With their announcement on December 8, 1997, of their proposed merger, the CEOs of Union Bank of Switzerland and Swiss Bank Corporation must prepare a plan of integration of the two firms. This case presents the press release of the announcement and relates the reaction of investors and journalists. The case also presents a framework for setting the strategy of post-merger integration and summarizes the integration task before the executives. The tasks for the students include: 1. Assess the public communication of this deal. The public announcement launches the integration effort and sets a tone that can help or hinder the subsequent combination. 2. Survey the integration planning process. The executives of the two firms were committed to having a detailed integration plan in place before the consummation of the deal--this is consistent with current thinking about the desirability of avoiding a slow integration. Thus, the case is an illustration of the kinds of issues that must be resolved quickly. 3. Describe and evaluate the integration strategy of the new firm. The case surveys the process of integration planning between the announcement and consummation dates of the merger and outlines the approaches in the various business units. The student must consider the influence of various strategic issues including the balance of autonomy versus absorption, relatedness, and control versus consultation (these are described in the case.) The (A) case in the series describes the proposed terms of merger and invites students to value the benefits of the deal and assess the strategic motives. The (C) case summarizes the integration effort and the economic results over the five years following the transaction. It is recommended that the instructor distribute the (A) case for advance preparation by students and hold the (B) and (C) cases for discussion after the (A) case.
In today's organizations, leaders need to be able to influence employees to be motivated and committed to high performance; no longer can managers simply get by dealing with employees only through a power relationship or by telling employees what to do. Leaders need to look beyond behavior (level one) to their employees' thinking (level two) and their VABEs (values, assumptions, beliefs, and expectations--level three) about their lives, the world, their work, and so on. This note explains the differences between these three levels of human activity.
This note is in introduction on what leadership is. The definition proposed is that real leadership is accomplished by the kind of person who is able to 1) see what needs to be done; 2) understand the underlying forces at play in a situation; 3) initiate action to change things. A person who wants to become a leader in his organization needs to learn and observe as much as possible about the organization and to think about where it should be going. He or she should go beyond his immediate situation to think about this, to have a proactive point of view of the business as a whole.
With increasing pollution and congestion, European car manufacturers were concerned that governments might eventually ban conventional cars from city centers. A smaller car had the possibility of escaping such a ban. The producer of Swatch watches, SMH AG (Swiss Corp. for Microelectronics and Watchmaking Industries, Ltd.), came up with the novel idea of an environmentally friendly but stylish supercompact car. The smarta would embody a whole new notion of mobility, where owning a smart car would mean purchasing an uninterrupted mobility solution, referred to as smartmove. The program would offer the smart customer attractive, favorably priced parking spaces, access to other vehicles from AVIS and car-sharers, access to other means of transport, and reduced prices for transporting the smart on ferries and trains.
Juan Luis Rojas, commercial planning manager of a Caja de Ahorros (savings bank), faces the challenge of motivating the branches to sell more long-term mortgages and ponders whether to use transfer prices to achieve his objective.
Larry Baer, executive vice-president and COO, was eager to improve profitability for the San Francisco Giants baseball team. Over the last few years, the Giants have had a number of successes. They successfully built the first privately financed ball park in over 30 years. They set all-time records in season ticket holders, attendance, and sponsorship advertising. At the same time, the team was highly competitive in the field, ranking first or second in the league and making it to the World Series in 2002. However, they were expected to incur significant operating losses. Baer wondered what he should do.
Atlas must decide whether to acquire La Indeca, increasing its Central American presence, or to focus on larger Latin American markets where higher growth is possible. In the year 2000, Jorge Rodriguez was in charge of Atlas Electrica, the largest home appliance firm in Central America. Although it had almost doubled its sales in the 1990s, by the end of the decade Atlas was experiencing a declining market share in its home region and facing increasing competition from outside the region, especially from Mexican and Korean multinationals. At the time, Atlas' main competitor in Central America, El Salvador-based Indeca, was up for sale. Atlas Electrica, based in Costa Rica, served more than a dozen Latin American countries. Since its establishment in 1961, it had served Central American markets with different types of home appliances, later focusing on white-goods for middle-income segments of Central American consumers. In the mid-1990s, through a strategic alliance with Sweden's AG Electrolux, Atlas had expanded to Latin American markets beyond Central America.
World Bank IT provides services (communications, applications, video conferencing, knowledge sharing, distance learning, information sharing, client commerce, crisis management, etc.) on a global basis to the poorest countries in the globe via satellites. This case covers the bank's global business strategy transformation and the role that IT plays in enabling that vision. Covers strategy and implementation topics and conveys a sense of using IT to narrow the digital divide on a global scale while recapping the evolution of the bank's IT strategy and implementation from 1995 to 2003.
This case traces the development of the balanced scorecard for a fast-growing biotech company in transition. It reports how the new CEO embraces the scorecard concept early to explain and measure the progress of his strategic objectives to the various stakeholders. The case subsequently traces the rollout and development of the scorecards as they cascade throughout the organization. Finally, the North American CFO confronts the problem of relating scorecard targets to individual performance goals of his finance team.
This case deals with a division of Rosemount, Inc., with concerns about meeting customer delivery requirements. Although the delivery problems result from long lead times throughout the ordering, production, and delivery process, the focus is on the manufacturing plant. The goal set for the protagonist, Mike Severson, is to reduce the production cycle time from five days to three.
Describes the Magic Matrix, which is both a chart and a process that enables executives to manage their product/service lines, and market segments and accounts simultaneously. The Magic Matrix has proven to be a powerful planning and analysis tool for such processes as sales forecasting, profitability analysis, and resource allocation. Explains, in detail, various forms of the Magic Matrix and how they can be used in a wide variety of management processes.
The market leader has the strongest ability among its competitors to shape an oligopolistic, segmented market in its favor. Market leadership is the result of the marketing leadership process including four steps: strategic visioning, integrated planning, managing performance, and marketing controllership. To some extent, market leadership is naturally sustainable. But, there are also natural processes that undermine the market leader's ability to maintain its position. Discusses this related set of topics.
The case describes the problem facing the president and credit manager of Warner-Lambert with respect to financial position of a major distributor. The distributor's financial statements have just been received by the company and the situation is much worse than anticipated. The survival of the distributor is clearly threatened and Warner-Lambert must consider a new distribution network for the territory.
A new, minimally invasive medical device has achieved only one-third of its budget. Was the problem one of marketing strategy, sales, reimbursement, and/or clinical trials?
This is the first case study of 12 in the Jack Wright series of cases on Corporate Governance. This first case describes the process by which Jack came to be asked to join the board of Mega Corporation. The case requires students to consider the pros and cons of board membership and decide whether they would recommend Jack join the board.
This case deals with the means by which a company's board assess its strengths and weaknesses, identifies the skills and experience it needs, derives a list of suitable candidates, conducts "due diligence" in the process of narrowing in the list, and invites desirable candidates to join the board.