A consultant had been asked by multiple clients for advice on how to manage generational differences in the workplace. According to experts in the area of generational differences, generations are defined by the watershed events and conditions that individuals are exposed to in their formative years. These experts believed that these common events and conditions shape individuals’ attitudes, which in turn influence their core beliefs and work values. The consultant, like many others, felt that generational differences were overhyped in the literature. Nevertheless, her client wanted answers and she set out to find them by collecting a dataset on work values.<br><br>The dataset contained over 1,000 responses across the four generations (Veterans, Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y). It also contained enough responses to deal with the question of whether there were three sub-generations of Boomers.

In 2011, Cate & Levi is a specialty gift manufacturer — primarily of children’s toys and clothing — based in Toronto, Canada. The founder of Cate & Levi is pondering growth options for his firm, recognizing that the business model so successfully employed to earn the company its first $1 million in revenues is not likely to sustain the company’s momentum. Just three years old, the company has grown dramatically in no small part due to its unique business model and design. Looking ahead, however, the founder is concerned that the business is not sustainable — the predominant raw materials used for the products are reclaimed wool sweaters, and each product is cut and sewn by hand both in-house and through contract labour across Canada. The case presents a series of growth alternatives for students to analyze and consider, contrasted against the constraints found in an adolescent business: constrained capital and human resources, limited brand recognition, and an underdeveloped supply chain.

The president of I-Star America, Inc. and vice-president of I-Star Corporation reflected on the success of I-Star in the Chinese and Japanese IT markets and the challenges of increasing market share in North America, one of the largest markets in the world. I-Star was expected to grow about 30 per cent in the next few years, and the president considered whether the strategy used in Japan could be applied to North America.<br><br><br><br>Many Chinese firms that experienced success in China were less successful in international (western) markets for a host of reasons, including failure to adapt business processes and products to the new market and the perception that Chinese goods and services might be of lower quality.<br><br> <br><br>The president believed that I-Star’s past and future success relied on the company’s ability to innovate in creating value for its customers. He believed that with the right strategy I-Star could generate revenues of US$50-100 million and build up a cadre of more than 200 employees in the software and services division in North America. How could I-Star increase its brand awareness and presence in North America to best achieve these goals?

Having just acquired Walker Insurance, Paul Thomson finds himself short of funds to support his original turnaround plan. He can request additional cash from his investor group, hunker down and grow at a slower rate or consider a proposal to buy his business. He has taken steps to re-virtualize the company and is challenged to build a salesforce to grow the business.

Increasingly, employees are innovating with their own consumer technologies (such as smartphones and tablets), rather than looking to their companies' IT departments to lead technical innovation. This can give rise to tension between employees and IT departments, and this tension is particularly pronounced in the US military, where long systems development times run headlong into young, technology-savvy soldiers arriving in camp with smartphones, sophisticated applications, and high expectations. In this case study, this phenomenon plays out in the person of a US Army Captain who, using resources obtained via the Internet and while on a tour of duty in Afghanistan, develops and sells an inexpensive iPhone application - Tactical NAV - that provides soldiers with a sophisticated navigation tool.

In March 2008, a group of investors considered purchasing 8,300 residential lots in 11 states from one of the largest U.S. homebuilders, at a price of 10 cents on the dollar. The deal would also involve purchasing a partially-built condominium complex, also at a substantial mark-down from the amount already invested. This case describes the residential real estate development business and the role of land in homebuilding. It describes the excesses leading to the housing crisis in 2008. The case is based on a real situation, but company names and some details have been changed.

American Apparel, a popular clothing manufacturer, has socially progressive labour policies and uses significant environmental advances in its manufacturing process. In addition, it has a well-established philanthropic arm. Set against these socially responsible policies is the highly sexualized nature of the company’s advertising. This element of the marketing mix seems, at least to some consumers, very much at odds with the other aims and policies of the company. The question facing students is whether this disconnect can be maintained or whether the brand’s advertising should change.

Northern Drilling Inc., an exploration diamond-drilling contractor, has been asked to tender a bid for a lucrative, highly complex contract with Mond Nickel. Northern has no drills or crew currently available to work on the contract, which requires experienced drillers. Compounding the issue is a shortage of skilled labour in the industry. At the same time, Northern's biggest client, Noranda Nickel, is seeing poor geological results on a job in the same area. Northern's management needs to decide whether to incur additional costs and leave a capacity cushion in an effort to maintain its excellent relationship with its current client, or whether it should instead utilize the drills on the new job. The primary issue facing Northern's management is whether Northern can handle the new contract, both financially and technically, without compromising the current job.

