Search results

The learning outcomes are as follows: to analyze the driving forces that lead non-government organizations (NGOs) to develop need-based programs; to evaluate the strategy adopted by NGOs in attaining the organization’s mission and creating a social impact, corporate social responsibility, inclusion, labor market, social enterprise, strategy and vocational learning; to apply social business canvas for analyzing the business model deployed by NGOs to develop market linkages; to analyze the challenges in setting and scaling NGO programs and strategies designed to address the same; and to enable students to brainstorm in creating future growth options for scaling up and replicating NGO programs.

The case describes the journey of Salaam Bombay Foundation (SBF), a national-level NGO registered in 2002 in Mumbai, India. In March 2020, SBF had an annual budget of INR 13.98 crores (US$1.84m). It addresses the challenging environments children from economically constrained families face by engaging them in continuing school education and providing vocational training. Since its inception, SBF has launched and executed many in-school and after-school programs. To successfully transit skilled adolescents and teenagers into the labor market and help them make informed career decisions, SBF launched “DreamLab,” a stipend-based “internship” model, in August 2018. Gaurav Arora, Vice President SBF, was assigned the responsibility to scale up skills@school and DreamLab internship programs. With disruptions caused by the pandemic in March 2020, Arora struggled to operationalize DreamLab as initially planned. The case is at a crucial decision point where clouds of uncertainty have made Arora and his team anxious about their future course of action.

The case is intended for students of undergraduate and graduate programs in Business Management, Social Entrepreneurship and Social Work programs. Executives of management development programs can also use the case to analyze the effectiveness and management of the skill development program.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The learning outcomes are as follows. Students can assess effective business strategies, determine the role of business in shaping informal institutions, understand managing issues in social enterprises, from talent management to expansion to mission drift, and develop deeper understanding of the African context.

The case presents the challenges facing the award-winning CEO/Founder of Tanzanian social enterprise Girls’ Technical Education (GTE). GTE provides technology and coding skills in Tanzania, focussing on educating women and girls. GTE has experienced significant success – expanding into neighbouring Malawi. GTE has a strong vision and mission, clearly articulated and prioritised by the Founder and his Board. Hybrid organisations, blending a social and financial mission, are expected to experience management tensions or mission drift, yet GTE seems to have avoided this. As an emerging organisational form, social enterprises – like GTE – often face hurdles regarding legitimacy and acceptance in the markets in which they operate. GTE is working to understand the Tanzanian and regional contexts and challenges in these ecosystems, seeking to influence norms and bring about positive impact.

Postgraduate courses including MBA, Executive Education and courses focussing on Organisation Studies, Management and Strategy.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 7 Management Science.

The learning objectives of this case are as follows: identify and understand the major challenges/problems faced by a social enterprise in promoting handicraft business; examine the value chain architecture of handicraft products; assess the role of the protagonist (Sanjay) as a social change agent in shaping a successful social enterprise; assess Sahaj Crafts' initiatives and analyze whether the key intervention/s planned/executed were required for skilling up of rural artisans and upgradation of handicraft business; know the marketing strategies for handicraft products; and understand the “strategies” which need to be applied for uplifting people's lives at the bottom of pyramid in general and for enlivening of artisans’ clusters in particular. The outcomes are as follows: examining the value chain architecture of handicraft product; understanding the difficulties and challenges of structuring a viable social business model; examining the role of Sanjay as a social change agent in shaping a successful social enterprise; and examining the model of Craft Incubation Center and design education proposed by Sahaj Crafts for improving rural artisans’ livelihood and skills upgradation.

Sanjay Joshi – the promoter and CEO of “Sahaj Crafts” (a social enterprise established in Western Rajasthan, India), an initiative to strengthen indigenous skills and mainstream rural craft products and artworks – is faced with the question of how to scale up his organization’s operations. Doing so requires that he address these fundamental challenges in terms of – how to deal with unorganized craft communities; match up product orientation to market demands; integrate modern technology / processes in craft business; combat restricted mobility of women artisans; and make effective interventions so that the artisans learn and enjoy working in the current model and solve the financial issues faced by the social enterprise. Providing effective and implementable answers to those questions is vital to Sahaj Craft’s development in attaining its mission to alleviate poverty in the region. Failing to expand operations above a critical scale may leave Sahaj Crafts vulnerable in meeting sufficient demand for contemporary craft products in the mainstream markets.

