This case fits with courses that have a focus on environmental sustainability and systems thinking, which help students conceptualize and formulate policy recommendations in industries dependent on the conservation of natural resources. Students are asked to construct a stock-flow map that depicts the interactions between markets, pricing, production, policy, and environment impacts. Class discussion explores stakeholder perspectives and compares student maps to an actual map constructed by a consultant working in the shrimp industry. Followed by a B case [OM-1389] and a systems simulation model available for further exploration of the issues surrounding the design and testing of policy to improve industry performance.
This case is appropriate for courses that focus on the areas of environmental sustainability and systems thinking. Students explore how the structure and information flows in the shrimp industry can create boom and bust performance. Key decision-making policies by industry participants and public administrators are designed and tested for improving industry performance through an in-class simulation. The A case (UV3569) serves as background.
Two MBA students involved in a week-long kaizen event at a manufacturing plant in the Czech Republic must increase productivity and reduce gross inventory despite an uncooperative work group. Lean manufacturing principles are analyzed in the context of a deadline-driven process.
In March 2009, the government of Iraq decided to hold its first oil field auctions. The auctions were for service contracts on the country's southern oil fields; the winner would obtain the right to produce oil above a certain target for a fixed fee. The bidders competed on the fee charged per barrel and the amount by which they promised to increase production. At the same time, the Kurdish regional government continued to sign Production Sharing Agreements with foreign companies for its oil fields, unrecognized by the national government. In a context of continuing (if much reduced) political violence and legislative deadlock in the national parliament, three actors needed to make key decisions. Jean Claude Gandur, the CEO of Addax Petroleum, needed to decide whether to continue investing in the Kurdish region in light of Baghdad's continuing opposition. The Iraqi oil minister, Hussein al-Shahristani, needed to design the oil auctions in such a way that oil companies would be moved to invest, and invest quickly, despite the lack of a national oil law. Finally, the American secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, needed to decide what Iraqi oil policy would be in the best interest of the United States, and what levers (if any) the U.S. government could pull in order to insure that such a policy would be carried out. What would the three actors decide, and how would their decisions affect the future of Iraq and the world oil market?
The first round of bidding on the rights to develop Iraq's oil field did not go as planned. All the bidding groups wanted to charge a fee per barrel that the Iraqi government considered too high. As a result, the Iraqi government conducted the auction a second time, this time making it clear that it would not consider fees above $2.00 per barrel. (In addition, the winner needed to deposit $500 million with the Iraqi oil ministry.) Only one bid was accepted: a consortium of the company formerly known as British Petroleum (now BP), the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC), and the Iraqi-state-owned South Oil Company. The consortium had previously bid $3.99 for the same field. It now had to negotiate the actual terms of the contract with the Iraqi government. In addition, the executives in London and Beijing needed to decide whether it made sense to exercise the option they had just purchased. Would they be throwing good money after bad by investing in the Rumaila super-giant field at such a low fee per barrel, or would there be strategic returns down the line?
The chief executive officer (CEO) of a multi-site and multi-business YMCA must determine how to more than double participation levels in the next five years. The case describes how the London YMCA has grown in both participation and size. However, the corporate level strategy has become complicated and the board of directors, CEO and senior management team need to consider a new M-form structure. This has many implications for the CEO, the senior managers and the future growth of the YMCA London.
The owner of Arrow Printing and Publishing, and his accountant were reviewing the company's fiscal performance. After nearly 45 years in the printing industry and with an increasing interest in other fields, such as municipal politics, the owner was considering if the time had come to leave printing and move on to new challenges. The options included keeping Arrow Printing and expanding into a potentially lucrative market or selling the business and move on.
For decades, General Electric and other industrial-goods manufacturers based in rich countries grew by developing high-end products at home and distributing them globally, with some adaptations to local conditions - an approach known as glocalization. Now they must do an about-face and learn to bring low-end products created specifically for emerging markets into wealthy markets. That process, called reverse innovation, isn't easy to master. It requires a decentralized, local-market focus that clashes with the centralized, product-focused structure that multinationals have evolved for glocalization. In this article, Immelt, GE's CEO, and Govindarajan and Trimble, of Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, describe how GE has dealt with that challenge. An anomaly within the ultrasound unit of GE Healthcare provided the blueprint. Because China's poorly funded rural clinics couldn't afford the company's sophisticated ultrasound machines, a local team built a cheap, portable ultrasound out of a laptop equipped with special peripherals and software. It not only became a hit in China but jump-started growth in the developed world by pioneering applications for situations where portability is critical, such as at accident sites. The team succeeded because a top executive championed it and gave it unprecedented autonomy. GE has since set up more than a dozen similar operations in an effort to expand beyond the premium segments in developing countries - and to preempt emerging giants from disrupting GE's sales at home.
John Johnson, owner of FinePrint Company, is presented with two opportunities to consider: (1) whether to accept a one-time special printing order and (2) whether to outsource some of his printing to another printing company. In making his decisions, he must consider the relevance of certain costs, the behavior of those costs, and the extent to which he has capacity constraints.
In the context of determining an optimal portfolio to recommend to two hypothetical investors, this strucutuerd analysis leads students through a series of steps examining return data for three stocks. The analysis first explores the effects of portfolio formation on returns and volatility. With the addition of a market index and a bond portfolio, students easily recognize how portfolios from from these to investment vehicles may be optimal. The analysis then explores stock betas as a measure of risk and the statistical properties of those betas. At the conclusion, students will have a practical understanding of the capital asset pricing model.
