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The Arbor City Community Foundation (ACCF) was a medium-sized endowment established in Illinois in the late 1970s through the hard work of several local families. The vision of the ACCF was to be a comprehensive center for philanthropy in the greater Arbor City region. ACCF had a fund balance (known collectively as “the fund”) of just under $240 million. The ACCF board of trustees had appointed a committee to oversee investment decisions relating to the foundation assets. The investment committee, under the guidance of the board, pursued an active risk-management policy for the fund. The committee members were primarily concerned with the volatility and distribution of portfolio returns. They relied on the value-at-risk (VaR) methodology as a measurement of the risk of both short- and mid-term investment losses. The questions in Part (A) of the case direct the students to analyze the risk inherent in both one particular asset and the entire ACCF portfolio. For this analysis the students need to calculate daily VaR and monthly VaR values and interpret these figures in the context of ACCF's risk management. In Part (B) the foundation receives a major donation. As a result, the risk inherent in its portfolio changes considerably. The students are asked to evaluate the risk of the fund's new portfolio and to perform a portfolio rebalancing analysis.

Understanding the concept of value at risk (VaR); Calculating daily and monthly VaR by two different methods, the historical and the parametric approach; Interpreting the results of VaR calculations; Understanding the role of diversification for managing risk; Evaluating the impact of portfolio rebalancing on the overall risk of a portfolio.

After reading this case, the students will be able to comprehend the conceptual framework of entrepreneurial learning to tap business opportunities; identify the challenges of small businesses; understand the structure of the franchise business model; and recognise the need for succession planning for business sustainability and evaluate various options for succession.

“Jute Cottage”, the two-decade-old brand, was operating through its own stores and franchise outlets. The brain behind the brand was Nasreen and her husband Bilal. Dire times led the duo, venture into this business. It was in 1992, the family had relocated from Kolkata and was trying to make a living in Bangalore. Nasreen joined as a teacher and her husband focused on his existing trading business in jute packaging material. This was when Nasreen tried selling jute bags from home that were bought from Kolkata. After a few years, when Bilal’s business had a setback, Nasreen thought of giving a push to her home business. This was how a business that was started at a small level grew slowly and steadily under Nasreen’s leadership to become a brand and reach the current level of owning four stores and 10 franchise outlets across South India. As Nasreen and Bilal were growing old and wanted to retire, they expected their only son, Ataullah, to take over the reins of their business. But to their dismay, he was not interested, as his focus was on movie-making and designing.

The case can be taught to MBA/PGDM students to give them experiential learning in the courses on Entrepreneurship and Strategy. It gives insight on how to tap the business opportunities, grow and sustain. The case also highlights the need for succession planning for business continuity.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The case can be used at undergraduate and postgraduate level, in management development programmes or in Executive Education programmes.

Social entrepreneurship, social inclusion, business model innovation, sustainability, strategy design and strategy execution.

The case explores the development of MITTI Café, an organisation that trains and employs individuals with intellectual, physical and/or psychiatric disabilities to work in inclusive kitchens and cafes in India. The protagonist is the founder of the café, Alina Alam, who has won several international awards for her work. The case highlights Alam’s approach and how she is trying to challenge societal and business perspectives relating to disability. From 2017 to 2021, Alam has scaled and operationalised the business, building her core team, leveraging several partnerships with stakeholders and putting into place offerings, processes and procedures that created a sustainable business model and blueprint.MITTI Café aligns itself with several of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with sustainability and social impact at the core of its strategy. As Alam considers the future in July 2021, what else needs to be taken into consideration to scale either within India or abroad?

Following reading and exploring the case, students should be able to identify how social exclusion and inclusion manifests in a business context, and how social entrepreneurship ventures such as MITTI Café can address this challenge; identify capabilities in the context of people with disabilities; recognise how stakeholder relationships can be leveraged as a force for good and for growth, and address SDGs through social enterprise; identify and categorise resources and capabilities within organisations; evaluate opportunities for growth and scale.

The case explores how the protagonist is challenging the concept of “ability” and through her work with the differently abled providing scalable opportunities for social inclusion and dignity.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

The case is suitable for all post-graduate students and executives doing a course in human resource management (HRM). The case will enable these students to apply concepts such as inclusion, empowerment, glass ceiling, in business situations involving women. It will help them to trace the evolution path for women employees who have the traits to lead a department or organisation and assume entrepreneurial roles.

The case study is particularly beneficial for MBA students specialising in HRM focussed on leadership and training. It can be used in courses such as gender and entrepreneurship for students of MBA entrepreneurship and MBA family business management. As the case is written in India, it can explore the gender issues in emerging markets surreptitiously. Most importantly, the case addresses COVID-19 perspective adequately, to teach modules embedded in main courses of any MBA program.

