Search results

Lilly ICOS is preparing to launch Cialis, a prescription drug that treats erectile dysfunction, and executives must decide how to position Cialis against market leader Viagra and recent entrant Levitra.

It is expected that students enhance their awareness of businesses’ role in human rights protection as a key factor in their corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement and core objective achievement, as well as understand the effects of gender-based violence on organizational performance and identify and develop policies for a socially responsible strategic plan for effective communication with current and potential stakeholders.

The case of AFF Consulting Group in Mexico illustrates the challenges that firms face when doing business in an environment riddled with inequality and gender-based violence. The firm is challenged with developing a socially responsible strategic plan to ensure effective communication with stakeholders. The case has been developed as a narrative to demonstrate the intricacies of internal dynamics and discussions, which lead to strategic planning and decision-making.

The case study illustrates the challenges of business dynamics in an emerging market. It is applicable, especially, for undergraduate and graduate students in management studies related to CSR, ethics, human resources, collaborator management and human rights.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Human resource management

This case is suitable for use for advanced-level undergraduate students (e.g. in their third or fourth year of study) and graduate-level students enrolled in human resource management, industrial relations, organizational behavior and legal courses (e.g. business law and ethics, employment law). It can be used also in training courses and sexual harassment workshops for employees, particularly those with supervisory responsibilities or who are involved in personnel, training, or industrial relations activities. The case has been class tested with MBA students enrolled in a course on organizational behavior.

In March 2014, William Wong, the CEO of Zejaya Corporation faced a dilemma. He had just been told some disturbing news about Larry Pang, his executive director, which may or may not have legal implications for the company in relation to sexual harassment. Two of his managers had confided in him that Linda Tan, one of his managers who had recently resigned, had asked them to tell him about Pang's repeated attempts to court her in the past several months. He was undecided on how he should handle the problem.

This case was developed for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a management situation. The case provides students the opportunity to learn about the potential ethical and legal issues surrounding workplace romance and sexual harassment at work.

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

This case centres around a senior vice-president in a private bank, who becomes aware of a potential sexual harassment (SH) case within his team. The case captures his reactions, right from his initial attempt to understand the scenario, to his conversations with the woman concerned, and his eventual attempt to minimise the incident. The purpose of the case is to explore how such incidents can play out in the Indian corporate sector, where socio-cultural factors and gender role expectations influence the way organisational members perceive and respond to the complaints. Influence of factors such as gender role expectations, power dynamics, office politics, individual differences, and business concerns in a) perception of harassment incidents and b) attributes related to harassment incidents

Corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The Homegrown case is designed for teaching corporate social responsibility and business ethics at undergraduate and graduate levels. The case may be used on a variety of courses including: corporate social responsibility, business ethics and corporate social responsibility, and business ethics.

In May 2003, the headline of the East African newspaper screamed “The Kenyan Horticultural Industry under fire.” The industry was accused of exploitative labor policies with respect to working conditions, workers' welfare, sexual harassment, and exposure to harmful pesticides by the key stakeholders led by the Kenya Human Rights Commission. The stakeholders had announced plans to conduct national and international campaigns against the flower growing and exporting companies in Kenya. Mr Richard Fox, the Managing Director of Homegrown was worried that the publicity had adversely tarnished the image and reputation of the horticultural industry in Kenya as a whole, including Homegrown. He wondered how best to respond to these allegations. Should Homegrown wait to see what the competitors and other stakeholders would do, as these were industry-wide problems or should Homegrown take the lead? And if so, what should be the scope of the programs, given the diverse nature of the issues? He had to make decision quickly.

The case provides opportunity for students to analyze, discuss, and debate topical issues in CSR. At the end of the case, students should be able to: identify emerging CSR and ethical issues facing the horticultural industry in Kenya; analyze the cost of implementing CSR programs in business organizations; evaluate the impact of CSR programs on business performance; justify and defend choices on CSR, and ethical decisions.

Not included.

Gender in the workplace. Is it still an issue? While it is increasingly easier in the early 21st century for women to work, manage, and take positions of high responsibility in American business, some issues and difficulties still remain. This series of vignettes touches on some difficult situations—for both women and men—involving sexual and romantic relationships in the workplace, decisions on whether to start a family, dress codes, family obligations, and sexual harassment.

This study enables to critique the development of a sustainability strategy brand; integrated reports, sustainability reports, usage of safe internet and online learning skills to reduce inequalities and increase stakeholders’ values.

Digi Telecommunications (Digi) has been publishing annual sustainability reporting in line with Global Reporting Initiatives since 2009. Albern Murty, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Digi, the largest player in the mobile telecommunications industry in Malaysia by the number of subscribers, decided to establish a responsible business brand known as Yellow Heart in 2018 to better serve their stakeholders demand. There was a low stakeholder understanding of Digi’s sustainability efforts and societal impacts. Digi’s Sustainability department aspired to make Yellow Heart the best industry practice for continuous improvements by making Responsible Business commitment one of the main pillars of the company’s strategy and vision. Yellow Heart was linked to Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)10 on reducing inequalities by focusing on Digital Inclusion and Resilience to increase safe access opportunities, provide marginalized communities with opportunities to pursue interests in digital learning pathways and create a more sustainable digital future for all. The case study illustrates the sustainability management at Digi and the planned migration from sustainability reporting to integrated reporting to build trust in the business with all the stakeholders. The case dilemma involves the challenges that Philip Ling Oon Hun, the Head of the Sustainability, faced in deciding the SDGs to focus on and measuring and reporting their outcomes to contribute to the greater good, not only in pure business terms but also to society at large.

