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The main teaching objective for the case is for students to build a better understanding of how to advance women (and other minorities) in the workplace through mentorship. This is achieved through recognizing the wide variety of issues that enable and constrains women’s advancement in the workplace; defining mentoring, sponsorship, coaching and networking; and highlighting how mentoring, sponsorship, coaching and networking can overcome the challenges of facing women’s advancement in the workplace?

The case study explores the role of senior women leaders in the career advancement of other women in the workplace. It helps us understand how mentoring can address the low prevalence of women at senior levels despite companies’ efforts to advance women. The case profiles the career and leadership journey of a senior female executive, Maserame Mouyeme. It documents her rise from the dusty streets of Soweto, South Africa to become one of the first black female executives in several corporate contexts across Africa and especially at Coca-Cola. The case illustrates her practice of mentoring and its impact on her and others’ careers. Also illustrated is Mouyeme’s leadership style, mentoring approach and workplace experiences. Students deliberate Mouyeme’s dilemma: whether to continue to advance a new generation of women leaders or whether to focus on her core role of building the business she is responsible for. The selected research method is a teaching case study, grounded in an exploratory approach. Primary data was collected via semi-structured interviews with the protagonist and four of her mentees. Secondary data was collected via studies about the protagonist and the companies she has worked for in her career. The case provides empirical insights about the role of leaders and especially women, in advancing women. The case shows the approaches in which organizations can advance women. It also shows how emerging leaders can better manage their own careers. The case deepens knowledge of women advancement and career development.

The case is appropriate for post-graduate level study, including MBA-level. It is also appropriate for use on executive development programs.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human Resource Management.

The case was written from secondary materials.

This case is designed to support learning objectives in a Human Relations class of a university management course. The case explores how the UK Metropolitan police, working with the Girls’ Network, piloted a reverse mentoring programme for six months in 2021. Three senior officers were mentored by a trio of teenage girls from disadvantaged London boroughs. The aim of the programme was to address falling trust in the police by creating more understanding and empathy in the mentees for the issues facing the communities where the mentors lived, and to give the mentors more confidence from the experience of representing their communities. Each mentor–mentee pair focused on a specific policing issue that was relevant to the mentor’s neighbourhood: knife crime, domestic abuse or social inequality. Through the process, the senior Met police officers gained a deeper understanding of the challenges in the communities they served. Now that the pilot had been completed, the Met faced a decision point. Should the programme be spread further through the Met?Through reading and discussing the case, students are expected to explore the importance of empathy in the workplace and how reverse mentoring, when having the right support and overall intent, could be used in organisations.

This case is appropriate for university management courses. This case has a difficulty level appropriate for undergraduate and postgraduate courses. This case could be incorporated into a unit on human behaviour, leadership or coaching.

This case will help students to understand the following: Develop a basic understanding of competency building processes. Learn about the mentoring process and its application in leadership development. Develop awareness about the methodology for assessment of the effectiveness of training.

Dr A. R. K. Pillai founded the Indian Leprosy Foundation in 1970 in response to the national call by late Mrs Indira Gandhi, prime minister of India, to the public-spirited people to take up leprosy eradication. It collaborated with international agencies to reduce leprosy drastically in India from four million, in 1982 to around a hundred thousand cases in 2006. In 2006, the Indian Leprosy Foundation was renamed as Indian Development Foundation (IDF) as the trustees decided to expand the work of IDF in the areas of health, children’s education and women’s empowerment. Dr Narayan Iyer, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of IDF initiated a leadership development intervention called the Students’ leadership programme (SLP) for children in the age group of 12 to 14, from the urban poor households in 2014. It was a structured mentoring programme spanning over three months in collaboration with the schools. It aimed at incubating skills in the areas of leadership, teamwork, personality, behavioural traits and provided career guidance. It had a humble beginning in 2014 with a coverage of 50 students. Initially, IDF welcomed executives from the corporate sector as mentors. As there was a need to rapidly expand the scope of SLP to the other cities of India, IDF tied up with the graduate colleges and invited the students to be the mentors. The other objective behind this move was to create social awareness among the students from more affluent strata of society. IDF was able to dramatically increase the participation of the students through SLP by approximately up to 100,000 by 2020. However, rapid progress threw up multiple challenges. The teachers complained about the non-availability of the students for regular classes to teach the syllabus as the students were busy with SLP. The schools forced IDF to shorten the duration of SLP to two months. Also, many undergraduate mentors were unable to coach the participants due to lack of maturity and found wanting to strike a rapport with them. There was a shortage of corporate executives who volunteered for the mentoring, due to work pressures. Dr Narayan, CEO & National Coordinator and Ms Mallika Ramchandran, the project head of SLP at IDF, were worried about the desired impact of SLP on the participants and its sustainability due to these challenges. So, with the support of Dr Narayan, she initiated a detailed survey to assess the ground-level impact of SLP. The objective was to get clarity about what was working for SLP and what aspects needed to improve, to make the programme more effective. Overall feedback from the survey was very positive. The mothers had seen very positive changes in the participants’ behaviour post-SLP. The teachers had specific concerns about the effectiveness of undergraduate mentors. The need for a refresher course to inculcate ethical behaviour and the inadequacy of the two-month duration of the SLP to reinforce values were highlighted. Respondents also voiced the requirement to build responsible citizenship behaviours among the participants. Mallika was all for preparing a model to further enhance the effectiveness of SLP. Dr Narayan and Mallika embraced the challenge and they were raring to go to develop SLP as a cutting-edge leadership programme and to take it to new heights.

