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The Business Case for Company Culture

December 2, 2020

Strong company culture has become a major selling point — right up there with salary and healthcare benefits — for companies looking to recruit the best and brightest talent. But what exactly is company culture? Contrary to popular belief, company culture is not simply defined by quarterly happy hours and office snacks. Rather, company culture relates to the ways in which employees think and act on a daily basis.

While Microsoft, Zoom, and HubSpot are infamous for their high-performing company cultures, many companies outside of the tech world are stepping up to the plate. Novelis, the world’s largest producer of flat-rolled aluminum, received significant praise for its commitment to operational excellence through culture management.

“You can never overestimate the impact a strong culture has on an organization,” said HR (Shashi) Shashikant, Senior Vice President & Chief Human Resources Officer. “If you are genuine and use every means at your disposal to reach and engage your workforce toward specific business goals, the results are astounding.”

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The numbers prove it: companies that effectively manage their culture have 63% more successful product launches and their employees are 90% more likely to recommend their organization as a great place to work. These companies also deliver nearly 20% higher returns to shareholders relative to comparable companies over a five-year period.

But reaching results isn’t the only advantage of culture management. Here are five additional benefits leaders reap when they intentionally cultivate their culture:

1. Strategic Clarity

A company’s organizational goals, or Key Results , define what they hope to achieve. But to successfully achieve the “what,” employees need to understand the “how.” This is the culture component.

Culture and strategy work in tandem to provide employees with a clear roadmap of expectations. By pairing three to five meaningful, measurable, and memorable organizational goals with four to five supporting cultural beliefs , leaders ensure employees understand exactly how they are expected to think and act to reach results.

Without cultural beliefs, employees continue old patterns of thinking and behavior that don’t align with top priorities. On the flip side, without highly targeted, strategic goals, cultural beliefs are like a boat without an anchor — there’s nothing to tie them to. It takes both culture and strategy to succeed.

Case Study: Petronas

PETRONAS, a Malaysian oil and gas corporation, was founded in 1974 as a small, 15-person company with big dreams. Today, the company employs more than 53,000 people working in 80 countries and across multiple business pipelines, including accounting, engineering, retail, oil fieldwork, and beyond.

While differences in location and job description abound, there’s one thing every PETRONAS employee has in common: a shared commitment to the PETRONAS company culture.

Accomplishing this unified culture wasn’t always easy. When Tan Sri Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin was appointed CEO of PETRONAS in April 2015, oil prices had been plunging steadily for nearly a year. Wan Zulkiflee knew that to survive in the market, his company would need both clear strategic direction and a cultural transformation to execute it.

Wan Zulkiflee worked diligently with his team to identify highly targeted key business results surrounding shareholder value, stakeholder knowledge, transparent procurement procedures, and the growth of professional relationships. Once strategic clarity was established, he introduced six cultural beliefs to anchor and rally the company towards achieving their organizational goals:

Results Matter: I stretch my limits to deliver superior results.
Own It: I own the results and don’t blame others.
Focused Execution: I plan, commit, and deliver with discipline.
Nurture Trust: I always keep my promise and build mutual trust.
Tell Me: I seek, give, and act positively on feedback.
Shared Success: I collaborate for the greater good of PETRONAS.

This strategic and cultural clarity charted a course forward for the company, helping them rise above the economic downturn.

“The upside of a crisis is that you are compelled to do whatever is necessary to ride out the tough times. This includes taking a hard look at your organizational culture . Is it one that helps you weather the storm, or does it need to be strengthened?” said Wan Zulkiflee in a recent interview. “Culture plays a critical part in bringing strategy to life. It’s the foundation that sustains all of our change initiatives.”

2. Top-to-Bottom Alignment

Working in silos can be extremely beneficial for a workforce, allowing employees to become experts in a specific task and take pride in their work and ownership over moving the needle in a specific area. But there’s also a downside to this type of structure. Rather than looking at the big picture — the overall success of the company — siloed teams end up with a very narrow frame of focus. They are unable to keep pace with desired organization-wide results.

According to the Culture Accountability Index, only 36% of employees believe that individuals within their organization are aligned around a common set of cultural beliefs. What’s more, only 31% of individuals deeply understand how their work connects to their company’s strategic goals. Without a sense of alignment and purpose, business results can quickly slip through the cracks.

Culture management gurus don’t just describe what the strategic goals are and how employees should think and act to accomplish them, they also explain why it all matters. This instills a sense of purpose in employees and leads to greater alignment among even the most siloed teams. In fact, employees at companies that intentionally cultivate their company culture are 76% better at working together across the organization to quickly and efficiently handle new projects.

Case Study: Richland Community College

A few years back at Richland Community College, cross-functional collaboration was hard to come by. Departments operated in silos, rarely communicating with one another, while faculty and staff remained strictly divided. The only thing uniting all parties was confusion over the institution’s overarching goals.

This lack of alignment led to an absence of good, productive conversation. It also didn’t bode well for the health of the institution as a whole — the student retention rate had dropped to 46.24% for the following term and 8.46% for the full fall-to-fall calendar year. It was time for a significant culture shift.

For Richland Community College, that meant rallying all employees behind a single, unifying set of goals:

Trust: Develop a mutually respectful and empowering work environment based on trust, individual and shared accountability.
Grow: Grow institutional enrollments by 7% in 3 years.
Thrive: Establish and maintain fiscal viability and sustainability.

Leaders at the college explained that every department would have to step up to the plate and work together if they wanted to see these goals realized. One department could not survive if the others failed — the health of the entire college was on the line.

Culture champions were appointed within each department to nurture inter-office relationships and conduct routine check-ins and team-building activities. As connections and trust strengthened, the teams stopped viewing one another as unique entities, but rather as part of one, united body. They understood what they needed to accomplish, how they were expected to get there, and why it all mattered.

It wasn’t long before goals that once seemed impossible started falling into place. Retention for the next term increased by 41% while fall-to-fall retention increased by 370%.

3. Personal Accountability

Individuals often externalize the need for change, and it’s easy to see why — it can be uncomfortable to take accountability and closely examine the issues right in front of us. But it can also be empowering. According to The New York Times bestseller, The Oz Principle , accountability is a “personal choice to rise above one’s circumstances and demonstrate the ownership necessary for achieving desired results.”

In organizations with effective company culture, employees are astutely aware of their organization’s top priorities, why they matter, and how they play a part in accomplishing them. As such, they are empowered to take greater accountability when challenges arise. In fact, companies with strong workplace cultures see 53% more personal investment in achieving organizational Key Results among employees.

Accountability-driven employees embody the Steps To Accountability (See It, Own It, Solve It, Do It) that promote ownership and propel change. For example, an accountable employee in a warehouse setting is one who sees that a machine is broken, takes ownership over the problem, develops a solution, and then puts that solution into place. They don’t say, “not my problem,” and wait for someone else to intervene, but rather do what’s needed to fix the issue.

Case Study: McElroy Manufacturing

McElroy Manufacturing is a family-owned business dedicated to providing the highest quality fin tube and pipe fusion products. Founded in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the company has grown from a small-town enterprise to a globally recognized brand.

Due to the nature of the high-hazard industry in which employees at McElroy work, safety has always been a top priority. When one of McElroy’s initial OSHA inspections identified over 40 serious safety hazards, members of the leadership team knew something had to change. They developed Lean into Safety , which is less of a program and more of a comprehensive cultural mindset.

“The culture of safety at McElroy is integrated into everything that we do. […] Because we put such a big focus on it, employees hold each other accountable,” said Barry Calogero, Vice President of Operations at McElroy. “If an employee sees something that doesn’t seem safe, they have an obligation and a responsibility to say something and they try to get it fixed right away. They don’t say that it’s management’s responsibility — they take ownership of it.”

McElroy employees are given 30 minutes a day to clean their workstations and make short safety and improvement videos using their phones. Several of these videos are then shared at the company-wide meeting each morning, ensuring all employees are aware of a dangerous situation or a new safety best practice that has been identified.

4. Employee Engagement

Accountable employees take ownership for driving their own improvement. They proactively seek feedback, adjust performance, and deliver better results. As such, accountable employees are also engaged employees . They feel a sense of purpose in their work and understand how they play a part in the overall success of their company.

According to the Culture Advantage Index, organizations in the top quartile of accountability have 28% higher rates of employee engagement and 31% more growth potential. To bring this data to light, let’s look at Novelis, the company introduced at the beginning of this paper.

For several years, Novelis had been posting dismal financial performance, pursuing conflicting priorities, working in uncommunicative silos, and suffering from a lack of accountability for results. To make matters worse, despite several years of unprecedented investment totaling more than $2 billion, the company had still failed to produce a favorable return on invested capital.

CEO Steve Fisher knew something had to change — the survival of the business depended on it. At the company’s Global Leadership Summit, Fisher said “There is a blue ocean of opportunity in front of us. However, as a company, I’ve become convinced we will drown in that ocean if the people in this room don’t change. Accountability must be our vehicle for change.”

“Accelerating change by getting accountability right, C-suite to the front line,” became the company’s primary propeller for growth. Under Fisher’s leadership, the senior team at Novelis led and achieved an astonishing transformation by getting people to take greater accountability for their results. As employees gained a renewed sense of direction and purpose, employee engagement scores rose to historic levels, return on capital employed nearly tripled, and profitability increased by 26%.

5. Organizational Agility

Nearly 72% of executives believe their business model will be under threat within the next five years. As high as that is, that data predates the disruption of 2020. It’s no wonder “agility” has become a buzzword among leaders seeking to navigate the rapid pace of change in the marketplace and the slew demands spurred by emerging technologies, a global pandemic, and a total upheaval to way of life.

As business strategies adapt and align around disruption, so must company cultures. An organizational mindset that is flexible, forward-thinking, and resilient is crucial. Just look at the mindsets behind the CEOs of companies like McDonald’s, Netflix, and Microsoft — all three have led organizational culture shifts designed to facilitate innovation.

Microsoft in particular has earned a reputation for developing a growth mindset , in which challenges are viewed not as threats, but as opportunities to go above and beyond. For Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, that means asking himself how successful new products are, how effective the company is at adapting to change, and what kind of culture is in place at any given moment to facilitate the company’s success. He encourages employees to ask themselves these questions regularly, refusing to settle for the “status quo” and constantly striving for new opportunities to learn and grow.

In a letter to his employees , Nadella wrote, “Our industry does not respect tradition — it only respects innovation. This is a critical time for the industry and for Microsoft. Make no mistake, we are headed for greater places — as technology evolves and we evolve with and ahead of it.”

Reaping the Benefits of Effective Company Culture

While each of the benefits listed in this paper — strategic clarity, top-to-bottom alignment, personal accountability, employee engagement, and organizational agility — is unique, they are also all related. Together, they form the basis of effective culture management and put companies on the path to sustainable success.

In companies that get their culture right, employees are 73% more enthusiastic about going to work and 69% more willing to navigate changing situations. They are proud of their companies and proud of themselves for the role they play in attaining organizational goals. But while studies prove that strong company culture is crucial for success, so do our clients.

After undergoing a significant culture shift that united more than 950 employees across 27 branches, leaders at Redstone Federal Credit Union were met with the fruits of their labor — 55% growth in annual non-interest income and 1,052% increase in loans. They also increased their monetary donations to local communities by 1,600% and increased members’ average annual cashback rebates by 7,251%. Their efforts had paid off.

“We’ve created a culture that’s going to ensure the success of this cooperative and its community for generations to come,” said Redstone CEO Joe Newberry. “It’s the culture that will propel us, and we can promise that no matter what happens in the future, Redstone will be here for its members.”

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Empowering employees to experiment and grow

How culture change and training initiatives have helped insurance company UNIQA start a movement.

Call for change

Accelerating a culture change

UNIQA Insurance Group, established in 1811 and one of the largest insurance companies in Central and Eastern Europe today, knew that attracting and retaining top talent was a critical step to becoming a market-leading service provider.

The company wanted to enable its people to react quickly, learn from mistakes and collaborate beyond conventional boundaries.

To do this, UNIQA established a Culture Office to lead internal cultural change. Using its UNIQA 3.0 strategy as a base, the company prioritized four guiding principles in its transformation: customer, ownership, community and simplicity.

When tech meets human ingenuity

Sparking new beliefs with stories

UNIQA and Accenture developed an unconventional approach to encourage employees to try new things and learn from failure. The Culture Office began piloting culture-change initiatives in which employees could address and solve everyday challenges through storytelling and small experiments.

A "Train the Trainer" program built the capability and confidence of employees to train others. Participants then led 15 cohorts of up to 12 experiment leads to kick-start their own experimentation and storytelling journeys with their teams.

These "micro" experiments—which would eventually number in the hundreds, if not thousands—then laddered up to cultural change in service of UNIQA’s strategic ambitions.

As we spoke to potential partners to help us on our culture journey, Accenture’s capabilities to create an innovative approach to culture transformation truly stood out.

Jacqueline Go / Head of UNIQA’s Culture Office

A valuable difference

The art and impact of storytelling

In mere months, the initiatives had a positive impact on UNIQA’s culture. Participants designed and tested more than 150 behavioral experiments, while UNIQA’s people conducted over 3,000 hours of coaching and workshops during which experiment leads received intensive training to ultimately empower colleagues.

Based on the encouraging feedback from participants, the Culture Office plans to conduct additional training sessions to accredit more leaders.

Employees are now better equipped to face everyday challenges, take ownership and collaborate. Using the art of storytelling, employees share with their colleagues their experiences of risk-taking and innovation—to turn culture change into a real movement.

