Collaborative work environments and team-based structures are commonly used across different types of organizations. Leaders increasingly need models for leading in complex intense teaming situations. To understand the team leader's role, it is important to appreciate and know the dynamics of teamwork, including how teams develop over time and the teaming elements that are important for success. By understanding the stages of team development and the dynamics occurring within a team setting, leaders can focus initiatives that are directed at certain critical moments for the team and build positive team dynamics. Team leaders should leverage the natural timelines that are part of running a project to effectively manage team dynamics to achieve high performance. Two crucial moments for the team leader are building and launching the team for a new project initiative. Following the project launch, teams start to collaborate and begin the performing and evaluating cycle toward goal accomplishment. In this article, we discuss our work with team leaders across industries to define and describe the role of a team leader, report on research focused on team dynamics and development, identify initiatives for team leaders to significantly improve the performance of intense teams, and specify strategies team leaders can use to turn around underperforming teams. We offer a new model for understanding the stages of team development and build this model to integrate important leadership tasks at each stage.

Service leaders have learned that it is not enough to attract customers who are ready and willing to experience what their organizations have to offer; they must also attract customers who are able to perform important roles in co-producing a successful service experience. This recognition has led to increasing interest regarding how organizations should manage these quasi-employees to ensure everything that must be done actually is done. Leading service organizations embrace this responsibility and have developed strategies to identify and accommodate variations in their targeted customers' capabilities. They know that client satisfaction depends upon the organization making up for deficiencies between what the customer must do to have a great service experience and what the customer actually can do. Surprisingly, there has been little systematic investigation into how organizations create and execute strategies to ensure that these deficiency gaps are filled. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that organizations that have developed systems and procedures to fill these gaps are likelier to satisfy their customers and achieve higher levels of repeat business than firms that have not. This article offers strategies for organizations that commit to bridging the customer can-do/must-do gap and thereby ensuring their customers have a successful service experience.

In today's interconnected world, a web of entities rather than predominantly a single firm coordinates a set of activities that deliver utility to mutually connected consumers, thus creating ecosystems. In this article, we suggest that in the current, ecosystem-based production and consumption environment it is important to identify a new set of factors that determines business success. We then propose that in order to develop a network-centric strategic mindset it is important to make a transition from the notion of firm-based competitive advantage to ecosystem-based nodal advantage by which products, services, or processes held by a single firm and affecting one or more ecosystems are exploited individually to improve business. To this end, we offer a new set of five forces that are likely to affect not only a node's financial profitability but also its vulnerability within its ecosystem and the survival of the ecosystem itself. Based on these forces, we recommend strategic triangulation and the formulation of policies to prevent infra-nodal substitution, increase nodal stranglehold, and improve nimbleness to accommodate ecosystemic transitions.

In the autumn of 2013, the president and chief executive officer of Schenck Shanghai Machinery Corp. Ltd., a subsidiary of the Dürr Group situated in Shanghai, China, was reviewing his business operations. The Dürr Group was a multinational machine tool manufacturer based in Germany. In emerging economies, the mid-market had become the battleground between foreign and local firms. Traditionally, foreign investors earned healthy margins in the premium segment, but many realized that they were missing out on fast-growing market segments and were facing potential threats from local competitors who were moving up-market. To remain competitive and to ensure future growth and profitability, while not compromising the brand's reputation, the Chinese subsidiary had to ensure continued support from headquarters in Germany.

A Singapore-based financial services company, the second largest lender in Southeast Asia, offered to acquire a Hong Kong bank, the eighth largest lender in the country, for a premium price per share. Three months later, a multi-billion hedge fund firm based in the United States had accumulated close to 8 per cent of the Hong Kong bank’s shares. According to Hong Kong’s securities law, the Singapore-based financial institution would have to acquire 90 per cent of the Hong Kong bank’s shares to successfully take the bank private, and there were only 25 days left for the company to meet this requirement. The hedge fund firm’s unspoken message was clear: raise your bid price to buy our shares or we will keep the company public at your expense.

