Susie Gordon and Antonio Barile, a married couple, own a manufacturing company together. When their first child was born, they agreed that Susie would stay home with the kids while Antonio ran the business, and then, after a few years, they would swap roles. Now Susie is itching to get back to work, but Antonio is reluctant to step out of the CEO's job and return home. Does he have to honor their original deal--and what will happen if he doesn't? This fictional case study is written by Jim Sharpe and James Weber and features expert commentary by Paola Carniglia, Linda Katz, and Mike Katz.

Susie Gordon and Antonio Barile, a married couple, own a manufacturing company together. When their first child was born, they agreed that Susie would stay home with the kids while Antonio ran the business, and then, after a few years, they would swap roles. Now Susie is itching to get back to work, but Antonio is reluctant to step out of the CEO's job and return home. Does he have to honor their original deal--and what will happen if he doesn't? This fictional case study is written by Jim Sharpe and James Weber and features expert commentary by Paola Carniglia, Linda Katz, and Mike Katz.

Susie Gordon and Antonio Barile, a married couple, own a manufacturing company together. When their first child was born, they agreed that Susie would stay home with the kids while Antonio ran the business, and then, after a few years, they would swap roles. Now Susie is itching to get back to work, but Antonio is reluctant to step out of the CEO's job and return home. Does he have to honor their original deal--and what will happen if he doesn't? This fictional case study is written by Jim Sharpe and James Weber and features expert commentary by Paola Carniglia, Linda Katz, and Mike Katz.

Crafting a compensation package for an organization's chief executive officer (CEO) that will help the firm maximize its performance is a vexing challenge for a board of directors. Management theory offers boards several practical hints. A board can put its CEO and the firm in the best position to be successful by (1) creating strong incentives for the CEO to act in the firm's best interest at all times; (2) benchmarking a CEO's performance and compensation relative to that of very high performing CEOs in the industry; (3) diagnosing and responding to CEOs' feelings about equity relative to their peers; (4) paying a CEO with uniquely valuable knowledge, skills, and ability at the top of the market; (5) offering retention incentives if a proven performer with unique skills is leading a company; (6) resisting the temptation to simply mimic the compensation packages that work for leading firms; and (7) considering candidates' social ties when recruiting a new CEO.

For many American firms engaging with Chinese business partners, patterns of negotiated promises made but not kept by their Chinese counterparts often prove rule rather than exception. While various issues play a role in this unfortunate condition, many contributing factors are not subject to control or correction by U.S. negotiators. But two singularly damaging factors can be controlled and corrected by U.S. managers. First is their tendency to negotiate from decidedly Western sociocultural perspectives. Second is that managers often negotiate in states of relative ignorance about certain key cultural values that heavily influence Chinese negotiating practices. Grounded in Bing Fa, this article describes approaches designed to enable managers to negotiate more effectively with Chinese partners. By turns, the approaches instruct U.S. managers regarding why and how they should (when negotiating with Chinese counterparts): embrace the unusual as normal; begin with hard ends in mind; anticipate/prepare for conflict; never resist resistances, [instead] always retreat gracefully; disclose with discretion; act like ladies and gentlemen; and never die with bullets in [their] guns. Adopt these tactics, and U.S. managers would lessen the impact of two factors that, when present, degrade their negotiating effectiveness.

Marketers may increase the chance of success for a new product launch by using a sub-brand name and a parent brand name simultaneously. In this article, we report the successful case of using two brand names--dual branding strategy--by practitioners in China for the Minute Maid Orange Pulp juice drink launch. A suggestive sub-brand name helps consumers recall the key benefits and features of the new product. A suggestive parent brand name communicates the benefits of the product category. A dual branding strategy addresses the problem of using only one brand name for a new product launch. After the successful launch of the first new product by a parent brand, marketers are able to launch other new products under other subbrand names in the future to meet different consumer needs. Marketers may use the same parent brand to introduce different products to build scale for the brand, and are able to clearly differentiate the different product offerings under different subbrand names. If a company acquires a brand from another company, a marketer may position the acquired brand as a sub-brand under the parent brand if the marketer has defined the business scope of the parent brand broadly enough and with a suggestive parent brand name.

