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The term emotional intelligence was coined by the researchers Peter Salavoy and John Mayer. The concept was popularized by Daniel Goleman through his book Emotional Intelligence published in 1996. According to Salavoy and Mayer (1990), emotional intelligence consists of a set of skills hypothesized to contribute to the accurate appraisal and expression of emotion in oneself and in others, the effective regulation of emotion in self and others and the use of feelings to motivate, plan and achieve in one’s life.

The case study uses two sources of information, namely, primary and secondary. Dr Dev, a senior training and development manager with a multinational company constituted the primary source. The secondary source consisted of information publicly available on various websites. The case has been disguised for various reasons.

Lady mosquito at NPS Mumbai is a case study on emotional intelligence, a much sought-after concept in management education, but not many case studies have been written on the topic. This case involves an interaction that took place between a facilitator and a learner, and it highlights the importance of emotional intelligence in day-to-day communication. The use of emotional intelligence will manifold improve the ability of the facilitator to understand the learners’ behavior in the classroom. This will further enhance the effectiveness of learning, as the motivated facilitator/trainer will be more committed to engaging the learners in their educational activities.

This case has been developed to be used in postgraduate and undergraduate management programs. This case can also be used in management development programs for executives. As the case provides a basic understanding of human behavior and thereby teaches to manage others just by managing oneself. As the case revolves around a facilitator and the learner, it can also be used in the trainer program for facilitators who desire to conduct training programs or want to take teaching as a full-time career.

The case is presented as descriptive in nature and primarily involves exploratory research.

Ashraf, a young graduate from Bangalore, India, started a chain of lifestyle shops, his family business in Khartoum, Sudan. To modernize the shops, Ashraf approached a small finance bank for financial assistance. However, after submitting the required documents and with a good credit score, he was denied a loan. The bank officials had mentioned that the loan automation software did not approve the application. Hence, the bank personnel said that they could not do anything further. Disappointed, Ashraf sought the help of his professor, John, to understand why the software rejected his application. Professor John explained to Ashraf the advantages and disadvantages of automation. In the process, Ashraf understood the significance and compelling need to address “Algorithm Bias,” a situation in which specific attributes of an algorithm cause unfair outcomes. The case place students in Ashraf’s position to help them understand the advantages and issues of applying automation through artificial intelligence.

The case suits graduate-level courses like business analytics, financial analytics and business intelligence.

Through the case, the students will be able to: Understand the role of algorithms in business and society. Understand the causes, effects and methods of reducing algorithm bias. Demonstrate the ability to detect algorithm bias. Define policies to mitigate algorithm bias.

After completion of the case study, students will learn to use Lean Canvas to identify business opportunity. They will also learn the balancing of exploitation of profit-producing activities and exploring new opportunities according to the environmental dynamism.

WONK, a tutor discovery and booking app was launched by MyEdge in 2016 to search and book verified tutors in locations served by the company. Based on their requirements, parents and students could sort and book verified tutors in their area. Through the app, users could search for academic and hobby classes in the form of individual tuitions. The ease of use and the service offering made it a popular app with students enrolling every 6 min. Within a span of six years, WONK had provided services to thousands of students in 20+ countries and had 200,000+ tutors registered on their app from 15,000+ pin codes. Despite a plethora of Edtech companies in India, a different business model and services offered gave them an edge over other Edtech companies. To keep up with the customer needs, they were constantly making the upgrades to their technology and expanding their services. Vidhu Goyal, the founder of the company, was enjoying the progress when another development in the technology hit the world. With the launch of applications based on artificial intelligence, will it disrupt the business or not?

The case study is recommended to be taught in a 90-min class to Master of Business Administration students. The case study may be used in courses related to strategy, information systems management and entrepreneurship.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Management of Innovation and Technology/Management Information Systems.

Information Systems.

