In 2020, just after closing a $34 million Series B financing round, Dave Salvant and Songe LaRon consider how to adjust their business, Squire Technologies, to the new realities posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Their barbershop technology, including tools to run a shop and a mobile app for customers was growing swiftly, but with nearly all barbershops shut down to prevent the spread of the disease and no revenue coming in, should they cut back, or .....more

This case explores how a family business builds a board that includes independent directors that helps to professionalize and strengthen governance in the company. The case relates to One Family Textiles, an Abu Dhabi-headquartered manufacturer of garments. The company was founded in 1975 by Adnan Kalam and his elder brother Ali Kalam; two Kenyan nationals with Indian roots. The company enjoyed impressive growth, and by the early 1980s had several .....more

Asset management firm Capital SAFI wanted to attract new strategic investors and expand to other countries. Having the right corporate governance in place was critical to achieve this goal.

Many large companies fail to pay enough attention to their leadership pipelines and succession practices. That leads to excessive turnover at the top and destroys a significant amount of value--close to $1 trillion a year among the S&P 1500 alone, say the authors of this article. The biggest costs are underperformance at companies that hire ill-suited external CEOs, the loss of intellectual capital in the C-suites of organizations that executives .....more

Kalahut: The House of Arts (Kalahut) was an Indian e-commerce site that connected instructors specialized in traditional Indian arts and cultural forms with customers interested in these services. Since its launch in July 2020, it had mainly served customers in India; however, it had also seen modest engagement on social media platforms and its website from individuals outside of the current customer pool. As the COVID-19 pandemic had resulted in .....more

Distinct Software (disguised name), a global enterprise software company, is at an important point in its growth trajectory where the luster of its mantra of "grow and win at any cost" has dimmed with increasing competition and margin pressures. To help navigate its sales organization through this difficult phase and improve sales productivity, the firm has hired Sam Chadwick, a digitally savvy industry veteran as its new Global Sales Head. .....more

In 2020, JPMorgan Chase announced a $30 billion Commitment to Advance Racial Equity. The Commitment included investments in housing, small businesses, and financial literacy across the U.S., and diversity, equity, and inclusion within the bank. It was part of a broader cultural shift within JPMorgan and U.S. society to better acknowledge and work to remedy the effects of systemic racism in the financial system. The bank was now focused on implementing .....more

Atrae Inc. was a Japanese software firm providing platform matching services for job recruitment in the software engineering industry. As compared to traditional Japanese firms, Atrae adopted a unique approach to managing its employees. Instead of the rigid hierarchy and top-down management approach that typified a Japanese firm, Atrae had a flat organizational structure and heavily relied on decentralized decision-making and individual motivation. .....more

In early 2021, BlackRock-the world''s largest asset manager with $9 trillion in assets under management (AUM)-sought to become a leader in promoting environmental and social sustainability. Over the previous ten years, CEO Larry Fink had written an annual open letter to CEOs, pushing them to view sustainability and climate change planning key components of any long-term strategy. He had built an investment stewardship committee to attend portfolio .....more

Excited yet apprehensive after being named CEO of P.F. Chang''s beginning July 1st, 2020, Damola Adamolekun was well aware of the extraordinary challenges facing the firm. The closure of businesses deemed "nonessential" owing to the COVID-19 pandemic had devastated the restaurant industry in the United States and abroad. The shock had been particularly unwelcome to P.F. Chang''s, an upscale-casual restaurant chain known for .....more