A very comprehensive case that requires students to define the organization's strategy, understand its structure, and then determine how a responsibility center network has been overlaid on it. There is a poor programming process at work, which has led the organization in some unusual directions, a budgeting process that emphasizes revenues and ignores expense, and a reporting process that does not fit well with the organizational structure or the network of responsibility centers. In short, a mess.
A rather complex case that calls for a report that gives providers a breakdown of why they are (or are not) achieving their budgeted levels of performance. Students knowledge of variance analysis is tested here by requiring them to understand and then restructure a confusing variance analysis prepared by the business manager.
A case on capital budgeting as a component of an organization's strategic planning. The case is designed for students to use their financial skills in calculating net present values, internal rates of return and in deriving appropriate discount rates. The fundamental objective, however, is not mechanical, but to assess the various components and characteristics of capital budgeting systems as to how well they fit with the specific needs of an organization.
This case requires a differential cost analysis that introduces students to several important matters. It demonstrates the difference between various types of direct and indirect costs. The cost center report for the Dialysis Unit contains fixed, variable and step-function costs, and students must identify which is which. Overhead costs are presented in the stepdown analysis and their relationship to direct costs and a breakeven analysis must be resolved.
This case is focused principally on a chief of pathology's attempt to justify an additional technician for the pathology lab. The question of how he justifies this, however, is somewhat of a red herring, since by looking at the process he follows in attempting to prepare the data necessary for such a justification, students will become aware of the control structure, both of the hospital and in the Department of Pathology, as well as the budgetary process used by the hospital. They thus have the opportunity to put the management control structure into its broader organizational context.
A growing home health agency is experiencing cash flow problems. Students must prepare a cash worksheet and a SCF and compare the results to the accrual statements, which show an operating surplus.
This case concerns a department of gastroenterology within a department of medicine that is attempting to build its budget. The chair of medicine has asked the GI division head to give him a business plan, and the business plan is presented in the case. The chief must decide how credible the business plan is. To fully understand what is going on, the budget-building (and business plan) effort must be taken down to the individual provider level.
The case describes the international problem of money laundering and summarizes U.S. bank regulations aimed at reducing money laundering activities. The introduction of H.R. 3886 in 2000 was one in a series of attempts to formalize U.S. banks' monitoring of their customers. The bill was prompted by a government report that named and criticized U.S. banks for laundering billions of dollars linked to drug trafficking, fraud, and organized crime. Interest groups in favor of H.R. 3886 were predominantly law enforcement agencies that viewed current anti-money laundering laws as ineffective. Groups opposed to the bill included the American Civil Liberties Union, which believed that the collection of more information about bank customers' activities was an invasion of privacy, and the American Bankers Association, which claimed that the legislation would impose unnecessary costs on banks. The case can be used to introduce the distributive politics framework for analyzing non-market issues and formulating nonmarket strategies in the context of government institutions. The epilogue reveals that H.R. 3886 died before it ever reached the House floor, but that an expanded version of the legislation ultimately passed-with the support of stakeholders who originally fought it-as part of the USA PATRIOT Act after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. This stance reversal provides an opportunity to explore how events, public opinion, and the media can create windows of policy opportunity.
The case examines the evolution of GE's corporate university in Crotonville, NY from its founding in 1956 through 2010 and the start of an effort of "Re-Imagining Crotonville." One of the world's first corporate universities, Crotonville became a model of leadership development and a recognized innovator in its field. The case details the role that Crotonville played under successive GE leaders, from Ralph Cordiner - who inaugurated Crotonville to train general managers to support a sweeping decentralization program - to Jeffrey Immelt. It considers how the institution changed in response to changing business needs and the factors that contributed to its vitality and success over several decades. Beginning in the 1980s, Crotonville became the nerve center of a cultural change effort launched by CEO Jack Welch, spawning programs such as "Work-Out" to cut through bureaucracy and return initiative to individual managers. Following the global financial crisis in 2008-9, CEO Jeffrey Immelt and Crotonville's leaders set in motion an exploration of the changing nature of leadership needed to confront the new realities in which GE operated globally. CLO Susan Peters initiated Re-Imagining Crotonville to align learning and development with these new leadership expectations. The case examines the choices faced by Peters and her team in re-thinking the environment, experience, and content of leadership learning at Crotonville. Learning objectives: Understand factors that have made Crotonville central to GE's leadership culture over time. Examine role of CEO and corporate leadership in driving cultural change through learning and development. Understand the unique assets and potential limitations of a 'corporate university' model for leadership learning. Explore the change management challenges of managing a legacy of success - continuing to evolve while preserving the strong 'brand' and 'secret sauce' that make Crotonville unique.
This case depicts the start-up and business development challenges faced by a streetwise entrepreneur who has invented a unique fishing rod. The capabilities necessary to invent, prototype and bring to market a limited quantity of product versus the challenges of larger scale product commercialization and managing a growing business are illustrated chronologically. The case primarily addresses why some entrepreneurial ventures succeed and grow to become large-scale corporations whereas others stay small and insignificant and why a majority of entrepreneurial initiatives eventually fail. Indigenous constructs (such as entrepreneur and organization specific factors) and exogenous constructs (such as industry, location and time specific factors that may predetermine the outcome of an entrepreneurial venture) are illustrated. A business plan, which has attracted angel investment, is presented for critical assessment. The background storyline subtly depicts that all businesses, regardless of size, face resource constraints and trade-offs and that managers must continuously adapt and upgrade their business models, competencies and management style to match the evolving threshold market standards.
