Describes the background and career of Lakhdar Brahimi in numerous roles ranging from Algeria's ambassador to Indonesia and the Arab League, to serving as that country's foreign minister, and to his many years at the United Nations, with special emphasis on his actions as a mediator in Lebanese and Afghan conflicts.
Founder Group's Chairman of the Board, Wei Xin, made adjustments to the company portfolio in 2010. Established in the mid-1980s, Founder is the industry leader for Chinese laser typesetting systems and was once the second largest PC manufacturer in China. It is also the largest university-based enterprise in China. After twenty years of development, Founder has achieved annual revenue of 47.5 billion RMB, with business in IT hardware and software, pharmaceuticals, medical care, finance, real estate, steel, trade, education, mining, fine chemicals, storage, etc. It has undergone highly unrelated diversification. Chair of the Board, Wei Xin, wants to ensure Founder's sustained growth. To this end, he must consider Founder's portfolio structure for the future.
A managing partner of Pacific Community Ventures, a San Francisco-based private equity fund, had until the end of the week to decide if he wanted to invest in Galaxy Desserts, a Bay Area manufacturer of premium baked goods. PCV was a private equity firm that took a "double-bottom-line" approach, a two-pronged objective of delivering both financial and social returns.
The case narrates how A.P.V.N. Sarma, chairman and managing director (CMD) appointed in 1997, realized the pressing need for change to rescue Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) from impending bankruptcy. SCCL was declared "sick" (bankrupt) by the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) twice, in 1992 and 1996. It had accumulated losses of 12.19 billion rupees. As it provided direct and indirect employment to people residing in the region around SCCL, the well-being of the organization was critical not only for the mammoth workforce, but also for the state of Andhra Pradesh (AP). The power generation units of the state relied significantly on the coal supplied by SCCL. The case captures various initiatives undertaken by Sarma to bridge the trust deficit between management and blue-collared workers with low literacy and income levels. It discusses the novel communication strategies to connect with workers. The case describes how numerous strikes plaguing SCCL were curbed, and order was restored to allow productivity to rise. Under Sarma's leadership, SCCL achieved a net profit of 894.1 million rupees for the fourth consecutive year in 2001. Sarma had a fixed tenure of five years which ended in 2001. The task for the new leader was to build on the foundations laid by Sarma and take the performance of SCCL to new heights.
In 2006, European automotive supplier Interior Group and China-based China Textile established Interior JV, a joint venture in China to produce seat covers for automakers manufacturing in China. After a slow start, the joint venture began to secure orders and was moving towards a breakeven point. Nonetheless, it was still faced with teething problems, especially in product development time, internal quality and on-time delivery. Though Interior JV had adopted many processes that were used by its European mother company, operating in the foreign environment of an emerging market continued to pose challenges for the joint venture. Now Interior JV must address these problems in order to stay on top of the game.
Samasource sought to use work, not aid, for economic development. The company secured contracts for digital services from large companies in the United States and Europe, divided the work up into small pieces (called microwork) and then sent it to delivery centers in developing regions of the world for completion through a web-based interface. Different from traditional business process outsourcing companies, Samasource relied on a marginalized population of workers to execute the work. The case explores how the company can grow its capability to help individuals around the globe through the provision of digital work. This case includes color exhibits.
The Abraham Path Initiative board faces strategic and negotiating challenges in revitalizing a route of Middle East cultural tourism following Abraham's path 4000 years ago. The Path begins in the ancient ruins of Harran, in modern-day Turkey, where Abraham first heard the call to "go forth." It passes through some of the world's most revered cultural, historical, and holy sites, ending in the city of Hebron/AI-Khalil at the tomb of Abraham. With Abraham as a venerated patriarchal figure for Islam, Judaism, and Christianity-monotheistic religions whose adherents have so often clashed-the potential unifying power of this conception has attracted a remarkable range of supporters from around the world as well as considerable media interest. From a notion crystallized at Harvard in 2004, this idea has been carefully negotiated into a concrete reality with supporting country organizations in Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. With the endorsement of the U.N.'s Alliance of Civilizations, over 300 kilometers of the Path have now been opened to a growing number of travelers ranging from student study groups to international leaders all walking stretches of the Path. Yet, momentum has stalled in key areas, strategic and operational issues remain unresolved, and the financial future of the initiative is clouded. Soon the board will meet to debate and decide these issues.