PRISM World Pvt Ltd is a leading training and consultancy firm in Delhi, India. The firm is owned and managed by a young woman Dr Anubha Walia. She started her career as a human resource manager in leading Indian companies, but somewhere down the line, she felt the job was not allowing her to realise the fullest potential. The Indian corporate training industry was male dominated with self-serving men, supporting the “glass ceiling”. To break the barrier, Anubha opened her training firm founded on the basis of a new philosophy, which should serve the ideals of helping and promoting women in workplace. This new philosophy was called PRISM. Anubha provided an inclusive environment which allowed her trainers to grow and feel empowered in a gender-biased industry.Very recently, when COVID-19 pandemic happened, female trainers were under tremendous strain as training requirements completely dried up, and they were rendered jobless. Most of these educated young women had small kids and paid monthly installments for their home loans, sharing the financial burden with their husbands. Some mature trainers were single women who had to support themselves through savings in these difficult times. But Anubha’s sense of empowerment at PRISM helped these women to do things which made their livelihoods turnaround even in uncertain circumstances. PRISM philosophy made a turnaround too. While employees were thinking of abandoning their companies and vice-versa, trainers at PRISM went for free webinars to draw clients to their firms and changed the concept of training and delivery in corona times.PRISM acquired a new meaning of wellness and spirituality in these difficult times and soared ahead successfully.

The case study hopes to achieve the following pedagogical objectives: 1. To educate students on manners and traits of women entrepreneurs. Besides, the usual difficulties of financing and running a business, women face adversities at home in the form of lack of access to working capital, trust deficit amongst family and friends. Basically, lack of support system to propels women into the tougher role of an entrepreneur graduating from a regular employee. Gender becomes a disability, which women had to fight in the workplace. The case introduces the PRISM philosophy as a unique methodology to inculcate inclusivity in work environment leading to women empowerment. 2. To outline all issues related to ‘glass ceiling” – the barrier which existed in the corporate world for businesswomen. Students need to know about problems women faced in the business environment as well as shortcomings within themselves, which can make them unproductive. 3. To align students first hand with the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic, specific to women. The case talks about educated young and mature women in Anubha’s firm PRISM, fighting for lost livelihood owing to reduced levels of business. But women are known to be highly resilient and empowered in the right direction will turnaround the situation in their favour.

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The case has tremendous social implication for educated working women in traditional patriarchal Indian societies. Though a sizeable percentage of women have achieved higher education and started working in a male-dominated corporate world, only a small number of them are visible as entrepreneurs and/or leaders. Every woman needs to trace her journey from an employee to an entrepreneur or a CEO to assume a position of leadership. This case can be an eye opener for many such ambitious women who can build small- to mid-size businesses in a short span of time. Digital intervention is very important in COVID times to stay afloat. The author has shared links for many videos which can disseminate ideas for digital transformation in businesses. The case tries to showcase an ideal inclusive environment which will propel women to achieve their latent goals and desires breaking the 'glass ceiling.'

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

This case requires students to evaluate alternative dual-share-class corporate structures that allow companies and entrepreneurs to pursue profit with purpose. The case explores Impact Makers, an IT consulting company based in Richmond, Virginia. While original founders of the firm hold all voting rights, the cash flow rights belong to two nonprofits setting the stage for a Newman's Own model of management consulting. The case discusses whether and how the alternative corporate structure aids the firm's overall strategy to attract top-quality employees, pay them competitive salaries, and provide superior service to its clients while donating 100% of its lifetime value to charitable causes, largely through partnerships with various nonprofit organizations. More importantly, the case asks students to evaluate how such a dual-share-class and dual-purpose company can raise capital to fund continued growth.

The case opens with CEO Michael Pirron reminding himself of all the questions he had run through to execute a strategy to further grow Impact Makers' consulting business both through expanding a menu of services and through conquering new geographical markets. To do either, or both, the company needed a cash infusion. Internal cash was limited, as up to 40% of it flowed to charitable partners, demonstrating Impact Makers' commitment to its mission. Raising debt for a company without fixed assets was challenging and time consuming. Complicating it all was that being structured as a nonstock corporation rendered equity raising difficult. Could Impact Makers raise money to grow and stay true to community values at the same time?

The subject areas are marketing, entrepreneurship, strategy or organisational design, operating in emerging markets and social entrepreneurship.

The study is applicable to MBA students, masters-level students and students of executive education.

