<p style="color: rgb(197, 183, 131);"><strong> AWARD WINNER - Corporate Social Responsibility Award, European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) Case Writing Competition</strong></p><br>In early 2005, Nestle is in the midst of a decision: whether or not the Fairtrade mark should be applied on Partners' Blend, a new instant coffee product to be marketed in the growing UK 'ethical' coffee segment. Application of the Fairtrade mark on the Partners Blend product means that Nestle must go against its historical position of not offering minimum guaranteed prices to coffee farmers. As part of their deliberations, Nestle executives must consider their coffee sourcing program at large, their corporate social responsibility framework, Nescafe and corporate Nestle branding, the UK market and the potential consumer benefits or backlash that could result from releasing such a product.
The Festival by the Sea (FBTS) has been successful by all accounts except financially. As the General Manager reviews the recent performance of the festival, she also noted several challenges lied ahead. The events industry needs better educated professionals, ethical issues need to be addressed, temporary employees and volunteers need to be successfully hired and retained, and sponsors need to be attracted in order to cover the costs of the New Brunswick festival. The General Manager must determine how to ensure the viability of the FBTS.
The chief executive officer of Calgary-based Guest-Tek Interactive Entertainment Ltd., a leading provider of high-speed Internet access to the hotel industry, must consider whether and how his company should grow its business overseas. Ninety-seven per cent of Guest-Tek's fiscal year 2003 revenue was derived from North American hotels - a market he knew would eventually become saturated. Guest-Tek had listed publicly in January 2004. Both internal and external investors now demanded results. Other geographic markets held the promise of new growth and competitors were already pursuing those opportunities.
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is an NGO -headquartered in London and established by WWF and Unilever in 1997 to set up a certification and eco-labeling system for sustainable fishing. The case describes the MSC's initial and more recent challenges including the Tragedy of the Commons, a wide range of less willing stakeholders, and the complexity of certifying fisheries on sustainability criteria. It also outlines management decisions to meet at least some of the challenges: improved transparency and engagement with stakeholders, new governance structures and certification methodologies. Learning objectives: Participants should 1) see the challenges associated with the certification of sustainable business practices (in general and in fisheries in particular); 2) reflect on the institutional dilemma presented by the wide range of often conflicting stakeholder demands; 3) see the necessity to carry out strategic (i.e. focused) stakeholder engagement (find the most important allies) and establish effective governance structures.
This note defines and discusses the measurement of corruption, describes corruption's principal effects on firms and societies, and discusses its relevance of to managers and to the efforts of firms to promote higher living standards throughout the world.
Explores the Mozilla Foundation's decisions leading up to the launch of Firefox 1.0, including its default browser, managing corporate partnerships, managing product development, and moving toward a revenue-based model. Mitchell Baker, president of the Mozilla Foundation, is faced with a crucial question in the impending hours of the Firefox 1.0 launch. Firefox, the reincarnation of the Netscape Mozilla browser, has had tremendous success despite Mozilla's loss of the Browser Wars to Internet Explorer years before. After AOL acquired Netscape, the Mozilla team had been unsure of their future, but they recently gained their independence with a new independent, nonprofit foundation. What partners should Firefox include as their default search partners? Should this relationship be commercial?
In the summer of 2005, LinkedIn, a two-year-old start-up, was choosing between two options to monetize its 5 million business people network. Members could contact each other through trusted intermediaries on the network to offer or seek jobs, consulting engagements, expertise, and financing. The company had outpaced its competitors by building the most populous online business network, but it had little revenue to show its investors. The first revenue option entailed keeping the existing features unchanged and rolling out a bundle of eight new services for a monthly fee of $15. These services would be targeted at network members who had forged many connections, logged in frequently, and viewed the profiles of many other members. The second proposal involved changing a basic design feature of LinkedIn by allowing members to contact each other without intermediaries for a fee. Fewer members would avail themselves of this feature, but those who did would be willing to pay as much as $5-$15 per message. This option ran a substantial risk of alienating members and would prompt some to abandon LinkedIn.
Supplement to case UV1296 Jeweler Peter Reines was intrigued by the diamond ring that had been dropped off by Ashley Gibson for his inspection. The center diamond was certainly more than three carats, the cut was old European, and the setting was exquisite. A friend with an impressive collection of antique jewelry, who came by the store, offered $30,000 for the ring. That offer translated into a maximum price to Gibson of $27,500 if she were interested in selling it.
Jenny Chen, CA, CFA, CMC has been hired by Jane Wallace of High Performance Tire. Jane, who inherited the firm from her parents, had successfully run the company for many years. When she transferred the responsibility to her son William in 2001, he began to make several changes in order to expand the number of outlets, diversify the product offering, and cut costs in the company. In 2004, the company was having difficulties and Jane decided to become more involved in the family business once again. Jenny's task is to review and analyze the company operations and make recommendations.
In 1999, Pulsar's chairman and CEO, Jenny Jones appointed her daughter-in-law, Kyla Jacobs-Jones to run Caltron. Caltron, a calculator manufacturer, was fully owned by Pulsar. Caltron was facing stiff competition from abroad, and in 2001 members of Pulsar's board of directors began to put pressure on Jones to divest it. Jacobs-Jones was given two years to turn the unit around before revisiting the decision to divest Caltron. In 2004, Dan O'Shea, CA, CFA, a corporate financial consultant with KPMG has been hired to review and analyze the company operations and make recommendations.
Coolidge (CKC), a chemical manufacturer, is being sued for patent infringement. The plaintiffs are the patent holder and its sole licensee, who is also a CKC competitor. An analyst at CKC has done a breakeven decision analysis from CKC's perspective, balancing going to court with settling out of court, but no analysis has been done for the plaintiffs.
In December 2003 the management team at Saurer Twisting Systems (STS) was facing increasing competition in the critically important Chinese market. Local competitors in China were undercutting the price of Saurer's CompactTwister, which was manufactured in China, by over 50%. The company was considering the introduction of a lower cost machine targeted at Chinese and Asian customers, who would not buy its high cost machine. Margins were likely to be significantly lower on the new machine, and the new machine might cannibalize their high-end product. If the STS team did decide to introduce the new machine, it would have to make some difficult decisions about positioning, pricing, naming the product, and sales strategy. It was also not clear how their Chinese competitors would respond to the proposed new product.
The vice-president of operations must submit a valuation and recommendation to expand his plant to handle a doubling of sales over the next three years. Students will have to understand the process review for capital allocation in this large corporation in order to make their recommendation, as well as complete a discounted cash flow.
The vice-president of operations must submit a valuation and recommendation to expand his plant to handle a doubling of sales over the next three years. Students will have to understand the process review for capital allocation in this large corporation in order to make their recommendation, as well as complete a discounted cash flow.
The Oracle acquisition of PeopleSoft in 2005 seems like ancient history (at least in technology years). In fact, the PeopleSoft acquisition is not even Oracle's latest major acquisition (Siebel was acquired in September 2005). One of the primary reasons that Oracle acquired PeopleSoft was to gain access to the 10,000+ customer base of PeopleSoft (and JD Edwards), which provides more than $1 billion in annual revenue. This customer base is a gift that keeps on giving in the form of a lucrative maintenance stream. Discusses options that PeopleSoft customers and, by extension, other enterprise software owners pursue to minimize enterprise resource planning (ERP) ongoing costs of ownership. Encourages students to evaluate several criteria that can be used to lower ERP costs.