Case studies

The blast at Beirut Port on the 4th of August was the cherry on the cake in a series of disastrous governmental failures manifested in the of lack of trust, an unprecedented economic crisis, hyperinflation, financial fallout, political bottle necks, toxic environmental situation and a vertical cleavage between the government and the people. The blast resulted in billions of dollars in losses both at the port and the surrounding Beirut area, destroyed more than 300,000 housing units, displaced their residents, ruined many artifacts of cultural heritage, injured thousands of people and killed hundreds. Definitely, it was a case of negligence in the storage of the Ammonium Nitrate, corruption, irresponsible leadership or all of these together. However, investigations are still underway to pinpoint the responsible individuals and to bring them to justice. This case looks at potential ways that could have prevented the blast, by questioning the reasons behind the non-voicing out of objections against the nature of the material stored unsafely for several years in Container 12 at the Port. Through the lens of Hadi Karim, a fictional character, the authors lead the readers to consider the disaster’s characterization, as well as applicable disaster management frameworks. The case also emphasizes the role of public leadership and leads the readers to consider measures and processes that could have been abided by to prevent the disaster.

Against the backdrop of the recent Beirut Port explosion, this case examines how events unfolded leading up to the tragedy, highlighting how it could have been avoided, as well as the managerial and ethical dimensions involved.

At the end of the case, students will be able to: 1. Characterize the disaster in terms of type and nature. 2. Analyze the blast by referring to the relevant disaster management frameworks. 3. Analyze the critical role of ethical and transformational leaders pre and post disaster. 4. Reflect on the role of employees in preventing disasters mainly through whistleblowing.

Shedding the light on an avoidable disaster, drawing lessons to avoid the occurrence of such events in the future, and raising awareness on disaster management and on whistleblowing as a tool in the ethical leader’s toolbox.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 10: Public Sector Management.

Macro-Economics.

Undergraduate and MBA.

The COVID 19 pandemic-related restrictions devastated South Africa’s economy in 2020 and although the restrictions were generally less damaging than in 2020, the government had to budget for vaccinations and rebuild the economy. Public service unions had just announced that they were demanding an increase of 4% above inflation for their members and that they were preparing for a strike. They were bitter about the fact that the South African Government had withdrawn from the last year of a three-year wage agreement in February 2020 and their members had not received an increase for the two years. These demands and Finance Minister Mboweni’s response to them had to consider the structural and cyclical impact on the fiscus and economy.

The learning outcomes are as follows: understand the general objectives of fiscal policy and stakeholders’ interests; understand the tradeoffs in fiscal policy and the implications of taking a position; and make recommendations based on reasoned judgements about those recommendations.

Undergraduate and MBA level courses on Macro Economics.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 10: Public Sector Management.

Project Management, Entrepreneurship, Risk Management, Communication.

Study level: MBA and Executive Education.

Applicability: This case can be taught in the project management course. It will cover the project-planning phase, which is an iterative or progressive elaboration for the entire project lifecycle. The case will help in discussing how project management is an important discipline to manage projects and stakeholders effectively.

The case depicts the dilemma of a passionate entrepreneur who is setting up an ambitious dairy business but project execution goes awry. The case discusses the challenges related to project planning and execution.

It captures the essence of proactive risk management, measures that can mitigate risks and create opportunities. The case also discusses the entire project lifecycle from project initiation to closure and the challenges a manager has to face in terms of stakeholder engagement, risk management, stakeholder communication and scope change.

To understand the alignment of the project with the organisation strategy; to learn to create a project plan and monitor and control the scope, schedule, resources and costs; to accurately estimate project costs, timelines, and quality and schedule, using tools like MS Project; to learn the risk management techniques for managing projects, teams and stakeholders; and to manage stakeholder communication effectively.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 2: Built Environment.

Abelha et al. (2018). “Transformational Leadership and Job Satisfaction: Assessing the influence of Organizational Contextual factors and Individual Characteristics” Review of Business Management, Volume 20 No 4, pp. 516–532. Avolio, B. J., Zhu, W., Koh, W. and Bhatia, P. (2004). Transformational leadership and organizational commitment: Mediating role of psychological empowerment and moderating role of structural distance. Journal of Organizational Behavior: The International Journal of Industrial, Occupational and Organizational Psychology and Behavior, 25(8), pp. 951–968. John M Alexander and Jane Buckingham, “Common good leadership in Business Management: an ethical model from Indian tradition”, Blackwell Publishing, 2011, UK and USA. Angus Corbett (2016). A systems approach to regulatory excellence (pp. 255–270), Achieving Regulatory Excellence, Brookings Institution Press, retrieved from http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/PBRLit/Corbett.pdf. Cary Coglianese (2015), Listening, Learning, Leading- a framework for regulatory excellence, Penn Program on Regulation, sourced from https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Listening-Learning-Leading_Coglianese-1.pdf

First, skills: to help students to apply their knowledge in transformational leadership; to help students to apply their understanding of impact of transformational leadership on organizational excellence in not-for-profit organizations. Second, knowledge enhancement: to understand the various components of transformational leadership; to enable the students to understand the different components of organizational excellence with a special focus on not-for-profit organizations and government regulators; to enable the students to understand the process of impact of transformational leadership on organizational excellence and its relevance in emerging markets context. Third, attitude development: students should understand the importance of leadership and its impact in emerging markets.