This case study is primarily suitable for post-graduate level management students to teach the concepts of designing and operationalizing a “social” business model in a social entrepreneurship module. This case study can also be used for highlighting business model innovations in the social sector of emerging markets. The case could be taught in the following academic domains: social entrepreneurship; bottom of the pyramid; social inclusion; supply chain consolidation (vertical integration in a value chain); marketing strategies for handicraft products; branding; brand positioning; cost and management accounting.

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 3: Entrepreneurship

Food service management, human resource management, hospitality strategic management and, international business and management.

Graduate students.

The purpose of this case study is to determine whether the practice of talent management serves to motivate fast food service employees. It aims to determine employees’ perceived level of awareness and importance of talent management practices; current practice of talent management within the fast food service sector; and to assess the level of motivation of employees from talent management practices. The survey method employing the use of questionnaires was used to ascertain data from a fast food service establishment in Jamaica, a developing island destination located in the Caribbean region (Sinclair-Maragh and Gursoy, 2015). Jamaica is chosen for the study, as there has been an increase in the number of both local and international fast food entities over the years (Collinder, 2014). The focus on fast food service is important, as they have been providing employment to a significant sector of the population. This type of business operation is classified as a tourism related hospitality area (Purcell, 1996) and as indicated by Christensen and Rog (2008), talent management presents an intriguing opportunity for hospitality organizations to attract employees with requisite skills and experience. The industry is also challenged in maintaining motivated employees (Baum, 2008). Talent management can assist organizations that have long-struggled with high turnover rates and the ability to attract and engage employees that are considered assets and not liabilities. Lockwood (2007) points out that engaged employees are loyal, hardworking and passionate about their work. Motivation theory is used to provide theoretical support for the findings of the study. This is because behavioral theorists such as Abraham Maslow suggested that survival, safety, belonging and self-esteem are factors that can be used to motivate employees and Sigmund Freud believes that people need to be rewarded to get work done (Nohria et al., 2008). This theory is plausible to the study, as it is postulated that talent management can enhance employee engagement, through highly motivated employees (Christensen and Rog, 2008). The study finds that majority of the employees understood the meaning of the term “talent management”. In terms of their personal and professional development, the employees believe that these are highly influenced by the organization’s culture. They pointed out that skills are usually developed through training, cross-training and succession planning. Financial assistance is given for further training and skill development. The performance evaluation process is used to identify employees’ specific skill. Although this is done, the majority has not been placed in other departments that would benefit more from their skills. Only 7.6 per cent reported that this was ever done. Employees’ emotional wellbeing is also important. Although majority of the employees (44.7 per cent) are happy about their work, they indicated that they could be motivated by coaching, mentorship and empowerment initiatives. Overall, the employees’ sense of belonging through their engagement and development, and self-esteem through their morale and competence are important to their motivation levels. They are also motivated when support is provided for training and skill development as explained by the motivation theory.

The learning outcomes are intended to guide the teaching-learning process and stimulate students’ understanding of the concepts of talent management specific to fast food service employees’ motivation. The case study is a useful resource for graduate students to enable and develop their critical thinking and solution-oriented skills. Students should be able to critically analyze the case and respond to the questions to garner and improve their understanding of talent management and its applicability in the fast food service sector. Further understanding of the concept can be derived from developing dimensions and measures of talent management that can be generalized to the food service sector.

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 6: Human Resource Management.

The learning outcomes are as follows: educate the students about the challenges in the development sector in general and in work of organizations working for women empowerment in particular; understand the overall concept of women empowerment vis-à-vis social entrepreneurship; explain the importance of technology in entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship and development sector especially in marginalized communities in developing countries; and learn operational-level resource management in a resource-constrained setting of a non-profit sector.