We were energized about the prospect of doing something different.

Satya Nadella employed a 'growth mindset' to overhaul Microsoft's cutthroat culture and turn it into a trillion-dollar company — here's how he did it

Microsoft is a case study in how a growth-mindset culture can help companies succeed in the future economy.

Microsoft is a trillion-dollar company thanks largely to a culture shift led by Satya Nadella.
Since Nadella became CEO in 2014, he's encouraged the entire company to adopt a growth mindset, or the belief that skills are developed through hard work and challenges are opportunities to learn.
Before Nadella took over, Microsoft was characterized by competition between teams and between individual employees.
Now, in keeping with a growth mindset, Microsoft evaluates employees' performance based partly on how much they helped their colleagues succeed. The company also looks to learn from its former rivals in the tech industry.
Business Insider spoke with a range of company insiders and organizational researchers to get the inside story on how to change the culture of a 150,000+ employee software giant.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories .

A cartoonist once drew an illustration depicting Microsoft's organizational chart as warring factions.

Take a look and you'll see three separate gangs: one blue, one green, one yellow. The gangs are assembled in pyramid-shaped hierarchies, with one leader at the top, two or three deputies at the next level, and so on.

A hand sticks out from each pyramid, pointing a gun directly at one of the others. It's clear. This is war.

And then Satya Nadella became CEO.

Nadella described the era of warring gangs in his 2017 memoir-manifesto, " Hit Refresh :" "Innovation was being replaced by bureaucracy. Teamwork was being replaced by internal politics. We were falling behind."

That particular cartoon – drawn in 2011 by a Google employee named Manu Cornet , no less – made changing Microsoft's culture Nadella's No. 1 goal as CEO.

"As a 24-year veteran of Microsoft, a consummate insider, the caricature really bothered me. But what upset me more was that our own people just accepted it," Nadella wrote. "When I was named Microsoft's third CEO in February 2014, I told employees that renewing our company's culture would be my highest priority."

Since becoming CEO, Nadella has been credited with a grand reinvention of Microsoft, exemplified by its market value exceeding $1 trillion, one of just a handful in history to hit that mark. When Nadella first took over, its market value was around $300 billion.

One of the keys to this transformation is a psychological concept that's become a mantra at Nadella's Microsoft: growth mindset . The concept has helped Microsoft made the shift to remote work with aplomb, reaching a market cap of more than $1.6 trillion, showing that Nadella's strategy has survived the pandemic intact.

Microsoft has traded a fixed mindset for a growth mindset

Growth mindset describes the belief that skills are developed through hard work and that challenges are opportunities to learn. Fixed mindset, on the other hand, refers to the belief that talent is innate and that struggling is a sign of failure. Research on the difference between growth and fixed mindset — and how they predict success — was pioneered by Stanford's Carol Dweck.

Early on in her career as a developmental psychologist, Dweck visited children at school and presented them with a series of increasingly difficult puzzles. Her goal was to better understand how people cope with failure. Some students, she found, weren't fazed by it.

In her 2006 book, " Mindset ," she recalls one 10-year-old boy who "pulled up his chair, rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips, and cried out, 'I love a challenge!'"

Dweck would spend the next five decades trying to figure out the difference between people who relish a good challenge and those who fear failure. Scores of studies published under her name suggest that people who see intelligence and abilities as learnable are more successful, personally and professionally, than people who think they're static.

Recently, Dweck coauthored a study that drew a link between growth mindset and organizational success . Employees who think their companies have a fixed mindset, the study found, interpret the company's culture as less collaborative, less ethical, and less willing to take risks than employees who think their companies have a growth mindset.

Given the rapid pace of technological change , these research findings are hyper-relevant. Across industries, adopting a growth mindset may be the only way to survive, and certainly the only way to thrive. When neither executives nor rank-and-file employees can predict what their jobs will look like next week, they need to embrace the resulting vulnerability, and get excited about learning.

Plenty of companies, in industries from telecommunications to early education, talk about cultivating a growth mindset , and about looking for job candidates who have it . But Microsoft is perhaps the most powerful example of an organization that has used growth mindset, and the psychology behind it, to rebuild its culture.

In many ways, fixed mindset and growth mindset can describe Microsoft before and after Nadella.

Nadella has encouraged Microsoft employees to be 'learn-it-alls' instead of 'know-it-alls'

Since the era of Bill Gates, Microsoft's founder and first CEO, its leadership had generally rewarded the smartest person in the room. And Microsoft performed well under Gates, but that performance came at a cost.

Gates was famous for meltdowns and browbeating – so much so that Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen once described working with Gates as "being in hell." Gates would only back down if you could convince him you knew what you were talking about, Allen said.

Gates' successor, Steve Ballmer, also known for an explosive temper, later presided over the atmosphere depicted in that cartoon Nadella was determined to address. Ballmer was known for cultivating a culture in which Microsoft teams warred with each other, as previously reported by Business Insider .

Microsoft introduced a new performance-management framework based on growth mindset

With any company culture shift, executives run the risk of promoting jargon more than action, and of HR representatives being the only ones who know there's a culture change underway.

Microsoft has tried to avoid that fate, not only by training its employees on the psychology of growth mindset, but also by embedding the concept into its daily work flow.

Prompts to adopt a growth mindset appear on posters throughout Microsoft's campuses ( something at which employees sometimes poke fun ). At the start of a meeting, a manager might remind colleagues to approach an issue with a growth mindset.

And in one of the most significant manifestations of growth mindset, Microsoft has eliminated stack ranking .

Stack ranking was famously used by Jack Welch when he was CEO of General Electric. Ballmer used the system at Microsoft to evaluate employees, although he did start phasing it out prior to his departure. Microsoft managers had to rank their employees from one to five in equal measure. Which meant that, no matter how good the employees were, some of them had to get the lowest ranking of a five.

Performance was defined in stack ranking as the quality of individual work, and that emphasis on individual performance was linked to fierce competition among Microsoft employees. It was also a barrier to Microsoft's innovation, since it facilitated a culture that rewarded a few standout team members and even gave employees incentive to hope their colleagues failed.

"We had a little bit of a 'not-invented-here' syndrome," Microsoft Chief People Officer Kathleen Hogan previously told Business Insider , referring to the tendency for developers and even organizations to reject acceptable solutions to problems if they hadn't developed those solutions themselves.

Dweck's research helps explain this trend, too. Her studies suggest that stack ranking's emphasis on "star" employees can leave everyone else afraid to try anything new, for fear of failing. In turn, that means companies are less innovative.

Microsoft leadership says its new system for evaluating employees instead rewards collaboration. Managers and employees meet often to discuss performance , in keeping with the general trend of companies nixing annual reviews and having managers regularly speak with employees about their work.

"What we really value is three dimensions," said Hogan , Microsoft's chief people officer. "One is your own individual impact, the second is how you contributed to others and others' success, and the third is how you leveraged the work of others."

To use Hogan's examples, maybe a more seasoned employee helped someone new to the team, or a software engineer built on another engineer's work instead of reinventing it.

Microsoft recently applied growth mindset to a new framework for managers : model, coach, care. That's a combination of setting a positive example for employees, helping the team adapt and learn, and investing in people's professional growth.

To measure the impact of these initiatives in real time, Microsoft emails employees with a different question every day asking how they're feeling about the company and its culture.

The shift from competition to collaboration might seem like it would be a breath of fresh air. And on the whole, it has been. But employees say it's presented its own challenges, too.

Nadella pushes Microsoft executives to take on stretch assignments

Nadella asked Peter Lee , one of the company's top researchers, to make a big change.

It was 2017 and Lee – now corporate vice president of Microsoft healthcare – had long worked on broader technology problems as a key leader in Microsoft Research, the company's research division.

Nadella wanted him to take on a new challenge and lead the company's emerging health care business, using his background in artificial intelligence and cloud computing to find new ways to tune the products to the needs of healthcare companies.

"Taking on healthcare was something that really perplexed me at first," he said. "I joked Satya sent me out into the Pacific Ocean and said, 'Go find land.'"

Adopting a growth mindset can be uncomfortable, he said.

"Growth mindset is a euphemism because it can feel pretty painful, like a jump into the abyss," he said. "You need to be able and willing to confront your own fixed mindset – the things that make you believe something can't work. It's painful to go through personally, but when you get past it, it's tremendously rewarding."

The transition has been edifying, both in terms of his personal growth – Lee was recently named to the National Academy of Medicine – and Microsoft's growth in the industry, as it establishes itself as a meaningful player in healthcare tech.

Microsoft now sees the business case for letting go of its rivalries with other tech giants

Under Ballmer, Microsoft was notorious for prioritizing its Windows operating system and Office productivity applications businesses over the rest of the company – at one point, it even canceled the Courier tablet, which would have been an early, future-looking competitor to Apple's iPad, because it may have undermined Windows.

Likewise, Microsoft once shunned Linux, a free open-source operating system once considered the biggest threat to Windows. Ballmer once called it a "cancer." But early on in Nadella's time as CEO, Microsoft changed tack and proclaimed, " Microsoft loves Linux ."

It wasn't just Microsoft being friendly. There was a strong business case for blurring boundaries. At the time, Microsoft said it realized its customers used both Windows and Linux, and saw providing support to both as a business opportunity on-premise and in the cloud. That would have been unthinkable in the Ballmer years, but it's proven to be a savvy business move: Microsoft recently hinted that Linux is more popular on its Azure cloud platform than Windows itself.

Microsoft's relationship with Salesforce has followed a similar trajectory. Whereas Ballmer had frequent and public bouts with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff , Microsoft under Nadella put aside its rivalry with Salesforce – which competes directly with Microsoft's customer-relationship-management Dynamics 365 product – in order to ink a big cloud deal that was good for the company overall.

Nadella even invites leaders from companies across industries to Microsoft's CEO Summit so the executives can learn from each other. Ballmer, meanwhile, famously snatched an employee's iPhone at a company meeting and pretended to stomp on it.

Which is not to say Microsoft always plays nice in the Nadella era. The company last summer changed licensing agreements to raise prices — often significantly — when customers choose to run certain Microsoft software on rival clouds including Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud. And it's been trading public barbs with AWS over the still contested $10 billion Pentagon cloud contract.

The Trump administration awarded the contract to Microsoft over AWS, but Amazon is challenging the decision in court, alleging political interference. The Pentagon in September upheld its decision to award the contract to Microsoft but AWS is expected to file a new complaint as part of the lawsuit next week.

The culture shift at Microsoft is an ongoing process

The beginning of Microsoft's culture shift was rocky.

In "Hit Refresh," Nadella recalls a Microsoft manager who announced in the early days, "Hey, Satya, I know these five people who don't have a growth mindset." Nadella writes, "The guy was just using growth mindset to find a new way to complain about others. That is not what we had in mind."

Even today, Microsoft leaders acknowledge that the culture change isn't over . Things have improved under Nadella, but the company culture is still far from perfect.

Diversity is an opportunity for improvement at Microsoft. Much like the larger technology industry , Microsoft still employs relatively few women and people of color in leadership and technical roles.

One of Nadella's biggest gaffes as CEO happened early on in his tenure, when he suggested women should not ask for raises, but rely on "faith" and "karma." After these comments, Nadella sent out an internal memo admitting to his mistake, explaining how he planned to learn from it, and stating his belief in "equal pay for equal work."

Nadella writes in "Hit Refresh" that in some ways he's glad to have belly-flopped in public. "It helped me confront an unconscious bias I didn't know I had," Nadella writes, "and it helped me find a new sense of empathy for the great women in my life and at my company."

Kevin Oakes, who runs a human-resources research company that helped Microsoft with its shift toward growth mindset, sees Nadella as an exemplar of a leader during a transition. That's largely because Nadella practices the growth mindset he preaches. In a presentation at Talent Connect, an annual conference organized by LinkedIn (which is owned by Microsoft), Oakes said Nadella has been Microsoft's "culture champion." Nadella understands that organizational culture is critical to the company's performance, Oakes said.

But today's Microsoft is still far from perfect. The positive contributions of growth mindset have not yet matched up with diversity and equity for Microsoft's workforce, according to some employees. Microsoft is the subject of a gender discrimination lawsuit still pending , which was denied class-action status by a federal judge. Employees have also openly alleged sexual harassment and discrimination.

The company released its first diversity and inclusion report in 2019 to track its progress in hiring — and retaining — a more diverse workforce. Results from that report showed that minorities in Microsoft's US offices earned $1.006 for every $1 white employees earned. A closer look reveals that white men still held more high-paying leadership positions than women or underrepresented minorities.

Microsoft has since announced plans to double the number of Black leaders and employees within the company, and the number of Black suppliers with which it works.

Meanwhile, Microsoft leadership still has some philosophical differences with employees as it relates to employee activism. Employee groups have protested Microsoft and Microsoft-owned GitHub's relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and some employees have said Microsoft's relationship with oil and gas companies is at odds with the company's goal to become "carbon negative" by 2030.

Some Microsoft employees say the company is making progress. Rich Neal, a senior director who's been with the company since 2003, recalled a recent meeting in which a male colleague all but repeated the same comment a female colleague had shared 15 minutes earlier.

At that point, Neal recalled, a third meeting participant addressed the male colleague to ask whether perhaps he hadn't understood the female colleague's point. And Neal said it wasn't a passive-aggressive attack. Senior leaders are encouraged to "be curious and ask questions, versus making statements," as a way of modeling growth mindset, he added.

