Scott Hall, vice-president of finance and chief financial officer of Champion Road Machinery Limited, was preparing a presentation on the company's proposed dividend policy for a board of directors' meeting scheduled for the middle of August. It had been only three months since the company completed its initial public offering, at which time the prospectus stated that: The company does not anticipate paying cash dividends on the common shares in the foreseeable future, but intends to retain future earnings for reinvestment in the business. However, earnings were well ahead of those projected in the prospectus and the company had succeeded in managing cash better than anticipated.
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.
An extremely successful consultant is having difficulty balancing his career and family needs. He is mid-career in a demanding job requiring increasing amounts of time and commitment. The pressures to produce from his boss and clients are becoming more difficult to manage and his family life is suffering.
This case describes the visioning process at Xerox Canada. The chairman, CEO and president of Xerox Canada has been meeting with her leadership team since eight o'clock in the morning to craft the organization's new vision statement. Three and a half hours into the meeting the team hits a road block. With 30 minutes left in the session, the CEO must decide whether and how to proceed. (A three-minute video can be purchased with the case, video 7A95M015.
The new editor of the London Free Press (LFP) was appointed in November, 1987, with a mandate to make changes. Like most other North American daily newspapers, the LFP had been gradually losing readership, and its share of advertising revenues in the community was shrinking. Despite its ability to remain profitable, the new editor thought that it was not living up to its potential, especially since it was the only daily newspaper in London. He feared that there were ominous signs of continuing decline in market share, which could only mean still lower profits in the future. He had been hired from the Toronto Star and put in charge of LFP's newsroom and editorial department to do whatever was necessary to reverse this trend. Now, in 1991, he wondered if it would be possible to stop the slow decline of the newspaper, or if its shrinkage was an inevitable consequence of broader trends in the information industry and Canadian society. A follow-up case (9A95M017) is available.
This case is designed for in-class distribution to build on the London Free Press (A) case, 9A95M016. It presents information about an organizational change proposal involving the reorganization of the editorial department into cross-functional work groups which is designed to support the locally-responsive strategy of the London Free Press. The new cluster form of organization meets resistance from many who question not only whether it is a viable option, but also whether anything needed to be done at all. McLeod must decide whether, and how to proceed.
Set in July 1995, this case invites students to assess the financial performance of Federal Express and United Parcel Service, two close competitors in the U.S. overnight express package-delivery industry. Although the case requires no numerical computations, it does ask students to interpret results and reflect on the implications. The contrasting financial records of the two firms afford a platform for exploring several important issues, including (1) the definition and use of "economic value added" (EVA) as a measure of corporate performance; (2) a comparison of EVA with other classic approaches of historical performance analysis; (3) the exercise of skills in business-segment analysis; (4) the exploration of the financial implications of intense competition and corporate transformation; and (5) the definition of "excellence" from a corporate-finance point of view.
Describes the long waiting time experienced by customers in Health Stops and asks students to specify the changes in its business model which could help solve the problem.
The producer of a stage show society needs to use network planning as part of project management to ensure that 10 performances are scheduled well over the next four months. Students will have to construct a network diagram, identify the critical path, and address questions regarding activity crashing. What is particularly unique is that they will have to create a list from the data presented to them at a meeting with the assistant producer.
Reengineering was introduced at CIGNA Corp. in 1988. CIGNA entered a second wave reengineering effort through a major project at CIGNA P&C, one of CIGNA's larger businesses. P&C was in financial crisis and as a result brought in a new executive team in 1991 to head the transformation effort. This case analyzes the phases of P&C transformation, P&C's business process redesign, their use of information technology in the form of client/server architecture to support the strategy, and the use of the balanced scorecard to drive transformation. Presents the progress of P&C's effort as of January 1995--marking the end of Phase I (analysis and design) and looking forward to Phase 2 (implementation).
Stonehaven is a disguised version of a shoe factory located in Central Europe that must respond quickly to mix and volume changes for the U.S.-based company. Shoemaking involves several distinctly different processes, which must be designed and managed in a way to give high performance (lead time, cost, productivity).
An investor must prepare pro forma financial statements as a basis for a third-party investment in his new company. The investor must make a number of accounting policy decisions.
Discusses the two stages of an organization's reengineering effort--the design and implementation. While the design phase needs to be revolutionary, an organization must assess whether the appropriate path to implementation should be evolutionary or revolutionary. Discussions are based on a two-year study of reengineering efforts at over 40 companies by the authors.
Cambridge Technology Partners uses a highly innovative product strategy, supported by a human resources strategy, that has been very successful. However, high growth rates jeopardize product quality while tension about relative compensation levels between sales and operations threatens the firm's culture.