Susan Reynolds, a successful auditor with a big-six public accounting firm, was hired as controller in the accounting department of a medium-sized, highly profitable motion picture company. Believing that she had been performing adequately, Susan found herself in a complete state of shock upon receiving her first annual employee evaluation. Although during her evaluation interview, Anita Lockwood, Susan's immediate supervisor, had acknowledged that Susan was a valuable addition to the department, a written review that accompanied the interview indicated that she was severely lacking in the interpersonal skills she needed to experience continued success in her present position as controller. The case ends with a hurt and highly dissatisfied Susan wondering whether she should make an effort to achieve the level of interpersonal skills needed to function effectively in her current managerial position, or to simply seek employment elsewhere.

In June 2001, Empresa Editora El Comercio (EEEC) had launched a new popular newspaper, Trome, for low-income families. Although several studies had preceded this launch, sales in following months failed to reach expected levels and actually displayed a decreasing trend. Trome embodied the company's effort to expand its news coverage to new population segments that were not served by its other newspaper, El Comercio, a market leader that had served as the foundation for the company itself. Six months after Trome's launch and faced with dropping sales, company managers had met to discuss their options. This case describes management team members' dilemmas at that meeting: "Should the new paper's style and contents be changed? Should Trome focus more on sex and violence-related issues, as its competitors did? Would it be convenient to replace the silverware promotion chosen to support launching? Was the channel conflict adequately managed? Were intended readers' needs truly and fully understood? Should the company re-launch Trome or would it be wiser to just give up on this project?

Rajeev Samant, founder of Sula Vineyards, was a pioneer in the nascent Indian wine industry. After selling off a minority equity stake to private investors in 2005 to raise funds for expansion of his winery, Rajeev in mid 2007 again faced the challenge of deciding whether or not and if so, at what rate to grow Sula to meet forecasted rapid growth in demand for Indian wines. He developed financial projections to present to Sula's board. Rajeev now needed to decide on the appropriate plan to present to his board as well as the anticipated level and sources of funding needed to support this plan. In seeking new funding, Rajeev was mindful of the tradeoffs inherent in new equity financing, which could lead to a further dilution of ownership control, versus new debt financing, which would place additional claims on future cash flows and increase Sula's financial risk.

The emergence, proliferation, and ubiquity of the Internet have not only transformed businesses, but also altered the relationship between the business and the customer. Recent advances in technology have helped to migrate this relationship to an interactive level where technology contributes to brand building by creating and sustaining a long-term relationship with the customer. Media fragmentation and customer indifference to traditional marketing tools are forcing marketers to seek new opportunities so the marketing message not only captures customers' attention, but also tries to engage them with the company. This paper discusses blogs within the context of creating this new, more enduring relationship with the customer. Blogs are discussed within the framework of Web 2.0, the next generation of the Internet, which is comprised of user-generated content and social computing. The use of blogs by several companies as tools to better engage the customer in the creation, delivery, and dissemination of marketing messages is also demonstrated.

The habitual mode of poor strategy implementation shaping the next round of strategy formulation weakens the subsequent planning cycle. Unfortunately, decades of company interactions consisting of research, teaching, and consulting suggest that strategy implementation has become a catchall of phrases and recommendations, with little clarity as to what comprises this necessary cornerstone of a capable organization. Strategists tend to use powerful terminology when referring to implementation efforts. Descriptors such as killers, confrontation, and engagement are linked with actions like conquering, blocking, tackling, and honing when discussing strategy implementation. Our contention is that implementation is a critical cornerstone or ally in the building of a capable organization, and the use of the appropriate levers of implementation is the pivotal hinge in the development of the organization. Ultimately, strategy implementation helps create the future, not inhibit it.

A view of the new competitive landscape shows globalization, rapid technological change, and hypercompetition as conduits leading to either organizational decline or organizational growth. In this article we explain how managers can use four mindsets to convert potential threats posed by these environmental challenges into pathways of prosperity instead of pathways of decline. A global mindset, or the ability to view the world using a broad perspective, converts globalization threats into growth opportunities by thinking beyond geographic boundaries, valuing integration across borders, and appreciating regional and cultural diversity. An innovation mindset, meaning a mental framework that fosters development and implementation of new ideas, transforms rapid technological change threats into opportunities by valuing constant generation of new ideas and business models, realizing sources of new ideas, and stressing next practices rather than best practices. A virtual mindset, or the ability of managers to hand over their firms' activities to external providers, turns hypercompetition into prospects for growth by facilitating flexibility and responsiveness. Finally, a collaboration mindset, meaning a willingness to engage in business partnerships, converts all three challenges into opportunities by allowing firms to form successful partnerships that can lead to synergy by combining business complementarities.