The case outlines the context and current decisions and dilemma facing Essay Gifts, which is a successful enterprise based in Cape Town, South Africa, supplying a local market in corporate gifting since 2006. The emerging market is facing economic decline and rising unemployment sitting at 25 per cent and up to 48 per cent in the youth market. After seven years of operating from a home-based office, Beatrice has moved into an office block in an upcoming area in Cape Town as they anticipate bullish targets for the upcoming year. The decision facing her now is whether to also sign a lease for a vacant retail shop downstairs from her office to sell ready-made gifting solutions. To meet the social mission, Essay Gifts is using township-based suppliers to develop the products, and this is proving an often unreliable and inconsistent source of supply and the current orders may not even be met at this particularly busy end-of-year period. How does Beatrice scale the business and what business is she in after all? Is she an entrepreneur, striving to increase the size of her business and her revenue, or is she a social entrepreneur creating employment opportunities for others?

The paper enables to identify the determining features of a social enterprise and the dynamics involved in balancing the social and commercial missions; understand the complexities of entrepreneurial operations in emerging markets; identify scaling up and strategic growth strategy options for social enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises; and distinguish entrepreneurial marketing strategies in contrast with traditional marketing strategies.

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CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The learning outcomes are to get an understanding of the greeting cards (GCs) industry – appreciate the evolution of the industry and the changes that have been impacting the industry; analyze the external environment situation and assess the current strategy of Archies; analyze the existing strategy of Archies and apply the knowledge of strategic frameworks to the current business context of Archies; and create a new strategy for the company to overcome its current challenges.

The case highlights the situation faced by Archies Limited, a company, which pioneered the growth of the social expression industry in India and developed the market for GCs, a quintessentially Western concept in the Indian market. While it experienced phenomenal growth for two and a half decades, in the past 10 years, things have become more difficult for the company. Based on secondary data, this case presents various facts related to the case and seeks answers related to possible strategies that the firm may explore in the future.

Undergraduate and postgraduate management course in the area of strategic management. The level of difficulty can be from medium to high depending on the learning level.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

The Max-Value Stores case provides an opportunity for students to apply the understanding of various financial reporting topics (revenue recognition, liability de-recognition, accounting changes, and deferred taxes) to determine the applicable GAAP for recognizing gift card ‘breakage’, the estimated amount of gift cards that is unlikely to be redeemed. The case requires students to examine several technical and conceptual financial reporting issues in a real-world setting and helps to strengthen students? accounting research capabilities, understand implications of the choice of an accounting policy for performance measurement and financial statement analysis, and develop critical thinking and professional judgment skills.

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.

At the end of the case study discussion, students will able to state the importance of outsourcing with comparing pros and cons in business decision-making; review the value bestowed to the community in using sustainable raw material while at the same time conserving the ancient style of artwork particular to the area; discuss the utility of the products manufactured by “Flying Colours,” especially for the lockdown period which was because of the pandemic; and demonstrate and interpret the use of shark and mosquito bite matrix.

Arun Kumar Patni, 47, and his wife Neelima Patni, 43, are co-founders of Flying Colours, a start-up company based in Jaipur, in the state of Rajasthan, India. Their enterprise was engaged in the manufacturing and marketing of bird products and accessories, including bird feeders, bird houses, earthen water bowls, etc. In July 2020, post-lockdown, they were desperate to hire carpenters to restart their factory. However, COVID-19 posed a serious challenge, making it very difficult to replace their skilled carpenters, who had returned to their native places and had not come back. This disrupted production and order fulfilment. Keeping this situation in perspective in anticipation of the continuing pandemic crisis, Neelima was in favour of outsourcing basic production and designing the birdfeed decoration and artwork in-house. Meanwhile, Arun instead favoured continuing full in-house production as before, by hiring replacement carpenters. Yet for an in-house full-scale production, procuring raw material was a difficult task because of the lockdown. The situation had earlier taken a turn for the worse when Arun had advertised an exchange marketing policy to let customers return their old bird feeders for a 20% discount on a new one. This campaign was a huge success and resulted in a sales spike but unfortunately it caused a huge stock of returned products in their warehouse. Arun initially planned to repair and resell them as refurbished products. It now seemed impossible, because local carpenters demanded higher labour charges than the regular carpenters did. Flying Colours had provided skills workshops and hired external trainers to train unskilled carpenters prior to lockdown, so now all the training investment was in vain. Cash liquidity, sales, marketing, etc. were almost at a standstill.

This case particularly focuses on undergraduate-level students pursuing business or commerce programs, especially those studying core course: Entrepreneurial Strategic Management.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.