Search results for: 'environment'

Sofia Lopez is a Spanish professional who founded “Servicios Ambientales” - an environmental services agency – twice. First in 2012, after her previous employer went bankrupt because of bad management and she lost her job. Sofia convinced four former colleagues to start their own company and brought a former client as a financial partner on board. Using her positive can-do attitude and convincing communication, she defended the attempt of her financial partner to fire her. Instead, she ousted him with the help of her partners. This made it necessary to start her company a second time in 2015. Sofia held on to her clear vision to deliver quality work. She addressed late payments with partial invoicing to manage cash flow. In late 2019, Sofia was still heading “Servicios Ambientales” which now had 20 employees and offered its services across Spain and other EU countries.

What obstacles did she need to overcome and how did she do so? What skills and techniques did she develop to “bounce back” twice?

How to make an effective contribution to a closely-knit board run by a longtime and rigid chair, and how to do so as the only woman? This is the predicament this fictional case study presents Jane Pruitt, a 54-year-old CFO coming in from another company under shareholder pressure. She is striving to make a much-needed impact on a privately-held formerly family-run metalworking machinery and equipment manufacturer overseen by five male board members (and financially interconnected friends) all about 70 years of age.
Jane begins to suspect that the intellectual, generational and gender diversity she was hired to provide was brought on board only for public show.

The case raises important questions about the value of diversity in a team environment and will engage any student who has been an outsider on an insular, club-like team.

This case presents several challenges that are relevant for organizations today. First, it explores a newcomer’s perspective on being an outsider in an insider-dominated setting. Second, the case presents a number of common board/team practices that undercut effectiveness. Finally, it gives students the opportunity to think and talk about board diversity, its merits and challenges, and possible paths forward to success.

Within that setting, several instructional objectives can be met:

• Diversity: The experience of the outsider, and the deep frustrations of not fitting in.
• Board Process: Board effectiveness requires both the right board composition and the right board process.
• Leadership: The next leader is often already at the table but may not match the stereotype of the old one.

The case describes the story of Meliá Hotels International in Magaluf, Mallorca, as a touristic destination that had an extraordinarily fast development. It became a reference destination, due to its climate and privileged environment. It turned into a reference of quality and cost-effectiveness in Spain for decades, driven by hotel investment and tourism in the area.

However, in the 90s the perception of the area, as a quality tourist destination, decreased and began a period of inflection. These actions led to the fall of prices and margins of hotels.

Faced with the situation of serious deterioration of the Magaluf area and the declining results of Meliá hotels in the area, Mark Hoddinott knew that they had to make a strategic decision about the positioning of Meliá in that destination. After detailed analyzes, reflections and a wide network of consultations with collaborators, Hoddinott concluded that the best alternative for the company was investing in the area and promoting a strategic repositioning to restart Magaluf as a tourist destination.

This document summarizes the concepts and basic processes involved in consumer behavior, emphasizing how understanding consumers' needs benefits both consumers and marketers. Understanding consumer behavior can allow companies to develop a commercial strategy that is better matched to consumers, which will increase demand and optimize the means to generate that demand. Some of the main challenges are the variability of behavior, its changing nature, and the complexities of studying it. The note delves into how consumer behavior can be studied in a systematic and precise way by using a wide range of theoretical approaches and models and how it can be affected by factors such as environmental influences (economic, political, technological and cultural context) and marketing actions. The document outlines the various psychological factors involved in decision-making (personality, lifestyles, beliefs and attitudes, motivation, perception and learning) as well as the non-psychological ones (age, sex, location, etc.) which allow the marketer to better understand the consumers’ buying habits. It explains the basic decision-making model in depth and how consumers’ behaviors can play an active role in generating value for the company or the opposite thanks to undesired behaviors such as boycotts, complaints and negative word of mouth. It wraps up by describing how to move consumers from habit buying to decision making.

This case study discusses Huawei's history and development in Spain. It analyses the telecom operator's origins and culture and the way it entered the Spanish market by focusing on bringing corporate communications in-line with the company's business strategy in order to create awareness, change the firm's image and construct a corporate reputation for its different interest groups. The case study also explains how Huawei's communications department developed as the business grew and illustrates how it overcame the west's prejudices about Asian companies.

This case is about Distributed Power Inc., a power generation provider that is looking to expand its business in Central America and the Caribbean in order to take advantage of the untapped market there.

It starts by describing political, environmental, social and technological aspects of the energy industry, pointing out its many challenges. It then introduces combined heat and power (CHP) systems as a possible solution in order to create energy in a cheaper and more reliable way. It explains how CHP has already been implemented by Distributed Power in some countries in Latin America but there is still an opportunity in Central America and the Caribbean, especially due to the very high cost of electricity there.

The company must decide where to go by taking into account the industries which require significant amounts of energy and the regulatory framework, GDP, GDP per capita, ease of doing business, access to electricity, electricity infrastructure and electricity installed generation capacity in each country. At the end of the case, descriptions of ten different countries with key data are included that can be used to help analyze where Distributed Power Inc. should go.

This is the second part of the case about the controversy over Nestlé purchasing palm oil in Indonesia for KitKats. It describes and provides documentation on the declaration issued by Nestlé regarding its purchases of palm oil in order to prevent further destruction of rainforests. It also focuses on the provisions for monitoring and ascertaining the impacts of Nestlé's palm oil purchases.

Part A is about how Greenpeace activists crashed a speech by posting a banner asking Nestlé to give orangutans a break and then posted a video denouncing the destruction of the rainforest due to the suppliers' plantations. It gives a background on palm oil, environmental problems in Indonesia, Sinar Mas, Greenpeace and Nestlé and then takes a look at the competitive environment. The case outlines conflicts that Nestlé has had in the past, as well as conflicts involving palm oil in general.