state of the business to identify the actions necessary for scaling up;2. awareness of the leadership styles demonstrated by the entrepreneurs to grow the business;3. the concept of pivoting for business expansion; and4. organisation building and life cycles for business growth.

Shamika was a lawyer by profession and had a successful career with leading law firms in India, North America and Hong Kong. She was passionate about beauty and skincare and developed a keen interest in that business. Shamika extensively researched brand management, supply chain and production. She had a burning desire to be an entrepreneur in the skincare business. So, she founded the brand “d’you”.The skin care industry in India had seen massive growth. There was a huge increase in people’s interest in cosmetics because of the rapid rise of the middle class. The skincare industry was dominated by firms offering various herbal products. Multiple product categories and a large amount of information confused the end-consumers. Shamika identified an opportunity to offer a skincare product to eliminate the need for a consumer to use multiple serums and compete with products of repute from the international market.South Korea was the top manufacturing hub for skincare products for all leading international brands. Shamika approached many manufacturers there to produce a unique formulation for her. It was challenging to get them interested because of the lack of big orders and the language barrier. Phoenix Cosmetics, a top R&D lab, agreed to partner with Shamika.In spite of severe opposition from her family, Shamika established d’you. She had to figure out customs duties, imports and food and drug regulations. She had to get specialists on board early to avoid time and cost overruns. To be cost-effective, Shamika innovated her promotion strategy. A special airless pump packaging from South Korea was finalised for the product.The pandemic outbreak, national lockdown and pressures of trying to run the business alone were very taxing for Shamika. She struggled to manage the timelines with various agencies, engage with Phoenix and maintain a steady flow of imports from South Korea.After the relaxation of lockdown, Shamika launched “Hustle”, an age- and gender-neutral solution to the skincare woes, in October 2020. She extensively used digital marketing and social media for product promotion and set high service standards. Hustle was recognised in micro beauty awards as the best serum in India. The leading fashion magazines reviewed it very positively. The sales zoomed up.Shamika initiated discussions with venture capitalists (VCs) to scale up. VCs, though positive, were surprised that she had no prior background in skincare. She strategised to create new products with Phoenix, who now desired to collaborate with her after the success of Hustle.Shamika felt the need to expand her team because of the workload stress. She followed the rolling business plan, allowing an immediate course correction because of the dynamic business scenario. She desired to delegate day-to-day operations to the professionals. She would mainly focus on strategising. Shamika was raring to grapple with the challenge of scaling up the business.

This case can be used in courses on organisation behaviour and human resource management in postgraduate and graduate management programmes. It can also be used in general and development management courses and during executive education programmes to teach entrepreneurial leadership and organisation theory.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human resource management

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

HRM, training, strategic HRM.

The case is designed for undergraduate and graduate level business students (BBA and MBA) in human resource management, organizational behavior, strategic HRM, corporate leadership and general management. The case provides an overview of the importance of diffused HRM practices in developing countries on the basis of standardized rules and cultural values defining these rules. The case presents the situation of HR management practices in SIH, Islamabad on the basis of different styles followed by HR managers to develop an egalitarian model aspired on the basis of local values but at the same time is on the line of international standards.

In Shifa, It was observed that locally trained HR managers could better synchronize employees' aspirations with standards of diffused model as compared to foreign trained managers. It was found that the former group of professionals appreciated local values; therefore they considered these values while following standardized rules and regulation; whereas the latter group took it as a bunch of obsolete concepts which had nothing to do with employee management practices in urban/modern organization. Therefore, positive perception of locally trained managers' about the indigenous' wisdom and its consideration in employee management decisions enabled them to play a proactive role in developing cultural fit HR practices, besides winning the support of both, management and the workers. This also allowed them to “maintain balance” between local aspiration and international standards of operations. Although SIH is unique in terms of its mission, services, organization, and its use of technology, it is believed that this unique case may provide useful insights for organizations in similar situations. Many of the difficulties faced by SIH either support or help to understand situations prevailing of other organizations working in the context of Pakistan. For instance, any public or private organization or multi-national corporation following Western (diffused) HR model to regulate workforce in the local setting can get benefit from this research.

The teaching objectives of the cases are apprehend the importance of diffused HRM practices in developing countries context. importance of indigenous wisdom of flexibility and culturally fit HR practices as a proactive approach towards HR issues handling the case of Mr Shahbaz and Ms Aysha Ahmad. Importance of social networking and controlled personalized models for employee regulation, e.g. case of Mr Abid Elahi.

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

The subject areas are organizational management, organizational behaviour and human resource management.

The study is applicable for courses in human resource management and organizational behaviour as part of masters-level programmes in business administration and management, executive development programmes on organization design and development for middle/senior management.