There is an ongoing debate among scholars regarding the existence of a fortune at the bottom of the income pyramid. While some scholars argue that there is a profitable market at the pyramid base, others refute this proposition, arguing that targeting poor people as customers could lead to unethical business practices and further their exploitation. With the aid of mini cases, this article explains that there is indeed a fortune to be made at the base of the pyramid but that good fortune can be created for both corporations and poor people if the population at the bottom of the pyramid is treated as suppliers, producers, co-owners, and/or employees rather than as mere consumers. However, in terms of consumers, there is a market for firms at the base of the pyramid through which they can earn profits and simultaneously help eradicate poverty, mainly by lowering the cost structure for poor people. In other words, firms that can reduce poverty and provide cost-effective utilitarian goods and services to poor people have more to gain from such individuals than those firms that provide more luxurious goods and services or offer goods with mere aesthetic or emotional value. With the help of mini cases, this article explains four measures firms can use to create fortunes for themselves as well as for poor customers by avoiding affordability and adaptability traps.

The dawning of the 21st century brought a wave of research into the phenomenon of sales force automation (SFA)--technology tools aimed at enabling sales organizations to better practice customer relationship management. While the academic literature has offered great insight into how an organization can increase the likelihood that its sales force will adopt a new technology system, a great majority of research stops there. This is unfortunate in that companies mistakenly infer that use of an SFA system is the major hurdle and that simply motivating SFA use will be the key to unlocking improved performance. However, this is often not the case; many organizations are able to get their sales force to use an SFA system but do not see improvements in performance. After briefly providing an overview of the factors affecting SFA use, this research provides insight into why use alone may not contribute to long-term improvements in a firm's sales performance. Key empirical findings and theoretical arguments from the extant literature are considered, and a list of best practices is offered here to help managers bridge the gap between SFA use and improved sales effectiveness and efficiency.

Project-based work has become a critical component of global industrial activity. Among other functions, projects are used to develop new products and services, improve operations flows, implement innovative information technologies, and conduct primary R&D. At the same time, project management is a core skill requirement for numerous corporations worldwide hoping to harness a means of improving both the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations. Unfortunately, the track record for project development has not been strong. Data suggest that within various industrial components, such as IT, failure rates for projects are high; even 'successful' examples typically run well over budget and behind schedule. This article addresses some of the reasons why projects and project management have failed to live up to lofty expectations, arguing that the seeds of failure are often sown from the outset through flawed project planning. Citing the more common errors in human judgment and drawing on numerous examples, we offer guidelines by which project planning can begin to work as it was intended: on behalf of the project rather than at cross-purposes with the project's goals.

Cyprus is a small island member of the European Union, constituting 0.2 per cent of the eurozone gross domestic product. During its growth phase, the Cypriot banking system developed vulnerabilities after suffering heavy losses during the Greek sovereign debt crisis. The European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union offered a bailout of US$16.9 billion if the Cypriot government could raise US$7.54 billion from within. The government had a few options on the table - a "one-off" stability levy on all bank deposits (a solution loathed by both native and foreign depositors), a bank restructuring plan, seeking help from Russia (which expected access to the island's oil and gas reserves) and a complete banking system bailout (which would come with oversight and control from those offering the bailout). The economy was fast approaching a standstill and Cyprus had only two days to strike a deal to avoid the collapse of its banking system.

In 2009/10, the commissioner of the Ontario Hockey League was generally satisfied with its operations but knew that certain markets were not reaching their potential. Management needed to use data to make some potentially difficult decisions, including possibly closing several teams down. The data included proximity of competition from other hockey leagues and other sports teams; how long a team had been in its city; how many points the team earned each season and how many of its players graduated to the National Hockey League; the make-up of the city in terms of its size, median income, median house price and its immigrant and visible minority populations; and, finally, the price of tickets. There were a few teams that were significant outliers at each end of the spectrum. What was the league going to do with the teams at the bottom that were dragging down average attendance figures? Student spreadsheet 7B13A028 with data is available.

Founded in 1997, Kalamandir was established in one of the poorest tribal areas in India to revive tribal dances and arts and generate livelihoods. It was now active in over 114 villages and its activities had helped increase the incomes of over 2,500 households. Despite strong achievements, much more would have to be done to make a substantial improvement in the lives of tribal villagers in Jharkhand, an impoverished region of India. The question was how to scale the activities and induce socio-economic development in a sustainable way. How could livelihood opportunities associated with arts, dance, culture and handicrafts be broadened while strengthening the region’s core agricultural income? How could the local leadership pool in villages be expanded and what mechanisms could be introduced to minimize conflicts or resolve them faster? How could Kalamandir attract dynamic professionals? Which government and private organizations did it have to develop stronger relationships with in order to access the financial resources it needed to grow?

The chief financial officer (CFO) of Inmet Mining Corporation is considering the pricing and structure of a $500 million bond offering in late 2012. The company required capital to fully fund construction at its biggest asset, the Cobre Panama copper mine, which had been estimated at $6.2 billion dollars. Now, it was preparing yet another bond offering that would ensure these capital cost requirements would be met. Complicating matters was the fact that a competitor, First Quantum Minerals, had made a $70 per share offer to purchase the company in November 2012. The CFO has to weigh options and structure the bond offering accordingly.

