Describes the start-up, strategy, organizational design, and operations of SCORE! Educational Centers, an after-school tutoring enterprise. Alan Tripp, founder and CEO, is faced with growing organizational stresses and a looming venture capital deadline. Examines Tripp's leadership, management style, and strategy. Focuses on the steps he takes to build the company into a viable organization.
Describes Rob Waldron's actions upon assuming leadership of SCORE! Educational Centers, an after-school tutoring enterprise. Examines the issue of acquiring and growing a small, self-owned company into a professional organization. Focuses on the steps Waldron takes to address a growing employee morale problem. Concludes as Waldron must decide whether or not to alter the company's recruiting strategy.
Describes the death of a cancer patient in one of the nation's premier cancer treatment centers and examines the organizational and process characteristics that may have contributed to the medical error.
Examines the implementation of a new patient care delivery model at Massachusetts General Hospital. Uses clinical and financial data to examine different choices for staffing non-physician health care professionals and to understand the challenges of managing change across multiple professions in the hospital environment. Recently promoted to senior vice president of Patient Care Services, Jeanette Ives Erickson must decide whether a model for patient care delivery is the best way to improve care and reduce costs in the midst of extreme budget pressures and a rapidly changing health care environment.
Dr. Hans Fritz is 37 years old when he arrives in Bangkok on March 1, 1998 to assume his position as general manager of Novartis Thailand. Novartis is the world's largest pharmaceutical company. He had lobbied to transition from a staff position to this line management assignment. He encounters an organization in chaos, a demoralized staff, and a market in crisis. The case describes his first month in this new position. His most important task at this stage is to set priorities when everything needs to be done at once. He has to decide whom to trust on his team and what to do in the short, medium, and long term.
Intel PRC was a division of Intel Corp., a U.S. $20 billion semiconductor manufacturer. A newly appointed division head makes a decision that an employee responds to emotionally, with a deep resentment, creating the potential for conflict within the department. The incident forces the manager to examine whether there are deeper organizational or communication problems he needs to consider. Cross-cultural issues come into play given that the manager, although originally from China, was educated and gathered extensive experience in the west and was thus considered an expatriate by his employees. The case examines the effect of organizational culture on an employee's behavior.
Describes the perceptual mapping techniques in a non-technical fashion. The procedure is useful for the depiction of the structure of the market. Discusses alternative methods, presents examples of each, and shows how the maps can be used in marketing decision making.
Presents a non-traditional description of the conjoint analysis methodology. Discusses the process by which a study is done and cites areas of application.
Daryl Buckmeister, CEO of The Chicken Coop, must decide whether to invest in market research, how much money to spend, and which programs to fund. His two vice presidents (of quality and marketing) have presented very different proposals.
Follows one company's path through the uncharted terrain of government regulation and the Internet. In March 1998, Network Associates announced it would begin selling powerful encryption software from its Dutch subsidiary. Such a move looked to the U.S. government like a violation of export regulations, but the company was confident it had operated within the bounds of law. Indeed, Network Associates appeared to have deftly exploited the uncertain nature of government regulation in a time of rapidly changing technology. Encryption export regulations had become highly controversial in the mid-1990s, and were the subject of ongoing legislative debate in 1998. While the regulations had been slowly evolving toward permissiveness, the pace of change did not meet the expectations of many companies in Silicon Valley. Network Associates was the first company to boldly challenge the export regulations and assert its commercial rights to sell its encryption products to foreign users. While such a move gave the company distinct first-mover advantages, it was also a strategy that contained significant political risks.
A new MBA graduate joins a privately held family business and sets ambitious growth goals for the next five years. To enhance motivation, he proposes a new incentive plan that will grant him a share of the wealth he creates. However, the family owners have a more conservative view regarding executive compensation.
The importance of planning for a product recall can be seen in the large number of recalls, their increasing frequency, and the overall costs they incur, both direct and indirect. Direct costs include: communicating to all affected parties; the logistics of recovering, repairing, and returning the product; and the loss in profits due to diminished sales during and after the recall period. Indirect costs occur in lowered stock price and market value. This article offers a guide to planning during three phases of product recall: prior to, during, and after the recall. Proper readiness for product recalls can substantially minimize both direct and indirect costs.