SER (Sugar, Energy & Rum) was a company belonging to the Grupo Pellas Corporation. The company operated in four countries, had six subsidiaries, employed more than 25,000 people, had more than 43,500 manzanas of sugarcane crops in Nicaragua alone and had global annual sales of more than US$400m. In 2008, due to the negative effects of the crisis on the company’s business model (increasing costs due to higher prices for fuel and decreasing income because of low international sugar prices), the company decided to implement a business intelligence (BI) system to optimize its processes to reduce costs and increase productivity. At that time, the company had more than 100 years of data, information systems that fed into their main business processes and a culture that appreciated data as the basis for decision-making. However, there were inconsistencies among data systems, users received highly complex reports in Excel or green screens and process monitoring happened long after the tasks had been completed. As a response, SER used extract–transform–load to collect and clean data that would be used in the BI system (the case leaves the questions regarding the systems selection unsolved for discussion). Based on their business model, they selected the most critical processes and defined key performance indicators to measure the impact of changes in those processes. They considered graphic design as a tool to make the system more accepted by users and worked together with users so that reports only offered the most important information. The result was improved costs and productivity. They decreased manual time spent by 14 per cent, automated time spent by 10 per cent, and eliminated 1,556 hours of dead time for equipment in the field, which allowed them to increase productivity by US$1m just in sugar. They saved 20,000 trips from the fields to the factories, which represented more than US$1m in savings by monitoring the weight of wagons loaded with sugarcane in real time. They improved client perceptions about the company both locally and internationally by implementing a sugar traceability system.

The case “Business Intelligence at the Grupo Pellas SER Company” has as its objective to respond to the question: How does a company make its BI system implementation successful? As such, the case: Discusses what a BI system is and what it provides to a business analyses challenges, benefits and context when implementing a BI system; analyses success factors and recommendations in the BI system implementation process; analyses the process of implementing a BI and highlights the importance of the system priority questions and technological alternatives.

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 11: Strategy

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

Resource-based view (RBV) theory (Barney, 1991; Barney and Mackey, 2016; Nagano, 2020) states that a firm’s tangible and intangible resources can represent a sustainable competitive advantage (SCA), a long-term competitive advantage that is extremely difficult to duplicate by another firm, when it meets four criteria (i.e. not imitable, are rare, valuable and not substitutable). In the context of this case, we believe there are three sources of SCA to be discussed using RBV – the major league soccer (MLS) team player roster, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to exploit this roster and the league’s single-entity structure: • MLS players: it has been widely acknowledged that a firm’s human resource talent, which includes professional soccer players (Omondi-Ochieng, 2019), can be a source of SCA. For example, from an RBV perspective, a player on the Los Angeles Galaxy roster: > cannot play for any other team in any other league at the same time (not imitable and are rare), > would already be a competitive player, as he is acquired to play in the highest professional league in the country (valuable) and > it would be almost impossible to find a clone player matching his exact talent characteristic (not substitutable) anywhere else. Of course, the roster mix of players must be managed by a capable coach who is able to exploit these resources and win championships (Szymanski et al., 2019). Therefore, it is the strategic human resource or talent management strategies of the professional soccer team roster that will enable a team to have the potential for an SCA (Maqueira et al., 2019). • Technology: technology can also be considered a source of SCA. However, this has been a source of contention. The argument is that technology is accessible to any firm that can afford to purchase it. Logically, any MLS team (or for that matter any professional soccer team) can acquire or build an AI system. For many observers, the only obvious constraint is financial resources. As we discuss in other parts of the case study, there is a fan-based assumption that what transpired in major league baseball (MLB) may repeat in the MLS. The movie Moneyball promoted the use of sabermetrics in baseball when making talent selection (as opposed to relying exclusively on scouts), which has now evolved into the norm of using technology-centered sports analytics across all MLB teams. In short, where is the advantage when every team uses technology for talent management? However, if that is the case, why are the MLB teams continuing to use AI and now the National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL) and National Hockey League are following suit? We believe RBV theorists have already provided early insights: > “the exploitation of physical technology in a firm often involves the use of socially complex firm resources. Several firms may all possess the same physical technology, but only one of these firms may possess the social relations, cultural traditions, etc., to fully exploit this technology to implementing strategies…. and obtain a sustained competitive advantage from exploiting their physical technology more completely than other firms” (Barney, 1991, p. 110). • MLS League Single-Entity Structure: In contrast to other professional soccer leagues, the MLS has one distinct in-built edge – its ownership structure as a single entity, that is as one legal organization. All of the MLS teams are owned by the MLS, but with franchise operators. The centralization of operations provides the MLS with formidable economies of scale such as when investing in AI technologies for teams. Additionally, this ownership structure accords it leverage in negotiations for its inputs such as for player contracts. The MLS is the single employer of all its players, fully paying all salaries except those of the three marquees “designated players.” Collectively, this edge offers the MLS unparalleled fluidity and speed as a league when implementing changes, securing stakeholder buy-ins and adjusting for tailwinds. The “socially complex firm resources” is the unique talent composition of the professional soccer team and most critically its single entity structure. While every team can theoretically purchase an AI technology talent management system, its application entails use across 30 teams with a very different, complex and unique set of player talents. The MLS single-entity structure though is the resource that supplies the stability required for this human-machine (technology) symbioses to be fully accepted by stakeholders such as players and implemented with precision and speed across the entire league. So, there exists the potential for each MLS team (and the MLS as a league) to acquire SCA even when using “generic” AI technology, as long as other complex firm factors come into play.

