Case Study : IIM Ahmedabad Case Studies/PI 2003

Case Studies

Case I
There is a bank robbery. A cashier violates the code of conduct but saves the bank’s money. What should the chief manager do with the cashier?

Case II
Kaveri Amma is a 40 yr old woman who has 2 daughters - 1 is married and the other is doing her 10th standard. She works in a cooperative where 35 other women support her. She makes ropes in the cooperative and earns Rs.600/ month. She was looking for alternative ways of making a little more money. She knew how to make a special kind of pickle. She bought the required stuff - tomatoes 8kg at a total cost of Rs.30, 1.5 l of oil at Rs.90, 40, 200 gm bottles at Rs.20, miscellaneous ingredients (ginger, garlic etc.) at Rs.57.

She had an earning of Rs.203 from this venture. She used to sell these bottles at Rs. 10/bottle when market price for such pickle was Rs.16. Since she was handpicking her tomatoes her quality was also maintained. A friend told her that if she did this exercise just 4 times a month then she would be able to earn more than what she is presently earning with her rope trade. A young graduate Sheela heard about Kaveri Amma’s business and offered her a loan of Rs.15000 to set up pickle making unit plus a Rs. 5000 grant. Should Kaveri accept this offer??

Case III
There was this man X who was a sweets vendor in India some 50 years ago during partition. He had two vendors - one who supplied milk-based raw materials and one who supplied non-milk based raw materials. He was very focused on quality and he would absorb the rising costs but be focussed on his quality image. Therefore his profits began decreasing His son Amit was a Commerce graduate and was taking interest in his business He handed his business to his son completely just two months ago. Amit had a 7-year-old daughter, Nisha. When the son started taking charge he hired only one contractor who supplied him the raw materials. During Christmas his daughter asked him to supply sweets for her class. So on Christmas Eve there was a party whereby by 8 pm, 30 girls from her class including she was sick with diarrhoea and vomiting. At 9pm the teacher called up Amit and threatened him with legal action and adverse publicity. The parents of the students also demanded an explanation. Students of the other class who had not eaten the sweets and had cakes were not sick. Also two of Nisha’s classmates who had diabetes and had not eaten the sweets were not sick. What should Amit do?

Case IV
In a psychology department of a college, the principal of the college announces in a function that Mrs Nair would be the next head of the department. Now this comes as a shock to Mrs Nair, because she was not taken into confidence and she just liked teaching. The retiring head Mrs Johnson was a capable head and although Mrs Nair did help her in her duties, yet she did not want to be tied to that position. The reason why Mrs Nair was made head was because there was a policy of the department that the senior most teachers are made the next head, which obviously Mrs Nair satisfied. Now Mrs Nair leaves the function and goes back to her house thinking about the whole thing. The question is what should Mrs Nair do?

Case V
Sahay is a management trainee at an organisation that deals in supplying hardware to customers. Now his boss Mr Subhdeep has been thinking of a plan. A consignment, which was due to a superintendent police who has huge political clout, has not been delivered to him. It had been promised that it would be delivered in 30 days, but so far 45 days have lapsed. Mr Subhdeep is thinking that he would deliver an empty consignment to this client and since it is a company policy that he cannot open the box till somebody from this organisation assists, he would take advantage of this policy. In the meanwhile he would substitute the box with the actual deliverable. Now Mr Sahay finds this unethical, and he asks Subhdeep but he says that everything is fair in war and business. So now what should he do:
a) Leave the company
b) Try to bring about a change

PI questions
Tell us something about your work experience.
How would Internet technology benefit the masses? How would to over come the language gap?
Your weakness says that you are not good at creativity but your certificates tell me you have taken part in poetry writing, dancing, and all that looks like a part of creativity to me. Explain the anomaly.
Give me specific incidents that led you to decide you have good analytical skills and not so good creative skills. You are talking totally technical tell me in layman terms.
What is Direct to Home (DTH) TV and how does it work? What is broadband?
What’s PETRONET? Venture of IOC, BPCL, GAIL & ONGC
What’s your mother tongue? Name four writers who write in your mother tongue.
What is commerce? What is Business?
What is saffronisation of textbooks?