It is widely accepted that the role of any organizational leader involves defining and implementing winning strategies, optimizing resources, developing talent and creating enablers for higher growth and performance, while delivering results. However, it is also commonly believed that sales managers are merely in charge of driving orders and meeting quotas. This needs to change. Today’s competitive market demands that sales force leaders possess market, customer and buying behaviour knowledge, as well as process optimization expertise, internal political skills (to argue for infrastructure resources), coaching and development skills, and the ability to gain commitment from team members. Leaders must know when special incentives are required and in what mix, as well as how to optimize resource allocation. Firms should consider the following questions: Is their sales force leadership comprised of people who excel at working with others? Do their hiring practices identify the knowledge and skill sets that best allow the sales team to sync with customer interface touch points and allow the firm to attract the skills and knowledge that are the most difficult and expensive to develop? Do they proactively seek commitment on behavioural improvements from sales team members, including ones who work from home or alone in the field? Lastly, do they seek the optimal customer relationship and loyalty level?

Following Greece’s failure to repay its loan to the International Monetary Fund, it is easy to claim that the Greeks should simply pay back borrowed money. But there is never a clear answer when asking who should be responsible for a nation’s unmanageable debt, and the question is far more complex when it involves a member of the eurozone. Greece lacks its own currency to devalue to gain economic relief, and the nation’s debt problem cannot be solved by issuing more debt with conditions that kill economic growth. Arguably there has never been a bailout designed to bail out the Greeks. The aid issued to date has been more about buying time to play “musical bondholders.” <br><br> When it comes to sovereign debt, few countries ever pay back principal in the international financial system today. Yet if the Greeks manage to set a precedent that other troubled E.U. countries try to follow, then the fallout could sink the euro and send the global economy into turmoil. Nevertheless, the risks to the global financial sector have been reduced following the bailout deal with the European Union. Investors need to understand that nobody knows what is going to happen, and yet market buying opportunities could arise. Ultimately, when thinking of Greece, it helps to take note of the fact that spending money you don’t have eventually comes back to haunt you.

The World Health Organization defines health as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity." For many Americans, the World Health Organization's definition of true health seems unattainable, given the multitude of complex problems plaguing the U.S. health system. The United States over the last 50 years has focused most of its health resources on providing medical care for individuals after they fall ill. It has placed far less emphasis on the non-medical determinants of health and the prevention of disease for the lives of its citizens. The result: an infamously expensive "sick care system" that does not perform as well as other wealthy countries across key measures. Americans of all socioeconomic stripes experience poorer health outcomes than their rich country peers. Such trends undermine U.S. international competitiveness. This background note digs deeper into these trends and their origins, the barriers hindering change, and past and current reforms, including the 2010 Affordable Care Act. If fully implemented, the controversial act will help the United States push beyond its myopic sick care focus towards the WHO's true health vision by creating a health system that integrates medical care with public health and prevention for all Americans.

In 2004, Congress passed the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 (AJCA). Several corporate benefits were included in this sweeping legislation, including the introduction of tax credits to encourage the development and use of alcohol and biodiesel fuels. Specifically, the Alternative Fuel Mixture Credit (AFMC) was structured as a refundable excise tax credit equal to 50 cents per gallon of alternative fuel produced. In 2008, paper manufacturers recognized an opportunity. If they added diesel fuel-which is not considered an alternative or clean fuel source-to black liquor, a natural byproduct of paper pulp processing, the resulting substance would be classified as an alternative fuel mixture that could potentially qualify for the AFMC. By mid-2009, every public company in the U.S. paper processing industry was receiving these credits. Because the credits were "refundable," and firms in the struggling paper industry did not have taxable income, the AFMCs generated tax savings from the U.S. Treasury totaling $6.4 billion, some of which was received in cash. This case examines the arguments around whether the refundable credits are taxable and discusses Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) Interpretation No. 48, Accounting for Uncertainty in Income Taxes (FIN 48). The case highlights International Paper as an example and presents analysis by the faculty authors on the three ways in which paper companies approached the AFMC.