This case relied on information that was widely reported within media, press interviews by MLS officials, announcements by various organizations, journal articles and publicly available information on MLS. All of the names and positions, in this case, are actual persons.

MLS started as a story of dreaming large and of quixotic adventure. Back in 1990, the founders of the MLS “sold” the league in exchange for the biggest prize in world soccer – the rights to host the 1994 Fédération Internationale de Football Association World Cup before they even wrote up the business plan. Today, the MLS is the highest-level professional men’s soccer league competition in the USA. That is a major achievement in just over 25-years, as the US hosts a large professional sports market. However, MLS has been unable to attract higher broadcasting value for its matches and break into the highest tier of international professional soccer. The key reason is that MLS matches are not deemed high quality content by broadcasters. To achieve higher quality matches requires many inputs such as soccer specific stadiums, growing the fan base, attracting key investors, league integrity and strong governance, all of which MLS has successfully achieved since its inception. However, attracting high quality playing talent is a critical input the MLS does not have because the league has repeatedly cautioned that it cannot afford them yet to ensure long-term financial sustainability. In fact, to guarantee this trade-off, the MLS is one of the only professional soccer leagues with an annual salary cap. So, the question is: how does MLS increase the quality of its matches (content) using relatively low cost (low quality) talent and still be able to demand higher broadcast revenues? One strategy is for the MLS to use AI playing technology to extract higher quality playing performance from its existing talent like other sports leagues have demonstrated, such as the NFL and NBA. To implement such a radical technology-centric strategy with its players requires the MLS to navigate associated issues such as human-machine symbioses, risking fan acceptance and even altering brand valuation.

The case is written and designed for a graduate-level (MBA) class or an upper-level undergraduate class in areas such as contemporary issues in management, human resource management, talent management, strategic management, sports management and sports marketing. The case is suitable for courses that discuss strategy, talent management, human resource management and brand strategy.

Agriculture knowledge, market intelligence, emerging business model.

It is best suited to teach undergraduates and graduates in the areas of rural marketing, agri-business management, service management and information and communication technology for development.

India is changing with great pace by inclusive growth on espousal of technology into the mainstream. Indian farmers are wholly depending even now on traditional methods for decision making on entire agriculture supply chain. The constant decision making provides middle men with a chance to exploit and empower themselves on the returns produced by farmers. Technology is creating waves providing an opportunity for farmers to benefit by adopting information and technology to solve their basic livelihood problems. The Thomson Reuter group launched a SMS-based mobile information service to support India's 250-million-strong agricultural community. The service, named Reuters Market Light (RML), is trying to provide a missing link by providing required information in the quickest possible time to farmers; user need-based services are critical to this. How far RML services are delivering in this context is quizzed by some analysts. Thomson Reuter's service started with the global climb down in commodity prices, coupled with increased risk of natural disasters as per experts. The competitors providing similar services at price which differ with RML wondered about the success, scalability and sustainability of its venture.

This is a practical view of how these interventions can be better looked at and can get into policy for a framework for rural areas' socio-economic development.

Teaching notes.