Kaarvan Crafts Foundation (referred to as Kaarvan henceforth) worked for women empowerment in Pakistan with a focus on creating economic opportunities for rural women entrepreneurs. The case shares different initiatives by Kaarvan for creating opportunities for economic empowerment of rural women entrepreneurs. The main focus of the case is a program “Digitize to Equalize” in which Kaarvan offered digital literacy training to rural women entrepreneurs. The program involved developing an ecommerce platform where rural women entrepreneurs could sell their handicrafts and other products. A comprehensive training activity was designed as part of the program to facilitate trainees to sell their products on a purpose-built website. The training covered different activities ranging from using smartphones, basic product photography to order handling. Even in the initial phase, the challenges were somewhat unexpected for the team as they grappled with diversity of learning among the trainees. Few trainee women were able to learn the skills quickly and requested their trainers from Kaarvan to train them on widely popular skills of social media marketing. At the same time, other trainees were struggling with basic skills and needed more time to get basics right. Because the program had limited resources, Kaarvan’s management found themselves in a fix. The mission-oriented organization wanted to ensure the best possible opportunities for the trainees but the resources did not permit to create separate cohorts for different training areas.

In terms of complexity, this case study is suited for business students enrolled in senior undergraduate, graduate programs and executive MBA programs.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 7: Management Science.

The subject areas are business communication, human resource management and health care.

The case was designed for use in a first-year MBA-level course in business communication but would serve well in a course for executives or for advanced undergraduates. It might also be assigned in general management courses to evoke discussion on communication skills required in sensitive and critical situations; human resource courses; and course on health care.

Palliative care is a specialized medical care focussing on improving the quality of life of patients suffering from life-threatening illnesses. It addresses symptom management and psychosocial and spiritual concerns of the patient and its caregivers. With the intent to alleviate the sufferings of terminally ill patients, Rajbala Foundation, a non-government organization (NGO), works at the psychosocial and spiritual levels. While training their volunteers in effective palliative care communication, it often encounters challenges such as socio-cultural variations, organizational challenges, appropriate verbal and nonverbal communication, etc. This teaching case focuses on the communication challenges faced by the volunteers of Rajbala Foundation. It would lead to a broader discussion on communicating empathically during critical situations. The case has a focus on NGOs, and non-profit organizations, public sector management, health-care management and human resources management. There is significant literature on communication skills for medical practitioners in palliative care. As an increasing number of NGOs step in to provide the second level of care to critically ill patients in non-physical domains, there is a need to understand the role of effective communication for such care providers. This case deals with non-medical care providers in palliative care; the issues of communication they face as they interact with patients; and the skills they require to address the emotional and spiritual needs of patients and their families.

The aim of this case is to raise awareness of the complexities involved in the communication process during an emotional and sensitive interaction. It aims to encourage volunteers involved in palliative care to reflect on good communication practices when communicating with patients and family members. After reading this case, the students should be able to discuss the complexities involved in the communication process when communicating in situations with high emotional involvement; understand the core elements of emotional interactions for effective practice; and emphasize the need for the development of communication skills within palliative care.

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 6: Human Resource Management

This study aims to particularly focus on undergraduate and postgraduate early stage level students pursuing business, educational, social work programs. Particularly those studying organizational behavior, leadership and change, curriculum design management, social literacy and courses on 21st Century Skills.

Social entrepreneurship, developmental studies, education, organisational behavior are the subject areas focused in this study.

Purpose – The present case study is an empirical account of the gender perspectives on leadership styles and entrepreneurial mind-set demonstrated by Jigyasa and Gaurav, the co-founders of “Slam Out Loud” (SOL) – an Indian for mission non-profit organisation established in 2017. The authors intend to highlight the challenges faced by SOL during COVID outbreak, to establish community connect in the virtual domain and deliver hyper-personalised socio-emotional learning (SEL) frameworks. Will SOL’s Creatively Omnipresent and Versatile Inclusive Design framework transform Indian child education in the wake of New Education Policy 2020 of India while being sustainable as well as globally competitive?

This case study is based on primary data collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with the founders of SOL. It follows the deductive approach of methodology. The data has been complemented by documentary analysis, including videos, descriptions of internal processes and articles.

SOL has been strengthening the transformative power of performance and visual arts to help build creative confidence (CC) among children from disadvantaged communities below five years of age. The co-founders have focused on imparting life skills such as communication, critical thinking and empathy in children. The framework adopted by SOL is a combination of six 21st century and SEL skills including creativity, communication, critical thinking, collaboration, self-esteem and empathy.