Over the past sixty years Net Present Value (NPV) and the Internal Rate of Return (IRR) have emerged from obscurity to become the overwhelming choices for the quantitative measurement of investment attractiveness in modern corporations. Despite their current popularity, neither NPV nor IRR was designed to deal effectively with the vast majority of investment problems, meaning those where periodic free cash flows are generated between the time of asset purchase and the time of sale. NPV assumes that periodic cash flows can and will be reinvested at the NPV discount rate, either at the cost of capital or another risk adjusted discount rate; IRR assumes reinvestment at the IRR. Neither assumption is usually realistic. In addition, when evaluating projects in terms of their financial attractiveness, the two measures may rank projects differently. This becomes important when capital budgets are limited. Finally, a project may have several IRRs if cash flows go from negative to positive more than once. The Modified Internal Rate of Return (MIRR), discovered in the 18th century, does account for these cash flows. This article explains the problems with NPV and IRR, describes how MIRR works, and demonstrates how MIRR deals with weaknesses in NPV and IRR.

Both popular and social science literature are replete with recommendations for enhancing communication effectiveness, typically defined as improving the clarity and impact of the spoken and written word. However, managing internal organizational processes and external market competitiveness often requires a different communication strategy, specifically silence and non-disclosure, while adhering to statutory regulations. This paper summarizes the rationale for communication prohibitions, highlights counter forces mitigating their intended effects, and offers recommendations for successful implementation. The three major counter forces are employee motivation and perception, changing socio-cultural norms, and organizational structures reflecting virtual teams and project teams. The eight recommendations for combating these forces are subsumed under one of two categories: creating an organizational culture supporting prohibitions, and executing the prohibitions with a minimum of employee resistance. In summary, employees charged with maintaining secrecy and adhering to non-disclosure prohibitions must view those restrictions as reasonable, warranted, equitable, and legal.

This paper examines 30 entrepreneurs who created profitable companies, and who were also exemplary in their efforts towards social responsibility. It examines their management practices to understand how these socially responsible entrepreneurs created and built their companies. The study reveals that these socially responsible entrepreneurs founded their companies, at least in part, to achieve idealistic objectives, and pursued financial and non-financial objectives simultaneously. Most avoided financing from institutional sources, hired employees for their shared values, and shrewdly leveraged their social identities to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. Many of these entrepreneurs made unusual efforts to create a strong organizational culture and implement sustainable operational processes to meet their self-imposed ethical standards. These socially responsible entrepreneurs gave a substantial amount of their profits to causes of their choosing, and volunteered themselves as role models for other businesses and entrepreneurs to follow.

These three short vignettes depict investment professionals considering difficult financings for companies in their portfolios. For one reason or another, each company has under-performed expectations. Should the protagonist recommend that the firm participate or not, or should he try to revise it? Can the firm exercise any influence, and are the potential gains worth the time and effort that will be required?

Enables a thorough analysis of the Amazon.com business model and its evolution from 1994 to 2001. The case ends with the company poised on the brink of bankruptcy, and enables discussion of how to turnaround the company and leverage proprietary assets.

Describes the launch and initial results of the (PRODUCT) RED campaign, a social marketing initiative conceived of by U2's Bono and Bobby Shriver to combat AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. The company licensed the (RED) brand to partner companies, which initially included Gap, Apple, Motorola, Armani, and American Express. The business model was structured to benefit partner companies by increasing consumer purchases - of (RED)-branded products such as red iPods and phones - while also resulting in increased donations to the Global Fund.

Updates the (PRODUCT) RED (A) case through early 2008, including announcements of new partner relationships (with Hallmark, Microsoft, and Dell) as well as new communications initiatives.

Alex Sharpe's Portfolio provides an introduction to the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), portfolio diversification and risk management. Sharpe currently holds the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, but is considering a more active management strategy. Students must assess the risk of the two stocks she is considering adding to her portfolio. Students are provided with monthly stock returns and must calculate the standard deviations of the individual stocks and of the portfolios when one of the stocks is added to it. Students must calculate the stock's beta using regression and will learn that beta is the appropriate measure of risk to use in decision making since risk-averse investors do not hold stocks in isolation.