This case is appropriate for undergraduate or graduate-level programs in Accounting, Corporate Governance and Strategy Implementation.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 1: Accounting and Finance.

This case presents the leadership challenges that Chief Petty Officer Amanda Smith navigated as the first woman assigned to lead a Flight Line work center at NAS Ionian, an organization that was characterized by a culture of “hegemonic masculinity.” Failure to effectively lead the work center could have catastrophic consequences, including death of service personnel. Flight Line work centers, located in naval air stations throughout the world, serviced the air operations of aircraft carriers of the US Navy and provided allied air support. The assignment was a test of Smith’s leadership because the NAS Ionian Flight Line had experienced a spate of misconduct by personnel and had failed important maintenance inspections. Chief Smith was tasked to improve the morale and performance of the work center’s sailors who had diverse personal and professional backgrounds. She was also directed to ensure that the work center passed important maintenance inspections despite the challenges of dealing with subordinates, rank peers, and senior officers who had never previously worked with a woman in her role.

The case study is based on primary data collected from the protagonist, a.k.a. Amanda Smith. The primary data are supplemented with secondary data from published sources. The names of the air station and the protagonist have been altered to protect the identity of individuals in the case.

The case is applicable to senior undergraduate courses in HRM performance or talent management, training and development as well as in MBA or other Master’s level courses in management, industrial-organizational psychology, organizational behavior and leadership.

The case deals with leadership style (e.g. Initiating structure – organizing work, giving structure to the work context, defining role responsibility, scheduling work activities; consideration – building camaraderie, respect, trust, and liking between leaders and followers); organizational culture; diversity management; power and influence; and performance management.

Human resource management, business ethics, public policy.

The case can also be taught in MBA/postgraduate in management programmes in general management or HR classes to give a lesson in organizational conflict and resolution, negotiation skills (strategies, tactics and power in negotiation) towards the middle or end of the course. The course can also be taught in MBA/postgraduate in management programmes in business ethics classes to make students appreciate the various approaches to ethics – end-results, duty, social contract and personalistic ethics. It also helps students learn how to institute ethics into the cultural fabric of the organization. In public policy programmes, it could be taught to illustrate the crucial role and at times unintended outcomes of actions of street level bureaucracies in policy implementation. The course can also be taught in refresher training programmes for executives to give lessons in conflict management, mediation strategies, union negotiations and ethics.

This teaching case is based on a real incident that took place in a defence production factory of India in the year 2009. It succinctly unfolds a small showdown between two officers that acquires a disproportionate size and explosive dimension and vitiates the environment of the entire organization. The case is a narration of a small row that in no time became a full-blown organizational dispute with layers of issues. Two officers, one very senior and the other influential, got entangled in a conflict, unfortunately in the presence of a large audience; dissatisfied workers and officers fanned the sentiments and encouraged them to unethically leverage legal privileges by gaming in the name of caste and sexual harassment to gain power in the messy dispute. The protagonist Ram Sharma, the General Manager (head) of the factory, is in a precarious situation as the conflict not only puts his managerial skills but also his moral standards and ethics to test.

After discussion and analysis of this case, the students should be able to: appreciate and evaluate the complexities and multiple facets of an organizational conflict including ethical challenges faced in a real life situation, recommend the options and course of action a manager could resort to in a high stake and time bound situation, learn to develop a basic framework for analysing, negotiations and strategize to resolve a conflict as a manager-mediator in such a situation, learn to handle difficult negotiation bound by complexities of unethical and legal disputes, answer to themselves the criticality of ground level bureaucracy's role in implementation of public policies (optional if the faculty decides to discuss the part provided in the teaching note). For international students, this is a case to learn dynamics of “negotiations in Indian context”. Overall development of critical thinking and analytical skills.

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

This case was written using primary data through various channels, including in-depth structured interviews with the CEO and other individuals at the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay (CCTB), as well as exchanging email messages and phone conversations with employees at CCTB. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. In addition, one of the authors took a tour of the main offices of CCTB and took notes on the physical facilities as well as the information provided by the tour guide. Public information from CCTB was used to enhance the information and provide background. All accounts presented in this case are real, and no information was altered or fabricated.

Clara Reynolds had been CEO of CCTB for over eight years. The agency had almost tripled its budget in the time she had been there. Her leadership style had positively impacted the culture of the organization. Employees valued her open and transparent leadership style. Employees saw her commitment to training employees, creating work–life balance and helping employees be exceptional at their jobs. There was an issue, however, with Transcare, the organization’s ambulatory service. The performance of the business was declining, and Clara wanted to update the board within 60 days at the next quarterly board meeting. She was not sure what she could do to increase engagement with Transcare’s staff, which would show the board that the staff was fully willing to do what was necessary.

This case is appropriate for teaching undergraduate or graduate-level courses in leadership, organizational behavior or principles of management. It is designed to be discussed during one class period. It will save time and improve the flow if the students read the case before class and are prepared when they arrive. Any information needed for the case discussion has been presented in the case; no further research by the students is necessary. Students should think about the role of leadership in a nonprofit. They should put themselves in the protagonist’s shoes throughout the reading of the case.