Publication database

Germany has embarked on a journey to fundamentally transform its energy supply system: the energy turnaround, or “Energiewende” as it is known. But the country that kick-started the PV movement around a decade ago has since been superseded by even more ambitious nations. So can Germany become a game-changer once more?

This paper contributes to a growing body of literature on the role of family in managers’ career decision making. Specifically, we offer an empirical elaboration on a recently proposed concept of the “family-relatedness of work decisions” (FRWD) by illuminating the role of the spouse in managers’ career sensemaking. Eighty-eight managers who were in the final stage of their EMBA program took part in the study. The data were gathered through a personal career inventory. The findings revealed that next to family-career salience and parent role identification, spouses also play an important role in shaping managers’ family-related career sensemaking. Future research should examine the supportive role of spouses in contexts other than that of an international EMBA. Moreover, researchers should examine the role of managers’ boundary management styles in shaping the degree of their family-related career sensemaking. Our paper suggests that when designing and implementing developmental initiatives, organizations should consider that managers’ decisions about their next career steps may be guided by family-related concerns, and the spouse may play a specific role. This paper offers the first empirical exploration and a refinement of the nascent theory of the “family-relatedness of work decisions”. It also introduces a new construct into the theory – spousal career support – that opens new avenues for future research.

With permission of Emerald

The case describes an innovative public service conceived and operated by a private company. The case examines how a public-private partnership, and its underlying political stakes, affect the way the service is designed and operated.

Case A, the subject of this particular teaching note, traces Gazi’s personal and business journey, and contains ample material to evaluate Gazi as a person, as an entrepreneur, and as a leader. Ostensibly, the case issue is the degree to which Gazi should now scale up from the approx. €10 millionof current revenues, but this issue is best set aside until the B case discussion. In fact, the B case includes substantial bottom-up information from each of Gazi’s key managers allowing this scale-up question to be tackled from both top-down and bottom-up perspectives. The A case raises much more the question what does it take to be a successful and exemplary entrepreneur, and how, when, and from where such capacities are acquired. The case lends itself not only to a detailed discussion of Gazi’s entrepreneurial capacities and their origins, but also prompts participants to ask themselves to which degree they themselves exhibit such capacities, and whether they can and should embark on an entrepreneurial career.

The question that the A case ostensibly poses, namely to what degree Gazi and his team should now scale up the overall business, and in which areas, is best left to the B case discussion for reasons outlined in the abstract. The A case discussion should therefore be mainly backward-looking focusing on Gazi as an individual, as an entrepreneur and as a leader. The A case discussion should also include a critical analysis of the strategy that Gazi has employed so far to grow the business—essentially diversification by pursuing new market opportunities.

The Gazi B case focuses on two issues: First, it provides a bottom-up perspective on each of Gazi’s main lines of business, namely, the Avis/Budget car rental and other vehicle and leasing businesses; in-bound tourism; outbound tourism and ticketing; conference and event business; and cruise ship landings. Detailed plans are presented for each of these business lines and can be contrasted with plans and figures presented in the A case which provided a top-down perspective. The two perspectives remain far apart! Gazi’s top-down vision is to have overall company revenues of €100 million within five years; bottom-up estimates range from €50 million overall downwards. The case invites a debate of how to reconcile these two disparate perspectives. It allows students to understand that the real issue behind these disparate growth goals is to decide first and foremost on the overall corporate business definition and scope, and whether the previous pattern of continuous diversification is sustainable in the long run. Also worth debating is whether Gazi’s focus on “top” line revenue growth, and on employee projections, should not be tempered by a parallel concern for the bottom line, for example profitability. The second in the B case is to decide on a possible brand name to replace Albanian Experience for the incoming tourism and conference business. This existing brand’s credibility and utility has been overtaken by a substantial de-facto expansion of tourism destinations to include virtually all of the Balkan area, Greece to the South and parts of Italy to the North, as well as destinations in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Although the corporate scope and focus issue and the branding issue appear to be separate, they are of course related. A new brand name must be found which if possible reflects the overall business scope as well as the new tourist sources, destinations, and USPs.

The question that the A case ostensibly poses, namely to what degree Gazi and his team should now scale up the overall business, and in which areas, is best left to the B case discussion for reasons outlined in the abstract. The A case discussion should therefore be mainly backward-looking focusing on Gazi as an individual, as an entrepreneur and as a leader. The A case discussion should also include a critical analysis of the strategy that Gazi has employed so far to grow the business—essentially diversification by pursuing new market opportunities.

Ostensibly there are two issues to be resolved: How to organize for the future; and the future roles and responsibilities of Gazi himself as the organization embarks on its next step of substantial growth. The larger issue behind these apparent issues is how to find the right balance in the future between the two extremes of a top-down strongly led, fast, entrepreneurial organization (as at present), and the growing need to institutionalize and decentralize the organization with both strategy and leadership pushed to levels below Gazi—all the while retaining an entrepreneurial culture and speed. Such new balances go beyond organizational structure and involve processes, systems, culture, people, and leadership. All are open for discussion in the C case.

The question that the A case ostensibly poses, namely to what degree Gazi and his team should now scale up the overall business, and in which areas, is best left to the B case discussion for reasons outlined in the abstract. The A case discussion should therefore be mainly backward-looking focusing on Gazi as an individual, as an entrepreneur and as a leader. The A case discussion should also include a critical analysis of the strategy that Gazi has employed so far to grow the business—essentially diversification by pursuing new market opportunities.

“The kitchen purchase” is a simulation of bargaining over the price of a fitted kitchen. The case study consists of a briefing for the sellers (the Hase family) and a briefing for the buyers (the Stulle family). On the basis of these briefings the course participants negotiate individually or in teams of two. The case study has been kept simple so that the negotiations can be conducted with very little preparation time needed. At the same time the case study presents a few “stumbling blocks” and permits a profound discussion on the distributive and integrative conduct of negotiations, handling bargaining power, and the ethics of bargaining. The case study is therefore especially well-suited for course participants with intermediate to advanced negotiating experience.

The case study aims at developing course participants' negotiation skills. Specifically, participants learn how to systematically prepare negotiations, how to determine and exploit bargaining power, how to tap into integrative potentials in distributive negotiations, and, optionally, how to negotiate in teams.