Case studies

Professors of undergraduate, graduate, doctoral or certificate programs can use this case study.

Human resource management, employee relations, women in business

Historically, only men have worked as tourist porters in Peru. The owner of a tour company in Peru wants to hire female porters in their company. Currently, all the porters in the company are male, and they are hesitant to work with women. The entrepreneur wants to build an inclusive organization to improve their company’s branding but is afraid of workplace harassment issues. This case examines the challenges of employee safety and business continuity while building an inclusive workforce. What should the owner do?

• Evaluate the factors that lead to the bias or discrimination of women or other minority groups in business; •discuss what reasonable accommodations an organization can undertake to become inclusive; and •explore business opportunities and challenges while being inclusive.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human Resources

MBA/MS/Executive Training.

Business and society; sustainability; women business leaders.

This case is about the development of sustainable viticulture in Israel. Michal Akerman, a viticulturist and agronomist, implemented out-of-the box ideas at Tabor Winery, Israel, and was successful in developing organic and sustainable vineyard. However, she faced challenges in terms of improving the quality of grapes as she looked forward to growing some of the best quality French grapes in Israel in the challenging conditions of the Negev desert region.

The expected learning outcomes are: to analyze the environmental impact of viticulture and sustainable viticulture through Tabor’s example, to examine how leaders can drive businesses to be involved in sustainable practices and challenges involved in implementing sustainable practices and to develop a framework for female leaders working in male-dominated business environments.

This case captures Michal Akerman’s (Michal) endeavours to develop organic and sustainable viticulture at Israel-based Tabor Winery. The traditional practices followed to grow the vineyards were proving adverse to the biodiversity. Unsustainable practices wiped out rare plants, and micro-organisms, which were essential for cultivation of grapes. The imbalance and unnatural ecosystem ultimately posed a threat to the very sustenance of the vineyards. As a seasoned viticulturist, Michal was of the view that a stable, diverse and balanced ecosystem prevented diseases among plants, and improved the quality of grapes.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 4: Environmental 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

The case focuses on Thivra Info Solutions Pvt Ltd, an entrepreneurial organization incubated by Prasannan (she/her) in 2017. The organization started with a mission to provide technology-based learning solutions for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Thivra Info Solutions Pvt Ltd had developed multiple offerings, including gamified learning, targeted to ASD and general ed-tech users. The firm also launched “Dwani,” the communicative-based learning app for ASD children. The initial feedback by users, parents and teachers had been encouraging. Prasannan was exploring avenues to scale the business when the Covid-19 pandemic affected all the operations.The case presents the multiple dilemmas entrepreneurial firms face in managing resources, finances, growth and product and customer focus. Students are encouraged to debate the organization strategy, product and consumer target segments and solutions to scale the business while managing frugal resources.

This case study can be used in entrepreneurship, leadership, crisis management, business development, organizational behavior and technology.

The case study describes the navigation of Thivra from a Generic Gamified App to its niche of catering for ASD students. The case presents the challenges presented to leadership to manage the crisis and try to grow their entrepreneurial venture. This case has been designed for use in business-to-consumer marketing or entrepreneurship, gender entrepreneurship, ed-tech-based startups, in MBA, executive MBA or executive education programs in the field. The case is suitable for those doing business in Asia, for post-graduate and under-graduate students studying business innovation, entrepreneurship, strategy and marketing. It is also appropriate for courses on gender entrepreneurship; women and crisis management; and product management. The case aims at facilitating classroom discussion on the extension of Indian-based ed-tech startups to ASD children.

Students will also be able to explore the following issues: to study the role played by a business model that withstands the competition over a long period and adopting sustainability; to describe the concept and implications of paradoxical leadership, thereby drawing its impact on business decisions; to analyze how a leader acts in terms of crisis from a startup point of view; to draw the phases and constraints of the enterprise development and compare and contrast it based on gender; to demonstrate the value to different constituents (ASD students, parents, teachers and ASD counselors) by understanding their differentiated needs and developing powerful value propositions for each. Articulating and demonstrating this value is key to gaining the buy-in of the various decision-making units; to understand how, having gained traction in one market segment (in this case, tractions with parents of ASD children), a company can develop new market segments; to study the issues and problems faced by startups in developing economies, especially the tech-based ones; and to understand the application of gamification on education and communication for ASD children.

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.

