This case presents an assessment of the strategic human resource management (SHRM) profiling process implemented at Becton Dickinson. It explores the questions the assessment raised about the viability of the process and what aspects might be changed if the process is to be continued.

Describes structural conditions in the American baseball industry in 1995. Although this case covers conditions leading to the 1994-95 strike, it is designed primarily for analysis of the structural tensions that arise between suppliers, buyers, and rivals as industry revenues diminish.

Consists of excerpts from Principles of Corporate Governance, a set of legal guidelines that enumerates the principal duties of corporate managers and directors, including fiduciary duty, duty of care, and duty of fair dealing. Also addresses legal obligations relating to tender offers and the supervision of employees.

Provides an introduction to the key concepts and questions individuals encounter in a diverse workplace. These concepts and questions are organized around three critical interactions and experiences in any individual's career: entry into an organization or work group; performance development; and interpersonal conflict. Relevant research noted.

Managers at Chicago Research and Trading, are at a final point in the negotiation and faced with a decision to sign the statement of intent to form a Russian-US Joint Venture. The pending decision highlights the importance of being willing to give up obtaining some additional information about the joint venture that would make MPI surer of their investment in favor of gaining the trust of their Russian partners. It also demonstrates the importance of intuition in decision making. JV Dialogue has gone on to be one of the most successful Russian-foreign joint ventures by most accounts. (A nine-minute video of the CEO answering students' key concerns about starting the joint venture can be purchased with the case, video 7A95G006.)

The general manager and director of training are becoming frustrated with the significant obstacles they must face. The challenge they face is converting an unfinished building into a Western-style hotel. Achieving this standard of quality and service did not come easily and the hotel required twice as many employees to operate than comparable hotels in the West. There were 20 expatriates managing the hotel when it opened. This number was to be reduced to 10 but it increased to 22. The number of employees and expatriate managers had a major impact on the budget. The inability to interest the staff in a career in the hotel or to want to become supervisors are significant obstacles facing management.

The president of a national computer sales and installation company wants to develop a plan to improve morale and reduce turnover. The company has grown rapidly is experiencing high employee turnover and low morale. In addition, a report, prepared by the controller, indicates a link between the increasing turnover and reducing customer retention (sales) data.

Frank Waterhouse, CEO of Argos Diesel, Europe, is exasperated. Bert Donaldson, who arrived in Zurich a year ago to create a European team--to facilitate communication among the parts suppliers that Argos has acquired over the past two years--just isn't working out. Although he has excellent credentials, both as a successful team builder at Argos International in Detroit and as a teacher in Cairo, his style seems abrasive here and he is behind schedule in implementing the team-building program. Moreover, Waterhouse is worried that Donaldson's failure will reflect badly on himself. But Waterhouse can't simply fire Donaldson. Donaldson is a smart man with a record of genuine successes in the States. If he gets fired, his career may be destroyed. Further, the CEO of Argos International thinks the world of him and is counting on Waterhouse to make this assignment work. Can Waterhouse teach Donaldson cultural awareness? Can he help him become effective in his job? Waterhouse has scheduled a conversation with Donaldson to discuss the situation. What should he say? For teaching purposes, this is the case-only version of the HBR case study. The commentary-only version is reprint 95401Z. The complete case study and commentary is reprint 95401.

Frank Waterhouse, CEO of Argos Diesel, Europe, is exasperated. Bert Donaldson, who arrived in Zurich a year ago to create a European team--to facilitate communication among the parts suppliers that Argos has acquired over the past two years--just isn't working out. Although he has excellent credentials, both as a successful team builder at Argos International in Detroit and as a teacher in Cairo, his style seems abrasive here and he is behind schedule in implementing the team-building program. Moreover, Waterhouse is worried that Donaldson's failure will reflect badly on himself. But Waterhouse can't simply fire Donaldson. Donaldson is a smart man with a record of genuine successes in the States. If he gets fired, his career may be destroyed. Further, the CEO of Argos International thinks the world of him and is counting on Waterhouse to make this assignment work. Can Waterhouse teach Donaldson cultural awareness? Can he help him become effective in his job? Waterhouse has scheduled a conversation with Donaldson to discuss the situation. What should he say? In 95401 and 95401Z, Doulgas A. Ready, Susan Schneider, Bjorn Johansson, Fons Trompenaars, and Roman Borboa offer advice on this fictional case study.

Frank Waterhouse, CEO of Argos Diesel, Europe, is exasperated. Bert Donaldson, who arrived in Zurich a year ago to create a European team--to facilitate communication among the parts suppliers that Argos has acquired over the past two years--just isn't working out. Although he has excellent credentials, both as a successful team builder at Argos International in Detroit and as a teacher in Cairo, his style seems abrasive here and he is behind schedule in implementing the team-building program. Moreover, Waterhouse is worried that Donaldson's failure will reflect badly on himself. But Waterhouse can't simply fire Donaldson. Donaldson is a smart man with a record of genuine successes in the States. If he gets fired, his career may be destroyed. Further, the CEO of Argos International thinks the world of him and is counting on Waterhouse to make this assignment work. Can Waterhouse teach Donaldson cultural awareness? Can he help him become effective in his job? Waterhouse has scheduled a conversation with Donaldson to discuss the situation. What should he say? In 95401 and 95401Z, Douglas A. Ready, Susan Schneider, Bjorn Johansson, Fons Trompenaars, and Roman Borboa offer advice on this fictional case study.