Microsoft has been equally vocal about diversity and inclusion within its customer base, building products that are accessible to as many users as possible. Ben Tamblyn, a 15-year company veteran and Microsoft's director of inclusive design, mentioned Xbox as a prime example. In 2018, Microsoft released the Xbox Adaptive Controller , which makes it easier for gamers who have limited mobility or physical impairments to play. (Interviews with Neal and Tamblyn were arranged by Microsoft's public-relations firm.)

Microsoft is a case study in growth mindset

Microsoft's culture shift, and its accompanying business turnaround, is already a case study in business schools and in reports from management consultancies and research centers . That makes sense to Mary Murphy, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University and Dweck's co-author on the paper about growth mindsets within organizations.

Growth mindset is essential for innovation in the technology industry, Murphy said, where change rarely happens incrementally. Instead, there are big inflection points from which there's no return. Microsoft, Murphy added, needs to be on the "cutting edge" of growth mindset in order to stay relevant.

Nadella, for his part, has modeled a growth mindset from the top of the organization, not least in his response to his tone-deaf comments about gender and compensation. "I learned, and we will together use this learning to galvanize the company for positive change," Nadella wrote in the memo he sent apologizing for the comments. "We will make Microsoft an even better place to work and do great things."

Got a tip? Contact reporters Shana Lebowitz via email at [email protected] and Ashley Stewart via email at [email protected] , message her on Twitter @ashannstew, or send her a secure message through Signal at 425-344-8242 .

Watch: Microsoft News' corporate vice president explains how his team avoids fake news sorting through 170,000 stories a day

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March 2020 (Revised August 2020)
HBS Case Collection

Culture at Google

Format: Print
| Language: English
| Pages: 34

About The Author

Nien-he Hsieh

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Culture at Google By: Nien-hê Hsieh, Amy Klopfenstein and Sarah Mehta

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Business Culture Case Studies 2022

Discover how organisations have transformed, become more purpose-driven and inclusive, coached or supported the wellbeing of their people, and more.

Peldon Rose, Enriching our workplace culture through a people-first approach

Peldon Rose understands the importance of its culture and the role it plays in business success but this had been impacted by time apart during the pandemic. The challenge was to reunite and reengage people, to create magic moments, spark connections, inspire belief and support people’s purpose with moments of joy – in a safe and protected environment. Read More

ISS World Services A/S, Putting People & Partners First

ISS is responsible for the delivery of Integrated Facilities Management for a banking client in more than 30 countries; enabling them to do their best work. With 80,000+ Bank colleagues and 6,000+ ISS colleagues, this introduced many complexities at the onset of the pandemic. Read More

UNIQA Insurance Group AG + Accenture

UNIQA Insurance Group, a large and complex organization consisting of more than 15,000 colleagues located in 18 European countries, is undergoing transformation, in a challenging and volatile environment. To remain a leader in the rapidly changing insurance industry, the company launched a new strategy to help transform from a classic insurance company into a compelling service provider. Read More

Swiss Re, NetZeroYou2 Programme

Swiss Re’s vision is to make the world more resilient. In addition, the company is committed to achieving net-zero emissions in their business operations by 2030, and in their business dealings by 2050. Their new 5-year global employee programme NetZeroYou2 (NZY2) addresses the role that employees play in helping the world achieve net-zero in both a ‘corporate’ and ‘personal’ sense. Read More

Wunderman Thompson, The Catalyst Academy

The Catalyst Academy was created as a programme where talent could get to know the industry and the company and ultimately to develop future marketeers for the sector. Designed to be the opposite of a traditional graduate programme, the academy is rooted in the belief that a diverse process will deliver a diverse pool of candidates. By bringing in fresh talent and fresh perspectives, the company would also have the best chance of future proofing clients’ businesses. Read More

EMCC UK, Defining, creating & promoting coaching and mentoring best practice

We’re excited to announce a strategic partnership between the Business Culture Awards and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) UK. EMCC will be sponsoring the 2023 award for the … Read More

BMJ + Coode Associates, BMJ Culture Transformation

BMJ engaged culture and leadership consultancy Coode Associates to support them build a more performance-oriented business through a focus on culture; aligning leadership teams and organisations around the behaviours they need to execute their strategy. Read More

Acacia Training, Retaining a family culture through employee wellbeing

Focussed on delivering training to the health and social care sectors for 20+ years, Acacia Training has experienced unprecedented growth since 2020. Learn how they have supercharged their Wellbeing efforts to support their own staff. Read More

EDF Energy + OPG + t-three

The partnership between EDF Energy, OPG (Ontario Power Generation) and t-three came about to support leaders’ transition from operational experts to spokespeople for the nuclear industry as a whole; balancing their technical know-how with an ability to motivate and engage. Read More

Mortgage Advice Bureau + Culture Consultancy

Mortgage Advice Bureau is one of the UK’s leading mortgage advice brands. They were undertaking a ‘transformational change project’ driven by technology, but wanted to ensure their internal culture connected all these things together and supported the achievement of their strategic ambitions. Read More

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Hertz CEO Kathryn Marinello with CFO Jamere Jackson and other members of the executive team in 2017

Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies of 2021

Two cases about Hertz claimed top spots in 2021's Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies

Two cases on the uses of debt and equity at Hertz claimed top spots in the CRDT’s (Case Research and Development Team) 2021 top 40 review of cases.

Hertz (A) took the top spot. The case details the financial structure of the rental car company through the end of 2019. Hertz (B), which ranked third in CRDT’s list, describes the company’s struggles during the early part of the COVID pandemic and its eventual need to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The success of the Hertz cases was unprecedented for the top 40 list. Usually, cases take a number of years to gain popularity, but the Hertz cases claimed top spots in their first year of release. Hertz (A) also became the first ‘cooked’ case to top the annual review, as all of the other winners had been web-based ‘raw’ cases.

Besides introducing students to the complicated financing required to maintain an enormous fleet of cars, the Hertz cases also expanded the diversity of case protagonists. Kathyrn Marinello was the CEO of Hertz during this period and the CFO, Jamere Jackson is black.

Sandwiched between the two Hertz cases, Coffee 2016, a perennial best seller, finished second. “Glory, Glory, Man United!” a case about an English football team’s IPO made a surprise move to number four. Cases on search fund boards, the future of malls, Norway’s Sovereign Wealth fund, Prodigy Finance, the Mayo Clinic, and Cadbury rounded out the top ten.

Other year-end data for 2021 showed:

Online “raw” case usage remained steady as compared to 2020 with over 35K users from 170 countries and all 50 U.S. states interacting with 196 cases.
Fifty four percent of raw case users came from outside the U.S..
The Yale School of Management (SOM) case study directory pages received over 160K page views from 177 countries with approximately a third originating in India followed by the U.S. and the Philippines.
Twenty-six of the cases in the list are raw cases.
A third of the cases feature a woman protagonist.
Orders for Yale SOM case studies increased by almost 50% compared to 2020.
The top 40 cases were supervised by 19 different Yale SOM faculty members, several supervising multiple cases.

CRDT compiled the Top 40 list by combining data from its case store, Google Analytics, and other measures of interest and adoption.

All of this year’s Top 40 cases are available for purchase from the Yale Management Media store .

And the Top 40 cases studies of 2021 are:

1. Hertz Global Holdings (A): Uses of Debt and Equity

2. Coffee 2016

3. Hertz Global Holdings (B): Uses of Debt and Equity 2020

4. Glory, Glory Man United!

5. Search Fund Company Boards: How CEOs Can Build Boards to Help Them Thrive

6. The Future of Malls: Was Decline Inevitable?

7. Strategy for Norway's Pension Fund Global

8. Prodigy Finance

9. Design at Mayo

10. Cadbury

11. City Hospital Emergency Room

13. Volkswagen

14. Marina Bay Sands

15. Shake Shack IPO

16. Mastercard

17. Netflix

18. Ant Financial

19. AXA: Creating the New CR Metrics

20. IBM Corporate Service Corps

21. Business Leadership in South Africa's 1994 Reforms

22. Alternative Meat Industry

23. Children's Premier

24. Khalil Tawil and Umi (A)

25. Palm Oil 2016

26. Teach For All: Designing a Global Network

27. What's Next? Search Fund Entrepreneurs Reflect on Life After Exit

28. Searching for a Search Fund Structure: A Student Takes a Tour of Various Options

30. Project Sammaan

31. Commonfund ESG

32. Polaroid

33. Connecticut Green Bank 2018: After the Raid

34. FieldFresh Foods

35. The Alibaba Group

36. 360 State Street: Real Options

37. Herman Miller

38. AgBiome

39. Nathan Cummings Foundation

40. Toyota 2010

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Home » Management Case Studies » Case Study: Analysis of Organizational Culture at Google

Case Study: Analysis of Organizational Culture at Google

Google Inc came to life with the two brilliant people as the founder of the company. Those two were Larry Page and Sergey Brin . Both of them are a PhDs holder in computer science in Stanford University California. In their research project, they came out with a plan to make a search engine that ranked websites according to the number of other websites that linked to that site. Before Google was established, search engines had ranked site simply by the number of times the search term searched for appeared on the webpage. By the brilliant mind of Larry and Sergey, they develop the technology called PageRank algorithm . PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of document, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of measuring its relative importance within the set. All this in-depth research leads to a glorious day which is on September 15, 1997 where Google.com domain was registered. Soon after that, on September 4, 1998, they formally incorporated their company, Google Inc, at a friend’s garage in Menlo Park California. The name Google originates from “Googol” which refers to the mathematical equivalent of the number one followed by a hundred zeros. In March 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto. After that, the company leased a complex of buildings in Mountain View. Ever since then, the location of the headquarter remain unchanged.

Google’s core business is to provide a search engine for the cyber user who would like to go to their desire site. The Google search engine attracted a number of internet users by its sleek and simple design but result in amazing search result. After the initial stage of Google establishing itself in the world, it began selling advertisements associated with the search keywords. The advertisements were text-based in order to maximize the page loading speed. Most of the Google Inc revenue relies on the advertisement and they had been successfully with the help of AdWords and AdSense in their system. After having some experience in the industry, Google itself launched its own free web-based email service, known as Gmail in 2004. This service is established to meet the need of the cyber user in order to store and send their document through online. In the same year, one of the most captivating technologies that Google had launched is the Google Earth. Google Earth is an amazing creation that is a map of the earth based on the satellite image. It requires you to type the desire location that you want to view and it will process the image for you. Furthermore, Google Inc made a new partnership with NASA with even enhances the Google technologies. Google also had its own Google Video which allows user to search the internet for videos. One of the most important things in the Google Inc is that they have a strong organizational culture which brings them closer and stronger compare with other firms. The values that they emphasis on are creativity, simplicity and innovation in order to gain competitive advantage against their competitor.

The Google Culture

In Google, the daily organizational life is distinctive and is one that thrives on informal culture. The rituals that portray the organization’s culture as unique and possesses a small-company feel are portrayed daily at lunchtime, where almost all employees eat together at the many various office cafes while at the same time having an open, relaxed conversations with fellow Googlers that come from different teams. Also, because one of the Google culture’s main pillars are the pillar of innovation, every Googler are very comfortable at sharing ideas, thoughts, and opinions with one another in a very informal working environment. Every employee is a hands-on contributor and everyone wears several hats. Sergey and Brin also plays a big part of laying the foundation on what the Google culture is and the founders have continued to maintain the Google Way by organizing a weekly all-hands “TGIF” meetings for employees to pose questions directly at them.

In Google, the motivated employees who ‘live’ the Google brand and are aligned to the company call themselves ‘Googlers’. Even former employees of Google have a name which they refer to themselves as ‘Xooglers’. This shows that in Google, their employees are so involved in the organization that they have their own symbolic name that mirrors the organization’s name and image, which is a sure sign of existing strong cultural values that are present within the company.

After tremendous growth in Google, the organization moved from a humble office building in Palo Alto, California back in its early days to its current office complex bought over from Silicon Graphics. The complex is popularly known as the Googleplex, which is a blend of the word ‘Google’ and ‘complex’. Googleplex is the result of a careful selection that serves to establish Google’s unique and individualistic culture in the eyes of the employees and the public. The corporate campus is built to provide a very fun, relaxed and colorful environment both inside and outside. Innovative design decisions provides Google employees 2000 car lots underground so that open spaces above and surrounding the building are filled with unique and interesting architectures that includes an on-site organic garden that supplies produces for Google’s various cafes, a bronze casting of a dinosaur fossil, a sand volleyball court, heated “endless pools” and also electric scooters along with hundreds of bikes scattered throughout the complex for Googlers to get to meetings across campuses. Googleplex is a significant departure from typical corporate campuses, challenging conventional thinking about private and public space. This also points out the alignment of values that are present in Google’s culture such as innovation, fun, laid-back, creativity and uniqueness that clearly shows that their organizational culture is truly unique and different from that of their competitors and other organizations.

Google engages their employees by applying adaptive culture in the organization. From their core competency in search engine technology, Google has responded to customers change in needs by expanding onto the mobile market. The employees analyze, anticipate and seek out the opportunities to improve the organization’s performance by being proactive and quick in coming out with new technologies and solutions for mobile services. It aims to help people all over the world to do more tasks on their phone, not to mention the several different ways to access their Google search engine on a mobile phone. In addition, Google recently entered the smartphone market by launching the Google Nexus One smartphone in response to customer’s increasing need for smartphones, which is gaining ground on popularity because everyone is going mobile in the Information Age. This is the result of Google employees’ common mental model that the organization’s success depends on continuous change to support the stakeholders and also that they are solely responsible for the organization’s performance. The employees also believe that by entering into other markets beyond their core competency, the change is necessary and inevitable to keep pace with an ever changing and volatile technological market.