This case was designed not only for MBA and executive education but also undergraduate courses in human resources (HR), leadership development, HR metrics and change management. It is ideal for introducing the concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I), the balanced scorecard and talent retention.

The case deals with initiating and integrating DE&I programs into a company. It highlights how and when to start, change management issues during roll-out and convincing senior leadership why a program such as the one the protagonist started adds value to an organization.

In early 2018, Kate McKinnon, AVP of HR for CareerStaff Unlimited (CSU), a temporary staffing company and division of Genesis HealthCare, reflected on the late 2016 decision to develop women for leadership roles at the company. With a rather unconventional implementation of the Women’s Leadership Group (WLG), Kate successfully developed fifteen female individual contributors, many of whom were promoted to leadership roles by early 2018. Kate was concerned about maintaining the momentum necessary to continue (and expand) the program of identifying, developing, promoting, and retaining women and other diverse employees across the company. She also wanted to measure a clear correlation between the WLG and CSU’s financial and customer outcomes. It was time to plan phase two of the program, including further improvement of the DE&I efforts at CSU.

The learning outcome of this paper are as follows: focused programs, led by courageous and committed leaders, improve gender equity. DE&I is a business imperative, as much as a legal/risk challenge. To be understood, approved and communicated, HR Initiatives must add value and be aligned with the company strategy along with financial and customer outcomes. People development and growth contribute to top talent retention.

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

Given the issues the USA is encountering after the George Floyd death and protests, this is a good way to demonstrate how courageous leadership can start to facilitate change in organizations.

CSS 6: Human Resources.

This case is appropriate for the following courses in undergraduate, graduate or executive programs.

Sustainability, strategy, inclusive business, environmental sustainability and women in leadership. Upon completion of the case study discussion successful students will be able to:

Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola brought to life Wecyclers, an urban waste management company in Nigeria that started as an idea during her MBA programme at MIT. Bilikiss served as its CEO from 2012 and mobilized efforts to sign up thousands of individuals, corporate bodies and agents who turn in waste to recycle. While waste management already had a lot of private sector participants (PSPs), there was no recycling company with a focus on community engagement as at the time Wecyclers came on board. The company went through several iterations to arrive at business model, develop its peculiar infrastructure, build partnerships and raise funds. The case study documents Wecyclers roll-out under the leadership of Bilikiss, whose work with Wecyclers has been shaped by her evolution as a professional woman with a background, education and network that has enabled her excel in the face of social norms which emphasize men as leaders. The case dilemma involves strategy cross-roads Bilikiss faced in mid-2017 as Wecyclers considered expanding its operation, pushed beyond waste collection, pushed by infrastructural weaknesses in the landscape which forced the company to consider vertical integration of its inclusive business model as a way forward to meaningfully serving its stakeholders – from communities, corporates to agents.

• Explore the strategic contexts of doing business in emerging markets;• understand the challenges and opportunities in inclusive business model for solving a social problem such as waste management; and • Examine the growth and evolution of women’s leadership, possibilities and hurdles, in a range of contexts.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

In this way, the case study contributes to the limited body of knowledge about strategic and pragmatic facing social enterprises in emerging markets, including funding, community engagement, infrastructure, etc. It also gives us a view of inclusive business models and the evolution of women’s leadership.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

This case is appropriate for use in undergraduate and MBA courses.

This case can be used in courses in business ethics, leading teams and organizations or business strategy. The focus of the case aligns well with discussions of managing up, navigating changes in top leadership and conflicts between executive vision and future company growth. Instructors that choose to emphasize the ethical approach could assign this case to explore tradeoffs between loyalty to current and future bosses.

Associate Director of Forecasting Cindy March faces a multi-faceted dilemma as biotech firm Veracity’s acquisition date by pharmaceutical giant Makhola approaches. After a new competitor enters the market, March expects Veracity drug Sangren’s future revenue to drop to $600m in 2019, but the outgoing Veracity CEO refuses to accept a forecast of less than $700m. March suspects that the CEO is intent on handing over a financially successful company and is overly optimistic about Sangren’s ability to maintain market share. In two weeks, March is due to present a 2019 Sangren forecast to incoming Makhola leadership, who she anticipates becoming her direct boss after the acquisition. Should March present the inflated forecasts and accept the poor reflection on her professional abilities or should she refuse to present numbers she does not believe in?

