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This case is to familiarize students with the peculiarities of social enterprises (SEs). They would be able to recognize that SEs are hybrid organizations that merge a social purpose with the managerial logics of business ventures. Because of this dual nature, social entrepreneurs need to balance their social aim and the financial viability of the project when analyzing different ways to grow the business, as well as understand and address internal tensions that arise because they have to deal with diverse stakeholders. At the end of the analysis, students would have clear that social and commercial ventures respond to different logics, and therefore, require different managerial models.

Andrea Meoño was the founder of Hope Home, a center for early childhood education in San José, Costa Rica. The goal of the center was to provide education and daily care to children of disadvantaged families, especially single mothers for whom it was a real challenge to maintain a permanent job to sustain their children, and at the same time, provide them with adequate care and attention. After five years of operating the center, Andrea had to figure out the best way to grow her business, ensuring financial sustainability while keeping true to her original purpose of helping vulnerable mothers by providing their children with excellent educational opportunities.

Master’s and Master of Business Administration students taking a course on social entrepreneurship.

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

This teaching case is well suited for short courses focussed on brand equity or marketing. It explores the following themes:

Premium brand equity: managing the brand in different markets, and the process involved in finding the right partners who care about the brand.

Market entry and penetration: strategies for growing in a market, testing a new market, and identifying the right products for a specific market.

Product expansion: the considerations that need to be made when a company is expanding its brand into new markets.

This teaching case is specifically aimed at postgraduate students completing a management diploma or a professional development course.

This case is about a premium confectionery brand Wedgewood. The company started in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa in 1999, with founder Gilly Walters’ handcrafted nougat aimed at a high-income target market. The retail product went on to be sold in stores nationwide. The company has since diversified its product range and tested markets both locally and abroad, with varying levels of success. In early 2020, Paul Walters, CEO, is considering options for the company. While his brother, Jon Walters, head of production and product development, is keen to increase global exports, Paul is less sure. The brand has been developed over the years and the product line expanded to consist of nougat, energy bars, and biscuits. While considering international markets, Paul must keep tabs on how to align the various brands in the process, and limit any potential damage to the brand equity to a minimum. With the company poised for exponential growth entering new international markets, Paul must consider the best expansion strategy. With business growth will they be able to maintain the core values of the business and the brand? Wedgewood will also need to think about staffing resources that would be required should they take on a massive international expansion.

To analyse how a small family-owned business is able to achieve sustainable growth and expand its footprint

To evaluate which business model creates the best platform for the expansion of a premium niche brand

To create a branding strategy for international brand expansion

This case focusses on management and customer service issues at a historic hotel, the Hawthorne, in Salem, Massachusetts. By 1999, when Juli Lederhaus was hired as the new general manager, the Hawthorne had a reputation of being well past its prime and customers were dissatisfied with the quality of service and outdated physical facilities. This case describes the actions she took, up to 2012, to improve service. The case ends with Lederhaus contemplating whether more changes are needed given that she had just heard a rumor that a company was considering building a new hotel just a few blocks away. The case gives students the opportunity to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the Hotel in relation to customer service, and propose recommendations for future improvements.

A qualitative, interview based, methodology was used. The researchers held numerous, face-to-face interviews with the owner and employees of various ranks. Information was also gathered from archival data and traveler review sites such as TripAdvisor.com and Yelp.com.

The case is targeted to undergraduate business and hospitality students at a sophomore or junior level. Classes in which this case could be used include: Organizational Behavior, Human Resource Management, and Hospitality Management.

Entrepreneurship.

Postgraduate Management Diploma Masters of Business Administration.