Google’s organizational culture places a huge importance of trust and transparency by having an informal corporate motto namely “Don’t be evil”. This slogan has become a central pillar to their identity and a part of their self-proclaimed core principles. It also forms the ethical codes of the organization where Google establishes a foundation for honest decision-making that disassociates Google from any and all cheating. Its ethical principles means that Google sets guiding principles for their advertising programs and practices, which is where most of their revenues come from. Google doesn’t breach the trust of its users so it doesn’t accept pop-up advertising, which is a disruptive form of advertisement that hinders with the user’s ability to see the content that they searched. And because they don’t manipulate rankings to put any of their partners higher in their search results or allow anyone to buy their way up the PageRank, the integrity of their search results are not compromised. This way, users trust Google’s objectivity and their ethical principles is one of the reasons why Google’s ad business had become so successful. The founders of Google believe strongly that ‘in the long term we will be better served, as shareholders and in all other ways, by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains.’

Analysis of Google Culture

On the other hand, Google hires employees that have good academic results but without practical experience and this will be a threat to Google in terms of their organization’s operation. Google is a results-driven organization and if employees with only creative ideas but lacking of skills to realize the ideas they have initially planned, this will absolutely reduce the productivity of the organizations. Google had been public listed on year 2004 and therefore Google had to take the shareholders’ views into consideration before making any decision. The shareholders had been strongly emphasizing on reducing the employee benefits due to the high cost invested on it. This leads to the organizational culture would be degraded and the employees would feel less satisfied and affect their produced results. Employees are very important asset the Google while the shareholders also the contributor of funds for Google. The management team has to weight the importance of both of the stakeholders for the Google as this will create a different organizational culture .

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Bank of America’s Corporate Culture Crisis: Part 1 – A Case Study in Failure

Compliance professionals constantly seek to understand how systemic issues within corporate hierarchies can lead to severe consequences. The recent revelations about Bank of America’s (BoA) persistent workplace culture problems are a powerful reminder of compliance’s critical role in safeguarding employees and the organization.

This week, I will explore the BoA failure around workplace culture from various perspectives articulated by the Everything Compliance gang, including Karen Woody, Jonathan Armstrong, Matt Kelly, Karen Moore, and Jonathan Marks. This exploration will include the failure of internal controls, failures by the Board and senior management, culture failures around highly driven, self-selecting employees, and the cultural miasma that is BoA from a perspective from across the pond. The full Everything Compliance episode will be posted on Thursday, August 29 .

In Part 1, we set the stage and then delve into the factors contributing to BoA’s toxic culture, the implications for compliance officers, and the lessons we can draw to prevent similar issues in your organizations.

Bank of America has faced intense scrutiny following a series of harrowing articles, in a story broken by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), outlining a toxic workplace culture within its investment banking division. This culture of overwork has had tragic consequences, including the death of junior banker Leo Lukenas, who had been working over 100 hours a week leading up to his untimely death. Disturbingly, this is not an isolated incident. A similar event occurred in 2013 when an intern, Moritz Erhardt, who worked in BoA’s London office, also died after working excessive hours. Despite promises for reform, these practices have persisted, indicating deep-seated issues within the company’s corporate culture.

One of the key issues is the disconnect between senior management’s intentions and the actions of middle management. While senior executives at BoA have voiced their concern for the well-being of their junior bankers and have set policies to limit overwork, middle managers have often circumvented these rules. Instead of enforcing the 80-hour workweek cap, they instructed employees to underreport their hours, ignoring internal controls and perpetuating a sweatshop-like environment.

This phenomenon is not simply a BoA problem; it’s a stark example of how middle managers can sabotage well-intentioned corporate policies. It underscores the importance of effective communication and alignment between all levels of management.

A glaring issue in this case is the failure of internal controls. In today’s technologically advanced age, middle management should have responded more to BoA’s manual control system for logging hours. Automated systems for tracking work hours could have prevented such blatant disregard for policies. Moreover, there was a lack of adequate internal audits and HR oversight. This highlights the necessity of robust, automated internal controls and regular audits for compliance professionals to ensure adherence to corporate policies.

Another critical aspect discussed is the culture of retaliation against employees who try to report overwork or seek help. In some instances, employees have been punished for following the rules, such as by having to work on holidays or receiving criticism from their managers. This toxic environment discourages whistleblowers and perpetuates the cycle of abuse.

For compliance officers, tackling this issue involves fostering a culture where employees feel safe to speak up without fear of retaliation. Senior management must impose real consequences for middle managers who violate policies and ensure consistent disciplinary actions to reinforce the importance of compliance.

The long-term implications of such a dysfunctional culture are profound. Junior employees trained in an environment where rules are routinely ignored may carry these attitudes into future roles, potentially spreading unethical practices across the industry. For compliance professionals, it’s essential to address immediate issues and cultivate an ethical corporate culture that will yield trustworthy leaders in the future.

The situation at Bank of America serves as a sobering case study of the importance of comprehensive compliance programs and the need for alignment across all management levels. By understanding and addressing the root causes of such corporate culture failures, we can better safeguard our organizations and foster environments prioritizing ethical behavior and employee well-being. As compliance professionals, we must ensure that the lessons learned from BoA’s crisis are not ignored and that we remain vigilant in building and maintaining robust compliance frameworks.

Let’s hope that in another decade, we are not revisiting this same issue at BoA or elsewhere. Instead, all compliance professionals should strive for systemic improvements that prevent such tragedies and promote a healthier, more ethical corporate culture.

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Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A)

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Agoda: people analytics and business culture (a) description.

In the spring of 2016, the chief executive officer of Agoda Company Pte. Ltd. (Agoda), a subsidiary of The Priceline Group, Inc., wanted to transform the firm's human resource practices using data analytics. The idea was not just to get more data, but to use this data to help managers gain insights to make better decisions. The three main focal areas of this exercise were recruitment, performance evaluation, and compensation. As key executives worked at transforming Agoda into an organization that emphasized people and development, they faced various challenges related to collecting, managing, and leveraging large volumes of data.

Case Description Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A)

Strategic managment tools used in case study analysis of agoda: people analytics and business culture (a), step 1. problem identification in agoda: people analytics and business culture (a) case study, step 2. external environment analysis - pestel / pest / step analysis of agoda: people analytics and business culture (a) case study, step 3. industry specific / porter five forces analysis of agoda: people analytics and business culture (a) case study, step 4. evaluating alternatives / swot analysis of agoda: people analytics and business culture (a) case study, step 5. porter value chain analysis / vrio / vrin analysis agoda: people analytics and business culture (a) case study, step 6. recommendations agoda: people analytics and business culture (a) case study, step 7. basis of recommendations for agoda: people analytics and business culture (a) case study, quality & on time delivery.

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Case Analysis of Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A)

Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) is a Harvard Business (HBR) Case Study on Organizational Development , Texas Business School provides HBR case study assignment help for just $9. Texas Business School(TBS) case study solution is based on HBR Case Study Method framework, TBS expertise & global insights. Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) is designed and drafted in a manner to allow the HBR case study reader to analyze a real-world problem by putting reader into the position of the decision maker. Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) case study will help professionals, MBA, EMBA, and leaders to develop a broad and clear understanding of casecategory challenges. Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) will also provide insight into areas such as – wordlist , strategy, leadership, sales and marketing, and negotiations.

Case Study Solutions Background Work

Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) case study solution is focused on solving the strategic and operational challenges the protagonist of the case is facing. The challenges involve – evaluation of strategic options, key role of Organizational Development, leadership qualities of the protagonist, and dynamics of the external environment. The challenge in front of the protagonist, of Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A), is to not only build a competitive position of the organization but also to sustain it over a period of time.

Strategic Management Tools Used in Case Study Solution

The Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) case study solution requires the MBA, EMBA, executive, professional to have a deep understanding of various strategic management tools such as SWOT Analysis, PESTEL Analysis / PEST Analysis / STEP Analysis, Porter Five Forces Analysis, Go To Market Strategy, BCG Matrix Analysis, Porter Value Chain Analysis, Ansoff Matrix Analysis, VRIO / VRIN and Marketing Mix Analysis.

Texas Business School Approach to Organizational Development Solutions

In the Texas Business School, Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) case study solution – following strategic tools are used - SWOT Analysis, PESTEL Analysis / PEST Analysis / STEP Analysis, Porter Five Forces Analysis, Go To Market Strategy, BCG Matrix Analysis, Porter Value Chain Analysis, Ansoff Matrix Analysis, VRIO / VRIN and Marketing Mix Analysis. We have additionally used the concept of supply chain management and leadership framework to build a comprehensive case study solution for the case – Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A)

Step 1 – Problem Identification of Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) - Harvard Business School Case Study

The first step to solve HBR Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) case study solution is to identify the problem present in the case. The problem statement of the case is provided in the beginning of the case where the protagonist is contemplating various options in the face of numerous challenges that Agoda Data is facing right now. Even though the problem statement is essentially – “Organizational Development” challenge but it has impacted by others factors such as communication in the organization, uncertainty in the external environment, leadership in Agoda Data, style of leadership and organization structure, marketing and sales, organizational behavior, strategy, internal politics, stakeholders priorities and more.

Step 2 – External Environment Analysis

Texas Business School approach of case study analysis – Conclusion, Reasons, Evidences - provides a framework to analyze every HBR case study. It requires conducting robust external environmental analysis to decipher evidences for the reasons presented in the Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A). The external environment analysis of Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) will ensure that we are keeping a tab on the macro-environment factors that are directly and indirectly impacting the business of the firm.

What is PESTEL Analysis? Briefly Explained

PESTEL stands for political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal factors that impact the external environment of firm in Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) case study. PESTEL analysis of " Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A)" can help us understand why the organization is performing badly, what are the factors in the external environment that are impacting the performance of the organization, and how the organization can either manage or mitigate the impact of these external factors.

How to do PESTEL / PEST / STEP Analysis? What are the components of PESTEL Analysis?

As mentioned above PESTEL Analysis has six elements – political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal. All the six elements are explained in context with Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) macro-environment and how it impacts the businesses of the firm.

How to do PESTEL Analysis for Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A)

To do comprehensive PESTEL analysis of case study – Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) , we have researched numerous components under the six factors of PESTEL analysis.

Political Factors that Impact Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A)

Political factors impact seven key decision making areas – economic environment, socio-cultural environment, rate of innovation & investment in research & development, environmental laws, legal requirements, and acceptance of new technologies.

Government policies have significant impact on the business environment of any country. The firm in “ Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) ” needs to navigate these policy decisions to create either an edge for itself or reduce the negative impact of the policy as far as possible.

Data safety laws – The countries in which Agoda Data is operating, firms are required to store customer data within the premises of the country. Agoda Data needs to restructure its IT policies to accommodate these changes. In the EU countries, firms are required to make special provision for privacy issues and other laws.

Competition Regulations – Numerous countries have strong competition laws both regarding the monopoly conditions and day to day fair business practices. Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) has numerous instances where the competition regulations aspects can be scrutinized.

Import restrictions on products – Before entering the new market, Agoda Data in case study Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A)" should look into the import restrictions that may be present in the prospective market.

Export restrictions on products – Apart from direct product export restrictions in field of technology and agriculture, a number of countries also have capital controls. Agoda Data in case study “ Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) ” should look into these export restrictions policies.

Foreign Direct Investment Policies – Government policies favors local companies over international policies, Agoda Data in case study “ Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) ” should understand in minute details regarding the Foreign Direct Investment policies of the prospective market.

Corporate Taxes – The rate of taxes is often used by governments to lure foreign direct investments or increase domestic investment in a certain sector. Corporate taxation can be divided into two categories – taxes on profits and taxes on operations. Taxes on profits number is important for companies that already have a sustainable business model, while taxes on operations is far more significant for companies that are looking to set up new plants or operations.

Tariffs – Chekout how much tariffs the firm needs to pay in the “ Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) ” case study. The level of tariffs will determine the viability of the business model that the firm is contemplating. If the tariffs are high then it will be extremely difficult to compete with the local competitors. But if the tariffs are between 5-10% then Agoda Data can compete against other competitors.

Research and Development Subsidies and Policies – Governments often provide tax breaks and other incentives for companies to innovate in various sectors of priority. Managers at Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A) case study have to assess whether their business can benefit from such government assistance and subsidies.

Consumer protection – Different countries have different consumer protection laws. Managers need to clarify not only the consumer protection laws in advance but also legal implications if the firm fails to meet any of them.

Political System and Its Implications – Different political systems have different approach to free market and entrepreneurship. Managers need to assess these factors even before entering the market.

Freedom of Press is critical for fair trade and transparency. Countries where freedom of press is not prevalent there are high chances of both political and commercial corruption.

Corruption level – Agoda Data needs to assess the level of corruptions both at the official level and at the market level, even before entering a new market. To tackle the menace of corruption – a firm should have a clear SOP that provides managers at each level what to do when they encounter instances of either systematic corruption or bureaucrats looking to take bribes from the firm.

Independence of judiciary – It is critical for fair business practices. If a country doesn’t have independent judiciary then there is no point entry into such a country for business.

Government attitude towards trade unions – Different political systems and government have different attitude towards trade unions and collective bargaining. The firm needs to assess – its comfort dealing with the unions and regulations regarding unions in a given market or industry. If both are on the same page then it makes sense to enter, otherwise it doesn’t.

