IIM Ahmedabad Group Discussion Topics

Case 1:
Johnson is the head of RND dept of a MNPC pharmaceutical company. ‘Dosage’ is the supplier of liquid glucose, which is a raw material for a product. It is found that this glucose forms hazy “fungus” like substance which is not actually fungus. Whether it is harmful is not known. ‘Dosage’ is most renowned supplier and has a very good past record. There are other 2 suppliers who are not dependable and are new suppliers, but have a liquid glucose supply, which doesn’t form the hazy substance. Johnson studies the samples of all 3 suppliers and finds 2 of the new suppliers satisfactory and is wondering why Dosage didn’t inform MNPC about this hazy substance. What decision should Johnson take?

Case 2:
Sameer wants to have a famous rock group perform on the last day of his college cultural festival, of which he is in charge. His college Director thinks that there will be trouble because the rock band is very famous, but Sameer persists and Director though, not in favour, agrees. The Director refuses to to be held responsible for any chaos. If anything goes wrong, the blame will rest on Sameer’s head and there will be no more fests for the college. On the night of the rock show, the band’s flight arrives late, there is a traffic jam, and it’s already very late. A 10,000 strong crowd is waiting for them. Sameer calls up SP and asks for road clearance for the band, SP agrees but needs Director’s approval for it. What should Sameer do?

Case 3:
How should management students manage their time between academics and extra curricular activities?

Case 4:
Govind runs a sweet shop. He has been supplying milk and other ingredients from friends for 57 years. He believes in quality of the product. There are price raises but he insists on quality and gives in to the price raises to maintain quality. One fine day, his son, Amit takes over this business. Being a commerce student, he calculates that most of the profits are wasted in maintaining quality and hence goes in for cost cutting measures. He arranges for a store where discounts are offered, arranges for a different milk vendor, etc. There is a party in Amit’s daughter’s school and he supplies sweets. That very day, his daughter falls sick. The principal informs him that 30 other students were also sick. The students who didn’t take sweets were all right. The principal also threatens him that she would file court case. What should Amit do?

Case 5:
Anita is a leading marketing executive for cola company ,KKIL,and a consumer forum has come out with a study showing that KKIL colas have got an unusually high level of pesticides.The forum doesn’t have any accreditation yet it has managed to whip up publicity.While KKIL manages to conform to Indian standards, which only requires that water used should be potable, this water itself has a high level of pesticides due to illegitimate usage on the part of unnamed persons.What should Anita do?

Case 6:
Rohan wishes to go abroad for studies but parents are not willing to send him because of personal reasons. What should he do?

Case 7:
A young management graduate, Puneet, has joined a PSU. He finds the work culture there has completely eroded and productivity has dropped. Some employees are not working and going elsewhere to work while claiming to be working. How should Puneet tackle this situation?

Case 8:
A corporation is facing problems with its computerized system because of the negligence of the systems manager. What action should the company take?

Case 9:
A watch company is planning to launch a new watch model in India but a senior executive is sceptic of this decision. So what should he do?

Case 10:
Ram owns an IT company, which was well known for employee relations. The company had higher and lower level employees. There were 2 canteens for each level off employees. For higher ones, a better quality food wad provided and charges Rs12 per plate; for lower ones, Rs 10 per plate was charged and the quality was relatively bad. However, off late lower level employees started demanding better quality food and also same canteen for both higher and lower level employees. The higher were not ready to accept the proposal.
According to them, they could not accept the proposal because they followed the traditional hierarchy. Both parties had a conflict and none was willing to give in. Also, the news started flowing outside the organisation, which resulted in loss of reputation for the organisation. What should the organisation do?

Case 11:
Mr. Thakkar owns a software company known as the SCI (Sunny computer Institute).It was established in the year 1996 and catered to the government software needs. By the year 1998, it had made quite a name for itself by catering regularly and on time to the government needs in Gujrat. This was the time when the owner decided to expand his business to other parts of the country without increasing his resources and without the advice of a Finance Advisor .As a result, the after sales support of the clients suffered because of the lack of manpower. There was troubleshooting from the head office and the transportation expenses had risen drastically. As a result, the business started going down, employees did not get their salary on time, and the attrition rate went up.
What should Mr. Thakkar do in order to uphold the image of his company?

Case 12:
A medical transcription company has recruited employees of age group -55-60years because of resource crunch. They are retired employees from government job. After recruiting these old employees, the management realises that these people are not able to perform well. What should the company do?