By analyzing and discussing the case, students should be able to:Evaluate the potential business and ethical conflicts arising from decision-making based on both data and intuition. Synthesize an appropriate strategy for navigating tradeoffs between current and future leadership.Analyze the gender dynamics of male-dominated executive leadership structures and strategies for female employees to combat gender biases.

The Behavioral Science Guys, 2015. One Simple Skill to Curb Unconscious Gender Bias. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEHi4yauhu8&ab_channel=VitalSmartsVideoTeaching 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 resources.

The purpose of this case study is to illustrate how Dianne Savastano, founder and CEO of Healthassist, Inc., a US-based health-care advocacy firm, successfully led her clients and team through the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. To gather the data for this case study, the authors interviewed the protagonists, the members of her team and two clients. The authors read Healthassist Newsletters and the firm’s documents; and in fact, they included one Newsletter and several documents in the Exhibits of the case study. The authors conducted a literature review for articles in newspapers and journals about the newly developing field of “health-care advocacy,” a field which Savastano helped to create.

The authors illustrate how Savastano, using the five practices of exemplary leadership by Kouzes and Posner, in The Leadership Challenge, led her team through the pandemic of 2020. This is a story of a woman leader, using traits such as warmth, empathy, analysis and decisiveness, keeps her small business afloat when so many other firms collapsed in 2020.

The authors conducted seven interviews and literature searches on the topics of health-care advocacy; women leaders; leading through a crisis; and COVID-19.

The case study illustrates how a woman founder and CEO can lead her firm through a crisis.

This is an example of how a woman leader managed through the 2020 pandemic.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

The case can be taught to MBA/PGDM students to give them experiential learning in the course on entrepreneurship. The case can be used to specifically make the student understand the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in the male-dominated business sector and recognize the entrepreneurial competencies needed to run a business.

Entrepreneurship.

Shany Jalal, Promoter and Managing Director of Servicecare Pvt. Ltd., and the protagonist of the case proud owner of Servicecare Pvt. Ltd. reminisced the circumstances that drove her to start the business venture in Bangalore, India. At the age of 17, a personal setback instilled in Shany a strong desire to become self-reliant and independent. Backed with a degree in hotel management and a meager loan amount of INR 10,000 provided by her father on certain terms and conditions, Shany deep dived into the soft facility management sector business way back in the year 1999 and since then there has been no turning back. Today, Shany Jalal is proud that her venture by starting a proprietorship company “Service Care”, and later converted it into a Private Limited Company, “Servicecare Private Limited” in 2011. Shany Jalal was proud that her venture is a name to reckon with in Bangalore. She has had a team of 4,200 employees, which operates Pan India, providing top-notch corporate cleaning solutions. Her motto was not to compromise on quality and she continues to provide the highest level of service to her esteemed clients, some of them even dating back to the days of inception. Her determination powered by a strong value system is what keeps the company a cut above the rest. Being in the soft facilities management service for almost 20 years, Shany Jalal feels she has achieved her dream. Today, she is a highly successful woman entrepreneur. As she retraces her career path, she owes her success earned through years of dedication, commitment, hard work and timely intervention of some kind-hearted individuals. Since 2011, the company witnessed an average growth of 41% year on year. Though there was stiff competition from domestic and multinational property management companies, Shany sailed through. However, in the global pandemic of 2020, when her business was impacted, Shany realized that to sustain organizational growth, she had to integrate technology with service. She contemplated ways and means of integrating technology with services to meet the clients’ demands. However, Shany believes that to sustain organization growth, technology must be integrated with service. She is currently contemplating ways to introduce and integrate technology with services to efficiently and effectively meet clients’ demands.

1. Understand the gender issues in India and its impact on women entrepreneurs. 2. Analyse the ecosystem that supports supported women entrepreneurs in creating a new venture. 3. Identify the leadership traits and style, entrepreneurial competencies and capacities of the women entrepreneur in this case. 4. Recognize the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in the facilities management business sector. 5. Explore various options of integrating technology to improve facilities management services provided to the clients.

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

Shany was able to face the challenges that came her way successfully with grit and courage. She was able to expand her business. Her business helped lighten the lives of many people as she provided a means of livelihood to the underprivileged. Shany was also able to motivate her husband to start a business venture and stood by him. She encouraged women to stand on their own feet especially motivating women to set up their own businesses. She is also in constant touch with other like-minded women entrepreneurs who share similar experiences in handling crises. This gives her more insight to take proper decisions.

Women entrepreneur, Facilities management services, Technology supported services

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.