Search results

Emami is facing the heat from activist-consumers as well as its competitors. Competitors have renamed their cosmetic products by dropping the controversial word ‘fair.’ This was in response to the Black Lives Movement that erupted in the United States in May 2020. However, the movement against fairness is somewhat muted in India and is mostly occurring amongst urban, highly educated, younger cohort who are unlikely to be the users of the product anyway. The significant consumer base yearns for fairness and is willing to spend money on products which help them achieve the same. In such a scenario, how should Emami respond to competitor actions and consumer-activist pressure?

The case provides an opportunity to discuss the significance of the brand name, role of advertising and gender stereotypes.

Jeff Hotchkiss, President of the Assembly Test Division of Teradyne, Inc., the largest electronics testing company in the world, returned to the corporation where he had built his career after a three-year hiatus as CEO of a VOIP start-up. Teradyne's operation was struggling through the effects of a bad economy coupled with significant downturns in the electronics industry, and Hotchkiss encountered numerous problems specifically in the China operation, including customer dissatisfaction with service, price, and time required to implement changes. He assembled a strategic team to address these issues and to recommend and implement an accelerated turnaround in China. Students are challenged to design the turnaround plan.

Information was obtained in interviews with Richard Nagel in Winter/Spring 2022. This information was supplemented by material from secondary sources. The only information that was disguised were the real names for Bob Crater, Tim Landy, Jane Tolley and Mary Nagel.

The case was classroom tested in Summer 2022. The responses from students helped to shape the writing of the case.

Richard Nagel, the owner of the RE/MAX Elite real estate agency in Monmouth Beach, New Jersey, has just learned that one of his agents, Tim Landy, quit and left the industry. Tim was a young real estate agent and Richard had spent considerable time training him. Tim was motivated and he worked hard to prospect for business, but he showed that he was experiencing difficulty closing on his sales. Richard decided to recommend that Tim work with another agent, Bob Crater, as Bob was an experienced salesman but was not doing the up-front prospecting that Tim was doing. Richard suggested two different strategies to the two agents – a pairing up arrangement and peer-to-peer learning. The outcome that Richard envisioned was that both of the struggling salesmen would benefit from either of these strategies, but Bob refused to collaborate.

Tim’s quitting was characteristic of an ongoing problem with employee retention that Richard had been experiencing as a manager in recent years. This problem caused Richard to think about how he recruited his real estate agents, how he developed them through coaching and how he motivated them so that they would stay happy in their job and not leave. He recognized the importance of thoroughly examining his retention strategy within the next 12 months so that he could better manage the problem and strengthen the productivity of his real estate agency.

The case is intended for an undergraduate course in human resources management, as it deals directly with recruiting, coaching and retaining employees.

The case describes the strategy of a large Indian Public Sector Bank (PSB) to enhance financial inclusion and financial literacy of less privileged people located in poorly accessible parts of India. While pursuing the developmental objective ‘imposed’ by the Central Bank/government, being a listed entity, the PSB had to be mindful of the financial viability of the strategy so as to protect the interest of its minority shareholders. The issues covered are endemic to most developing countries where public enterprises often become instrumentality of the state.

This case is written for those people who are interested in entrepreneurship, and to generate discussions on the Lean Start-up methodology, as well as other topics related to entrepreneurship and innovation.

It can be used with senior undergraduates, MBAs, EMBAs and senior executives.

In August 2011, Mars Ren and Gene Deng created a technology-based venture, Shanghai Tianhailu Network Information Technology Ltd. Filled with passion, they aspired to be the first “factory outlet” in China' hotel booking industry. To achieve this goal, they developed the Hotelvp app for mobile users. After 6:00 p.m. every day, users could book accommodation online in hotels above three-star standard for that same night at significant discounts. Hotels also benefited because they could sell their unsold room nights at the last minute and improve their revenue management. Ren and Deng were convinced that this win-win idea would take off. Unfortunately, it failed to fully satisfy either the users or the hotels. In spite of the founders' passion and energy, it was still acquired by a much more powerful player in the online sector, JD.com, in early 2014. This case is designed to stimulate in-depth discussions based on the question: What are the key obstacles when launching a startup and how to overcome them?

Through class discussion, it aims at teaching the student how to define and practice a start-up idea successfully by following the “Lean Start-up” methodology and/or take advantage of a practical tool, discovery-driven planning. Specifically, this case intends to teach students how: To identify and define a good start-up idea; To take actions based on the idea/opportunity, iterate and modify it along the way to create new start-ups, and finally lead the new start-ups to grow and succeed; To understand the key concepts, frameworks and theoretical logics of Lean Start-up methodology, and apply it in practice.

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

Strategic Management.

The case is designed for a) MBA students b) Short-duration executive MBA courses.

The case refers to India’s leading steel company Tata Steel. Tata Tiscon, the steel rebar brand, is the organization’s leading retail brand. The case chronicles the period between the birth of the retail brand in the year 2000, its dramatic rise and dominance, to the end of 2013 when some of its initiatives had failed. Tata Tiscon was established as a pan Indian brand on the dint of a distribution network comprising 33 distributors and over 2000 retailers, many of them exclusive to the brand. The brand spawned a series of innovation in the category like “selling by piece”, fixed price concept and “free” home delivery. Together with its channel partners, the company achieved dramatic success which was reflected in its leading market share coupled with significant price premium in a category where price had traditionally being the only selling pitch. After 2010, the company saw an emerging challenge in the form of a new business model, where some companies were gearing to provide the complete portfolio of construction material including cement, steel, etc., and a turnkey construction solution for house builders. Tata Tiscon responded by attempting to enter the service space by launching a building design solution and later a construction supervision solution. Both of these initiatives failed. The protagonist of the case is Mr Keshav Viswanath (Chief of Marketing for retail business at Tata Steel), who is concerned with the failures of these key initiatives and is wondering how to ensure the “leader” status of Tata Tiscon in coming years.