Economic Factors that Impact Agoda: People Analytics and Business Culture (A)

Social factors that impact agoda: people analytics and business culture (a), technological factors that impact agoda: people analytics and business culture (a), environmental factors that impact agoda: people analytics and business culture (a), legal factors that impact agoda: people analytics and business culture (a), step 3 – industry specific analysis, what is porter five forces analysis, step 4 – swot analysis / internal environment analysis, step 5 – porter value chain / vrio / vrin analysis, step 6 – evaluating alternatives & recommendations, step 7 – basis for recommendations, references :: agoda: people analytics and business culture (a) case study solution.

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Master of Advanced Studies in INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Case Studies in Intercultural Communication

Welcome to the MIC Case Studies page.

Case Studies Intercultural Communication

Here you will find more than fifty different case studies, developed by our former participants from the Master of Advanced Studies in Intercultural Communication. The richness of this material is that it contains real-life experiences in intercultural communication problems in various settings, such as war, family, negotiations, inter-religious conflicts, business, workplace, and others.

Cases also include renowned organizations and global institutions, such as the United Nations, Multinationals companies, Non-Governmental Organisations, Worldwide Events, European, African, Asian and North and South America Governments and others.

Intercultural situations are characterized by encounters, mutual respect and the valorization of diversity by individuals or groups of individuals identifying with different cultures. By making the most of the cultural differences, we can improve intercultural communication in civil society, in public institutions and the business world.

How can these Case Studies help you?

These case studies were made during the classes at the Master of Advanced Studies in Intercultural Communication. Therefore, they used the most updated skills, tools, theories and best practices available. They were created by participants working in the field of public administration; international organizations; non-governmental organizations; development and cooperation organizations; the business world (production, trade, tourism, etc.); the media; educational institutions; and religious institutions. Through these case studies, you will be able to learn through real-life stories, how practitioners apply intercultural communication skills in multicultural situations.

Why are we opening our "Treasure Chest" for you?

We believe that Intercultural Communication has a growing role in the lives of organizations, companies and governments relationship with the public, between and within organizations. There are many advanced tools available to access, analyze and practice intercultural communication at a professional level. Moreover, professionals are demanded to have an advanced cross-cultural background or experience to deal efficiently with their environment. International organizations are requiring workers who are competent, flexible, and able to adjust and apply their skills with the tact and sensitivity that will enhance business success internationally. Intercultural communication means the sharing of information across diverse cultures and social groups, comprising individuals with distinct religious, social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. It attempts to understand the differences in how people from a diversity of cultures act, communicate and perceive the world around them. For this reason, we are sharing our knowledge chest with you, to improve and enlarge intercultural communication practice, awareness, and education.

We promise you that our case studies, which are now also yours, will delight, entertain, teach, and amaze you. It will reinforce or change the way you see intercultural communication practice, and how it can be part of your life today. Take your time to read them; you don't need to read all at once, they are rather small and very easy to read. The cases will always be here waiting for you. Therefore, we wish you an insightful and pleasant reading.

These cases represent the raw material developed by the students as part of their certification project. MIC master students are coming from all over the world and often had to write the case in a non-native language. No material can be reproduced without permission. © Master of Advanced Studies in Intercultural Communication , Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland.


	: Catholic, Convert, Ethnocentrism, Family, Judaism, Marriage, Mediation, Mexico, Religion, Stereotypes, Stigmatisation, Values

	: Cultural Dimensions, Cultural Values, Culture Shock, Erasmus, Finland, France, Integration, Proximity, Studying Abroad, Time Orientation

	: Cultural Dimensions, Cultural Values, Finland, International Collaboration, Italy, Miscommunication, Task Vs Social Orientation, Time Orientation

	: Economics, Intercultural Negotiations, Iran, Media, Politics, Public Relations, Switzerland

	: Africa, Critical Incident, Gender, Generation, High Context/Low Context, Individualism/Collectivism, Nigeria, Public Position, Religion, Time Orientation

	: Business, China, Directness, East-West, Individualism/Collectivism, Intercultural Collaboration, Miscommunication, Temporality

	: Cultural Prejudice, Generalisation, National Identity, National Past, Offence, Stereotypes, Swiss Banks, Switzerland, WWII

	: Christianity, Christmas, Education, Foreign Influence, Islam, Mediation, Parents, Religious Freedom, Schools, Switzerland, Tolerance

	: Airport, Awkward Feeling, Burka, Clothing, Critical Incident, International Setting, Local Customs, Neutral Setting, Stereotypes, Travel

	: Collaboration, Company, Employees, Face Loss, Gender, Intercultural Collaboration, Mediation, Turkey

	: Africa, Competence, In-Country Diversity, Nigeria, Religious Conflicts, Representations, Social Capital, Stereotypes

	: Collaboration, Culture Shock, Ethnocentrism, Integration, International Organizations, Management Styles, Mexico, Working Relationship, Working Styles

	: China, Cultural Adaptation, Culture Shock, Developmental Model, Going Abroad, Living Conditions, Stages Of Culture Shock, Studying Abroad, Unhappiness

	: Bureaucracy, Collaboration, Critical Incident, Cultural Etiquette, Netherlands, Rules And Procedure, Saudi Arabia, Status And Hierarchy, Western Vs Oriental

	: (Reverse) Culture Shock, Attire, Clothing, Cultural Configuration, Dress Code, Formality, Job Interviews, Non-Verbal Communication, Work Setting, Working Culture

	: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Collaboration, Cultural Perception, Employees, Hierarchy, Individualism/Collectivism, Power Distance, Time Perception

	: Arbitration, Cultural Presupposition, Discrimination, Ethnocentrism, Mediation, Rumania, Torture, Trauma, Xenophobia

	: Ramadan, Religion, Workplace, Conflict, Mediation Strategies, Inter-Religious Dialogue, Professional Environment

	: Christianity, Church, Equality, Finland, Gender, Gender Equality, Media, Religion, Religious Beliefs

	: Afghanistan, Critical Incident, Cultural Assumptions, Gender Relations, Hierarchy, Islam, Religion, Work Abroad

	: Agnostic, Atheist, Baptism, Christianity, Cultural Norm, Education, Mediation, Parents, Personal Choice, Switzerland, Upbringing

	: Geert Wilders, Immigration, Immigration Policy, Islam, Netherlands, Politics, Religion, Religious Stereotypes, Terrorism

	: Britain, Culture Of Origin, Expat, Going Abroad, Language, Multiple Identities, Stranger, Switzerland, Two Cultures, Values

	: Culture Of Origin, Identity, Identity Shock, Immigration, Language, Stranger, Switzerland

	: Collaboration, Cultural Dimensions, Egypt, Employees, Intercultural Competence, Management Styles, Working Abroad

	: Adaptation, Culture Shock, Exchange Year, Expectations, Host Family High School, Stereotypes, Study, Teenager, USA, Way Of Life

	: African Immigrant, Culture Shock, Immigration, Monoculturality Vs Multiculturality, Multicultural Environment, Multiple Identities, Saudi Arabia, Studying Abroad

	: Business Culture, Collaboration, Communication, Compensation, Complaint, Individualism/Collectivism, Local Market Knowledge, Translation, Turkey

	: Discrimination, Islamophobia, Mediation, Minarets, Religion, Right-Wing Politics, Stereotypes, Switzerland

	: Africa, Ethnic Communities, Genocide, Intercultural Competence, Mediation, Peace Building, Rwanda, Stakeholders

	: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cultural Values, Ex-Yugoslavia, Mediation, Peace Building, Perception, Religion, Religious Belief

	: Choice Of Register, Common Ground, Development Cooperation, Ecuador, Indigenous People, Intercultural Negotiations, Negotiation, Non-Verbal Communication, United Nations

	: Collaboration, Cultural Dimensions, Intercultural Awareness, Intercultural Competence, Portugal, Stereotypes, United Kingdom, Working Styles

	: Communication, Cultural Dimensions, Germany, Immigration, Language, Linguistic Register, Politeness, Switzerland

	: Forum, Gender, Homosexuality, International Setting, Islam, Mediation, Politics, Polygamy, Values, Western Vs Oriental, Youth

	: Collaboration, Language, Mediation, Neat, Röstigraben, Stereotype, Switzerland, Tunnel

	: Archeology, Cultural History, Isreal, Mediation, Middle-East Conflict, Palestine, Religion, Religious Symbols

	: Acculturation, China, Cultural Pressure, Family Expectations, Generation, Italy, Marriage, Overseas-Chinese, Parents, Traditions, Two Cultures

	: Awkward Feeling, Critical Incident, Cultural Values, Discrimination, Gender, Immigration, Individualism/Collectivism, Intercultural Competence, Money, Politeness, Social Reflex, Stereotypes

	: Apartheid, Colonialism, Cultural History, Intra-National Diversity, Minorities, Names, South Africa, Symbols

	: Islam, Mediation, Offence, Religion, Religious Belief, Stereotypes, Vatican, Violence, Western Vs Oriental

	: Assumptions, Business Meeting, Critical Incident, Etiquette, Gender Relations, Islam, Pakistan, Public Event

	: Inter-Religious Dialogue, Islam, Media, Mediation, Minarets, Muslim Communities, Norms, Public Opinion, Religion, Switzerland, Symbol, Values, Vote

	: Collaboration, Critical Incident, Eating Habits, Hierarchy, India, Mediation, Non-Verbal Communication, Outsourcing

	: Islam, Mediation, Minarets, Religion, Religious Symbols, Religious Values And Identity, Switzerland, Symbol, Vote

	: Critical Incident, Dancing, Intercultural Relationship, Meeting The Parents, National Symbol, Non-Verbal Communication, Stereotypes, Turkey, Western Vs Oriental

	: Asylum, Conflict Resolution, Denmark, Education, Immigration, Islam, Mediation, Parents, Religion, Stereotypes, Veil

	: Collaboration, Critical Incident, Going Abroad, International Setting, Linguistic Meaning, Management, Miscommunication, Philippines, Stress, Time Orientation, Working Style

	: Australia, Being Different, Discrimination, Generalisation, Hostility, Immigration, South-East Asian Immigrants, Stereotypes, Two Cultures

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If you want to receive our last updated case studies or news about the program, leave us your email, and you will know in first-hand about intercultural communication education and cutting-edge research in the intercultural field.

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Why Hundreds Flock to Wisconsin for a Workplace Culture Conference

The organizers behind culturecon in madison, wisconsin, say people see the business case for great organizational culture now more than ever..

When the co-founders of CultureCon hosted their first event in Madison, Wisconsin , in 2018, they were shocked to get more than 100 attendees. This week, approximately 400 in-person and nearly 200 virtual attendees are expected to attend the seventh annual CultureCon conference.

Why has an event focused on workplace culture struck such a chord? According to co-founders Zach Blumenfeld, 33, and Nick Lombardino, 37, it's because culture has only become more of a priority for organizations in recent years.

Blumenfeld and Lombardino started CultureCon--not to be confused with the conference of Black creatives and entrepreneurs of the same name--after Blumenfeld, who was working in the startup space, noticed that executives always seemed eager to talk about the "good, bad, and ugly about their cultures," he says.

He connected with Lombardino, who previously worked in employee experience, and they set out to create a forum for that seemingly buzzy topic in their hometown, which they felt also boasted a strong sense of community that could help their project grow. When those first 100 or so attendees came in 2018, it confirmed their hunch--people were hungry for this topic.

"The business imperative was starting to become more clear around workplace culture, and I think a lot of that has to do with the maturity of some of these data tools that can better manage employee engagement, productivity," Lombardino says. Thus, CultureCon was able to act as the "container for these conversations," he adds.

The broad appeal of the topic quickly became clear too. It wasn't just HR leaders showing up, Lombardino says: "We have C-suite executives, business owners, VPs, directors, team managers, even individual contributors who are not responsible for necessarily managing culture but want to make work more engaging and meaningful for themselves."

In organizing the annual two-day event, Blumenfeld and Lombardino have had a front row seat to the wide-ranging shifts in workplace culture. In 2018, their "most edgy" topic was whether remote work would last, Blumenfeld says. Now, events include topics like psychedelics in the workplace.

But they've also seen how some topics remain continually important to attendees. "People want an inclusive workplace, people want to know how to innovate on their culture," Blumenfeld says.

CultureCon's footprint has expanded beyond Wisconsin -- the second annual CultureCon West is coming up in Las Vegas, for instance -- but the co-founders continue to make Madison their home base for their main event. They work with local vendors, partner with local nonprofits, and encourage attendees to explore the downtown area.

"There are so many people who come to Madison for the first time, and they just love the experience," Blumenfeld says.

Today, the business need for great organizational culture has only grown, Blumenfeld believes. And CultureCon continues to strive to be the place where people from a variety of industries and roles can come for those conversations.

"I think it helps motivate people to keep learning and growing," Blumenfeld says, "on a topic that really has to have that continuous learning."

A refreshed look at leadership from the desk of CEO and chief content officer Stephanie Mehta

5 Amazing Small Business Case Study Examples for Marketers

In the competitive landscape of small businesses, standing out requires more than just great products or services. It demands compelling stories that resonate with your target audience. Case studies, real-world examples of marketing your product or service, are powerful tools to build trust. Let’s explore nine inspiring small business case study examples that have harnessed the power of storytelling to achieve remarkable results.

Power of Case Studies

Before exploring these inspiring examples, understand the profound impact that well-crafted case studies can have:

A compelling case study does more than showcase your product or service. It tells a story that resonates with your audience.
It transforms abstract benefits into tangible results, helping potential customers visualize themselves achieving similar success.
Case studies build trust and credibility by highlighting specific challenges, solutions, and outcomes.