The essence of business success lies in making sure you're playing the right game. How do you know if it's the right game? What can you do if it's the wrong game? To help managers answer those questions, the authors have developed a framework that draws on the insights of game theory. The primary insight of game theory is the importance of focusing on others. In other words, companies should consider both cooperative and competitive ways to change the game. Who are the participants in the game of business? The authors introduce a schematic map that represents all the players and all the interdependencies among them.

With institutional investors, regulatory authorities, the financial press, and the fear of lawsuits all pressuring boards of public corporations to be more active, many directors are seeking practical ways to conduct strategic oversight. Gordon Donaldson's strategic audit provides an orderly way for boards to review strategy without invading management's territory. Usually, there are three triggers that motivate boards to get involved in strategy: the retirement of a CEO, a precipitous decline in profitability, or an unsolicited takeover attempt. These triggers force a board into a reactive mode and are not conducive to effective oversight. Managers are expected to turn strategic vision into operational reality, but directors represent shareholders and must evaluate strategy based on how the company's returns compare with those of other investment opportunities. Donaldson suggests that a low-key, behind-the-scenes audit of strategy, designed to lend credibility to management's leadership and not undermine it, is an important board tool.

Rigid, old corporate styles, like the inflexible steel and stone headquarters that symbolized them, are fast becoming quaint vestiges of things past. Many of today's managers are beginning to understand that encouraging some behaviors at the edge of accepted organizational propriety can actually help their companies achieve success in this new competitive environment. And hot groups are helping organizations do just that. Based on years of observing and participating in hot groups, the authors describe the conditions under which such groups flourish, the behaviors they exhibit, the type of leadership they require, and the benefits they bring. For those executives who believe that more hot groups might help stir the hearts and minds of their people, there remains the question of how to make them happen. The authors offer suggestions that managers can follow to create an environment fertile enough to allow hot groups to grow.

Smart companies may incur huge losses when they enter unknown territory--new alliances, markets, products, technologies. Failures could be prevented or their cost contained if managers approached innovative ventures with the right planning and control tools. Discovery-driven planning is a practical tool that acknowledges the difference between planning for a new venture and for a more conventional business. Using Kao Corp.'s entry into floppy disks, the authors present a step-by-step approach to help companies think differently about planning. Managers should begin with the bottom line and work their way up the income statement, first determining a new venture's profit potential.

It's no secret that managing a brand in today's chaotic marketplace is a daunting task. Consumers are bombarded with messages from broadcast and narrow-cast television, radio, on-line computer networks, the Internet, faxes, telemarketing, and niche magazines. But by harnessing new and emerging technologies, companies can start real-time dialogues with their customers and provide interactive services with valuable side effects. Netherlands-based Philips NV, for example, used a research team to brainstorm with children and adults to develop a new product; in the end, its enthusiastic young product developers became potential loyal customers. Marketing managers must take responsibility for systems that link companies with customers, suppliers, and distributors. They must give consumers access and learn to think of feedback as part of product development. They need to provide customers with support and information. Finally, they need to become personally competent in information technology and to expand the role of marketing within the organization.

Many companies have used activity-based costing in onetime profitability studies. But when companies integrate ABC into critical management systems and use it to make day-to-day decisions--when they use it as activity-based management--it becomes a powerful tool for continuously rethinking and improving a business. Most managers do not realize that implementing activity-based management is a major organizational-change effort that involves a tremendous amount of work. The biggest obstacle is resistance from employees. The authors focus on two companies--Chrysler Corp. and Safety-Kleen Corp.--whose success in implementing activity-based management can serve as a model for other companies. The benefits they have reaped have been 10 to 20 times their investments in their programs.

In the mid-twentieth century, global organizations began to promise employees economic security, personal fulfillment, and respect in return for performing clearly delineated activities. Employees were willing to make sacrifices, and employers were willing to invest in training in the mutual expectation of future reward. But now, intense competition and rapid change are destroying predictability. Virtual organizations and many current managerial practices, such as reengineering, continuous improvement, matrix management, and "rightsizing," ignore this human need. As a result, employees keep their resumes up to date and their commitments to a minimum. The best way to approach organizational change is with the realization that dire predictions are better than no predictions at all or positive predictions that no one believes. Managers must make few promises and keep those they do make. The more managers make clear to employees which courses of action will improve their lives, the more employees can focus on creating value.

Manufacturing managers in a broad array of industries agree that achieving low cost and high quality is no longer enough to guarantee success. In the face of fierce, low-cost competition and an army of high-quality suppliers, companies are increasingly concentrating on flexibility as a way to achieve new forms of competitive advantage. Having acknowledged the importance of flexibility, however, managers in industry after industry are finding it frustratingly difficult to improve. In a quest to help manufacturing managers begin to understand why the improvement of flexibility has been so elusive, author David Upton embarked on a study of more than 60 factories in North America that manufacture fine paper. Upton found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the flexibility of the plants depended much more on the people in the operation than on any technical factor.

Examines an Indian joint venture between a large U.S. telecommunications company and a small Indian software company, including a business and legal analysis of a joint-venture term sheet. Issues include extraterritorial application of U.S. antitrust and civil rights laws, protection for computer software afforded by Indian intellectual property and employment law, application of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and circumstances under which a buyer of goods can stop payment on a letter of credit issued in favor of a seller that shipped nonconforming goods.

A high-technology manufacturing company was recently given profit-and-loss "stand-alone" status by its parent. No longer a captive supplier, it must seek new markets for its technology and products on the outside world. Describes a benchmarking study by a group of consultants to determine future operations improvement.