This case depicts the start-up and business development challenges faced by a streetwise entrepreneur who has invented a unique fishing rod. The capabilities necessary to invent, prototype, and bring to market a limited quantity of product versus the challenges of larger-scale commercialization and management of a growing business are illustrated. The case primarily addresses why some entrepreneurial ventures succeed and grow while others stay insignificant, and why a majority of entrepreneurial initiatives eventually fail. Indigenous constructs such as entrepreneur- and organization-specific factors and exogenous constructs such as industry, location, and time-specific factors that may predetermine the outcome of an entrepreneurial venture are illustrated. A business plan, which has attracted angel investment, is presented for critical assessment. The case’s background story shows that all businesses face resource constraints and trade-offs and that managers must continuously adapt and upgrade their business models, competencies, and management styles to match evolving market standards.
<p style="color: rgb(197, 183, 131);"><strong> AWARD WINNER - Emerging Chinese Global Competitors Category at European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) Case Writing Competition</strong></p><br>7 Days Inn, a leading hotel group in China, was established in 2005 and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2009. It now operates more than 1,000 hotels in 168 major Chinese cities and has enrolled more than 30 million customers in its membership club. Its success is largely due to its innovative business model and operations strategy, which includes designing product services with the vertical cutting approach, enhancing customer loyalty through a membership system and direct sales, managing a hotel chain with different governance structures and expanding a hotel chain with an innovative franchised-and-managed model. In particular, the case introduces the company’s shepherd management philosophy. However, as the company expands, it has become difficult for headquarters to manage and supervise all the hotels. In addition, the resignation rate of hotel managers has gone up to 30 per cent in the past few years. What should 7 Days Inn do to deal with these challenges? Does the company need to break the rules again and innovate its business model, operations strategy or operating model — or all of them?
The newly-promoted international operations director for ReedTrek Manufacturing, is trying to diagnose the issues at his company's under-performing China plant. While the operations director originally believed the loss-making operations suffered from technical issues, his visit to the plant suggests to him that there are leadership and management issues.
This note introduces a framework for formulating strategy that helps a manager identify which decisions are strategic-and thus which decisions to focus on (both when developing strategy and when executing it)-and that provides a practical test for whether a particular set of choices is a strategy. The framework is based on the definition of strategy as "the smallest set of choices to optimally guide the other choices."
In October 2005, Yahoo! Inc. ("Yahoo") formed a partnership with Alibaba Group Holding Limited ("Alibaba"), the country's biggest e-commerce firm. The company invested US$1 billion in Alibaba for a 40% stake and transferred the ownership of Yahoo! China ("Yahoo China") to Alibaba. However, some media outlets have described the two companies' relationship since 2005 as being anywhere from rocky to downright ugly. Yahoo's decision in mid-2009 to switch to Microsoft's Bing search technology has prompted Alibaba to adopt a search engine from Yahoo's local competitor Sohu.com. Then Alibaba collaborates with eBay Inc. instead of Yahoo in entering the US business-to-business market. Meanwhile, Yahoo directly competes with Yahoo! China for advertisers by soliciting companies in southern China to advertise on Yahoo's Hong Kong website. Alibaba has been taking a loss in its operations since 2006, and the search revenue share of Yahoo! China has dropped from 27% in 2005 to an insignificant level in 2010. But Yahoo! has turned down Alibaba's offer to buy back its stake because it would like to wait for the IPOs of Alibaba's two major subsidiaries before any exit. In light of growing tension with Alibaba, Yahoo's board would like to review its approach to managing this partnership and figure out what should be done to mend the ties.
In early 2003, an outbreak of SARS in Hong Kong led to a plunge in inbound travel to the city. Many local travel agencies started hosting below-cost inbound tours, dubbed "zero-fee tours", for mainland Chinese tourists. They make a profit by bringing these tourists to shop in designated retail outlets that charge them inflated prices but offer lucrative commissions to tour operators. Zero-fee tours first caught the public's attention in October 2006 when a group of tourists were abandoned at a pier because they spent too little while shopping. Then in June 2010, a tourist died of a heart attack after a heated argument with a tour guide over a shopping arrangement. Despite preventive measures implemented by the industry association, tourist complaints keep increasing and high-profile cases in which tour guides insult or even fight with tourists continue to happen. Trendy Travel Limited is a local travel agency that hosts regularly priced inbound tours. Facing strong market demand for zero-fee tours, it would like to understand the business model of zero-fee tours: what is the driving force, is it sustainable, and what are the impacts to the company and the entire industry? It also wants to determine how to position its inbound tour business in the short and long term.
Hong Kong Business Intermediary ("HKBI") was Hong Kong's first business brokerage company that specialised in small business sales. Leading the company was Edwin Lee, a young entrepreneur who took his every chance to drive the company to new levels of success. In November 2001, after realising that there were no business brokerage firms in Hong Kong, Lee set up HKBI and started to offer "matchmaking" services for prospective business sellers and buyers. As the company diversified into too many additional services without proper planning, the rising operation cost turned into a cash flow disaster for HKBI in 2005. Lee then restructured his business model into a more systematic and integrated way and successfully turned his company around, earning himself the award of Hong Kong's Innovative Entrepreneur of the Year 2007. HKBI's business model and efforts in promoting entrepreneurship had also received recognition worldwide. Meanwhile, local rivals began to tap into the under-developed sector in Hong Kong, and many of them were former HKBI employees. Lee knew when a blue ocean began to turn red, he needed to continue to reinvent his business to safeguard HKBI's market leader position. He envisioned HKBI to become a small business property developer in the future. How did Lee distinguish HKBI from others by associating the business brokerage operation with the finance, private equity and property markets in an innovative way? How did take it as his employees striking out on their own and becoming his competitors while one the objectives of HKBI was to promote entrepreneurship?