When a small business shares how it successfully navigated a problem, it positions itself as an expert in the industry. This expertise is backed by real-world results, which makes your brand more trustworthy in the eyes of potential customers.

Small business case study examples are powerful social proof that your offerings deliver real value. According to a survey by the Content Marketing Institute:

“73% of marketers say that case studies are one of the most effective forms of content for influencing purchasing decisions.”

This is because they provide potential customers with evidence that your solution works and can help them achieve similar results.

Small Business Case Study Examples

Here are a few small business case study examples you can not miss to analyze:

Zapier is a prime example of how strategic SEO and content marketing can drive massive organic traffic and user growth. It faced the challenge of increasing its visibility in a crowded market to establish itself as a go-to platform for automation.

Through a meticulously planned SEO strategy, they set a precedent for how small businesses can leverage content and partnerships to fuel growth.

In its early days, Zapier faced a significant challenge. It was how to stand out in a rapidly growing market of productivity and automation tools. With numerous competitors offering similar services, it needed to find a way to differentiate itself and drive organic traffic.

The company recognized the importance of online presence and visibility to attract new users and grow its platform.

The challenge was clear. Zapier needed to boost its SEO efforts and increase website traffic to sustain growth and stay competitive.

To tackle this challenge, the company implemented an ambitious SEO strategy focused on long-tail keywords. These are often less competitive and more targeted.

The company created 25,000 unique landing pages, each optimized for specific long-tail keywords related to their services.

These pages were not just automated templates. They featured well-structured, human-written content that addressed the specific needs of potential users searching for those keywords.

Zapier also developed a comprehensive playbook for onboarding new apps and partners.

By involving their partners, the company generated a vast amount of content without overwhelming their in-house team. These partners wrote high-quality guest posts for their sites, including backlinks to Zapier, further strengthening Zapier’s SEO and increasing referral traffic.

This boosted its domain authority and helped attract new users by increasing the company’s visibility across various online platforms.

Zapier’s strategic SEO and content marketing efforts paid off tremendously. The creation of 25,000 optimized landing pages significantly increased organic traffic, making it easier for potential users to discover Zapier through search engines.

Collaborating with partners for content creation and link building further amplified their online presence, driving even more traffic to the website.

Today, Zapier is recognized as a leader in the automation industry, with a robust user base and a solid online presence, largely thanks to its strategic use of SEO and content partnerships.

Key Takeaways

Leverage long-tail keywords to create targeted, relevant content that drives organic traffic.
Create multiple landing pages with well-optimized, human-written content to improve search engine visibility.
Collaborate with partners to scale content creation and build valuable backlinks.
Outsource link-building efforts to trusted partners to increase domain authority and attract more users.
Focus on SEO as a long-term strategy to establish and maintain a solid online presence.

“One more thing…”—a phrase famously used by Steve Jobs during Apple keynotes, signaling the introduction of a groundbreaking product or idea. This phrase perfectly encapsulates Apple’s approach to innovation and branding: consistently delivering something unexpected and transformative.

It’s a testament to Apple’s commitment to pushing boundaries and setting new standards in the industry. This philosophy is reflected in their products and their approach to overcoming challenges and driving success.

Apple’s journey from a struggling tech company to a global powerhouse is a powerful case study of how strategic innovation and branding can redefine an entire industry.

In its early years, Apple faced a series of significant challenges. The company was battling financial difficulties, lagging behind competitors like IBM and Microsoft, and struggling to establish a strong foothold in the highly competitive technology market.

One of the most pressing challenges was Apple’s inability to define its brand identity clearly and differentiate itself from other players in the industry. The company’s products, while innovative, were not achieving the desired market penetration, and Apple was at risk of becoming irrelevant in a rapidly evolving market.

Additionally, Apple faced the challenge of creating products that were not only innovative but also accessible and appealing to a broader consumer base. The company needed to balance its focus on design and technology with the need for mass-market appeal.

Apple also had to overcome internal challenges, including management instability and a lack of cohesive vision, hindering its ability to execute a unified strategy.

To address these challenges, Apple, under the leadership of Steve Jobs, implemented a multi-faceted strategy that focused on innovation, design, and brand reinvention.

Apple doubled down on its commitment to innovation, focusing on creating products that were not only technologically advanced but also user-friendly and beautifully designed.

The launch of the Macintosh in 1984, for instance, was a turning point that showcased Apple’s ability to combine cutting-edge technology with an intuitive user experience. The focus on innovation continued with the development of iconic products like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, each revolutionizing its respective industry.

Recognizing the need for a solid and consistent brand identity, Apple undertook a significant rebranding effort. This included simplifying its logo, as previously mentioned. It involved redefining Apple’s image as a brand synonymous with innovation, creativity, and premium quality.

The “Think Different” campaign was instrumental in positioning Apple as a brand that stood for innovation and rebellion against the status quo. It resonated deeply with consumers and differentiated Apple from its competitors.

Apple strongly emphasized design and user experience, ensuring that every product performed well and looked and felt exceptional. This strategy extended to the Apple ecosystem, where seamless integration between devices created a unique and compelling user experience that competitors struggled to match.

Apple’s strategic decisions paid off handsomely, transforming the company from a struggling business into the most valuable company in the world. The focus on innovation and design resulted in products that captured market share and created entirely new markets.

The iPod revolutionized the music industry, the iPhone redefined mobile communication, and the iPad opened up new possibilities in personal computing.

The rebranding efforts and the “Think Different” campaign helped establish Apple as a premium brand with a loyal customer base. Apple’s products became status symbols, and the company cultivated a reputation for quality, reliability, and cutting-edge technology.

The Apple Stores further solidified this brand image, providing customers with an immersive, personalized experience that drove sales and brand loyalty.

Under Jobs’ leadership, Apple’s stock price soared, and the company’s market capitalization grew exponentially. Apple’s ability to consistently innovate and reinvent itself has ensured its continued success, making it a dominant force in the technology industry.

Innovation is vital to staying ahead in a competitive market; consistently developing groundbreaking products can redefine entire industries.
A strong, cohesive brand identity is essential for differentiating a company from its competitors and building customer loyalty.
User experience and design are critical factors in product success; functional and aesthetically pleasing products create lasting consumer appeal.
Retail strategy and direct customer engagement can enhance brand perception and drive sales.
Leadership and vision are crucial for maintaining focus and executing a successful long-term strategy.

In 2009, Uber emerged with a bold vision: to transform the transportation industry by offering a convenient, reliable, and tech-driven alternative to traditional taxi services.

What began as a simple idea—connecting riders with drivers through a smartphone app—quickly became a global phenomenon that disrupted how people move in cities worldwide.

Uber’s journey from a small startup to a multi-billion-dollar company is a powerful example of how technology, innovative business models, and strategic execution can revolutionize an entire industry.

Uber’s rise from a startup to a multi-billion-dollar company is a compelling case study in leveraging technology, innovative business models, and strategic marketing to disrupt an entire industry.

When Uber was founded in 2009, the transportation industry was dominated by traditional taxi services, often criticized for being inefficient, expensive, and difficult to access. Customers frequently faced challenges such as long wait times, unclear pricing, and poor service.

Uber identified these pain points and recognized an opportunity to disrupt the market by providing a more convenient, reliable, and cost-effective solution.

However, the challenge was not just about creating a better service. It was about convincing both consumers and regulators to accept a completely new model of transportation that relied on private drivers and mobile technology.

To overcome these challenges, Uber implemented a multi-pronged strategy that combined technology, aggressive marketing, and strategic partnerships. Uber’s core innovation was its mobile app, which allowed users to book a ride with just a few taps on their smartphone.

The app provided real-time tracking of drivers, transparent pricing, and the convenience of cashless payments, addressing many issues plaguing traditional taxi services.

Uber also introduced dynamic pricing, known as “surge pricing,” which adjusted fares based on demand, ensuring that riders could always find a ride, even during peak times.

Uber’s business model was disruptive in that it didn’t own any vehicles or employ drivers in the traditional sense. Instead, Uber acted as a platform that connected independent drivers with passengers.

This allowed Uber to scale rapidly without the overhead costs associated with maintaining a fleet of vehicles.

The company offered incentives to drivers, such as flexible working hours and the potential to earn more than traditional taxi drivers, which helped attract many drivers to the platform.

In some regions, Uber introduced services like UberMOTO (motorcycle taxis) and UberAUTO (auto-rickshaws) to cater to local transportation preferences.

This flexibility allowed Uber to penetrate diverse markets and meet the unique demands of different customer segments.

Uber’s strategic approach to technology, business model innovation, and aggressive expansion paid off, making it one of the fastest-growing companies in history.

Within a few years, Uber had disrupted the global transportation industry, challenging the traditional taxi model and inspiring a wave of similar startups.

The company’s success was not without controversy, as it faced legal challenges, protests from taxi unions, and regulatory hurdles in many cities. However, Uber’s ability to adapt and navigate these challenges allowed it to continue growing.

By 2019, Uber had completed over 10 billion rides globally, and the company went public with a valuation of over $80 billion.

Today, Uber operates in more than 900 metropolitan areas worldwide and has expanded its offerings to include services like Uber Eats, Uber Freight, and autonomous vehicle research.

Uber’s journey from a small startup to a global leader is a testament to the power of innovation, technology, and bold business strategies.

Leveraging technology can transform traditional industries by offering innovative, user-friendly solutions.
A disruptive business model can enable rapid scaling and global expansion without the constraints of traditional operations.
Aggressive marketing and strategic expansion are essential for establishing a solid presence in new markets.
Adapting to local markets is crucial for success in diverse regions, allowing a company to meet specific customer needs and regulatory requirements.
Navigating regulatory challenges is critical to sustaining growth and maintaining market leadership in a disruptive industry.

“Customer obsession over competitor focus”—this principle has driven Amazon’s growth from a small online bookstore into one of the most influential companies in the world.

Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, Amazon was born out of the simple yet ambitious vision to revolutionize the retail industry by harnessing the power of the internet.

Amazon has transformed how people shop and redefined what it means to be a global retailer. This case study explores how Amazon tackled its early challenges, developed game-changing strategies, and achieved remarkable outcomes to become a dominant force in the global economy.

When Amazon launched, the company faced significant challenges. The internet was still infancy, and online shopping was not a common practice. Consumers were wary of buying products online, concerned about security, and unfamiliar with the process.

Moreover, Amazon had to compete with established brick-and-mortar stores with solid brand loyalty and consumer trust. The challenge for Amazon was to convince people to buy books online and shift the entire shopping paradigm towards e-commerce.

As Amazon began to expand beyond books, the company needed to develop a robust logistics network capable of delivering a vast array of products quickly and efficiently, all while keeping costs low.

Amazon’s strategy to overcome these challenges was multi-faceted and centered around three core principles: customer obsession, innovation, and scalability. Jeff Bezos has always emphasized that Amazon primarily focuses on the customer.

From the outset, Amazon prioritized creating a seamless shopping experience by offering a vast selection of products, competitive pricing, and unparalleled convenience.

This customer-centric approach extended to innovations like customer reviews, personalized recommendations, and an easy-to-use interface, which built trust and encouraged repeat business.

Amazon invested heavily in technology to improve the shopping experience and streamline operations. The creation of the “1-Click” purchasing system and Amazon Prime, which offered fast and free shipping, were technological innovations that set Amazon apart from competitors.

Additionally, Amazon Web Services (AWS) was launched as a cloud computing platform, which became a significant revenue stream and powered the company’s vast operations.

Amazon’s strategy involved expanding beyond books into every retail category, from electronics to clothing to groceries.

Amazon also diversified its business by launching products like Kindle, Echo, and Fire TV and expanding into services such as Amazon Prime Video, further embedding itself into consumers’ lives.

Amazon’s strategic focus has yielded extraordinary results, making it a prime example in any collection of small business case study examples. The company rapidly evolved from a startup into one of the largest retailers in the world.

Amazon’s ability to scale operations efficiently has enabled it to dominate the e-commerce space, capturing nearly 40% of the U.S. online retail market as of 2021.

The success of Amazon Web Services (AWS) further exemplifies the company’s innovative spirit, positioning Amazon as a leader in cloud computing. AWS has become a cornerstone of Amazon’s profitability, generating billions in revenue and supporting countless businesses worldwide.

This success story is crucial when discussing small business case study examples, demonstrating how diversification and innovation can drive substantial growth.

The introduction of Amazon Prime has cultivated a loyal customer base, with over 200 million subscribers globally who depend on the service for everything from daily essentials to entertainment.

Amazon achieved a market capitalization that surpassed $1 trillion in 2018.

Customer obsession is crucial for building a loyal customer base and driving long-term success.
Continuous innovation in technology and services can differentiate a company from its competitors and create new revenue streams.
Scalability and efficient logistics are vital in managing rapid growth and maintaining a competitive edge in the market.
Market expansion and diversification allow businesses to reduce risk and capitalize on new opportunities.
Strategic acquisitions and investments can accelerate growth and enable entry into new markets and industries.

5. Snapchat

“Embrace the moment”—this mantra encapsulates Snapchat’s unique social media and communication approach. Snapchat emerged as a groundbreaking platform founded in 2011 by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown.

Unlike other social media platforms that focused on permanence, Snapchat introduced the concept of ephemeral messaging, allowing users to send photos and videos that would disappear after being viewed.

This innovative approach resonated with younger audiences and quickly set Snapchat apart in a crowded social media landscape.