Sakhumzi Restaurant on Vilakazi Street, in Soweto’s Orlando West, had grown exponentially since it opened in October 2001. Vilakazi Street was named after a South African Zulu poet, novelist and educator, Benedict Wallet Vilakazi, who was the first black South African to obtain a PhD in 1946. The street was famous for housing two Nobel Peace Prize laureates – Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu – as well as for being the site of the shooting of Hector Pieterson during the Soweto Uprising. There were two museums in the vicinity that attracted thousands of tourists every year – Mandela House and the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum. The founder of Sakhumzi Restaurant, Sakhumzi Maqubela, had no experience of the hospitality industry but, nevertheless, had a “deep appreciation” of customer satisfaction, which he had learnt through his previous job in the banking sector. During the start-up phase of the restaurant, Maqubela immersed himself in books on business, focusing on leadership and communication. From such humble beginnings, the restaurant had become a thriving magnet for the tourist and local markets – tourists enjoyed sampling traditional Soweto fare, and for locals, Sakhumzi offered a culinary “home away from home”. Dressed smartly, Maqubela could be seen every day at his restaurant, mingling with patrons and greeting tour operators warmly. But what worried Maqubela was how to keep growing. Should he open another Sakhumzi? Would it work away from the tourist hub of Vilakazi Street? Or were there other options that he needed to explore?

The outcomes are as follows: evaluate the entrepreneurial mindset and how entrepreneurial opportunities are recognised, assess the individual-opportunity fit of an opportunity that is being pursued, navigate the entrepreneurial process, identify sources of entrepreneurial finance, identify and overcome resistance and obstacles to start-ups and growing the venture, rigorously analyse the potential of a new business opportunity/venture and assess the relevance of the practice of entrepreneurship to firms and society.

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.

This case describes how eight entrepreneurs discover different opportunities for new businesses to exploit a single technological invention. The case focuses on the process of entrepreneurial discovery and its implications for the creation of new firms. Many of the teaching materials on entrepreneurship assume that entrepreneurs have already discovered an opportunity. While these materials provide useful information about the process of creating new enterprises, they miss the crucial first step in the entrepreneurial process: identifying an opportunity. The case illustrates the theoretical concept of the role of information in the discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities. It can be used in a class on entrepreneurship or management of technology.

The years 2011, 2012, and 2013 witnessed both significant developments and setbacks in global polio eradication efforts. On the positive side, January 13, 2012, marked a full year since India had detected a case of wild poliovirus. On the negative side, polio continued to be endemic in three countries-Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria-and in those countries the goal of eliminating polio seemed more challenging than ever. Between December 2012 and January 2013, sixteen polio workers were killed in Pakistan, and in February 2013, nine women vaccinating children against polio in Kano, Nigeria, were shot dead by gunmen suspected of belonging to a radical Islamist sect. In addition, after a 95 percent decline in polio cases in 2010, the number of cases in Nigeria rebounded in 2011. Recognizing that polio was unlikely to be eliminated in these countries in the near term, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative moved its target date for eradication from 2013 to 2018.

These setbacks sparked a debate about the appropriate strategy for global eradication of polio. Indeed, some experts believed that recent setbacks were not caused by poor management but were instead the result of epidemiological characteristics and preconditions that might render polio eradication unachievable. These experts argued that global health efforts should focus on the control or elimination of polio rather than on the eradication of the disease.

This case presents an overview of polio and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and recounts the successful effort to eradicate smallpox. The case enables a rich discussion of the current global strategy to eradicate polio, as well as the issue of whether eradication is the appropriate global public health objective. More generally, the case provides a concrete example of a particular type of global public good, namely infectious disease eradication.