Some technology transitions are exceedingly difficult for incumbent firms to execute. The bankruptcy filing by the Eastman Kodak Company highlighted the difficulty companies faced when their core business transitioned from an analog to a digital world. Kodak's business was built on the sale of a complex manufactured product - color photographic film that was exceedingly difficult to manufacture - with correspondingly high barriers to entry. Over more than a century, it developed the complex chemistry and high speed coating technologies that enabled it to roll-coat tiny strips of plastic with as many as 24 layers of complex organic dyes and photosensitizers at thousands of square feet per minute. Its color film and paper products including Kodachrome and Kodacolor preserved many of the iconic images of the last century. Beginning in the 1990s, the company built a digital photography business, yet by 2012 the company was in reorganization and its prognosis was guarded. Kodak faced a particularly challenging analog to digital transition, like many companies that have faced the waves of creative destruction wrought by technological innovation. Why was an analog to digital transition in the core technology of a business particularly challenging? This note reviews some of the management research on how firms have fared with technology transitions, and then explains why the conversion of a technology from analog to digital is uniquely problematic. The challenge that faced Kodak is the same challenge facing companies like Panasonic and Sony, telecom equipment companies, and other industries now that the underlying technology through which products and services are built has changed.

Leaders of the Romanian telecommunications agency must decide about a proposed international merger and how to structure bandwidth auctions critical to the telecoms market. The case is designed to teach about regulatory choices from the perspective of a regulatory agency, but it also describes the competitive standing of domestic and international telecoms providers in Romania and the challenges of operating as a "foreign" multinational, even in the European Union where protection of national champions is supposedly obsolete. Policy tradeoffs are developed among approving, delaying, or denying the proposed merger of domestic Romtelecom with Greek-based Cosmote. Likewise, tradeoffs are described for bandwidth auctions, notably among public transparency, maximizing revenue, preventing collusion, promoting efficient use of spectrum, broadening coverage, and fostering innovation in products and services.

American Apparel, a popular clothing manufacturer, has socially progressive labour policies and uses significant environmental advances in its manufacturing process. In addition, it has a well-established philanthropic arm. Set against these socially responsible policies is the highly sexualized nature of the company's advertising. This element of the marketing mix seems, at least to some consumers, very much at odds with the other aims and policies of the company. The question facing students is whether this disconnect can be maintained or whether the brand's advertising should change.

Northern Drilling Inc., an exploration diamond-drilling contractor, has been asked to tender a bid for a lucrative, highly complex contract with Mond Nickel. Northern has no drills or crew currently available to work on the contract, which requires experienced drillers. Compounding the issue is a shortage of skilled labour in the industry. At the same time, Northern's biggest client, Noranda Nickel, is seeing poor geological results on a job in the same area. Northern's management needs to decide whether to incur additional costs and leave a capacity cushion in an effort to maintain its excellent relationship with its current client, or whether it should instead utilize the drills on the new job. The primary issue facing Northern's management is whether Northern can handle the new contract, both financially and technically, without compromising the current job.

The owner and operator of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gym Gracie Barra London (GBL) in London, Ontario, sets out to develop a comprehensive marketing plan to increase membership enrolment by 40 per cent. GBL currently has100 members, and the owner hopes to leverage the recent explosion of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and mixed martial arts to continue to grow his business. After operating GBL for six years on a part-time basis, he is ready to operate the gym full time. He has personal savings of $3,000 and a private investment secured for a potential gym expansion. Now he must decide which direction he wants to take his business and how best to market GBL.

In 2011, a fourth-year science student at The University of Western Ontario must provide the manager of Infection and Prevention Control her recommendations to improve staff compliance with the hand hygiene requirements of the medical and support staff at London Health Sciences Centre and the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. The Province of Ontario’s Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care had implemented an initiative called Just Clean Your Hands to improve hand-cleaning rates that would directly affect the number of infections acquired by patients while in hospital. The task is complicated by the large number of employees working at LHSC and the many different employee groups, ranging from physicians to cleaning staff. Hand-cleaning procedures must also be followed by the patients' families and friends who visit. In addition, workplace sub-cultures have historically not enforced compliance with discipline. Essentially, the challenge is to change the behaviour of a large group of people in diverse roles. Students should realize that because health care is publicly funded in Ontario, any plan of action to improve hand-cleaning compliance will need to be justified financially and implemented at a reasonable cost.

