Learning Resources is a family-owned educational toy company that, by late 2011, was facing a myriad of challenges, including increased competition, entry into new markets, new distribution methods, rising costs of production in China, and changing customer behavior. The company lacked a clear strategy and suffered from organizational misalignment. Rick Woldenberg, the former CEO of Learning Resources, is called back to the helm after a four-year absence to address these issues, increase performance and set a direction for the company, all while remaining true to the values of his family's business.
The owner and general manager of a large retail establishment faced a dilemma about whether his long-time yard manager was still the right person for the job. The business increasingly depended on providing superior customer service in order to compete in the market. Recently, the owner had placed a personal friend in the operation as an assistant to the yard manager. This new addition had shown a real talent for developing employees and driving performance improvements. As a result, customer service feedback had drastically improved. The owner realized that the assistant had become the real leader of the yard. He wondered how to keep the momentum of the changes going while still showing due respect to a loyal employee.
Because financial frauds are not uncommon, and CEOs and/or CFOs are most often directly involved in them, directors of public corporations should be constantly concerned with monitoring their officers' legal and ethical behavior. This is the case for three primary reasons. First, due to a variety of organizational pressures and decision making missteps, even people who wish to be 'good'-as most corporate officers presumably do-often make serious ethical mistakes. Second, top corporate officers are particularly susceptible to making several of these errors. And third, for various psychological reasons, corporate directors often find it difficult to adequately police those officers. This installment of Business Law & Ethics Corner explores the issue of good directors and bad behavior.
It is undeniable that the global financial crisis (GFC) has been a catalyst for regulatory change. Whether these policies and regulatory changes are good or bad, whether they will help or hinder growth, and whether they can effect proper balance between growth and effective risk management, the reality is that significant regulatory changes have been proposed and many have already been adopted and implemented. Business leaders may argue that the proposed policy and regulatory choices are both bad policy and bad economics, but the conclusions reached from the GFC is that the status quo was unworkable, and is certainly now politically unpalatable. Corporate governance reforms have arisen as a result of the global financial crisis. This article examines a slew of trends and changes in the wake of the GFC.
Most organizations focus their attention on simply achieving gender diversity on their boards. This approach misses the point. A complex relationship exists between board gender diversity and good governance whereby such diversity can have a negative, positive, or neutral impact on organizational performance, indicating that organizations may only reap the benefits of gender-diverse boards under proper conditions. This article examines which conditions allow gender-diverse boards to flourish and which conditions lead to failure. Organizations usually increase female representation on boards of directors to achieve one of two goals: gender parity or improved governance. Each of these goals is influenced by different circumstances and thus must be approached in a unique manner. Three recommendations are offered herein for organizations trying to achieve each goal. Gender, ethnic, and cultural board diversity all share related justifications and challenges, so organizations that follow the recommendations in this article will be well positioned to benefit from all three sources of increased diversity on their boards of directors
Corporations now face the oftentimes daunting task of integrating the interests of multiple stakeholders. The general intent behind this multiple stakeholder focus has been to ensure that corporations operate for the benefit of society as a whole, with corporate governance in the oversight role for all activities. Our research suggests doing business in an emerging economy is confounded by the fact that rules, regulations, and marketplace expectations of the home market do not apply. Due to their evolving nature, the environments in emerging economies are uncertain and complex. Governance is not just an oversight issue related to making the most appropriate decisions. Instead, responsible governance in emerging markets entails governing bodies understanding the characteristics of the unsettled environment in which the company is, or will be, operating. Four major characteristics (demographic trends, technological development, natural resources, and political/legal unease) of emerging economies have led to significant challenges and stormy passage with respect to governance. The continual evolution and understanding of these factors must, of necessity, shape a company's governance process in the developing marketplace.
Inefficient state-owned enterprises in China were compelled to restructure to remain competitive, which resulted in phenomenal economic growth. While economically successful, China did not initially have any indigenous laws to regulate companies or control this growth, so Chinese lawmakers had to transplant corporate laws from developed Western countries. However, this transplantation process did not occur without problems, and certain domestic attributes had to be supplemented in corporate legislation to correspond with Chinese socialistic objectives and cultural values. This article analyzes the key attributes of Chinese corporate governance and regulations concerning shareholders' rights and, in the process, highlights provisions that are peculiar and characterized as uniquely Chinese, ultimately raising more questions than answers for shareholder
The owner and general manager of a large retail establishment faced a dilemma about whether his long-time yard manager was still the right person for the job. The business increasingly depended on providing superior customer service in order to compete in the market. Recently, the owner had placed a personal friend in the operation as an assistant to the yard manager. This new addition had shown a real talent for developing employees and driving performance improvements. As a result, customer service feedback had drastically improved. The owner realized that the assistant had become the real leader of the yard. He wondered how to keep the momentum of the changes going while still showing due respect to a loyal employee.