After analyzing and discussing the case, students will be able to:

• Understand the nature of a global public good

• Perform a back-of-the-envelope benefit-cost analysis of polio eradication

• Discuss the appropriate strategy for eradicating an infectious disease

• Apply game theory to analyzing which countries would be likely to contribute funds toward global polio eradication

• Discuss the role of private organizations in the provision of global public goods

Understand the nature of a global public good

Perform a back-of-the-envelope benefit-cost analysis of polio eradication

Discuss the appropriate strategy for eradicating an infectious disease

Apply game theory to analyzing which countries would be likely to contribute funds toward global polio eradication

Discuss the role of private organizations in the provision of global public goods

Set in September 1992, this exercise provides teams of students the opportunity to negotiate terms of a merger between AT&T and McCaw Cellular. AT&T, one of the largest U.S. corporations, was the dominant competitor in long-distance telephone communications in the United States. McCaw was the largest competitor in the rapidly growing cellular-telephone communications industry. Prior to the negotiations, AT&T had no position in cellular communications. This case and its companion (F-1143) are designed to allow students to be assigned roles to play. The case may pursue some or all of the following teaching objectives: exercising valuation skills, practicing strategic analysis, exercising bargaining skills, and illustrating practical aspects of mergers and acquisitions.

In July 2007, Mark-Hans Richer became Harley-Davidson's first chief marketing officer. Its riders were aging, which the company saw as an existential threat. Although Harley-Davidson had a record sales year in 2006 and had maintained a commanding share of the heavyweight motorcycle market for the previous decade, it needed to take new action to sustain its growth.

Richer needed to deliver a new generation of riders and a more diverse customer base, all without losing current Harley-Davidson customers. He also knew that he could not relax: the average tenure of a CMO in 2007 was only 27 months and a complete new product development cycle would take a minimum of four years.

After analyzing the case, students should be able to:

• Recommend marketing decisions for a brand with extremely high loyalty in light of various consumer behavior indicators gleaned from market research

• Understand the power of leveraging existing assets as opposed to innovating new products

• Understand the psychological basis of customer loyalty, including drivers and metrics of loyalty

Recommend marketing decisions for a brand with extremely high loyalty in light of various consumer behavior indicators gleaned from market research

Understand the power of leveraging existing assets as opposed to innovating new products

Understand the psychological basis of customer loyalty, including drivers and metrics of loyalty

Whole Foods and Wild Oats were both natural- and organic-food stores that competed for similar customers on values such as high-quality and healthy products, excellent customer service, knowledge of products, and an enjoyable shopping experience. In February 2007, Whole Foods announced that it would purchase a smaller but formidable competitor, Wild Oats. There was tremendous geographic complementarity involved: The merger would give Whole Foods the largest footprint within the natural- and organic-grocery industry in North America.

The case opens with Martha Stewart's 2005 release from prison following her conviction for obstructing an insider-trading investigation of her 2001 sale of personal stock. The scandal dealt a crippling blow to the powerful Martha Stewart brand and drove results at her namesake company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO), deep into the red. But as owner of more than 90 percent of MSO's voting shares, Stewart continued to control the company throughout the scandal.

The company faced significant external challenges, including changing consumer preferences and mounting competition in all of its markets. Ad rates were under pressure as advertisers began fragmenting spending across multiple platforms, including the Internet and social media, where MSO was weak. New competitors were luring readers from MSO's flagship publication, Martha Stewart Living. And in its second biggest business, merchandising, retailing juggernauts such as Walmart and Target were crushing MSO's most important sales channel, Kmart. Internal challenges loomed even larger, with numerous failures of governance while the company attempted a turnaround.

This case can be used to teach either corporate governance or turnarounds.

Students will learn:

• How control of shareholder voting rights by a founding executive can undermine corporate governance

• The importance of independent directors and board committees

• How company bylaws affect corporate governance

• How to recognize and respond to early signs of stagnation

• How to avoid management actions that can make a crisis worse

• How weaknesses in executive leadership can push a company into crisis and foster a culture that actively prevents strategic revitalization

How control of shareholder voting rights by a founding executive can undermine corporate governance

The importance of independent directors and board committees

How company bylaws affect corporate governance

How to recognize and respond to early signs of stagnation

How to avoid management actions that can make a crisis worse

How weaknesses in executive leadership can push a company into crisis and foster a culture that actively prevents strategic revitalization