This case study explores Snapchat’s journey, its challenges, strategies, and outcomes that solidified its place as a leader in the social media industry.

When Snapchat first launched, it faced significant challenges in a social media environment dominated by giants like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The critical challenge was differentiating itself in a market where social media platforms competed for user attention through features emphasizing permanence, likes, and public sharing.

Snapchat must convince users, especially younger ones, to embrace a new communication method focused on fleeting moments rather than lasting memories.

Another major challenge was monetization. While Snapchat rapidly gained popularity, especially among millennials and Gen Z, turning that user base into a profitable business was not straightforward.

The platform needed to find innovative ways to generate revenue without compromising the user experience centered around privacy and the temporary nature of its content.

Furthermore, Snapchat had to continually innovate to stay relevant as competitors began to imitate its core features. Maintaining its distinct identity and user base in the face of increasing competition was a constant challenge.

Snapchat implemented vital strategies focused on innovation, user engagement, and monetization to overcome these challenges. Snapchat’s primary innovation was its focus on ephemeral content—photos and videos that disappeared after being viewed.

This concept was a significant departure from other social media platforms, where content was designed to be permanent.

Snapchat also introduced other unique features, such as Stories (a 24-hour timeline of photos and videos), Lenses (augmented reality filters), and Discover (a platform for branded content and news). These features helped differentiate Snapchat and attract a younger demographic that valued privacy and spontaneity.

Snapchat prioritized user engagement by constantly introducing new and playful features that kept the platform fresh and exciting. The app’s interface encouraged users to interact with friends more personally and creatively, fostering a strong sense of community and belonging.

The introduction of Snapstreaks, which tracked how many consecutive days two users communicated, further boosted user retention and engagement.

To address the challenge of monetization, Snapchat developed innovative advertising solutions that were integrated seamlessly into the user experience. The company introduced Snap Ads, full-screen vertical video ads between Stories, Sponsored Lenses, and Geofilters, allowing brands to create interactive user experiences.

Snapchat also leveraged its Discover platform to partner with media companies and offer premium content, generating additional revenue streams. These strategies allowed Snapchat to monetize its user base effectively while maintaining its core appeal.

Snapchat used a strategic approach to innovation, user engagement, and monetization. This paid off, making Snapchat one of the most popular social media platforms among younger audiences.

By 2023, Snapchat had over 375 million daily active users.

The majority of its user base comprises millennials and Gen Z, who are often elusive for other platforms to capture. Snapchat successfully turned its unique approach to content sharing into a lucrative business.

The company’s innovative advertising solutions and partnerships with brands and media outlets allowed it to generate substantial revenue. This helped to achieve profitability after several years of operating at a loss.

As of 2023, Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc., had a market capitalization of over $15 billion.

Features like AR Lenses and Snap Maps kept existing users engaged and attracted new ones, helping Snapchat maintain its competitive edge.

Despite the challenges posed by larger competitors, Snapchat has carved out a distinct niche in the social media landscape.

Innovation in user experience can set a platform apart in a crowded market, especially by offering unique features that address specific user needs.
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Factors of authenticity: exploring santorini’s heritage hotels.

1. Introduction

2. literature review, 2.1. the complex concept of authenticity in heritage hotels, 2.2. authenticity factors in historic hotels, 2.3. international and national institutional framework for heritage hotels.

The deviation of heritage hotels from the minimum mandatory required dimensions applicable to public areas and rooms of hotels.
The minimum number of points of the optional scoring criteria required for the classification of hotels in each star category was reduced.
A number of mandatory amenities for 5- and 4-star hotels, such as restaurant, bar or room service, became optional criteria for heritage hotels.
Heritage hotels were exempt from the provisions for the accessibility of disabled persons to hotel rooms.

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. the case of santorini: heritage architecture, tourism, and applied policies, 3.2. data collection and analysis.

Conducting archival research in the register of the HCH for all heritage hotels in Santorini (69 hotels) to analyze their structural characteristics:
RQ1. What are the (a) size, (b) legal form, and (c) star class characteristics of heritage hotels?
RQ2. What are the (a) site characteristics, (b) spatial concentrations, and (c) seasonality of heritage hotels?
The evolution of heritage hotels based on their opening dates, categorized by star ratings (5 star–1 star) and their percentage distribution across three spatial levels: the whole country, the region (South Aegean, where the island belongs administratively) and the municipality.
The average size of these hotels, as classified by the Research Institute for Tourism (2020): very small hotels (up to 20 rooms), small hotels (21–50 rooms) and medium hotels (51–100 rooms).
The legal forms of heritage hotels, grouped into partnerships (including sole proprietorships, general and limited partnerships), limited liability companies, and various other forms of companies.
The correlation between the development of heritage hotels and the overall hotel capacity on the island.
The duration of their operation (year-round or seasonal) and its comparison with the seasonality of tourist demand (monthly air arrivals of tourists to the island for the period 2010–2013).
The spatial distribution of heritage hotels according to altitude and location.
RQ3. Does the current classification system reward elements that enhance the authenticity of heritage hotels?
RQ4. Does the current classification system compel heritage hotels to invest in areas or services that compromise their historical authenticity?
RQ5. How is the historicity of the hotel displayed on the website?
RQ6. (a) What is the construction period of the hotel building, (b) what is the architectural style of the hotel building, (c) what was the previous use of the heritage hotel building?
RQ7. (a) What type of accommodation is displayed on the website? (b) In which languages is the hotel’s website available for browsing?
RQ5: A simple choice scale was used where only one of the suggested answers is possible: (a) not at all: no mention of the historicity of the hotel, (b) moderately: provides some information about the historicity of the hotel, and (c) extremely: promotes heritage as a key concept for the hotel.
RQ6: Information was grouped as follows: (a) construction period of the building by century, (b) type of architecture of the building, categorized as Local Folk Island Architecture, Neoclassical, and Venetian, and (c) previous conversion of heritage hotel buildings into caves, mansions/captain’s houses, kanaves, and other types of heritage buildings.
RQ7: The material and information contained on the websites were evaluated and grouped into luxury suites, boutique hotel, heritage hotel, historic hotel and villas. Information was also collected on the browsing languages offered on the websites.

4.1. The Structural Characteristics of Heritage Hotels

RQ2. What are the (a) site characteristics, (b) spatial concentrations, and what is the (c) seasonality of heritage hotels?

4.2. Investigation of the Impact of the New National Star Rating System on the Authenticity of Santorini’s Historic Hotels

Located in a designated traditional settlement or an area of outstanding natural beauty.
Operating within architectural heritage buildings.
All classified hotels have developed a customer complaint management system, earning 100 points each, while three of them received an additional 200 points for being certified with the boutique hotel quality label of the HCH.
Eight (8) out of the ten (10) hotels are associated with local cuisine and products, earning between 200–450 points for certifications like the Greek Breakfast label from HCH and/or the special Greek Cuisine quality label of the Ministry of Tourism.
Four (4) out of ten (10) hotels received high scores (150–500 points) for adhering to international environmental management standards [such as ECOLABEL [ 49 ], Green Key [ 50 ]), and/or for developing organic agriculture or using organic products.
Four (4) out of ten (10) hotels were also highly scored (150–500 points) for following international corporate social responsibility standards [ISO 2600:2010 on Social Responsibility International Organization for Standardization [ 51 ]).
RQ4. Does the current classification system compel heritage hotels to invest in areas or services that compromise their historical authenticity ?
All hotels are required to have an adequate breakfast room and dedicated space for reception and rooms/apartments.
All hotels are required to have 28-inch or larger televisions in their rooms.
Seven (7) out of ten (10) hotels have a catering outlet and a leisure outlet (canteen or bar), which are requirements that receive 500 and 250 points, respectively.
Seven (7) out of ten (10) hotels have communal swimming pools of up to 150 m 2 , with four of these hotels also featuring whirlpool and massage pools.
Two (2) out of ten (10) hotels also have private swimming pools in 50% of their rooms, earning 300 points.

4.3. The Promotion of Authenticity and Heritage Identity by the Hotels

RQ5. How is the historicity of the hotel displayed on its website?
RQ7. (a) What is the type of accommodation displayed on the website? (b) In which languages is the hotel’s website available for browsing?

5. Discussion

6. conclusions, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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Sarantakou, E.; Tsamos, G.; Vlami, A.; Christidou, A.; Maniati, E. Factors of Authenticity: Exploring Santorini’s Heritage Hotels. Tour. Hosp. 2024 , 5 , 782-799. https://doi.org/10.3390/tourhosp5030045

Sarantakou E, Tsamos G, Vlami A, Christidou A, Maniati E. Factors of Authenticity: Exploring Santorini’s Heritage Hotels. Tourism and Hospitality . 2024; 5(3):782-799. https://doi.org/10.3390/tourhosp5030045

Sarantakou, Efthymia, Georgios Tsamos, Aimilia Vlami, Agni Christidou, and Evridiki Maniati. 2024. "Factors of Authenticity: Exploring Santorini’s Heritage Hotels" Tourism and Hospitality 5, no. 3: 782-799. https://doi.org/10.3390/tourhosp5030045

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Mass Culture is an arts support organization that strives to harness the power of research to learn and generate new insights, enabling the arts community to be strategic, focused and adaptive.

‘Research in Residence Use Case Study Reflections’ by Robin Sokoloski & Jamie Gamble

Evaluative Thinking , Research in Residence
August 26, 2024

Methodology

Robin Sokoloski and Jamie Gamble utilized developmental evaluation to engage both the researchers and participants from arts organizations in a reflective process over 10 months. They designed a series of intermittent exchanges where researchers and arts organizations shared their learnings at various stages. Additionally, Mass Culture provided each arts organization with a learning log (a Jamboard) with prompts to reflect on their use of the framework throughout the study. In 2024, Robin and Jamie convened a final session for participants to discuss the framework’s application and outcomes. This process supported arts organizations in developing their reflection pieces on how they integrated the Arts Impact Framework that they used into their work practices.

Key Findings

Qualitative evaluation tools were a good fit for the participating organizations. Vicki Stroich of Caravan Farm Theatre shared in her reflection piece, “Unlike other tools that primarily measure quantitative metrics like emissions, this framework addressed qualitative aspects, such as how artists and audiences engage with the work and the resulting mindset or actions. This approach resonated with us because of our deep relationships with the land and community.”
These frameworks require high-level support to implement. In all cases, there was direct involvement of the researcher who created the framework. This greatly enriched the process. The direct support of the researcher is particularly valuable given the novelty of the frameworks and the emerging practice of integrating them into organizational operations. This also had the benefit of providing an external, “critical-friend” perspective. A self-directed application of the frameworks has not yet been tested. Our hunch is that a self-directed application could be possible when there is high-readiness and high-interest in an organization. This is desirable given the time and resource limitations of having external support.
The process helped the researchers gain valuable insights on how to refine their arts impact frameworks. For instance, Emma mentioned her intention to revise some of the language in the Living Climate Framework for the Arts that she designed. Additionally, she plans to update or include indicators that more explicitly address social justice.
The findings from the application of these frameworks were used by an internal audience. The extent to which the frameworks help organizations to communicate about impact with external audiences (such as funders) has not yet been tested.
It’s one thing to discuss your organization’s commitment to equity, access, and environmental sustainability (the social domain of each framework). However, applying these arts impact frameworks uncovered some challenges, including resistance, fear, and capacity constraints within arts organizations to dive deeply into self-examination and taking action on findings. Rachel Marks referred to this as “finding the edge and exploring ways in which we can push or ease ourselves past it.”
These frameworks facilitate an ongoing and expansive process, where questions often lead to further inquiries, fostering deeper understanding. For instance, Katie Ingrey from the City of Ottawa remarked that the framework prompted her to consider, “What does it mean to be proactive rather than reactive when serving your community?” Shanice Bernicky, the researcher behind “Spiraling Outwardly Towards Equity,” reflected at the conclusion of the Use-Case Study, saying, “Each wave of social justice considerations, beginning in the mid-1980s with the revision of the Indian Act and the creation of the Multiculturalism Act, builds to a crescendo. I believe we are at a peak now with the focus on equity, diversity, and inclusion. However, waves can crash down just as quickly as they rise. So, how do we support organizations across the sector in sustaining their commitment to intentional equity work over time?”

This process demonstrated the value of the three frameworks being tested. They are each thoughtful and comprehensive in how they support organizations to review critical issues of climate, equity and accessibility. These frameworks point to the value of qualitative impact assessment tools and how they can be catalysts for radical thinking, allowing a deeper exploration of how the arts intersect with these environmental and social domains.

Through this process, participating organizations were empowered to move beyond simply measuring impact, encouraging them to rethink and challenge traditional notions of the arts’ role in shaping society. The frameworks demonstrated new possibilities for understanding and harnessing the power of the arts to drive social change.

Possible Steps Forward

Research is a living thing, and Mass Culture is committed to continuously testing these frameworks alongside their researchers/ authors, aiding in their refinement and connecting them with arts organizations eager to explore their potential. We recognize that the arts—and the many social and environmental domains they intersect—require robust frameworks. That’s why we are dedicated to securing resources and partnering with great people to develop new arts impact frameworks. Ultimately, we are driven by the belief that qualitative measurements are not only credible, but just as “measurable” as quantitative data.

Access in Counterpoint Use Case Study Reflection

Access in counterpoint use case study.

Living Climate-Impact Framework for the Arts Use Case Study Reflection

Living climate-impact framework for the arts.

Spiralling Outwardly for Equity in Public Arts Use Case Study Reflection

Spiralling outwardly for equity in public arts use case study.