Rockland Hospitals, a family-run entrepreneurial health care venture, had gone from a 90-bed capacity in 2004 to 808 beds in 2014. It had created an identity as an affordable, quality-driven health care provider in the National Capital Region of India. However, the managing director needed a growth plan that would achieve his goal of creating a medical corridor in the National Capital Region with a consortium of four super-specialty hospitals. Should he focus on capacity utilization and enhancing the efficiency of existing hospitals? Was attracting more medical tourists from foreign countries the answer? Or should he strive to create a health care network that reached the remotest corners of India?<br><br>Can be used with Rockland Hospitals: Innovating Health Care in India (B). 9B15A034

Rockland Hospital, a family-owned entrepreneurial health care group, had conceptualized an integrated health care network that could connect patients, clinics, diagnostic centres, secondary-care hospitals and three existing Rockland specialty hospitals through an information technology interface. Implementation and control of the strategy had to be seamless. When profitability and growth came with the necessary conditions of coordination, transparency and accountability, how could Rockland ensure effective, efficient medical treatment and services to the end user? Could Rockland manage the complexities of multiple stakeholders and multiple health care delivery paths?<br><br> Can be used with Rockland Hospitals: Innovating Health Care in India (A), 9B15A033.

Rockland Hospitals, a family-run entrepreneurial health care venture, had gone from a 90-bed capacity in 2004 to 808 beds in 2014. It had created an identity as an affordable, quality-driven health care provider in the National Capital Region of India. However, the managing director needed a growth plan that would achieve his goal of creating a medical corridor in the National Capital Region with a consortium of four super-specialty hospitals. Should he focus on capacity utilization and enhancing the efficiency of existing hospitals? Was attracting more medical tourists from foreign countries the answer? Or should he strive to create a health care network that reached the remotest corners of India?

Rockland Hospitals, a family-run entrepreneurial health care venture, had gone from a 90-bed capacity in 2004 to 808 beds in 2014. It had created an identity as an affordable, quality-driven health care provider in the National Capital Region of India. However, the managing director needed a growth plan that would achieve his goal of creating a medical corridor in the National Capital Region with a consortium of four super-specialty hospitals. Should he focus on capacity utilization and enhancing the efficiency of existing hospitals? Was attracting more medical tourists from foreign countries the answer? Or should he strive to create a health care network that reached the remotest corners of India?

In the fall of 2014, the Alibaba Group, an e-commerce company that operates domestic and international marketplaces and provides Internet-based services from its headquarters in Hangzhou, China, startled the world with its record-breaking initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. The company's business plan differs from other major Internet companies such as Amazon and eBay by its strategies that are tailored to the particular circumstances of the Chinese economy and Chinese consumers. Now, the executive team has set its sights on achieving the next big thing - developing its online-to-offline business, a market sector estimated to be worth a trillion dollars in the age of the mobile Internet. However, the company faces stiff competition from Tencent, the other Internet titan in China. How can Alibaba integrate online and offline activities to increase sales and improve the consumer's experience - and, therefore, improve its own bottom line?

On November 25, 2012, the head of Revenue Recognition at ESol Limited (ESol) India was preparing for a meeting with the company's sales team at the head office in Bangalore. ESol Limited was a large, U.S.-based multinational information technology corporation, which had moved into India in 2000. Since then, its management had insisted on the need for close monitoring of accounting procedures in strict adherence to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Although the sales team had negotiated the Request for Proposal with MoveForward, a large research firm in India handling and processing high volumes of sensitive data, in good faith, the revenue recognition team felt that clauses dealing with penalties, liquidated damages and termination put their company at risk and wished to defer all of the revenue proposed for the contract until these issues were resolved. The friction between the two teams put the entire deal in jeopardy.

Two engineers founded a start-up for the design and development of Internet of Things and wearable technology products. They received initial seed capital from family in lieu of equity shares. The company developed a product that could be used to search for misplaced items through the user’s phone. The product was expected to be ready for mass production in a week. However, in spite of potential huge demand, the company did not have funds for mass production because it used the seed capital on the design and development. The supplier would not produce unless the start-up paid up front. The technology start-up needed to analyze all the available options for funding mass production of its product and choose the most suitable one.