Case 13:
Mr. Mandy is in charge of UP region for a company dealing in Stocks and Investments. His company has acquired some new companies; these new companies have many offices in rural areas. Rural infrastructure is bad, and the roads are terrible. Transport costs are heavy.
81% of the investments from rural areas are from rich residents who are political hotshots too. The pay structure is different in both the companies; the employees in the new company get paid better than employees in old company. Because of this discrepancy, the people in old company started asking for higher pay. Also, because of recent CBI charges against some of the rich residents in rural area, the investment from the rural area is expected to be very low for the next 6 to 12 months. What should Mr. Mandy do in this scenario?

Case 14:
The layout of garment shop in Hyderabad is such that the sarees are arranged on different floors according to the price of the sarees. 1% commission of the price of the saree is given to the salesmen for every saree that he sells. In order to earn more, the salesmen were concentrating mainly on customers who could afford expensive sarees because of which the floors that had cheaper sarees got neglected.
What should be the best possible approach that management should follow?

Case 15:
Narain is a village youth who worked in a hardware job for six months. He gets selected for a job in a software company along with two others. However, the higher ups are not happy with his performance. His Boss Siva gives Narain letters of recommendation to apply in a different company but Narain takes a stay on his termination from the court.What should Siva do?

Case 16:
Inam is a supervisor of the movement of railways in the Joretan Railways. Rani is his supervisor; she reports to Sami, who in turn reports to the country head. The Railways Minister has recently announced that the different railway divisions need to spruce up and that trains should run on fixed schedule.
Inam has been recieving a lot of flak from Rani lately because the trains are not running on time. He is also irritated since Rani and he joined at the same time and she got promoted becasue she handled a couple of crisis situations. Inam has told Rani the trains were running late because of the bad tracks and engines but he hasn’t been able to provide the data to support the claim. Also, Inam feels that Rani is unduly favouring the supervisors of the Track and Engine Maintenance Departments. The supposed unproductivity of Inam has hit the juniors in his department too.The Railway Minister has announced that he would be visiting the place soon. What should Inam do?

Case 17:
In Sahil’s law firm, the attrition rate is very high. To find out the reasons for the same, management conducted a survey. The following reasons were found out fro the high attrition rate-
(1) Bad work atmosphere
(2) No HR department
(3) Boring training
(4) Discouraging manager’s feedback.
This company gets 4 projects from 4 big firms. To complete the project, the company has to hire 25 people, who would have to stick to the company for 2-3 years. Given the rate of attrition, it is very unlikely that any employee would stay for 2-3 years. What should the management do?

Case 18:
A liquid glucose company wants to expand sales to client, instead the client decides to stop orders altogether. This happened because the drums in which the liquid glucose is supplied leak and change the colour of the final product offered to the client. Also, the liquid glucose company tends to change its prices every month. What should the CEO of glucose company do?

Case 19:
Batra hospital gives doses of a vaccine to children age between 5 to 10 years. A single vaccine costs Rs 21 to the hospital but Dr. Namrita manages to get a large stock at Rs 18 per vaccine. When the vaccine bought by Dr Namrita was used on one of the patients, the patient died. The medicine was tested in the laboratory and was found out that the chemical used in the vaccine can prove to be very dangerous in certain cases. What should Dr. Namrita do to save her career and image of the hospital?

Case 20:
“Mr John Greenhorn is an MBA and has right now been working with Unicomp for the last 3 years..His exceptional perfoemance in the company has got him the title of CFO in a short span of 3 years. Mr. John is married, has a mortgage on his house and is expecting a baby. Mr Krill and Mr Percy are the promoters of the company and have 1% stock each right now. Also, an investment banker in the company owns 5% of the stock.The remaining stock is with the shareholders.
Mr Percy and Mr Krill want to acquire a company named Computech. Computech is owned by Mr Beuhler who is their friend and the two have vested motives in the acquisition. Computech provides parts to IBM as well. Computech is famous for its haphazard management and is facing financial crises. Mr. Percy has asked Mr. John to fudge a finance report of Computech that would facilitate acquisition. What should Mr John do?”

Case 21:
Two Professors – Bill and Jan have their tenure extended because they have to get a paper published. Bill had written an article. He asked Jan to suggest improvements in the same and get it published. The major portion of the work was essentially done by Bill. Jan however took the initiative to get the work published. When the journal came out, Bill was surprised to discover that Jan has given her name as the Chief Author and Bill’s as Supporting Author.
Should Bill Claim the right to ownership? Will his decision be morally justifiable? What will be the implications of his decision on Personal and Professional relationship between Bill and Jan?