The students are expected to understand how a core strategy like differentiation is implemented successfully in “practice”; understand the exploitation–exploration dichotomy in an organization; appreciate difference between radical innovation (based on new organizational routines, new business partners and new relationships) and incremental innovation based on fine tuning of existing organizational routines and relationships.

Rebar production: www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6n9sci8j-8; Tata TISCON AV: www.youtube.com/watch?v=89kOUsbnaYQ; TQM – The Toyota Way: www.youstube.com/watch?v=qf3gdrIMxRw; Disruptive vs. Incremental Innovation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOOL_GiaLTo; Approach to innovation is dead wrong: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pii8tTx1UYM

CSS 11: Strategy.

Organizational theory/organizational behavior.

MBA

ABC Development Organization (ABCDO) is a civil society organization working in Dungarpur district of Rajasthan. ABCDO is working towards empowering tribal women of rural Rajasthan through making credit accessible to them and by offering them various livelihood choices. The organization employs local people, most of whom have not received college education. Illiterate, marginalized, and poor are the adjectives that describe the clients of ABCDO – the women from rural and tribal Rajasthan. ABCDO played the role of an intermediary between these hopeless women and formal financial system. ABCDO works with low degree of formalization and with a relatively low amount of documentation, despite being in the business of delivering financial services. However, such low formalization has never caused any problem in coordination of various activities within the organization and ABCDO has been growing in operation for the last couple of years. The case is about the role played by organizational culture in an organization with low degree of formalization. This case examines the emergence and functions of culture in civil society organizations which are often characterized by routineness of technology, yet the absence of rules, procedures and written documentations.

At the end of the course, students should be able to understand the following: the emergence of culture in a Civil Society Organization, the role played by culture in an organization with low degree of formalization, the framework depicting relationship of environment and strategy to organizational culture in the context of organizations engaged in microfinance with a social agenda.

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 first company under the Amara Raja Group was established in 1984, i.e. Amara Raja Electronics Limited (AREL) followed by Amara Raja Batteries Limited (ARBL). Its founder leveraged the presence of his family in Renigunta, a rural village in South India, and chose to start the industry there to create employment opportunities. Preference is given to local population in all ARG enterprises. Despite its strong people orientation, the HR department/function at ARG got strengthened only after Jaikrishna strived to make it central to business. The department's evolution has been demarcated in three phases. The first and second phase saw few initiatives, and during the third phase the HR department was structured according to the Dave Ulrich Strategic HR Model. While this structure had been successful until now, certain sections in ARG still doubted its sustainability.

This case is appropriate for the following courses in undergraduate, graduate or executive programs.

Sustainability, strategy, inclusive business, environmental sustainability and women in leadership. Upon completion of the case study discussion successful students will be able to:

Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola brought to life Wecyclers, an urban waste management company in Nigeria that started as an idea during her MBA programme at MIT. Bilikiss served as its CEO from 2012 and mobilized efforts to sign up thousands of individuals, corporate bodies and agents who turn in waste to recycle. While waste management already had a lot of private sector participants (PSPs), there was no recycling company with a focus on community engagement as at the time Wecyclers came on board. The company went through several iterations to arrive at business model, develop its peculiar infrastructure, build partnerships and raise funds. The case study documents Wecyclers roll-out under the leadership of Bilikiss, whose work with Wecyclers has been shaped by her evolution as a professional woman with a background, education and network that has enabled her excel in the face of social norms which emphasize men as leaders. The case dilemma involves strategy cross-roads Bilikiss faced in mid-2017 as Wecyclers considered expanding its operation, pushed beyond waste collection, pushed by infrastructural weaknesses in the landscape which forced the company to consider vertical integration of its inclusive business model as a way forward to meaningfully serving its stakeholders – from communities, corporates to agents.

• Explore the strategic contexts of doing business in emerging markets;• understand the challenges and opportunities in inclusive business model for solving a social problem such as waste management; and • Examine the growth and evolution of women’s leadership, possibilities and hurdles, in a range of contexts.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

In this way, the case study contributes to the limited body of knowledge about strategic and pragmatic facing social enterprises in emerging markets, including funding, community engagement, infrastructure, etc. It also gives us a view of inclusive business models and the evolution of women’s leadership.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

An industry adage held that “there are two types of rental car companies: those that lose money and Enterprise.” The company that would become Enterprise Rent-A-Car was started in 1957 in St. Louis, Missouri, by Jack Taylor. Taylor set up Enterprise offices in neighborhoods rather than at airports because he believed that Americans would welcome a local option for renting cars when their own vehicles were being repaired. In 2010 Enterprise had more than 6,000 rental locations in the United States and a fleet of 850,000 cars in service. Its parent, Enterprise Holdings (comprising Enterprise, National, and Alamo brands) accounted for nearly half of the car rental market and was more than twice the size of Hertz, the number two competitor. Enterprise's competitive advantage was the result of the combination of its practices in hiring, training, compensation, organization, customer service, IT, and fleet management, among others.