This case can be used in courses on human resource management in postgraduate and graduate management programmes. It can also be used in the general and development management courses and during executive education programmes to teach methodologies for evaluating the effectiveness of the training interventions, with emphasis on the voluntary sector.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human Resource Management.

Leadership development for strategic impact in high growth export driven organization.

The case is suitable for second and final year students of a two year post graduate management programme (Master's level) on the following courses: leadership – on development of organization wide leadership processes; talent management – for identifying, nurturing and retaining talent in an organization and for developing leadership capabilities in managers; and strategic human resources (HR) – regarding building leadership development and talent management initiatives for creating a strategic level impact in the organization and its joint ventures.

In about 45 years since its inception Anand Automotive Limited (AAL) has established itself as one of the premium firms in auto ancillary manufacturing and export. This case demonstrates how AAL built its leadership development programme. Further, the case elaborates on the coach/coachee mentorship programme at AAL. The case further explores the various initiatives under the broad umbrella of the Anand Leadership Development Programme (ALDP). The ALDP process has been woven into the fabric of HR practices of the organization. AAL sales turnover was USD1.2 billion in 2012 and it has a goal to achieve a turnover of USD2 billion by 2015. Mr K.C. Bhullar, the group head HR, had to plan an HR system which will embed leadership in the tapestry of AAL as an organization. The amalgamation of ALDP in AAL has to be disseminated across all levels at the 19 plants spread across different locations in India. The ALDP is expected to sprout a large number of leaders in AAL who can usher in an extremely quality focused and conscious organization. Such leaders would in their day-to-day demonstration of leadership at AAL help AAL to become an excellent manufacturing organization. This would help AAL to have a leadership position in the global automobile market. ALDP is also expected to create a band of leaders who would help the organization from very senior level strategic management positions and play leadership roles in its joint ventures.

This case can help students to understand how HR practices integrate leadership development programme for the strategic gains of an organization. Students would also understand the role of mentorship in coach/coachee processes.

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

Part A – to identify the challenges of inducting and nurturing next-gen leaders, to outline the building blocks for the successful induction of the next generation into the family business and to spell the importance of mentoring conversations as a tool for successful induction in the family business. Part B – to define the basic tenets of effective communication-goal setting, planning and action using the goals, plans and action framework, to build a “listening” environment through understanding the hearing, understanding, remembering, interpreting, evaluating, and responding mode and to relate the importance of “questioning” in diagnosing a problem and reading both verbal and non-verbal cues in communication.

The two-part case describes the role of communication amongst young family business scions and a mentor’s role in shaping such communication. Part A traces the induction of Aditya Gandhi, a fourth-generation scion of Gandhi Gems and Jewels, a 110-year old Indian family business dealing in precious gems and jewels. It deals with the challenges of mentoring and successful induction of the next-generation into family business Part B of the case describes the communication between Aditya Gandhi and the proprietor of Gandhi Gems and Jewels’ key client, Ghanshyam Das. It deals with the tenets of effective communication as should be understood by young next-generation family members.

