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This teaching case is well suited for short courses focussed on brand equity or marketing. It explores the following themes:

Premium brand equity: managing the brand in different markets, and the process involved in finding the right partners who care about the brand.

Market entry and penetration: strategies for growing in a market, testing a new market, and identifying the right products for a specific market.

Product expansion: the considerations that need to be made when a company is expanding its brand into new markets.

This teaching case is specifically aimed at postgraduate students completing a management diploma or a professional development course.

This case is about a premium confectionery brand Wedgewood. The company started in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa in 1999, with founder Gilly Walters’ handcrafted nougat aimed at a high-income target market. The retail product went on to be sold in stores nationwide. The company has since diversified its product range and tested markets both locally and abroad, with varying levels of success. In early 2020, Paul Walters, CEO, is considering options for the company. While his brother, Jon Walters, head of production and product development, is keen to increase global exports, Paul is less sure. The brand has been developed over the years and the product line expanded to consist of nougat, energy bars, and biscuits. While considering international markets, Paul must keep tabs on how to align the various brands in the process, and limit any potential damage to the brand equity to a minimum. With the company poised for exponential growth entering new international markets, Paul must consider the best expansion strategy. With business growth will they be able to maintain the core values of the business and the brand? Wedgewood will also need to think about staffing resources that would be required should they take on a massive international expansion.

To analyse how a small family-owned business is able to achieve sustainable growth and expand its footprint

To evaluate which business model creates the best platform for the expansion of a premium niche brand

To create a branding strategy for international brand expansion

Researchers recognize that interpersonal relationships contribute to the career development of professional employees. The purpose of this paper is to extend this research to individuals working at a formative point in their careers. Guided by Social Cognitive Career Theory, a model is developed that tests whether the quality of individuals’ work relationships at an early career stage has implications for their development of career cognitions and career exploration behaviors.

Structural equation modeling is used to test the model in two samples of employed students (n=372 and n=166).

Coworker relationship quality had a direct influence on career self-efficacy, which led to increased career outcome expectations, goals and exploration behaviors. The influence of supervisor relationship quality was mixed across studies.

Findings suggest that the quality of individuals’ relational experiences at work, even at an early career stage, has implications that extend beyond the workplace to affect their careers more generally.

Results speak to the dangers associated with a poor interpersonal climate for employees at an early career stage, and suggest that managers invest in opportunities that allow these employees to build stronger bonds with coworkers. The results also suggest that career counselors and internship coordinators be sensitive to the interpersonal climate of organizations with whom they contract.

This study offers insight into the connection between early employment experiences and individuals’ career cognitions and career exploration behaviors.

To resolve an inherent dilemma in extant research on geographically dispersed research and development (R&D), this study explores interdependencies between formal and informal network structures. Firms that seek to benefit from the decentralization associated with disperse R&D must align it with an informal structure that enhances organizational members’ motivation to share and assimilate their unique knowledge and skills. On the basis of an investigation among 424 US biotechnology firms between 1973 and 2003, this study reveals the moderating effect of the firm’s informal social structure on the effect that geographically dispersed R&D personnel have on the exploration of new technological opportunities. Specifically, the higher the social network density among R&D members, the more likely geographic disparity is to affect exploration; however, this likelihood decreases with an increase in power asymmetries. These results offer insights into the conditions in which the appropriate management of geographically dispersed R&D varies.

The purpose of the present analysis is to show that HR systems are not always designed in ways that consider the well‐being of employees. In particular, performance metric methods seem to be designed with organizational goals in mind while focusing less on what employees need and desire.

A literature review and multiple case‐study method was utilized.

The analysis showed that performance metrics should be revaluated by executives and HR professionals if they seek to develop socially responsible organizational cultures which care about the well‐being of employees.

The paper exposes the fact that performance appraisal techniques can be rooted in methodologies that ignore or deemphasize the value of employee well‐being. The analysis provides a context in which all HR practices can be questioned in relation to meeting the standards of a social justice agenda in the area of corporate social responsibility.

In discussing the subject of bread, or indeed any subject, one is of course confronted by the initial difficulty of definition. Nothing is harder than to define any concrete thing, no matter how common and well‐known it may be. This is not surprising when we remember that no one has ever succeeded in defining a definition. Perhaps the best attempt to do so is Pascal's, in the “Port Royal Logic,” and it is easy to drive a coach and six through the rules which he lays down for definitions to conform to. The only things that can be strictly defined are mathematical abstractions, such as a circle, which are formed on natural objects by pruning away their multitudinous properties till only two or three which can be expressed by a short and indisputable definition are left.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of the activity-based workspace (ABW) on employee belonging. Place attachment theory (PAT) is used as a proxy to understand and measure the belongingness of employees to their physical workplaces.

A case study of a bank’s newly retrofitted ABW office is conducted, providing fresh perspectives on the effect of ABW on employee belonging. A questionnaire survey was used to understand employee belongingness. Surveys are conducted with employees of the bank (n = 100) who experienced the transition from the conventional open-plan office with designated seats to an ABW, to understand and compare the change in employee belonging after the transition, by studying the level of belonging achieved in the space before and after.

