The case explores the steps taken by the leadership team at OYO to mitigate the challenges faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a young start-up on the growth trajectory, OYO was hit harder than some of its established competitors. With the onset of the pandemic, the hospitality industry had come to a grinding halt and occupancy rates were at an all-time low. It was necessary for the management to revamp organizational structures and processes, and exhibit strong leadership skills to drive the workforce through one of the most challenging periods that OYO would have to go through. A recurring theme observed throughout the case is the resilient leadership response to the crisis by the protagonist, that is, Ritesh Agarwal, the Founder and Group CEO of the company, and his unwavering involvement in ensuring to keep the company afloat. Several people-centric initiatives that were undertaken for different stakeholder groups are outlined throughout the case and a major focus is given to the importance of decentralized and distributed leadership in the face of a crisis. The case is a narrative on organizational crisis management on the face of a setback and the role of leaders and empowered employees to navigate it.

In this research, we seek to explore the impact of the shift in pedagogy for management education from a conventional setting to a virtual learning mode. We aim to develop and validate a virtual learning outcome measurement scale to measure the perceptions of current and recent management students on different aspects of learning intake and learning outcomes in a virtual setting as compared to a completely classroom-based environment. We have developed and validated a 12-item scale that has been drafted with the support of prior literature, followed by two Focused Group Discussions (FGDs) ( n = 4). We performed exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on the responses gathered to understand if our variables are interrelated and whether they could be grouped into clusters. The three identified constructs of the scale namely “Acquisition of Knowledge, Retention of Knowledge, and Application of Knowledge” have been supported by exploratory factor analysis (CFA) and structural modelling using confirmatory factor analysis ( n = 104). Measurement of learning outcomes using this scale can be used to develop better learning interventions for management students. The study further can also be extended and generalizable to other higher education domains.

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