A Wall Street analyst has just learned that FPL (the holding company for Florida's largest electric utility) may cut its dividend in several days despite a 47-year streak of consecutive dividend increases. In response to the deregulation of the electric utility industry, FPL has substantially revised its competitive strategy over the past several years. The analyst must decide whether a change in dividend policy will be a part of FPL's financial strategy in this deregulated environment.
Describes the economic logic leading to the deregulation of the U.S. airline industry in 1978 and subsequent competitive developments. The roles of computerized reservation systems, airport hubs, route strategies, and fleet management are raised as unanticipated tactical responses. The decision focus of the case emphasizes the prospect of regulation. A rewritten version of an earlier case.
Provides an overview of the company's history, industry, competitive position, strategy, and organization. Analyzes the culture and morale at Apple. Written at a time when the company faces a very compelling threat to their business, and when morale within the company is very low. The purpose is to identify the key organizational issues that the company must address.
Describes the events to follow Datavision (A) and (B). Covers the aftermath of two previous team-building meetings and leaves off with the protagonist struggling with how to proceed.
The expanded use of project management techniques is not always met by a concomitant increase in the pool of competent project managers. Senior managers readily acknowledge the ad hoc manner in which most project managers acquire their skills, but are unsure how better to develop a supply of well-trained project leaders for the future. Over the last several years, we have conducted interviews with dozens of senior project managers asking the question: "What information were you never given as a novice product manager that, in retrospect, could have made your job easier?" From the responses, we offer some rules as a useful means of understanding the challenge project managers face and some ways to address these concerns: understand the unique context of project management; recognize project team conflict as progress; understand who the stakeholders are and what they want; accept and use the political nature of organizations; understand what "success" means, operationally; remember that enthusiasm and despair are both infectious; build and maintain a cohesive team; and use time carefully, or it will use you.
A new CEO is hired to manage the turnaround of a family-owned newspaper publisher. In a departure from previous management, he implements a new compensation scheme that explicitly ties executive pay to market-value-based measures of firm performance. Because the company is not publicly traded, payoffs under the executive compensation plan are based on the firm's appraised value. Determining a value for this company (including any value created by the turnaround manager) is a complicated exercise. Additional complications arise because the firm's value also determines potential cash distributions to family members who wish to sell their shares back to the company. Certain family goals may also be inconsistent with the CEO's objective of maximizing the present value of the firm's assets.
Do men and women have distinct leadership styles? Do they approach management differently? This note summarizes the two perspectives that have dominated the ongoing debate on gender differences in organizational leadership and management behavior. Psychological theories emphasize the different outlook, attitudes, and values inculcated in men and women during their development and socialization. In contrast, situational theories argue that gender differences are few, and largely an artifact of differences in opportunity, power, and lack of representation in business and organizational settings. The evidence from research studies is reviewed briefly.
Describes a managerial network as a set of relationships critical to a manager's ability to get things done, get ahead, and develop personally and professionally. "Networking" refers to the activities associated with developing and managing such relationships. Describes different types of networks, outlines characteristics that make networks useful, and concludes with practical guidelines for developing a useful network.
The treasurer of a Toronto men's wear manufacturer attempts to negotiate bank financing for his company. The task is made more complex by the need to purchase material from Hong Kong and sales made to the United States and Italy.
A project manager in the Operational Research Department of an automobile assembly plant must decide how he can most effectively redirect his team to meet management's deadline and design expectations. For five months he had been supervising the work of three young company employees who were developing a simulated assembly line. However, because his current responsibilities left him in charge of four or five projects at a time, all in varying stages of completion, he had left his assistants to work together with very little intervention from him. As a result, he is facing the pressure of an uncompleted project and an unnecessarily elaborate design. (This case should be used with Antar Automobile Company - Part II: Team and Individual Objectives and Antar Automobile Company - Part III: Conflicting Objectives.)
This case examines a proposed marketing joint venture which would introduce Neilson brand chocolate bars to Mexican consumers. Pepsico Foods' Mexican subsidiary -- already servicing 450,000 retail stores -- has suggested a joint branding agreement. Alternative distribution arrangements are available which would allow Neilson to maintain greater control over its name, at the cost of slower market access. (A sequel to this case is available bearing the same title, case 995G04.)
Samuel Kaymen and Gary Hirshberg founded Stonyfield Farm in 1983, in part to demonstrate that "environmentally and socially responsible businesses can also be profitable." In 1994, the company has grown to over $21 million in revenues, derived mainly from refrigerated and frozen yogurt. It has expanded beyond its core New England base to natural food stores nationwide and to supermarkets in 20 states. All its production, however, is concentrated in its New Hampshire plant, which has limited the company's growth on the West Coast. Now Stonyfield has to decide whether to build a plant in California. It has also entered a joint venture agreement to make ice cream in Russia. It faces competitive challenges in its traditional markets as well.
CIBA-GEIGY is a large, diversified multinational corporation that transforms itself in the 1990s through a massive structural and cultural change. The case describes the changes implemented and the processes used to effect change in portfolio, people, and structures. By the middle of 1994 CIBA is assessing how effective the transformation has been and whether it has gone too far, or not far enough.