In 2003, Elizabeth and Sunil Mehta had founded a voluntary organization, “Muktangan”, focussed on child-centric education through innovative pedagogy for the community of the urban poor. Elizabeth, an educationist, and Sunil, a highly successful business person, joined hands to contribute to the well-being of urban poor to make a difference to their lives. Elizabeth and Sunil presented a proposal to impart education for “the children of the community, by the teachers drawn from the community” to the residents of the slums in central Mumbai. With a humble beginning of running a small pre-school, Muktangan now manages seven schools with 3,400 children and 500 teachers, and a teachers’ training centre with a capacity to train 100 teachers a year. Muktangan won acclaim for its unique pedagogy and a very effective child-to-teacher ratio. Over the years, Elizabeth and Sunil led Muktangan with a strong passion and a “hands-on” approach. Of late, Elizabeth and Sunil faced questions from their donors about the sustainability of Muktangan with respect to leadership and management succession. Elizabeth and Sunil had a vision for Muktangan for self-directed growth with an empowered team. Muktangan embarked on the journey to create a leadership for self-directed growth. Sunil, Elizabeth and team Muktangan conceptualized and implemented a change management intervention with help from an external consultant to build the desired organization.

Outcomes are understanding issues involved in the leadership, organization design and management of change, particularly of those organizations engaged in social change and development in developing societies.

The Muktangan Story: Part A – An Organizational Study; The Muktangan Story Part B – Winds of Change; Teaching Note; References: Bradach J. (1996), Organizational Alignment: The 7-S Model, Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02,163. Cooperrider D. and Whitney D. (2005), “A Positive Revolution in Change: Appreciative Inquiry”, In The Change Handbook. The Definitive Resource on Today’s Best Methods for Engaging.Whole Systems, by Peggy Holman, Tom Devane, and Steven Cady. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Cooperrider D., Whitney D., and Stavros J.M. (2008), Appreciative Inquiry Handbook for Leaders of Change (Second Edition), Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Greiner, L.E. (1998), “Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow”, Harvard Business Review, May-June, 3-11. www.muktanganedu.org/ accessed 12 April, 2018. Kessler, E. H., (2013) (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Management Theory, Sage Publications Kotter, J. P. (1996), Leading Change, Harvard Business School Press, Boston. Lewin K. (1951), Field Theory in social science, Harper & Row, New York. Waterman, R. H., Peters, T. J., and Phillips, J. R. (1980), Structure is not organization. Business Horizons, 23(3), 14-26.

CSS 6: Human Resource Management.

The case is designed for students with prior knowledge of principles of management, particularly leadership theories. The case would also benefit bachelor students who already took an introductory course to leadership such as organizational behavior or graduate students who are familiar with the leadership and/or entrepreneurship literature. This case study may be used in the following academic courses: theories of leadership, leadership and leaders, organizational leaders’ roles, management skills, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial management.

This case study may be used in the following academic programs: Bachelor’s in Business Administration Master of Science in Business Administration MBA Programs.

Kamal Reggad is a Moroccan entrepreneur who created the company Menaclick, an online business that aims to sell and promote various products and services nationally and internationally at discounted prices. Goods and services are posted on Menaclick’s website www.hmizate.ma, which means “good deals” in Moroccan Arabic. The Hmizate platform operates a daily-deals and group-buying website offering discounted deals to Moroccan customers. The deals are mainly on goods and services such as traveling, food, esthetics, shopping, high-tech gadgets and recreational events (Eco, 2013). Menaclick is based in Casablanca, Morocco, and its website www.hmizate.ma is one of the most popular websites in the country with over 40,000 visitors per day. In the past few years, Kamal has been significantly contributing to building the groundwork of the e-commerce industry in Morocco, a course that has been changing the way Moroccan customers shop for goods and services. In fact, it is because of the merits of group-buying sites such as Hmizate that over 16 million Moroccan internet users navigate the net daily to buy products and services online with ease and facility (Maroc Numeric Cluster, 2014). Kamal Reggad is a fitting example of an innate leader who introduced a new leadership style to Morocco. Kamal took a colossal risk by targeting a new and unexplored market in Morocco which is the e-commerce business; his risks have paid off. As the case explains, Kamal’s success is because of his passion, perseverance and positive attitude.

In general, the objective of the case study is to further enhance the understanding of leadership in general and entrepreneurial spirit in particular. The case study will assist students in developing their leadership-related skills through the discussion of a real-life situation and experience and propose an example of the importance of participative leadership during the launching phase of a business venture. The case is designed to provoke and stimulate students’ personal reflections about a particular management style, especially in entrepreneurship.

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CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.