The results showed that there was a positive sense of belongingness amongst employees working in the ABW space, as per the PAT framework and an increased sense of belongingness compared with the previous conventional open-plan office. However, ABWs were found to also have a negative effect on employees’ sense of control and security.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs indicates that a feeling of belonging is fundamental to humans. The need for belonging is also applicable in the workplaces of today’s progressive corporate organisations, where there is increased pressure and incentive to appeal to and retain talent. This research was conducted in response to the huge growth in interest in activity-based working across the corporate real estate community. As there has been no prior research done in the area of the emotional need for belongingness in ABW.

Of all the major, global professional sports where women have made inroads, striving toward equality in terms of status, earnings and media attention, tennis stands at the forefront. This chapter traces this historical development, outlining the sport's earliest socio-cultural features that afforded the inclusion of female players and charting the progress of notable women who thrust tennis into the limelight and turned themselves into commodities – the essence of professionalisation. Suzanne Lenglen blazed the trail by becoming, in 1926, the principal attraction in the sport's inaugural professional tour. Female players were encouraged to cast aside the shackles of restrained femininity and chart their own courses in a sport still dominated by men and played according to male standards. The rise of ‘Open Tennis’ in 1968 removed the playing restrictions and stigma of professionalism, but by opening up to the male-dominated corporate world, unsurprisingly it was the male players who initially competed for the lion's share of new money. Billie Jean King's efforts to galvanise her fellow female professionals to compete on a rogue tour sponsored by Virginia Slims left them ousted by the sport's main officials, but the tour's commercial success propelled them toward equality in terms of prize money and status. Still more or less a white, middle-class-dominated pursuit, the arrival of Venus and Serena Williams in the late 1990s turned tennis toward new markets, and the sport's significance for women remains apparent in the fact that its leading players are the most recognisable and well-paid of all professional female athletes.

The paper explores the role of construction industry “partnering” ‐ the development of closer collaborative links between firms ‐ in stimulating organisational learning. Drawing on case studies of partnering relationships involving large clients (British Petroleum, NatWest Bank, McDonald’s, Selfridges, Safeway) and over 40 of their contractors and suppliers, discusses the factors which influence the transfer of knowledge between organisations, the different levels at which learning takes place (e.g. individual, team, organisational) and the extent to which double‐loop learning can be observed.

In spite of past and current efforts at implementing effective rehabilitative interventions in carceral settings, institutions of confinement are primarily concerned with the maintenance of order within their walls. The purpose of this paper is to better understand associations between inmates’ developmental background and the experience of institutional discipline, to collect information on childhood maltreatment and disciplinary measures for a sample of Canadian prisoners.

Information relative to socio-economic background, childhood maltreatment and experience of discipline while in custody was obtained using face-to-face interviews and institutional file review for a sample of 416 male and 106 female offenders in Canadian provincial institutions.

Results from logistic regression analyses provided support for the association between childhood maltreatment and the experience of discipline, specifically in the form of increased monitoring from correctional staff. Furthermore, this association was found to be more pronounced for female offenders.

The findings highlight the need to incorporate a developmental perspective to current understanding of the use of disciplinary interventions in a prison environment. Such an approach may allow for preventing the enactment of a cycle of coercion, with negative consequences for the inmates.

This study is original in its use of latent variable analytic methods to uncover the structure underlying the construct of childhood maltreatment in adult offenders. In addition, it provides valuable data of interest to researchers, corrections personnel and policy makers on the possible links between earlier developmental experiences and adjustment to the prison environment.

School principals make sense of multiple messages, policies, and contexts within their school environments. The purpose of this paper is to examine specifically how school leaders make sense of hiring and subjective evaluation of on‐the‐job teacher performance.

This qualitative study drew from 42 interviews with 21 principals from a mid‐sized Florida school district. Two rounds of semi‐structured interviews (one to two hours each) were conducted with the informants over two summers (2005‐2006). The multi‐year study allows the authors to assess the consistency across principal participants.

Principals' personal beliefs, background, and experiences were found to shape their conceptions and preferences for teacher characteristics. School type (e.g. elementary, secondary, levels of poverty) also influenced principals' perceptions of and preferences for specific applicant and teacher characteristics. Principals in the sample, however, showed surprising consistency towards certain characteristics (caring, subject matter knowledge, strong teaching skills) and job fit (person‐job). Sampled principals reported that each vacancy is different and is highly dependent on the position, team, and individuals. Regardless of the position or school setting, federal, state, and district mandates strongly influenced how principals made sense of the hiring process and on‐the‐job performance.

The findings underscore the complexity of the human resource functions in education and raise important questions of how school leaders reconcile personal preferences and building‐level needs with demands from the district, state, and federal levels.

The authors' findings offer important insight into the complex conceptualizations that principals hold and the balances that must be struck in the face of policy and hiring constraints. How principals make sense of teacher quality, however, has not been examined. This study contributes to the extant research and makes a theoretical contribution to studies using a cognitive frame to understand school leadership.