A director within the leadership development program of a large multinational organization must decide how to manage a very difficult conversation she must have with her assistant director. The assistant director, who is older and more experienced (although less educated), interviewed for the director's position and didn't get it. The assistant director has never been happy reporting to her much younger boss, and has felt consistently left out of major decisions. The assistant director had confronted the director about her feelings and threatened to resign. How should the director handle this difficult conversation?

PepsiCo introduced Lay's potato chips to China in 1997. As its chips business grew in China, it faced increasing difficulties in securing a reliable supply of quality potatoes. In the North American market, Pepsi relied on external suppliers for its potatoes, but in China, it ran into problems both in sourcing locally and in getting its US supplier to grow potatoes on its behalf. The matter was further complicated by the fact that the Chinese government had banned the import of potatoes. Faced with numerous obstacles in sourcing potatoes in China, how should Pepsi go about securing this critical input? Should it rely on external suppliers given China's immature agribusiness industry, or should it integrate backwards to grow its own potatoes?

Early 2005 saw the first hostile takeover in Japan. Financed by foreign capital, the takeover startled Japan's traditional business establishments who now feared that the threat of hostile takeovers had finally become a reality in Japan. Meanwhile, Japan also went through numerous accounting scandals involving public companies and was seeing dramatic changes in disclosure and corporate-governance rules and regulations in regards to issuers of publicly traded securities and their officers and directors. Concurrently, Mr Hidezo Terai, president of World Co. Ltd, Japan ("World"), a publicly traded apparel company on the Tokyo and Osaka Stock Exchanges, considered returning the company to its private limited status and de-listing it from both the stock exchanges. The company believed doing so would allow them to introduce a management system for quick and flexible responses in the ever-changing fashion business. The market on the other hand suspected that such a move was driven by a need to seek relief from the new disclosure and corporate-governance rules and regulations, and to protect World from possible hostile takeovers

Many managers indicate that their organizations are very good at starting projects, but not so good at finishing them. According to this author, the reason most often cited is that marching orders change when other priorities are recognized. Employees find this extremely frustrating and wasteful, as it is difficult to make positive gains when managing on a sea of shifting priorities. The author suggests that there is a better way.

This case describes the difficult times Charles Schwab the company faced after the dot-com bust of the early 2000s. It also describes how Charles Schwab the man returned in July 2004 to take on the CEO position, and the strategic actions he took to fix the problems and refocus the company he founded over 30 years ago. The case shows how he was able to draw on the considerable remaining strengths of the company, not in the least its long-established culture that emphasized doing the right thing for customers. Two years following Schwab's return to the CEO job, the company turned in strong results. With the crisis of the past few years weathered, the case focuses on the challenges the company faces going forward as it pursues its strategy of offering good, consistent, un-conflicted investment advice to increasing numbers of smaller investors.

From his humble beginnings as a local salesman in New York, Henry J. Kaiser rose to become one of the leading industrialists of 20th century America. Though he had no technical engineering training, Kaiser mastered the management and execution of plans for several large scale projects that contributed to the growth and improvement of contemporary America, including the Hoover Dam, one of the wonders of the modern world. During World War II, when the United States desperately needed ships to deliver manpower and supplies overseas, Kaiser, who had never built a ship before, rose to the challenge and successfully directed the construction of thousands of Liberty ships. These merchant vessels gave the U.S. Navy the overwhelming might to claim victory at sea for America and her Allies. He pioneered shipbuilding techniques that not only allowed him to build ships at unprecedented rates, but he also spurred the whole shipbuilding industry to do the same. His fame made him the object of envy and scorn for shipbuilders all across America, yet he had never built a ship before the war. All of Kaiser's endeavors, from his beginnings in the construction industry all the way to his development of Hawaii's urban landscape, demonstrated his willingness to embrace the unknown, and his determination in the face of setbacks. His combination of entrepreneurship, perseverance, and compassion made him the embodiment of the American spirit.