A novel Sinha’s 5 × 7 SEL- COVID Matrix.

Learning outcomes can only be achieved using case-based pedagogy. Students are encouraged to dive deep into the dilemma. After the case discussion students will be able to define Creative Confidence (CC) with its importance in social development, comprehend the impact of developmental interventions such as Jijivisha Fellowship during COVID 19 and post COVID 19, understand servant leadership and its impact in the management, analyse how servant leadership accelerates social efficacy in the social enterprises, illustrate the novel 5 × 7 SEL-COVID framework for educators, create and evaluate their hyper-personalised SEL framework curriculum.

The SOL initiative is well aligned with the National Education Policy introduced in India in 2020. It will address the issues of not only providing equitable and inclusive education but also enhancing enrolment ratio and reducing dropout rates. Adoption of Arts-based education will also develop Creative Confidence (CC) and improve emotional well-being of children in primary education.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

This study aims to build on the human capital development theory that focuses on the education and development of individuals considering their spillover impact on the organization’s and community’s improvement. Through examining the efforts put in by the Ministry toward developing its nationals to convert its economy into that of a knowledge-based one, this case shows a practical application of the human capital development theory.

To attain a more comprehensive understanding of how the Ministry underwent the implementation of educational and employment reforms, this study carried out a mixed methods study that pertained conducting interviews and collection of secondary data such as reports, minutes of meetings and publicly available date. First, four top management and executives were interviewed from the Ministry to gain deeper understanding on the planning of educational and employment reforms being implemented by the Ministry, its implementation and the challenges that the Ministry faced in doing so. Additionally, top management and executives from higher educational institutes in Qatar were also interviewed to attain a more comprehensive understanding of how they worked with the Ministry to implement the educational and employment reforms. The interview participants held key positions within the Ministry and education institutes in Qatar. As a result, they were directly involved in driving strategic decision-making in various areas relating to education at all levels (primary, secondary and tertiary). Further, they were directly involved in the establishment of Qatarization initiatives in the education sector within Qatar. Below is a list of the interviewees:

1. Mr Ahmed, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (formerly Qatar University President and Community College of Qatar President);

2. Mr Saad, Higher Education Consultant at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (formerly the Dean of Community College of Qatar);

3. Mr Ali, Assistant Undersecretary of Shared Services Affairs, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education;

4. Mr Abdulla, Acting Assistant Undersecretary for Higher Education, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education;

5. Mr Jassim, Vice President of Academic & Student Affairs at Community College of Qatar;

6. Mr Bilal, Vice President of Academic & Student Affairs at College of the North Atlantic-Qatar;

7. Mr Mohammed, Chief Strategy and Development Officer at Qatar University; and

8. Mr Yasin, General Manager of Qatar Learning Center.

Each participant was first contacted to inform them about the nature of the study and to gain their consent to conduct an interview. The interview protocol contained closed- to open-ended questions, aimed at providing in-depth information on Qatarization practices and the efforts to reform the education sector in Qatar. As a result, a semi-structured interview was conducted. The participants were posed with several questions that included but were not limited to these. For instance, the participants were asked with questions like what steps are being taken by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education to improve the education system in Qatar? and What are the current Qatarization practices that have been implemented in the Ministry of Education and Higher Education? Upon attaining answers for these questions, the interviewer was able to follow up with more specific and relevant questions like how does the Ministry engage Qataris to take up science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs?, what are the methods employed to attract Qataris toward pursuing higher education?, what are the different types of scholarships being offered to Qataris? and hat are the programs that the Ministry of Education and Higher Education implements to train/employ young Qataris to be qualified for work in the education sector? The interviews lasted about 30–45 min. In addition to interviews, several secondary sources were used from the Planning and Statistics Authority, the World Bank and the Ministry of Education and Higher Education.