This video case study exercise uses excerpts from the movie Patton and the HBO series Band of Brothers to juxtapose two military leaders (General George S. Patton and Lieutenant Dick Winters) as they face strikingly similar situations – each interacts with a subordinate experiencing “battle fatigue” (a.k.a. shell shock, PTSD) during the Second World War. Patton appears to lack emotional intelligence (EI) as he apparently loses control and strikes a soldier he believes is demonstrating cowardice. Winters, on the other hand, takes a much different approach when dealing with a subordinate in a similar situation. This case exercise is designed to augment assigned theoretical readings and increase student conceptual and practical insight into the construct of EI.

The analysis of film and biographies is based on historical figures.

The case is best used with undergraduates in management or leadership courses who may lack the contextual background to discuss certain aspects of leadership. Specifically, the case is designed to explore the elements that comprise EI as well as how EI may affect a leader’s effectiveness. The case study can also be used to challenge common conceptions of how EI may manifest and to discuss the potential “dark side” of EI.

This case study exercise centers on the concept of EI, with an emphasis on providing a robust understanding of the concept, including how context may come into play and how EI may have a “dark side.” The exercise could also be used to facilitate discussion of multiple topics normally covered in undergraduate management or leadership courses such as personality, perception and attribution, authentic leadership, toxic leadership, transformational leadership and motivation.

The learning outcomes of this paper is as follows: to give faculty the opportunity to illustrate the strategist’s and marketer’s toolbox, namely, tools and frameworks such as the McKinsey 7S model. Porter’s generic marketing strategies. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis. Political, economic, social and cultural, technological, environment and legal – external macro analysis. The case is intended for use in MBA and Executive education courses in strategy, marketing and leadership. The case offers relevant experiences and instructive lessons in formulating and implementing business strategies. The case highlights the importance of contextual leadership intelligence and competence in enabling entrepreneurial business activities. The case gives students the opportunity to apply a strategic framework to marketing communications, competitive analysis and branding with a new brand and a new name in a first world economy. The case helps students understand that: successful companies are a success because of their people and leadership, proactive thinking and constantly looking for new opportunities will make you a leader in the market, up-to-date competitor and market analysis are paramount in making the winning decision, staying true to one’s business philosophy and company values build a reputable organization, the importance of creating partnerships and healthy relationships with the distribution channel, the concept of competitive advantage, the concept of differentiation, focus and cost leadership and the concept of value and understanding customer needs.

The Egan’s Whiskey case offers students a unique opportunity to discover the important, yet grass-root, strategic decisions made by a high-quality alcohol product in a very competitive, well-known brand dominated the market, the USA. The case focuses specifically on issues related to strategic choices and implementation, brand, reputation, leadership, strategic marketing decision-making, customer/retail relationships, customer value and the importance of good marketing intelligence. There are some good examples of out-of-the-box thinking. History reveals that companies with the strongest brands, most proactive leadership, innovative marketing ideas, superb marketing intelligence and deepest relationships with their consumers are the pillars of success. The very assets that define these leading companies provide benchmarks for upcoming organizations. Being complacent and having poor leadership and vision in an ever-demanding customer-driven and competitive environment is a recipe for failure. Organizations and their leadership teams need to start thinking systematically, proactively and strategically about their place in competitive markets and take quick actions to mitigate risks and miss opportunities before they become reality. This case reveals the importance of understanding your strategic landscape, your market, your competitors, your customers, quick thinking and actions and having a rolling strategic plan, which is adaptable.

The case is intended for use in MBA and Executive education courses in strategy, marketing and leadership.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

In mid-June 2000, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor is considering an investment of $125 million of convertible preferred stock in his firm by a group of private investors including Citadel Investment Group LLC. The offer comes at a difficult time for the company, because only three months earlier, its stock had reached a record price of $300 per share. At that point, the company had registered a $1 billion seasoned equity offering. Shortly thereafter, the company was forced to restate its earnings after running afoul of the SEC for its revenue-recognition practices. Although the restatement did not change the company's cash-flow position, it did result in an SEC investigation and the cancellation of the stock offering. In order to meet Saylor's ambitious plans for MicroStrategy, additional funding must be obtained. With public-market funding sources shut off, students must evaluate what the best course of action is for the firm at this moment. Students are asked to evaluate a new form of venture financing called private investments in public enterprises (PIPE). PIPEs differ from conventional floating-rate convertibles in that the conversion price in most cases can only be adjusted downward. The case considers both the pros and cons of these investments.