After seven successful years of operation, John Fredrick (John), director of Global Centre for Case Studies (GCCS), one of the largest repositories of management case studies in Asia, was facing a challenge unprecedented in his career. So far, the company had been concentrating on developing case studies pertaining to the subjective areas of management. However, in order to emerge as the one-stop-destination for all management related case studies across the world, the top management (head of the department and the board of directors) at GCCS felt it was essential for the organisation to offer a mix of both subjective and objective case studies. In December 2007, the decision was taken to add new teams. However, this decision by the top management was turning out to be a bane rather than a boon for the institute in general and John in particular.

An MBA (Marketing) with M.S and a Ph.D in Operations Research, John was driven by his ambition of contributing to the field of academics. At 38, John had to his credit 15+years of teaching experience in reputed business schools countrywide. Despite a proven track record in academics, John was keen on developing a practical approach to imparting theoretical education. Giving a form to his aspirations, he incorporated GCCS in 2000. Since its inception, GCCS had consistently strived towards endorsing high-quality research in the field of business management. These case studies were available for purchase on the company's website.

John believed in building an organisation with minimum levels of hierarchy, requiring minimum supervision. To achieve the same, he formulated five case writing teams, each comprising of three Research Associates (RAS) - team members on the case writing team - headed by a team leader. In addition to the five case writing teams, the organisation had one editorial team and a technical support team, both reporting directly to John.

In consultation with his team members, John had developed a rigorous and efficient case development process, which was religiously followed across the organisation (Exhibit 1). Articles or business stories published in international business journals or magazines served as case topics for these RAs, using which a case study was developed. Work relied on extensive secondary research, coupled with interviews from eminent business leaders. Being a time-bound process, it required the RAs and their respective team leaders to adhere to the deadlines. Working under the guidance of their team leader, the RAs were expected to deliver a high-quality case along with a Teaching Note (TN), a detailed analysis of the case study, within 12-15 days. At this stage, the completed Case pack (Case and TN) would be sent to the editing team, where it would undergo a rigorous check in terms of language, style guidelines and copyright violation. Please refer the PIC 1 attached.