The case elucidates the transformational leadership style of AICTE Chairman and his key attributes of humility, high ethical standards, openness to ideas and suggestions and problem-solving attitude. The case also highlights how the transformational leadership style of AICTE Chairman heralded the journey of Organizational Excellence of AICTE – an Indian Technical Education regulator. The case maps the change of AICTE from an inward-looking, controlling, opaque organization to a forward-looking, enabling, transparent organization.

This case can be used in leadership classes for Management in Business Administration (MBA) students and participants in executive development programs. The case focuses on transformational leadership and its impact on organizational excellence in context of emerging markets The case also outlines the various components of organizational excellence in not-for-profit organizations and government regulators and hence provides a fresh perspective for measuring organizational excellence.

CSS: 10: Public Sector Management.

The case study helps students to understand how public-private partnership (PPP) airports runs their business, how regulatory policies impact their business. The case also explains why the Cochin International Airport business model is so unique compared to any airport in India.

In 2016, Airport Economic Regulatory Authority released a new tariff regime for Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL).CIAL has undergone challenges because of the tariff changes (changes every five years), which were implemented in 2017. This has impacted their business model. The CFO of CIAL was under pressure to share the impacts with the shareholders and to provide a way forward for the business. Cochin International was known to be one of the cheapest aeronautical tariff charging airports. The case discusses the issues of a public utility when it is under a regulatory price regime. The case explains different regulatory mechanisms (single till: the whole commercial revenue is cross-subsidized). The case discusses issues regarding Cochin International Airport, which is a public utility under PPP mode. Since 2016, regulator has changed the price regulatory regime from light touch (no price regulation only monitoring) to hybrid till regulation (a percentage of commercial revenue is cross-subsidized). The case explains what made Cochin International Airport so unique. It explores the challenges because of the regulatory regime, how it affects Cochin airport’s strategy for business. How should the management of CIAL to act on the above issue? What will be the impact? Will they need to change their business models?

The case is basically focused on MBA level students who are in their final year. There are various MBA courses in which this can be taught, which can be infrastructure management, infrastructure regulation, domain courses such as airport management. The student should have basic knowledge of economics, public utility and business strategy. The case helps them understand the impact of regulation, the role of the regulator and its impact on business strategy.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 10 Public Sector Management.

The teaching objectives of the case study will enable the students as follows: to recognise the challenges of information technology (IT) implementation in the health-care sector associated with employee resistance, to apply the technology acceptance model for analysing the degree of employee resistance, to relate the utilisation of Kotter’s 8-step change management approach in successful IT implementation in the health-care sector and maintenance of employee productivity and to classify the leadership traits reflected by the leaders in training the 600 diverse employee population of Al-Ain hospital.

The case highlighted the predicament the government-owned Al-Ain City Hospital, United Arab Emirates, faced following the surge in the incidences of COVID-19 in the country in March 2020. The hospital management decided to initiate the work-from-home arrangement as a non-pharmaceutical intervention of handling the spread of the disease amongst its employees. Fatima Almur, the Information Technology Director in Al-Ain Hospital, asked the Application Support Manager, Aysha Shahwan, to deploy some IT tools significant for remote support to patient care within two weeks. Shahwan faced significant challenges in deploying the IT tools in two weeks given the diverse workforce, with the majority of them having limited knowledge in operating the tools, and hence, their apprehension in the usefulness of the tools. Besides, Shahwan had to deploy some advanced tools for easy and secured access to the electronic health record, telemedicine and telecommuting using mobile phones, tablets or PCs. The deployment of these advanced tools would be jeopardised by employee acceptance and consequent dwindling productivity. Considering the issue of employee acceptance of the change and their limited knowledge, Shahwan had, therefore, to develop training frameworks to boost the former’s perceived usefulness and ease-of-use of the IT tools. Will Shahwan successfully deploy the advanced IT tools to enable the hospital staff, including medical staff and departments, to ensure efficient patient care from a remote location? Will she be able to train the 600 employees across genders, ages and knowledge, use the IT tools and safeguard them from common software threats like email phishing and ransomware? Will the hospital be able to sustain its vision of quality patient care using advanced technologies through this new arrangement of remote support amidst the pandemic when patients are more?