Case 22:
Bharat had subscribed for a recently launched Tech magazine (launched in Dec. 2004) but was asked to wait for 2 months before he could receive the first issue. Moreover, in Jan 2005 he was told that he would have to pay more for the magazine as the costs had increased. Bharat felt that this was unfair as he had already paid for the subscription and any price rise thereafter should not affect him.
He threatened to take the distributors to the court. The distributors are in a fix because if Bharat is paid a refund, other customers will ask for the same. Moreover there cannot be a double pricing policy. What should distributors do?

Case 23:
“Should gambling be legalized?”

Case 24:
“Imagine No Religion”

Case 25:
Raghu is a managing partner of KTex Company which gets yarn from exporters and uses its looms to produce bed sheets and curtains. For the past two years it was facing losses. Two years before that it made profits of Rs90000. There is public outcry against the pollution caused by the auxiliary industries like tying and dyeing. Raghu feels that this is the reason for the sluggishness in the industry. The exporters of yarn pay a ‘conversion charge’ to KTex. The conversion charges have decreased from Rs 8 per metre to Rs 5 per metre. The labourers are demanding ‘advance wages’. There have been instances where the labourers quit KTex when the other companies offered them advance wages. There are some companies which are making profits because of good management of labour.
KTex has 10 looms which work for a maximum of 16 hours per day, 20 loom operators and 2 supervisors are present. Other small chores are done by 6-7 boys who are paid daily wages.

Case 26:
An export company has offered an order of superior quality yarn. The quantity of yarn sent would be sufficient for three looms. The company has to supply 84 meters per day where as it currently produces 80 meters per day. The penalty for not meeting deadlines is very stiff. In order to produce three looms, the company need alteration which would cost Rs 5000 per loom. Raghu has the option to go for a bank loan, which he can easily get. What should Raghu do?

Case 27:
Ram is a head of Marketing of a Lucknow based travel agency.the company covers 4 major routes
Information about the company:

• Cost per person for the routes ( 1 Adult – 250, Adult+ Child =300, 2 Adults = 500)
• The state tourist service is a little costlier but people seem to prefer it, maybe because 1 year ago a private bus had had an accident.
• Ram has a sales team of 5 employees (2 men + 3 women).
• All fresh graduates recruited via XYZ consulting company @ Rs 2000/- each.
• Women seem to be better at bringing in customers. They are paid at 3000/- each+ 50/- per customer.
• There are rumours that the sales team wants to leave.
• XYZ consulting now charges 3000/- per recruit and also training costs will add up to the expenditure.

The profitability of the company went down because of high wages and expenditure. What does he do to keep profitability and not lose sales team?

Case 28:
The case was about a new FMCG company which wants to launch a new ‘male’ cola brand in certain rural/semi-urban areas of India based on statistical information of a survey which encompassed 128 million houses all over India. The FMCG company had also predicted that there will be greater demand for FMCG products in the rural/semi-urban areas of India by 2010.There was however lack of any statistical data on the areas where the product is to be launched. The focus was on a ‘male’ cola brand since the people in the rural areas want to emulate themselves as Bollywood heroes drinking the cola.
There were certain other factors such as seasonal factors, bad roads, competitors already present there, power problem, festivals etc. that the company has considered for the launch of the cola in rural areas. The company had appointed a business analyst Raman to provide them with inputs on how they should proceed to launch the product. As Raman what should be your advice to the company ?

Case 29:
A woman is trying to take advantage of her gender and tries to exact revenge on a co-employee for a bad appraisal that cost her a promotion. She is doing this by threatening to show an incriminatory sms to higher authorities and also the media. There is a project deadline approaching and no one can be fired. What should the project leader do?

Case 30:
Two parties want to build a spiritual gurukul and an educational institute over some disputed land (case going on in court between state and central govt for ownership of the piece of land for 40 yrs). What should the education ministry’s advisor do?

Case 31:
Government alleges that the Technological Management Institute has not done enough to strengthen the technological management capabilities in the country. The placement is over with mostly MNCs and few Indian companies coming to the campus. The media cell secretary worries whether he should disclose this placement info to the media. It would invite government’s ire but not keeping the placement and salaries undisclosed would place the competitive management institutes ahead in this year’s placements and hence prospective bright candidates may prefer other institutes.What should the media cell secretary do?

Agri Business
Sohan is fresher who has passed out from a management college recently with specialization in Agri business. He joins a large seed company. He is incharge of sales in a drought affected area. The seeds offered by the company are resource intensive and five times costlier than competitor’s but give better results. But sales are dropping because of various factors and this is given as challenge to Sohan. Sohan has to prove his mettle in this situation. This may also be a turning point in his career. What steps should Sohan take in order to prove his worth?

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