As a farmer-owned cooperative, South Dakota Wheat Growers (SDWG) serves the needs of its 3,600 active farmer-members by supplying farm inputs and organizing the marketing and transportation of grain produced in the co-op's service territory. For almost 80 years, the majority of grain was shipped out of the area by rail to markets in the East and the Pacific Northwest. However, the recent expansion in ethanol production is changing the pattern of grain flow along with stimulating the local farm economy. SDWG's management and producer board must decide how to continue to meet the needs of their producer-owners under the new conditions.

CEO Wesley Edens and the five Fortress principals are contemplating a move unprecedented in the industry: Becoming the first hedge fund and private equity firm to complete an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). This case examines potential reasons for a leading alternative investment firm to go public, including the firm's own rationale relating to "people, permanence, currency, and capital," while also providing analyst expectations regarding target valuation and initial stock performance.

Philip Goldstein, the principal in a growing hedge fund and prominent activist investor, has taken a position in a Mexico-based closed-end fund. Following a hard-fought proxy contest in which he advocated for management to eliminate the fund's substantial discount, Goldstein earns a seat on the board of directors. Now he and the board are faced with the decision of how best to "unlock value" in the fund by delivering Net Asset Value (NAV) to shareholders. The case, which provides rich detail on the workings of closed-end funds (CEFs), invites students to examine the trade-offs among liquidating the fund, converting it to an open-end fund, or carrying out a self-tender offer. It also raises topics of fund selection and investing in country-specific funds such as Mexico.

In the early 20th century, public outrage at certain life insurance practices led to an investigation in New York State that threatened to curtail growth in the industry. Charles Evans Hughes guided the four-month-long Armstrong Investigation, which made startling revelations, and offered a number of controversial recommendations, several of which would forbid the most popular form of life insurance (tontine insurance), limit the growth of life insurers (which included several of the nation's largest financial institutions at the time), and prevent insurance firms from owning the stock of other companies. The New York State legislature approved all of the recommended measures, and sent the bill to the Governor for his signature. The life insurance industry objected, however, claiming that some of the new rules would reduce consumer choice and unnecessarily lower returns on company investments.

CEO and founder Atsumasa Tochiasako (52) sat in his Washington D.C. headquarters, looking with pride at the copy of a press release that would announce the latest in a broadening line of financial services that Washington D.C.-based Microfinance International Corporation (MFIC) had been providing for two years to a growing number of "unbanked" Hispanic nationals in the United States and their home countries.

Historically, the biggest obstacle that healthcare innovators, such as pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers, needed to overcome on their way to market was securing approval by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) or other international regulatory authorities. However, in the last decade, a new (sometimes even more challenging) hurdle had to be cleared: insurance coverage and reimbursement. Payers--either public payers, such as Medicare in the U.S. and the National Health Services (NHS) in the U.K., or private commercial payers, such as Blue Cross/Blue Shield and UnitedHealth Grou--could deny coverage for a technology that had received regulatory approval if they determined that the supporting evidence did not adequately demonstrate that the technology was superior to existing treatment alternatives that were already being reimbursed. This had the potential to create a potentially adversarial relationship between payers and innovators in cases where they had conflicting interpretations of the evidence regarding the cost, benefits, and risks of new technologies. The challenges to innovators in managing this conflict are illustrated in this case study by an example: the 2006 decision by the U.K.'s NHS to deny coverage for Exubera, a new form of inhaled insulin.

Six-person facilitated negotiation among representatives of the city, state, developer, insurer, and victims' families regarding the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Six-person facilitated negotiation among representatives of the city, state, developer, insurer, and victims' families regarding the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Six-person facilitated negotiation among representatives of the city, state, developer, insurer, and victims' families regarding the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Six-person facilitated negotiation among representatives of the city, state, developer, insurer, and victims' families regarding the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Six-person facilitated negotiation among representatives of the city, state, developer, insurer, and victims' families regarding the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Six-person facilitated negotiation among representatives of the city, state, developer, insurer, and victims' families regarding the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Six-person facilitated negotiation among representatives of the city, state, developer, insurer, and victims' families regarding the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.