Sean Warrick is an estate planning adviser at Hellwig & Macon. He is preparing for meetings with two clients. His first clients are Peggy and David Bartley, a professional married couple of moderate wealth. His second clients are Ray and Michelle Polanski, a couple that married late in life and had highly asymmetrical wealth and age. In the case, Warrick is reading a report written by Peter Sullivan, a top estate planning adviser, which considers how estate planning strategies might need to change due to recent changes in estate tax law. Specifically, Warrick must decide whether each couple should continue with their preexisting estate planning strategy, whether they should modify this strategy somewhat, or whether they should abandon their current strategy entirely.
How, in a business climate in which building relationships with customers has dominated both managerial thought and marketing budgets, could Filene's Basement have fired a loyal customer, one who was formally and informally recognized as a best customer? This case allows students to reverse-engineer a fired customer's relationship with discount retailer Filene's Basement, from her perspective, to uncover the critical incidents and behaviors of each party that shaped their relationship trajectory. The company's customer relationship management (CRM) programs are analyzed to show how they influenced and encouraged unprofitable customer behavior.
Since founding CancerScan in 2008, Jun Fukuyoshi and Yoshiki Ishikawa had helped to improve cancer screening rates in Japan. Between 2005 and 2007, awareness of breast cancer in Japan rose from 55% to 70%, but the incidence of breast cancer screenings remained constant. Jun and Yoshiki applied marketing research techniques to increase the screening rate for breast cancer, a disease which killed over 12,000 Japanese women in 2011. Cancer screening initiatives accounted for 60% of the company's 2013 sales of $2.5 million.
In May 2014, Bill McDermott will become the sole CEO of SAP AG, the world leader in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) field. The case occurs in January 2014 at SAP's investors meeting, at a time when the company's stock is near record high. A 2010 strategy committed the company to a transition to cloud computing. The main driver behind this transition was the development of SAP HANA, an in-memory computing technology that combined database, data processing, and application platform functionality. Ownership of cloud infrastructure was a key question. SAP could build, own, and operate its own data centers, or partner to locate SAP HANA and other products with other cloud infrastructure providers, such as Amazon, Microsoft, or IBM. McDermott also had to make decisions around the organization and leadership of the company's cloud efforts.
Narrates the story of Emirates, an airline founded in 1985 in Dubai that by 2013 was among the three largest commercial airlines in the world. The case emphasizes how Emirates capitalized on its location-a small city-state strategically located to reach ¾ of the world population in a flight of less than eight hours-to build a fast-growing and profitable hub-based business model. The case details how Emirates' chooses new routes, technology, and equipment and manages its human resources, marketing and branding, and government relationships-together forming an internally consistent strategy that capitalizes on opportunities across geographic markets. Importantly, students are asked to evaluate if the airlines' strategy will be sustainable as Emirates faces technical and political challenges to expand and must compete with numerous new players from the Middle East.
This case discusses the only privately owned bridge between Canada and the United States and the possible construction of a second competing and publicly owned bridge. With an upcoming crucial vote on the fate of the public bridge, a Michigan student must decide how to vote and whether she believes that a central public infrastructure should be privately held. She contemplates a deeper issue as well – the fundamental principle of capitalism, a system that sometimes perpetuates inequalities since individuals are rewarded for their hard work and are able to defend their self-interests. The student recognizes that her vote is not just about the future of the public bridge but also about her beliefs in balancing individualism and equality.
This case discusses the only privately owned bridge between Canada and the United States and the possible construction of a second competing and publicly owned bridge. With an upcoming crucial vote on the fate of the public bridge, a Michigan student must decide how to vote and whether she believes that a central public infrastructure should be privately held. She contemplates a deeper issue as well - the fundamental principle of capitalism, a system that sometimes perpetuates inequalities since individuals are rewarded for their hard work and are able to defend their self-interests. The student recognizes that her vote is not just about the future of the public bridge but also about her beliefs in balancing individualism and equality.
The Kursk, a Russian nuclear-powered submarine sank in the relatively shallow waters of the Barents Sea in August 2000, during a naval exercise. Numerous survivors were reported to be awaiting rescue, and within a week, an international rescue party gathered at the scene, which had possessed between them all that was needed for a successful rescue. Yet they failed to save anybody. Based on the recollections and daily situational reports of Commodore David Russell, who headed the Royal Navy's rescue mission, the case explores how and why this failure-a classic coordination failure-occurred. The Kursk rescue mission also illustrates the challenges of pluralistic risk and disaster management, and asks students to consider how to bring about solutions in the face of pluralistic risk issues, such as the depletion of natural resources and many other disasters, when multiple parties with competing and often conflicting values and expertise have to learn to coordinate and establish a virtual, well-aligned organization.