Human capital development is regarded as a fundamental pillar that leads to the sustainable economic, political and social progress of a society. Given the foundation of human capital development is based on educational capacities, Qatar has regarded education as its national and foremost priority and the key to maximizing human potential toward building a sustainable knowledge-based economy in the long run. This case study portrayed the works of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education in the state of Qatar. The Ministry had been tasked with the mission to support the government’s national strategy of transforming Qatar’s economy from a resource-based economy into a knowledge-based economy. As such, this case sheds light on the Ministry’s strategic initiatives toward developing the local human capital. The Ministry governs over the education sector, and in providing the Ministry’s point of view, the reader is able to get a grasp on the inner workings of a government entity. In addition to providing an overview on the strategic initiatives employed by the Ministry to enhance the quality of education for Qataris, this case study also examined the Qatarization initiatives taken up by the Ministry. Qatarization is a national strategy implemented by the state of Qatar to nationalize the workforce. In other words, through Qatarization, the government intended to increase the employment opportunities available for Qataris and enhance their professional skill set through training and development efforts. Accordingly, this case also illustrated the Ministry’s role in Qatarizing its workforce successfully. In understanding the challenges faced by the Ministry toward enhancing the education services and employment opportunities being offered to the nationals, students can attain a refined perspective on the real-life challenges that government entities face in implementing strategic initiatives. Through this case, students in graduate and undergraduate courses relating to business, strategy, economics, public policies and education can also attempt to engage in decision-making activities that involve overcoming the challenges faced by the Ministry through devising action plans or revising the strategic initiatives. The issues discussed in the case delve into how Qatar government’s initiatives for economic transformation via educational reforms impacted educational institutions, students and the workforce.

This case is intended to be studied by students in graduate and undergraduate courses relating to business, strategy, economics, public policies and education where they can engage in realistic decision-making activities that involve overcoming the challenges faced by the Ministry through devising action plans or revising the strategic initiatives.

This case study concerns self-managed teams (SMTs) and high-performing work stations.

This study is applicable to training, employee satisfaction and developing economy in the society at large.

High-performance work systems (HPWS) are processes in which organizations utilize a fundamentally different approach for managing work in place of the traditional hierarchal approach. HPWS uses an approach that is fundamentally different from the traditional hierarchical or bureaucratic approach otherwise known as the control-oriented approach. The fundamental difference between control-oriented and involvement-oriented approach is in organizing and managing at the lowest level in an organization. The basic purpose of HPWS is to create an organization based on employee involvement, commitment and empowerment. In these kinds of highly involved organizations, employees demonstrate more responsibility and commitments because of high empowerment and have access to information/knowledge and awareness to perform at the highest level. In this case study, the authors make a complete study about the ten pillars of SMTs in Dr Reddy's Laboratories Private Ltd. and the situation of FTO-4 at the Yanam plant and FTO-7 at the Visakhapatnam plant post-implementation of the SMT concept. This paper attempts to demonstrate how SMTs differ from conventional teams, as well as how effectively they contribute to the organization objectives.

To understand HPWS and concept of SMT; to understand how the concepts of HPWS and SMT were implemented in Dr Reddy'S Laboratories in *FTO-4 AND *FTO-7; to understand the key difference between traditional hierarchical systems and SMTs; to find out how continuous process improvement has made SMT initiative an evolving one (from 2002 to 2011); to understand how involvement of different stakeholders has made SMT initiative a sustainable one; and to understand the importance of SMT in this twenty-first century as they lead to a better and brighter future for everyone.

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

Human resource management.

It is appropriate for graduate students majoring in human resource or business management. Students who are interested in studying Asian economies in the world, as they are the most growing economies in the world and at the same time have a shocking number of people employed in the informal sector.

This case study talks about women workers who face a glass ceiling at the management level and deplorable working conditions at the informal level. This case involves women in the paper bag-making business, a part of the urban informal sector. The paper bag-making business provides employment and income generation for the urban poor. The focus in this study is on women production workers, rather than entrepreneurs or professional managers. Focus of the study will be on the change in the pattern of income distribution within the family-based household, the degree of bargaining power derived from productive work and income and impact of technology on the plight of unskilled women force and how technology and vocational training can lead to utilization of manpower being wasted because of lack of synergy between technology and the informal sector in India. Expected learning outcomes Four key points of selection, training, assessment and leadership all have been addressed in this case study, and the relevance of these points is important from the point of view of management students who have to understand the linkages and the hidden costs these informal sector occupations come with and then to device an appropriate strategy to bring and use these human resources to their full capacity by utilizing the existing resources instead of adding new ones, which in development economics is known as Solow residual.

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