Scholtes Waterservices was a second-generation family firm in the Netherlands that specialized in installing and selling water pipes, primarily for the horticultural industry. In 2008, Rijk Scholtes Jr. and his brother, Ben, took over management of the firm from their father and gradually assumed ownership through a buyout plan. It soon became evident that their father, Rijk Sr., could not let go of the company. This especially affected Rijk Jr., as he worked in an office close to the place where Rijk Sr. lived. As a result, the relationship between father and son began to steadily deteriorate. Moreover, Rijk Jr. began to feel isolated as the relationship and collaboration between Rijk Sr. and Ben was not adversely affected. Instead, the once-strong relationship between the brothers began to deteriorate. Rijk Jr. was left wondering whether anything could be done to rectify the situation or whether it was time to leave the family firm.

The chief executive officer of Royal Bhutan Airlines (Drukair) is concerned about growth and the seasonality of demand for Bhutan's national airline. The Kingdom of Bhutan, with a population of approximately 700,000, is located east of Nepal between India and China (Tibet). It has recently embarked on a program of modernization, including a move to democracy and promotion of tourism. The tourism initiative is described as "high value, low volume," meaning that tourists must contract with a local tourist operator and pay minimum daily tariffs. Drukair has witnessed a steady growth in passengers, which is correlated closely with tourist visits, mostly from the West and Japan. Tourist tickets are booked by in-country tour operators; there are no Internet bookings at the time of the case.The CEO is wondering what can be done to improve overall business. He is considering interlining, the practice of joining with other airlines, in order to give passengers the opportunity to book tickets from their home countries. Marketing for growth is also a concern, and as Drukair is the only carrier in Bhutan, the CEO wonders if he should be promoting tourism in the country as part of his marketing plan.

Developed as a companion to the Red Brand Canners (RBC) case, the starting point in this case is the improvement in performance resulting from the optimization approach in the original case. However, RBC's vice-president of operations is concerned about the quality and quantity mix of the most recent tomato crop received from Greenfield Farms (GF). RBC's preferred quality and quantity mixes differ significantly from the current harvest. From RBC's perspective, the issue is how to motivate the supplier to produce a crop more in line with RBC's needs. Initially, both firms in the B-to-B section of the supply chain try to find a combination that would be mutually beneficial, an attempt that fails because of existing conflicts of interest. RBC's objective might be accomplished by taking a supply chain approach and modifying the delivery contract by an appropriate pricing scheme. The task is to identify and calibrate a pricing scheme that will realize the supply chain's maximum performance and lead to a stable win-win solution. The derivation of the supply chain optimal prices is carried out by developing and solving a linear optimization model.

The case goes over the evolution of politics and instituions in Egypt over the last 50 years. The case provides new insights on the reasons for violent political transitions and also explores the effects of political instability on productivity and competitiveness.

A large general-merchandise retailer misses its fiscal year earnings-per-share guidance, so its CFO is charged with improving the firm's forecasts. This case presents the use of probability distributions for forecasting discrete and continuous uncertainties such as GDP growth, inflation, and unemployment, including the benefit of ranges and distributions over point estimates. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's Survey of Professional Forecasters is introduced as a source of forecasts

This case pertains to the foundational underpinnings of the accounting process and the statement of cash flows. In Part I, students are presented with 23 business events that they must evaluate for recording in the financial records. Part II requires students to prepare a 2012 statement of cash flows using the information presented in the company's 2011 and 2012 year-end balance sheets along with its 2012 income statement. In Part III, students must rely on a 2011 balance sheet and a 2011 statement of cash flows to work backward to derive the 2010 year-end balance sheet. There are two versions of this case: Option 1 and Option 2. The Option 2 case is a bit more challenging than the Option 1 case. Instructors should use Option 2 if they feel students are well grounded in their understanding of financial statement relationships and the customary financial reporting of a typical set of business events. Both cases reinforce students' learning related to the accounting process and the connectivity between the financial statements. Please note that only one version of the case should be used due to the existence of some overlap between the two.