Gerry Pasciucco was appointed to lead American International Group's Financial Products (AIGFP) group after the government bailout of AIG in 2008 and charged with the task of shutting down the division while minimizing the government's losses. AIGFP's failed trades had threatened to bring down the entire company, and the government had responded by loaning AIG $182 billion in exchange for 79.9% of the company, because it feared that AIG's failure could trigger the collapse of the entire global financial system. Several months into his tenure, the division paid large retention bonuses to all of its professionals according to a contract negotiated before he joined AIGFP. These bonuses were seen by the public as going to the very people whose mistakes resulted in the need for a bailout in the first place and resulted in an unprecedented storm of public outrage, culminating in a Congressional hearing in which AIG's CEO, Ed Liddy, was repeatedly attacked for making the bonus payments. Liddy responded by asking people who had received the largest payments to return the money to the company. Now Pasciucco has to decide how to lead his team through this crisis while grappling with the larger issues of the justice of the retention payments.
Transworld Auto Parts had to implement its new strategy flawlessly to survive the auto industry upheaval. The new CEO asked her leadership team to craft strategy maps and balanced scorecards to help each division implement its strategies.
The case illustrates the use of the residual income (also known as the abnormal earnings) valuation approach. Students are asked to provide a valuation of Coca-Cola Company using the residual income valuation methodology and understand how it maps into the discounted cash flow method. Students learn how forecasts of sales, performance, dividends, and other valuation inputs feeds into a valuation model. Students also learn the modified Dupont decomposition technique and how to reclassify financial statements to perform the modified Dupont analysis.
In 1985, M.C. Mehta, a lawyer and head of his own environmental NGO, filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court of India to enforce the 1981 Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act in the environs of India's National Capital Region (NCR). In 1988, World Bank experts had advised the Indian government that given the extent to which air pollution in the National Capital Region came from an increasingly large fleet of passenger vehicles, an effective policy would be to mandate relatively clean compressed natural gas (CNG) in public transportation vehicles. Although the government had actively considered a series of policies, it had failed to implement any. By the early 1990s, New Delhi was the fourth-most polluted city in the world. By June 1998, the sub-particulate matter concentration in Delhi's air was three times higher than the standards set by India's Central Pollution Control Board. This case follows India's Supreme Court ruling in 1998 that all buses, taxis, and auto-rickshaws in Delhi be switched to clean fuels by March 31, 2001. Public transportation operators, the regional government, and Delhi residents all had interests at stake and were not necessarily supportive of the changes. The case is divided into 3 parts-A, B, and C-and sets up an analysis of how the Supreme Court ultimately achieved its mandate.
J-TRADING is a US-based arm of a Japanese keiretsu that is focused on commodity trading between the East and North America counting about 350 employees in the US. It has experienced problems with its information technology (IT) infrastructure and help-desk functions. IT employees were not motivated to work on these rather mundane tasks leading to quality and cost issues. J-TRADING CIO decided to solve the problem by outsourcing both functions. The case relays J-TRADING's outsourcing journey through its ups and downs discussing the process of vendor evaluation and selection, task transition, relationship management, and business outcomes. The case provides full financial details necessary for financial analysis and asks students to evaluate the sourcing decision itself as well as vendor selection and governance processes. It also asks students to elaborate on alternative sourcing approaches such as offshoring and cloud-based solutions.
In 2012, the World Bank faced important questions in terms of its future strategy and mission. Should the Bank continue to focus on micro-level development initiatives, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), or return to traditional macro-level financial support? Was the Bank's role as a source of funds for developing countries still relevant? Should emerging market nations be given a greater role in the governance structure? Most importantly, was Jim Yong Kim, a US national, the right choice to lead the Bank, in preference to highly qualified candidates from developing nations?
In April 2011, Sony's PlayStation and Qriocity services were attacked by an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into the company network, compromising user account information. For five days, the corporation turned off both its PlayStation Network and Qriocity services while it conducted a full and complete investigation with the help of an external security firm. Although brief statements about the issue were posted on the PlayStation blog, Sony did not publicly disclose the full extent of the security breach or the expected date when network services might return to normal, leaving many people speculating if personal or financial information had been illegally obtained. The timing was complicated by the imminent announcement of the launch of Sony's first tablet computer. With its public statement, Sony intended to communicate key points of information about, explanations of and solutions to the network interruption. With over 70 million PlayStation Network and Qriocity services user accounts worldwide, customers, industry analysts, investors, consumer protection groups and government officials were all waiting for answers.
April 17, 2012, was a special day for SANY Group and for its founder Liang Wen'gen. Headquartered in Changsha, SANY Group had transformed itself in two decades from a small welding material factory in 1989 to a leading global construction equipment manufacturer with 5 industrial parks in China; 5 R&D and manufacturing bases in America, Germany, India, Brazil, and Indonesia; and 21 sales companies worldwide. SANY Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. (SANY), SANY Group's major subsidiary, engaged in the construction equipment business and was number six on International Construction's 2012 Yellow Table, a ranking of the world's largest construction equipment manufacturers.
Community Energy Inc. was founded in 1999 with the goal of developing the United States' renewable energy supply. In 2003 Eric Blank, cofounder and executive vice president of CEI, considers a proposal for an Atlantic County wind farm. Though the proposal clearly fit within the firm's strategy of identifying and developing renewable energy projects that could generate attractive financial returns, coastal wind farms were nonexistent in the United States in 2003.
As Zillow's real estate search service gains user adoption, some real estate professionals question Zillow's policies, fees, and power. Dissatisfied real estate professionals could remove listings from Zillow, reducing the service's value to users. Should Zillow adjust its approach in order to address complaints?