Undergraduate business management.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 10: Public sector management.

The learning outcomes of this paper are as follows: to understand the characteristics of a natural monopoly such as telecommunications sector and impact of “network externality”; to understand the role of a regulator in maintaining a balance between competition and consolidation of telecom sector; to understand the importance of first-mover advantage in telecom sector and coping mechanism of late entrants; to understand different pricing mechanisms of “natural monopolies” that can be adopted to remain profitable; to understand social cost of price floor in telecommunications sector.

Indian telecom sector is going through a downturn where most of the private sector telecom service providers have reported huge losses, failed to pay adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues and reported decline in average revenue per user over a period of 3–4 years. Fierce competition in the sector leads to rock bottom calling and data charges. Bharti Airtel benefitted for being the first mover in terms of market share but with entry of JIO in 2016, the service providers have entered a price war. As a result, service providers have requested Mr. R.S. Sharma, Chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to come up with a floor on calling charges and requested the government for a bailout package. Currently, Mr. R.S. Sharma, Chairman TRAI is facing a dilemma whether to regulate and come up with a floor on calling and data charges or leave the sector for market correction. Mr. Sharma can also recommend to amend the definition of AGR. Telecommunications sector exhibit the characteristics of a natural monopoly where there is a need of a regulator to introduce “competition for the sector” and “competition in the sector.” In India, TRAI is the regulatory body responsible for introducing “competition for the sector” by auction and “competition in the sector” by deregulating calling and data charges, maintaining at least three private and one public service provider, decreasing “switching cost” of the customers, etc. The case deals with the issues of why there is a need of a regulator in natural monopolies, how different chairmen of TRAI have successfully introduced competition “for” and “in” the sector, and how Indian telecom sector went through a downturn? What should TRAI do to maintain competition in the sector?

The case deals with the issue of managing telecommunications sector (a natural monopoly) by a regulator in the context of India. The regulator had successfully introduced “competition in the sector” and “competition for the sector.” This led to sharp increase in subscriber base and decrease in calling and data charges. Presently, fierce competition in the sector has left the service providers cash crunched. The case deals with the dilemma faced by the chairman of the regulatory body in India on whether the regulator should come up with a price floor or market correction. Study level: MBA, Executive MBA.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 10: Public sector management.

The case can be used in strategic management, international business or ethics courses. In strategic management courses, students will be able to identify political relationships as sources of a firm’s competitive advantage. Students will also understand the role of ethics in the firm’s competitive advantage. In international business courses, the students will be able to analyze the role that corruption and bribery play in the analysis of a country’s institutions. Students will also understand how corruption in a host country influences a firms’ decision to internationalize. Finally, students will understand the challenges that firms face when serving customers in other countries. In ethics courses, students will understand the nature of state/business corruption, i.e. the abuse of public office for private gain and the concept of state capture, i.e. managers controlling the political system for their advantage. Students will be able to analyze the decision of whether to collaborate with unethical partners or customers.

Bell Pottinger Private (BPP) was a British public relations (PR) firm with a successful but questionable reputation of helping famous critical figures and despots improve their public image. In 2016, Lord Tim Bell and the other leaders of BPP were asked to create a PR campaign for the Gupta family. The Guptas were a group of businessmen headed by three brothers who migrated from India to South Africa in the early 1990s. By the 2010s, they had built a business empire allegedly thanks to a corrupt relationship with the President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma and his family. The press and prosecutors were increasing their investigations on these relations. The case has two parts, which address two separate challenges and can be taught as standalone cases or in a sequence in two sessions.

MBA and Executive Education.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 5: International business.

The central lesson to be learned from studying the case is to understand the challenges and constraints posed by contextual conditions in designing contracts in public–private partnerships (PPP) for financing and delivering health care in emerging economies such as India.

Perverse incentives, along with contextual conditions, led to extensive opportunistic behaviors among involved agencies, limiting the effectiveness of otherwise highly regarded innovative design of the program.

India’s “Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana” or National Health Insurance Program, launched in 2007 provided free health insurance coverage to protect millions of low-income families from getting pushed into poverty due to catastrophic health-care expenditure. The program was implemented through a PPP using standardized contracts between multiple stakeholders from the public and private sector – insurance companies, hospitals, intermediaries, the provincial and federal government.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 10 Public Sector Management.

Appendixes for the case study, teaching notes with figures and suggested chart plan schema.

Students are expected to learn the use of networks for market growth; types of network connections; and ways to achieve international expansion through networks’ relations.

This teaching case describes the internationalization of an emerging country artist, the Brazilian singer Anitta, who seeks to expand her audience in foreign markets, while dealing with maintaining the public in her home country.

Recommended to International Business disciplines in specialization courses.

CSS 5: International Business.