Native Americans were subjected to a protracted and painful process of forced removal from their land. The case provides "first hand" evidence on the debate over Indian removal as it took place during the early nineteenth century. The first document is excerpted from Andrew Jackson's First Annual Message to Congress in 1829 and the second document from Jackson's Second Annual Message in 1830, the year the Indian Removal Act was passed. The third and fourth documents cover the Congressional debate over the relocation of Indians, which led to strong partisan splits and divisions between the North and the South. Document three is excerpted from Whig Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey's six-hour speech to Congress opposing Indian removal. Document four is excerpted from a speech by Senator John Forsyth, a Democrat and former Governor of Georgia who spoke in response to Senator Frelinghuysen's remarks. A final document presents the Cherokee perspective and the reasons for their opposition to removal as represented by a memorial letter, written to the United States Congress in 1829. A statistical portrait follows the documentary evidence.
Dental Associates of Northern Virginia is one of the largest dental networks in northern Virginia. In this series of two cases, the head administrator must choose between keeping up with new technology by investing in innovative all-porcelain crown-making machines or holding onto a strategy of waiting and seeing. This choice also aligns with the head administrator making a larger decision of whether to enhance the core competency of his network by developing a complete in-house laboratory or continuing to rely on an expensive, but reliable, outside laboratory for all-porcelain restorations. Together, the two cases in the series are rich in concepts of cost, timeliness, quality, and flexibility, as students are forced to see an operations problem from both patient and doctor perspectives. The cases also consider the ever-changing world of technology and how it impacts a doctor’s practice along with an entire network of offices.
Recorded Future was a software company that aimed to aggregate the information on the Internet in a way that offered new and valuable insights. Funded by Google and In-Q-Tel, the venture-capital wing of the Central Intelligence Agency, Recorded Future gave people tools to not only extract meaning from the web, but also to make predictions about future events ranging from terrorist attacks to corporate product releases. The case presents the investment decision of a portfolio manager, Andrew Fisher of LXE Capital, who is considering investing based on insights drawn from Recorded Future's software interface. The case asks students to grapple with a new source of investment data, to evaluate the reliability of back-tested portfolio strategies, and to ponder how best to utilize data for the purposes of generating "alpha" (positive risk-adjusted returns) in investing.
A new CEO steps into the shoes of his long-serving predecessor who had created the U.S. telecommunications giant via a series of acquisitions and, before departing, had initiated the company's strategic repositioning. The new CEO reflects on Verizon's recent successes, some of which he led, and considered how to ensure the team would continue to rise to new challenges. He knew change was both energizing and difficult and that every victory had to be followed by the next play. He paused in his New York City office to think about how his team handled recent challenges and whether the culture was in place to continue Verizon's transformation from a traditional telecommunications provider to a global services and technology firm.
The features of zero emissions, light weight, high efficiency, low energy cost, and almost zero pollution contribute to the increasing popularity of electric motorcycles and a substantial growth potential for the worldwide electric motorcycle industry. However, Zero was facing competition from Brammo, which although positioning its products differently from Zero, adopted a similar international growth strategy. How could the chief executive officer of Zero position its products so that Zero would be able to offer a unique value proposition and establish clear dominance in the electric motorcycle industry?
The vice president in SouthBank's Corporate Banking Group was reviewing an opportunity for SouthBank (SB) to bid to become the agent bank in a $120 million revolving credit facility for Prime Micro Inc. (PMI). SB's competition for the agent's position would be Texas Trade Bank (TTB), which had been PMI's lead bank for many years. Despite SB's attempts to displace TTB over the past several years, this was SB's first real opportunity to gain agent status. As agent bank on this deal, SB would likely be viewed by PMI as its lead bank, which, due to PMI's considerable banking needs, would allow SB to realize significant fee income in the future. Although delighted with the prospect of getting PMI as a new client, the vice president was worried about PMI's creditworthiness.