Corey Leibow eased his car back onto Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto, California. As president and CEO of Mercado, a company that provided the search and merchandising technology to power retail web sites, he had just met with another venture capital (VC) firm in an effort to raise a $26-million Series E round of financing. It was June 2008 and Mercado currently offered both on-premise and on-demand or "software as a service (SaaS)" versions of its applications. Despite the fact that revenue from both solutions was projected to grow in excess of 80 percent that year, Leibow found that investors generally pushed back on the company's hybrid approach to distribution. Some VCs wanted Mercado to focus solely on its traditional enterprise business based on a perpetual, on-premise licensing model. Other investors preferred to see Mercado morph into a pure play SaaS company. Leibow knew that he had to make a decision quickly in order to raise the capital the company needed, but he also wondered if it was possible to continue pursuing both angles. The choice he made would significantly affect Mercado's sales force and R&D team as well as which customers the company targeted and how it would attract and retain them.

In 2007, PCCW had to formulate a strategy for growth of its successful NOW TV platform and its quadruple play implementation outside of Hong Kong. Launched in September 2003 by PCCW (Hong Kong's largest telecommunications operator), NOW TV had swiftly become the world's most successful commercial IPTV deployment. By the end of June 2007, the service had an installed subscriber base of almost 820,000 and offered a choice of 143 TV channels, 71 of which were exclusive. However, opportunities for growth were inherently limited to Hong Kong (7 million inhabitants), which meant PCCW had to find ways to expand its NOW platform or seek to license parts of it internationally.

ASUSTek Computer was the world's largest manufacture of PC motherboards, yet when it tried to launch its new sub-notebook Eee PC, the organization faced challenges in doing things outside of its established processes. Though many of the team members had worked together for years, they had to find new ways of working as they tried to launch the new mobile Internet device category without undermining its existing notebook PC business.

This case analyzes Infosys' innovative approach to measuring performance in client relations. Infosys' strategy is evolving to build transformational partnerships from its original position as an outsourcer of end-to-end IT projects. A transformational partner helps clients to devise and implement strategies that will allow them to achieve a competitive advantage. The traditional paradigm of service-level agreements (SLAs), while sufficient for Infosys' needs early on, is not able to achieve the level of understanding that transformational partnerships require. Infosys applies the principles of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) to produce a feedback mechanism that allows the partnership to grow to the benefit of both parties.

The Blue Bulls rugby team enjoyed a fanatical fan base and had been performing well in local and international competitions recently. As a leading South African rugby franchise, the Blue Bulls faced a social and political environment that emphasized racial transformation. An up-and-coming Afrikaans musician had become best-seller with his De La Rey song, which was about a Boer soldier who calls on General De La Rey to lead the Afrikaner people to victory in the second South Africa War between the Boer Republic and colonial Britain. Given the emotive theme of the song and the response by some to view it as a reassertion of Afrikaner nationalism, the song had attracted significant media coverage and controversy. As part of the entertainment at the Vodacom Super 14 rugby game between Western Force and the Vodacom Blue Bulls, De La Rey was played over the stadium loudspeakers. This delighted most of the mainly White Afrikaans spectators. As the evening progressed, the acting head of the Blue Bulls Company, the organization that managed the Blue Bulls rugby team and the Loftus Versveld stadium, received a number of complaints from supporters about the playing of the De La Rey song and thus decided to remove the song from the official stadium playlist. By Monday morning, a media frenzy had erupted about this decision and the acting head was faced with a number of options of how to respond. The case is written for a first-year MBA module and is designed to explore the following themes: 1) race, identity and language as consumer behavior variables 2) spectator, supporter and consumer processes within sports marketing 3) sports brand development and sponsorship relationships.

In November 2006, Chris Michel left Military.com, which he founded in 1999, to start Affinity Labs, a global network of online communities. That month, Michel raised a Series A round of venture funding and established a partnership with Monster, which he had sold Military.com to. Within its first year of operations, Affinity Labs launched eight vertical portals including PoliceLink, NursingLink, TechCommunity, and IndiaOn. While the company was well ahead of its original plan to release four portals in 2007, Michel still faced a number of challenges. He had learned a great deal from Military.com and Affinity Labs' first launches, but in the case of each new community, was faced with how best to construct the vertical and attract a sufficiently large audience. While the model seemed highly scalable because each vertical used the same core technology, every sector had its unique features. In the fall of 2007, executives from Monster opened up a dialogue with Michel about selling the company or expanding their relationship. Michel wondered if the time was right to sell or if he should grow Affinity Labs further with the hope of creating a company that could command the high valuations seen recently by a number of social networking concerns.