MC Minds (our blog, podcast, and videos) will inspire, educate, question, connect and journey through knowledge on arts and culture research topics across Canada.

Would you like to recommend someone for an interview with MC Minds? Contact Kathryn at [email protected] .

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Create Stories That Change Your Company’s Culture

Jay B. Barney,
Manoel Amorim,
Carlos Júlio

Does your firm’s culture support its strategy? If not, you’ll need to retool your culture, and that’s not so easy to do. The values, beliefs, and norms that make it up are intangible and diffused throughout your organization, and employees tend to resist anything that threatens established behaviors and relationships.

To figure out the secret to doing cultural change well, the authors examined how business leaders around the world approached it. They learned that successful ones didn’t begin with workshops, studies, or new HR policies. They began by creating stories highlighting actions that were deeply inconsistent with a firm’s established culture but reinforced an alternative culture more aligned with its strategies. The most effective stories were authentic, featured the leaders themselves, offered a break with the past and a path to the future, appealed to hearts and minds, and were dramatic and memorable. Most critically, they empowered employees to begin crafting their own stories about cultural change so that everyone in the organization ended up co-creating a new culture together.

Work with these six building blocks.

Idea in Brief

The problem.

Most business leaders approach cultural change in a formal, analytic manner: by holding workshops to define values and revising HR protocols and practices. That almost never works.

Why It Happens

The values, beliefs, and norms that make up an organization’s culture are hard to define, and people instinctively resist attempts to alter established behaviors and relationships.

The Solution

Since organizational culture is embodied in the stories employees share, start by changing those stories. Create new narratives that reinforce the desired culture and are deeply inconsistent with the old one. That will signal your commitment to cultural change and empower employees to craft their own culture-changing stories.

It’s well-known that firms where strategy and culture align outperform firms where they do not. It follows, then, that if the two aren’t aligned, you most likely need to change your culture.

JB Jay B. Barney is a Presidential Professor of Strategic Management and the Lassonde Chair of Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business. He is a coauthor, with Manoel Amorim and Carlos Júlio, of The Secret of Culture Change .
MA Manoel Amorim is a founding partner at MXF Investments and was previously the CEO of Telefonica Brasil, Globex, and Abril Education.
CJ Carlos Júlio is an entrepreneur, a director of several Brazilian companies, and a commentator for CNN Brazil.

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Using a SportPlus approach to improve support and outcomes for young people in or at risk of entering the Youth Justice System

The £5 million Ministry of Justice programme (2022) used sport to enhance positive outcomes for vulnerable young people in the context of youth crime.

Introduction

The fund supported 220 voluntary and community sports organisations (collectively referred to as Locally Trusted Organisations or LTOs) to carry out targeted community work in numerous local authorities, supporting children and young people who were at risk of entering the criminal justice system. Sport is increasingly recognised as having a role in prevention and early intervention work with children at risk of, or already involved in, offending behaviour. Although sport was unlikely to stop offending by itself, it has the potential to make a positive contribution.

The challenge

Reducing crime and anti-social behaviour is a long-standing public policy concern which has become more acute as rates of incidence increase and the prison population in the UK continues to rise. Youth crime alone costs the taxpayer £1.5billion a year and research reveal that over three quarters of adult prolific offenders received their first caution or conviction as a juvenile.[1]

In the year ending December 2022 girls comprised of 16 per cent of first time entrants into the youth justice system and across both sexes, ethnic minorities accounted for 24 per cent.

It is now recognised that many children and young people who offend have experienced multiple disadvantages and that contact with the criminal justice system can compound this disadvantage further. Supporting vulnerable young people at risk of involvement in crime, anti-social behaviour and serious violence is critical, especially those who present ‘risk factors’ such as school exclusion, prior involvement with the police, or other challenging socio-economic circumstances.

A greater focus on trauma-informed approaches such as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) has led to the adoption of child-first practices within Youth Justice. These seek to mitigate the harm that can arise from offending behaviours by developing pro-social (Pro-social is the opposite to anti-social and uses positive behaviours, attitudes, and decision-making) identities that aim to prevent offending and create safer communities. These approaches are reliant on developing supportive and empowering relationships with children focused on fulfilling their potential and making positive contributions to society.[2]

The solution

Sport and physical activity has long been utilised as a cost-effective tool to address criminal justice issues, whether to prevent, divert or rehabilitate,[3] and there is a growing evidence base which highlights the strong potential of sport, when used alongside other mechanisms, as an effective intervention tool with young people both in the community and within the secure estate.[4]

This approach is known as a SportPlus principle which can best be explained by simply accepting that the act of participating in sport and physical activity becomes the vehicle for providing support to a young person with a wider (and often deeper) set of vulnerabilities and needs. The activity is specifically designed to enable the young person to benefit not only from the regular participation in physical activity but to address particular issues a young person/group of young people may be vulnerable to. Factors considered when designing SportPlus activity often include: the time, location and modality of activity; the training, skills and competence needed of a coach/trusted adult; and the contextual safeguarding environment activity will be delivered within.

For example, LTOs like Ride High , a charity based in Milton Keynes, engages young people through opportunities to learn to ride and care for horses. Referrals are made by a range of organisations including the Local Authority, Child, and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), counsellors and bereavement support services, police, the Youth Offending Team (YOT), the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS), the British Red Cross and refugee support programmes. Great care is taken to ensure the young person is guided into the appropriate activity including riding lessons and equine care, that supports their unique needs and experiences, alongside working on themed projects which provide targeted support in the ‘club room’. The significant value of the approach is that young people are trusted to work with animals when they had previously been let down by the adults in their lives.[5]

More case studies can be found in the Sport for Development Coalition’s policy document Getting on Track .

In 2023, the UK Government’s Ministry of Justice invested £5 million into a Youth Justice Sport Fund to support 218 LTOs and other voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations across England and Wales to conduct targeted work supporting vulnerable young people, aged 10-17, considered to be at risk of being involved in crime, anti-social behaviour and serious violence crime and violence. Using local sporting activities as a vehicle to address problem behaviour and as a diversionary tool to prevent crime and anti-social behaviour, the fund aimed to increase the capability of sport sector delivery organisations to work effectively with their local criminal justice partners, including Youth Justice Services, Police and Police Crime Commissioners (PCC)/Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) structures. This work focused on building sustainable relationships for the medium to longer term to facilitate potential future access to the new ‘Turnaround’ programme and other funding.

While the MOJ project timeline was too short to highlight an official impact on offending, the project focused on targeting the right young people and engagement with YOTs and other stakeholders. To this end the project was successful in engaging with almost 8,000 young people experiencing a number of inequalities and who are often underserved. For example:

More than 400 projects submitted applications for funding and 220 projects were awarded funding after an intensive review process to provide a SportPlus approach to supporting young people in or at risk of entering the youth justice system.7,832 young people were involved in the programme with a total of 68,741 attendances during the intervention period.

Football was the most provided sport (68 per cent of organisations), followed by boxing (50 per cent), multi-sport (48 per cent) and gym fitness (42 per cent). In some projects the choice of sport was driven by consultation with the young people. Projects also integrated the ‘plus’ activities into their work. ‘Plus’ activities included mentoring, formal or informal workshops or discussions about areas such as consequences of involvement in crime or gangs, drugs and alcohol, the role of a community and making healthy and positive choices.

In terms of reach, of the 7,832 young people engaged 82 per cent came from the most deprived communities within the bottom four IMD deciles. Most participants (88 per cent) were aged between 10 and 17 years and 48 per cent were aged between 13 to 15 years old. Most participants (77 per cent) were male and 22 per cent were female, whilst 44 per cent of young people were from an ethnically diverse background including 18 per cent from a black background. Additionally, 12 per cent of young people engaged in the programme had learning difficulties.

Of the organisations involved: 88 per cent engaged young people excluded from school or college, 76 per cent engaged young people with mental health issues, 63 per cent engaged young people associated with gangs and 57 per cent engaged with young people in care/care leavers. More than half of the organisations engaged young people who had been arrested or cautioned in the last three months whilst 44 per cent of organisations engaged with young people who had been a victim of abuse. Other ‘vulnerabilities’ included: substance misuse, parents with addictions, Special Educational Needs, bereavement, sexual exploitation, learning difficulties, disabilities, being groomed into gangs, missing episodes, and homelessness.

In terms of the sources of formal referral routes, the majority came from educational establishments (82 per cent), this was then followed by youth justice services (39 per cent), early help hubs (23 per cent) and the police (23 per cent). It is encouraging that 88per cent of organisations stated that they were working with young people who were not attending or who had been excluded from school or college as not attending school is associated with offending and being recruited to gangs. Informal referrals are valuable in helping to recruit ‘at risk’ young people who would not choose to take part in more formal intervention programmes as well as those who might not be known to statutory agencies. Delivery organisations reported that engagement levels had improved from an average of 2.7 at the start of the project to 3.3 at its conclusion.

How is it being sustained?

While the fund itself did not progress to a second year, many of the underpinning ideas continue to be developed in collaboration with VRUs, Police and Crime Commissioners and others. There is a growing recognition that sport and physical activity, when delivered in the right way, can have clear pro-social outcomes for at risk young people.

Many LTO’s continue to use the SportPlus approach to tackle youth anti-social behavior and crime as a part of their normal prevention activities. Core to these interventions is the Theory of Change developed by StreetGames in partnership with leading academics, which outlines the ingredients needed for successful sport-based interventions in a community safety context. This Theory of Change can be also applied to local authority initiatives to maximise impact.

Lessons learned

Secondary level (also known as ‘early intervention’ by some referral agencies) SportPlus intervention programmes are well-suited for referrals by agencies such as schools, the police, youth justice services and early help services. They can include one of more of the following: regular sports activity and playing sessions which are targeted (e.g. in terms of local area ‘hot spots’ and specific groups of young people), volunteering and one to one sport-based mentoring.

For young people who have offended, sport can provide a twin-track approach that leads them out of the Youth Justice System and towards activities that build strengths, capacities, and potential, whilst emphasising positive behaviours and outcomes. In particular, the opportunities for engagement and for ‘relationship building’, in and through sport, provides a valuable medium through which to offer this twin-track approach to empower young people to develop social capital and pro-social identities.

Sports Activity and Playing sessions at a secondary intervention level should provide sport or physical activity activities that are designed purposefully to provide fun and positive opportunities for personal development and growth for young people including achievements. It can be based on providing a single sport or physical activity such as boxing, football, martial arts, or dance or it can be based around a multi-sport approach, providing a wide range of sports for young people to play at the same session.

This programme demonstrated that a SportPlus approach offers more opportunities to undertake meaningful work with young people experiencing high levels of challenge in their lives and enabled staff to build a strong rapport with young people. It also enhances young people’s skills and knowledge and provides access to additional support.

[1] GOV UK, 2023, Youngsters to take up football, boxing and rugby in £5 million bid to cut crime .

[2] YJ resource Hub, 2022, A guide to Child First .

[3] Morgan, H and Parker, A. (2023). Sport, Physical Activity and Criminal Justice Politics, Policy and Practice in England. London: Routledge.

[4] Ministry of Justice, 2019, An Independent Review of Sport in Youth and Adult Prisons.

[5] Sport for Development Coalition, 2024, Getting on Track: Reducing youth offending and re-offending through sport and physical activity .

Contact information

StreetGames’ Community Safety lead: [email protected]

Links to relevant documents

https://www.streetgames.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/YJSF-Executive-Summary-3.pdf
https://www.streetgames.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/theory-of-change-using-sport-to-enhance-positive-outcomes.pdf
https://www.sportfordevelopmentcoalition.org/sites/default/files/file/26386%20Sport%20For%20Development%20Coalition%20Antisocial%20Behaviour%20Policy%20Brief_Accessible.pdf

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Delhi coaching institute deaths case: CBI seeks another week to probe SUV that drove through inundated road

Delhi coaching institute deaths: cbi has sought more time to investigate the suv that drove through the road leading to flooding of the basement..

Updated Aug 28, 2024, 3:14 PM IST

Delhi coaching centre flooding case: CBI seeks more time to probe the SUV

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that is probing the deaths of the three IAS aspirants in the basement of a coaching centre in Old Rajinder Nagar has said that they would need more time to inspect the vehicle that was seized for flooding the basement after it drove through the inundated road.

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The CBI filed its status report on the application of Manuj Kathuria, driver of the SUV that caused the water in the road to swell and crash the gates of the building that led to the sudden flooding of the basement of Rau's IAS Study Circle.

The agency sought another week for inspection of the vehicle. It said that the vehicle and the gate of the building were inspected by a team of professors of IIT Delhi. It will now be inspected by the Motor Vehicle Inspector. The court then listed the matter on September 4.

Kathuria, who was arrested in connection with the case, was released on bail earlier this month from Tihar jail. The high court reprimanded the police for the “strange” investigation, leading to the arrest of Kathuria.

"What is Delhi Police doing? Have they lost it? What are its officials who are monitoring the probe doing? This is a cover-up or what?" criticised the court adding that might challan the rainwater next.

The court also criticised the police for failing to question officials from the Municipal Corporation of Delhi or seize relevant documents from the civic body.

Three civil service aspirants – Shreya Yadav (25) from Uttar Pradesh, Tanya Soni (25) from Telangana, and Nevin Delvin (24) from Kerala – died on July 27 when the basement of their coaching centre flooded amid heavy rain. The incident stirred massive uproar, with people questioning the institute's flouting of norms and the authorities' failure to ensure proper enforcement of laws.