The case can be used in an executive programme for owners of family businesses or in an undergraduate or post-graduate programme in general business administration or family business management.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

This case focuses on the steps taken by the Director of the Jaipuria Institute of Management, Jaipur, to arrive at a working definition of the problem of lack of student engagement and to initiate corrective measures. A key assumption made by the Director was that if students were engaged outside of the curriculum, they would be more engaged with the curriculum. This is consistent with research findings (see for example Kuh, Kinzie, Buckley, Bridges and Hayek, 2006) which show that students who are more engaged within the curriculum are more engaged with their institution's governance and student activities. It must be pointed out, however, that each institute, given its own context, should examine whether this assumption holds—activities outside the curriculum should not end up simply competing for valuable students' time.

The case deals with project management principles that are required for implementing a social project in India.

The study has been carried out at primary schools in an underdeveloped state, namely, Odisha, in India.

The case illustrates a project management approach for improving primary education in a government set up. The bureaucracy set up in education in a state like Odisha, India, needs to undergo radical changes. To be effective, an education system requires an optimal integration of the three main components, namely, people, infrastructure (this includes technology) and pedagogical processes. Using a public–private partnership model, American India Foundation (AIF) through its Digital Equalizer (DE) Program has been able to make a positive impact in an underdeveloped tribal dominated district like Keonjhar. The case study also illustrates the detailed execution plan predicated on total system planning, required to achieve this amount of success. The case study also explains how to measure success through different metrics where intervention has to be at multiple levels. The learning from the case study can also be adopted for designing an implementation strategy in other states.

Expected learning outcomes are as follows: how to approach implementation of technology-based intervention with involvement of all stakeholders; learn project management techniques related to digital learning model implementation; understand the DE methodology; and understand the challenges faced while implementing the DE Program.

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 7: Management Science.

In mid-2013, the Lee family, which owned the Hong Kong based food and health product giant Lee Kum Kee (LKK), struggled with how best to increase involvement of the fifth generation (G5), the children of the company's current fourth-generation (G4) senior executives and governance leaders. Only two of the fourteen G5 members had joined the company, and few had expressed interest in further involvement, including in the multiple learning and development programs the business offered, such as a mentoring program. Many of the G5 cousins had expressed little interest in business careers in general, and none of them currently was serving as an LKK intern. G4 members observed that their children were busy with family obligations, hobbies, and emerging careers outside the business. G5's lack of interest in business and governance roles was part of a growing pattern of low family engagement in general, exhibited by the cancellation of recent family retreats (once an annual tradition) because of apathy and some underlying conflict. A history of splits among past generations of the Lee family regarding business leadership made the engagement issue even more meaningful and critical.

Students will consider the challenge from the point of view of G4 family members David Lee, chairman of the family's Family Office, and his sister, Elizabeth Mok, who ran the Family Learning and Development Center. They and their three siblings saw engaging the next generation as a top priority, one related to key concepts including family-business continuity, generational engagement and empowerment, succession, emotional ownership, and intrinsic/extrinsic motivation.

Forming ties with prominent partners can help convey greater status and legitimacy to the company (Hallen, 2008) and also increases the entrepreneur’s influence within their own network (Bonacich, 1987). This allows entrepreneurs to gain greater access to the information, experience or resources that the company needs.

The founders of the company provided us with access to the inner workings of the company, their mentors and advisors and themselves. The authors used archival research and interviews when preparing this case. Interviews allow for the development of uncensored, real-life insights into the entrepreneur’s business experience. The authors also interviewed two of their mentors and investors.

Having graduated from UMass Lowell with engineering degrees, co-founders Rajia Abdelaziz and Ray Hamilton build invisaWear into a venture, but they did not know much about business. With coaching from their mentors, Rajia and Ray focused on building their network to raise capital to finance the business. Despite all their hard work networking, however, they faced a hurdle. Rajia and Ray contemplated their dilemma. “Are the authors doing something wrong? What can the authors do differently to attract investors?”

This case is suitable for an undergraduate course in business or entrepreneurship. This case is intended to illustrate to both business and non-business students how entrepreneurs can go about building their networks to grow their businesses. Presented as a real-life example of how entrepreneurs build their networks, the case can also be used to hone in on select topics including mentoring, searching for resources and coachability.