Institutions in Crisis
These cases provide students of ethics, organizational studies, crisis management, and institutional analysis with opportunities to explore the dynamics of organizations experiencing change, ethical crisis, and evolution. The cases draw upon actual scenarios across four institutional domains: religion, the military, business, and higher education. All cases have accompanying teaching notes.
Vioxx and the Merck Team Effort (2009)
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The pharmaceutical company Merck continued to market its popular prescription pain reliver, Vioxx, despite mounting concerns over its safety. This case study uses the Merck Vioxx episode to examine the coexistence of competing understandings of mission across organizational subdivisions and the difficulty of regulating drug safety in a market context.
Keywords: Vioxx, Merck, pharmaceutical, drug trial, consumer safety, FDA, regulation, mission, marketing
A Synergistic Union, or Selling Out?: University-Industry Relations, Biotechnology, and the UC-Berkeley/Novartis Partnership (2009)
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This case uses the controversial partnership linking the University of California-Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources and agribusiness giant Novartis to examine the ongoing tensions between higher education’s public mission and its competition for resources in a competitive education and research market.
Keywords: higher education, University of California, Novartis, industry-academic partnerships, public mission, biotechnology, agriculture, proprietary science, public science
Crisis of Purpose in the Ivy League: The Harvard Presidency of Lawrence Summers and the Context of American Higher Education (2009)
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Uses the resignation of Harvard President Lawrence Summers to discuss the operation of the modern university within an increasingly competitive, complex, and corporatized context and to illustrate institutional contestation over questions of governance, accountability, and mission.
Keywords: Harvard, Summers, higher education, governance, accountability, mission
Commercial Surrogacy and Fertility Tourism in India: The Case of Baby Manji (2009)
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Discusses the institutional complexities around the surrogacy and birth of a child with a Japanese biological father and three mothers–the intended Japanese mother who had contracted for the surrogacy, the Indian egg donor, and the Indian gestational surrogate.
Keywords: surrogate, biological parent, egg donation, adoption, diplomatic relations, parentage, nationality, family, citizenship, identity
CyberU: The Accreditation of Jones International University (2009)
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Examines how the accreditation of the first completely online university served as a catalyst for bringing into the public sphere conversations about the definition and purpose of higher education, the way new technologies affect how communication and learning happen, and the role of corporations in higher education.
Keywords: distance education, online courses, accreditation, higher education, online degrees, liberal education, adult education
Religious Liberty, Vatican II, and John Courtney Murray (2009)
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Examines how the work of John Courtney Murray and the Second Vatican Council led the vast and complex institution of the Roman Catholic Church to radically revise its understanding of religious freedom within a nine-year period.
Keywords: American Catholicism, church and state, religious freedom, doctrinal change, laity
Tailhook ‘91 and the U.S. Navy (2009)
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Discusses the organizational culture and internal operations of the U.S. Navy as an institution in light of the sexual harassment scandal that followed the 1991 annual meeting of the Tailhook Association.
Keywords: women, U.S. Navy, naval aviation, military investigation, military officers, sexual harassment