In September 2009, Brian Lee purchased a computer game developed by a major company and, like other customers, he was experiencing difficulty running it. The source of the problems was a highly restrictive system of digital rights management (DRM), which, while more or less universally disliked, was causing serious technical problems for a minority of users. Lee began to share his experience on the company's message board and was engaging in a debate about online piracy with a company representative. He was curious about piracy in the file-sharing age and wondered why it would be wrong to download a pirated version of the game with the DRM circumvented. The note deals with an issue which resonates with students. Although the context is simple, the problem is complex, thus giving instructors wide latitude on how to teach this note. It is suitable for modules or courses focused on ethics, service operations, intellectual property rights and information technology.
In January 2007, West Coast Fashions, Inc., a large designer and marketer of branded apparel, announced a strategic reorganization that would result in the divestiture of their wholly owned footwear subsidiary, Mercury Athletic. John Liedtke, the head of business development for Active Gear, a mid-sized athletic and casual footwear company, saw the potential acquisition of Mercury as a unique opportunity to roughly double the size of his business. The case uses the potential acquisition of Mercury Athletic as a vehicle to teach students basic DCF (discounted cash flow) valuation using the weighted average cost of capital (WACC).
In September 2007, the Group President of CapitaLand has to select a new CEO for a key subsidiary. The case presents the profiles of three candidates-two internal and one external-and ends with the senior management team debating the candidates' merits.
In September 2009, Brian Lee purchased a computer game developed by a major company and, like other customers, he was experiencing difficulty running it. The source of the problems was a highly restrictive system of digital rights management (DRM), which, while more or less universally disliked, was causing serious technical problems for a minority of users. Lee began to share his experience on the company's message board and was engaging in a debate about online piracy with a company representative. He was curious about piracy in the file-sharing age and wondered why it would be wrong to download a pirated version of the game with the DRM circumvented. The case deals with an issue which resonates with students. Although the context is simple, the problem is complex, thus giving instructors wide latitude on how to teach the case. It is suitable for modules or courses focused on ethics, service operations, intellectual property rights and information technology.
In 2005 Sonance, a high-end audio company and the inventor of the in-wall speakers category, was faced with declining profitability and shrinking market share. The company had to rethink its marketing strategy to find a path to profitable and sustainable growth. This case summarizes management's decisions as well as the events and developments that followed the 2005 situation discussed in Sonance at a Turning Point, Columbia case #080515A.
In March 2005, the vice-president and chief operating officer of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA), was thinking about how to best harness the business intelligence (BI) system that CATSA had implemented. From its creation in 2002, CATSA had developed an organizational structure with more than 200 managers overseeing 4,000 screening officers. In June 2003, a BI solution was developed and, in 2004, the solution was launched. The vice-president wanted to know whether his team could anticipate and manage the changes that the new BI system would trigger.
From the 1970s onward, after the emergence of microfinance, lending for the poor started shifting from informal sources (e.g. moneylenders) to formal sources. The Grameen Bank (Grameen) led this change, primarily due to its chief executive officer (CEO) and his innovative microcredit model. On the basis of the CEO's rich understanding of on-the-ground realities, he began to experiment and modify the business model for microfinance, which, in the past few years in Bangladesh, was largely dominated by a few big players. As a result of some very interesting and insightful experiments that had been conducted, the microfinance landscape was changing the way banking services were modeled for the poor, not only in Bangladesh but throughout the world. The case profiles a situation wherein Baring Private Equity Partners India, one of the largest private equity players in emerging markets, was looking to invest in the high-growth, profitable microfinance industry of South Asia.This case is oriented toward helping students understand the credit needs of the poor and their perspective on money management, hunger, investment and savings. Students should be made to appreciate how an innovative business model can be developed through a deeper understanding of the local context combined with conceptual thinking. The case strongly vouches for the development of sustainable solutions that require both financial viability and sensitivity to the conditions of the poor. The most important point to be highlighted about the microfinance landscape is that the entrepreneurship model is changing from being socially focused to being business focused. Earlier, most players entered the microfinance arena as a not-for-profit venture; however, many for-profit organizations have now entered this sector.
Many countries have become increasingly concerned with the subject of corruption, and managers today must deal with changes in ethical norms and laws. New laws and international agreements seek to create a worldwide shift towards the reduction of corruption, and so management responsibilities are continually evolving. Both Transparency International and the World Bank provide estimates of the relative pervasiveness of corruption in different countries. Yet this subject is ambiguous and complex, creating significant challenges for managers. Both Volkswagen and Siemens have recently experienced public criticism and legal prosecution over corruption issues, some relating to internal and inter-corporate relations. Some cultures appear to accept corrupt practices as part of normal business-government relations. In China, guanxi is widely seen as a requirement for business success with the establishment of personal relationships that include an ongoing exchange of gifts and personal favours. Some managers may argue that the giving of gifts is acceptable, that bribes to expedite decisions may be necessary, and that only certain types of bribes should be seen as inappropriate corruption. However, this perspective involves the difficulty of drawing a line to guide decisions of corporate employees, and for many managers it is now necessary to implement clear corporate guidelines in regard to what they consider to be corruption. In this context, some managers may decide to avoid investing in certain countries until the culture of corruption has changed.