The Chief of the Australian Army faces a significant public scandal. In recent weeks, allegations have emerged that members of the country’s defence forces, including officers, shared explicit emails and photos that denigrated women. The scandal occurs as the Australian Defence Force is actively encouraging more women to join the ranks of the military. The Chief of the Australian Army needs to devise a strategy to communicate to the victims of the scandal, members of the army and the general public that the Australian Army is a national institution with strong values and moral standards and will not tolerate chauvinism of any kind.

Small differences in the leadership of teams can have large consequences for the success of their efforts. Many initiatives fail not because of a fatal error in judgment or insufficient ideas, knowledge, motivation, or capabilities to deliver a solution. They fail because, as is so often heard, "we needed to be more of a team to succeed," "we weren't a sufficiently high-performing team," or "our team suffered from a lack of leadership." In a world where most problems faced by organizations are too complex for a single individual to tackle alone, leadership frequently involves designing, launching, and managing teams. And yet teams are fickle. Even as teams become more common at all levels of organizations, a shocking number of them fail to live up to their potential or even to deliver at all. Teams remain the most flexible and powerful units of learning, change, and performance in most organizations but require effective leadership to succeed. This note summarizes the conditions leaders can create to increase the chances of creating, managing, and participating in successful teaming environments.

Organizations without the means to improve rarely can keep up with competition. Improvement requires a deep understanding of underlying operating processes and an ability to assess their performance. The essence of process analysis is the ability to answer the questions, "How is this process doing?" and "How can it do better?" In this Reading, readers observe an operating process and consider the data that needs to be collected so that they are able to answer these key questions. How can a process be described as "doing" well? The answer depends on what the customer promise is and how the firm seeks to create and capture value for its stakeholders. Is the company focus on speed, quality of service, and customer satisfaction? Its measures of success would be very different from another business running a high-volume, capital-intensive factory with a customer promise of low cost, focusing on capital utilization, high volumes, and specific measures of efficiency and productivity. The Reading begins with an overview of the steps in analyzing a process, beginning with process flow diagrams, represent the sequence of tasks and flow of product and information. Concepts introduced in the reading include batch processes, bottleneck analysis and cycle times, and calculating capacity and labor utilization. A variety of numerical analyses are introduced to measure process performance with a focus on 3 critical dimensions: capacity, efficiency, and effectiveness.

This Reading expands on the basic concepts of Process Analysis. It begins with explanations of generic types of processes: the job shop, the worker-paced line, cellular manufacturing, the machine-pace assembly link, and the continuous flow process. Each process type has different characteristics and key management challenges associated with it. The Reading continues with an introduction to the impact of variability (in this case, in processing times) on process performance. The final section covers process improvement with a focus on quality and learning.

Inventory strategy can be a key driver of a firm's success or failure. Conversely, an inappropriate inventory strategy can erode customer service and can quickly deplete cash, especially for startups or other cash-starved firms. Because of the important strategic and tactical roles played by inventory within a business, it is important to understand the fundamentals of inventory management. This Reading begins by defining key terms and concepts. It then explores how to determine an inventory model that is appropriate to each business situation. Determining a model depends on finding answers to a pair of related questions: Can inventory be replenished within a defined selling period? If it can, a new question arises: What is the replenishment trigger? A "single-period model" applies to products with a limited useful life that cannot be carried over for sale in a subsequent period and a "multi-period model" applies to products that can be carried over for sale in a subsequent period.

It is often assumed that a quality inspection for a product or service comes at the end of a process. For example, an article of clothing may include a sticker that reads "Inspected by #12." Total Quality Management places greater emphasis on monitoring individual steps within an entire production process to ensure that the process is running the way it was intended. Paying close attention to the underlying processes connected to a product or service can greatly benefit companies and the customers they serve. This Reading introduces key concepts and considerations in applying process control beginning with product inspection. It provides an overview of the most commonly used statistical and analytical tools called Statistical Process Control (SPC). SPC is applicable to all processes in manufacturing and services whenever there is a measurable output that must deliver a high-quality product or customer experience.

To Jonney Shih, Chairman of ASUSTek Computer, the introduction of Apple's iPad made clear the need to transition his company to a new cloud-computing era. But the company's roots in the manufacture of Windows-powered desktop and notebook PCs bounded the creativity of his design and engineering teams. The case examines the ASUS's efforts to get into the smartphone business, leveraging experimentation it has done in tablets and a range of hybrid devices. Will its experimentation and recombination of features lead it to market success, or simply confuse consumers?