Business-information technology (IT) initiatives in pedagogy are no longer a novelty. Still, some of the best known music examination boards seem reluctant to change, and continue to adopt a system largely bereft of it to run their business. Aligning business and IT in music examination boards is proving to be a theoretical challenge, and an unresolved issue at the corporate level. Involuntarily participation in the increasingly prevalent reliance on new technologies to augment business opportunity, as part of a wider process of globalization, is no longer a viable option. Although some boards are seeing this alignment as an enabler of business goals, others see it as an inhibitor. Who is right? Which strategy reaches the business goal of maximum enrollments? This paper opens a discussion on possible best-aligned business-IT decisions to enable best business activity and uses a case study to examine the underutilization of business-IT alignment adopted by one of the most successful music examination board in the world. This paper questions whether the use of IT in music examination defines being a market leader or not. By using a survey, in-depth interviews and a pilot study, this paper presents an IT alignment fit between the board and its IT platforms. Finally, the paper leverages the value of an initiative composed of thoughtful business strategy and IT to open up new business opportunities, and raises unanswered questions for the reader.
Peak Sealing Technologies (PST), a manufacturer of premium carton sealing tapes, stresses technological innovation as the company's core value. But when a new regional competitor introduces a less expensive and inferior product, PST is faced with a decision that could conflict with their values. Product manager Emma Taylor must decide if the company should augment its existing high-quality product line with a cheaper, less effective product to compete with their competitor. However, this decision could cannibalize PST's premium line. Emma is faced with a key issue in product line management--determining the variety of products in the line that serve the same function. Students are introduced to the problems of "trading down" the product line and must consider whether the company's corporate values are a strength or liability. This case can be used effectively in a first-year MBA course on marketing management to illustrate concepts associated with the risk and strategy of introducing a product line extension. It also allows for more complex analysis that would be appropriate in an Executive MBA program or advanced MBA elective courses in Product Management, Business to Business Marketing, Sales Management or New Product Development.
This note reviews some of the relevant research and offers advice for managing and dealing with emotions in the negotiation context. In particular, negotiators should strive to understand their own emotions and feelings and be aware of the emotions the other party may be expressing. By learning to recognize and manage emotions, one is likely to improve many facets of the negotiation and obtain better outcomes for oneself and others.
Companies regularly face difficulties, but sometimes they have to face a "life threatening" crisis. Such events challenge leadership, not least because of their complexity - technological puzzles, loyalty and political maneuvering, branding and communication issues, to name a few. But they can also be are powerful integrative moments, and when "well navigated" they can become opportunities for wider company reforms.
Companies regularly face difficulties, but sometimes they have to face a "life threatening" crisis. Such events challenge leadership, not least because of their complexity - technological puzzles, loyalty and political maneuvering, branding and communication issues, to name a few. But they can also be are powerful integrative moments, and when "well navigated" they can become opportunities for wider company reforms.
This is a two-party negotiation between a pharmaceutical company and a government agency to decide if a new medication will be put on the reimbursement list. The pharmaceutical company has a valuable new product, the government has semi-monopolistic power over whether (or not) drugs are listed. The role-play allows participants to negotiate given the inherent value-creation limitations of the setting.
This is a two-party negotiation between a pharmaceutical company and a government agency to decide if a new medication will be put on the reimbursement list. The pharmaceutical company has a valuable new product, the government has semi-monopolistic power over whether (or not) drugs are listed. The role-play allows participants to negotiate given the inherent value-creation limitations of the setting.
In this negotiation role-play between a promising new hire (Maria) and her experienced boss (Milo) in a large NGO, Maria has an ambitious mandate to develop a new initiative from scratch, while Milo has to tightly control budgets. Disagreement on the budget puts the relationship on a collision course.
In this negotiation role-play between a promising new hire (Maria) and her experienced boss (Milo) in a large NGO, Maria has an ambitious mandate to develop a new initiative from scratch, while Milo has to tightly control budgets. Disagreement on the budget puts the relationship on a collision course.
Lakshmi Mittal, CEO of Mittal Steel, a UK-based company with Indian roots, took advantage of a weakened Arcelor that had successfully won a bidding war for Canadian steel company Dofasco, with an unsolicited bid to buy the company. Mittal's plans for acquiring Arcelor were initially thwarted by concerted opposition from Arcelor's board and several European governments. To Mittal's further surprise, on May 26, Arcelor orchestrated a merger with the Russian steelmaker Severstal. Although the proposed merger did not offer Arcelor shareholders as much value as Mittal's deal, Arcelor had structured the deal in such a way that it did not require shareholders' approval. Mittal wondered how he should respond to the Severstal deal. Did it make sense to continue pursuing Arcelor or should he look for other ways to expand his steel empire?
The mining giant Anglo American attempts to differentiate itself through its social performance, yet public expectations are still growing. Maintaining a "social license" to operate was increasingly challenging and critical to business success. The case considers Anglo American's options to stay in front of these trends. How can the protagonist promote greater professionalization of social performance inside the organization, and greater integration with business decisions? The organization was also under pressure to increase social investments as part of the company's social license. Could significantly more value - for the company, host governments, and local communities - be created by leveraging the company's core operations, such as increasing the amount of goods and services purchased from local suppliers?