A major shopping center developer and an insurance company form a joint venture to develop a 900,000 square foot super-regional shopping center. Describes the nine-year struggle to deal with market, regulatory, and financial issues to get the project ready for construction. However, there is now a need for additional equity, and the partners must decide if they should still go forward with the project and how the partnership should be restructured.
Taco Bell CEO, John Martin, boldly proclaims a growth goal of 200,000 points of access by the year 2000 (the company had approximately 3,600 in 1991). To realize such growth, Martin embraces a philosophy of continual change. The implications for Taco Bell are dramatic changes in organizational structure, culture, human resources, technology, and communications. In redefining its market and "thinking outside the box" in all aspects of its business, Taco Bell hopes to become a "super brand"--transcending not only categories but industries as well.
Describes the three business segments of PepsiCo (beverages, snack foods, and restaurants). It then explores the competitive environment within each segment and the response of PepsiCo's businesses. It seeks to show how PepsiCo CEO, D. Wayne Calloway, in a very "hands-off" and decentralized manner, achieves high growth rates in each segment through a process of "continual transformation." Calloway strives to hold together a fast-growing and rapidly changing business through shared values (instead of implementing tighter controls and increasing supervision).
In the 1980s, experts and executives alike heralded alternative dispute resolution (ADR) as a sensible, cost-effective way to keep corporations out of court and away from the kind of litigation that devastates winners almost as much as losers. But the great hopes for ADR faded quickly. What characterizes ineffective ADR? An emphasis on winning at any price, a lack of commitment to ADR on the part of both top-level management and company counsel, and the misconception that ADR is not really that different from litigation. But some companies are using ADR effectively--lowering costs, resolving disputes rapidly, and preserving business relationships. Few companies have made the commitment to ADR more effectively than NCR. In addition to boosting the commitment of top management to ADR, NCR has defined a number of goals to be pursued in the event of disputes.
Faced with an unprecedented number and variety of products on the market, managers are finding it more difficult to predict demand and plan production and orders accordingly. As a result, inaccurate forecasts are increasing and, along with them, the costs of those errors. A new approach to the entire forecasting, planning, and production process, accurate response entails first figuring out what forecasters can and cannot predict well. Then supply chains must be made fast and flexible so that managers can postpone decisions about their most unpredictable items until they have some market signals--like early-season sales results--to help correctly match supply with demand. Accurate response enables companies to use the power of flexible manufacturing and shorter cycle time much more effectively.
In his first six months as head of strategic planning for the Knoxville Co., Dan Richards was a whirlwind of efficiency. His work habits and enthusiasm were contagious; morale at Knoxville had improved markedly since his arrival. Almost overnight, however, Dan's performance waned. Over the next few weeks, his behavior continued to worsen. When finally confronted, Dan told the CEO that he needed to take some time off. Later, Dan's wife called to explain that Dan was a diagnosed manic-depressive and had checked into a mental hospital explaining, "The doctor thinks he'll be back to work in a month." But would a month be long enough? The CEO wasn't sure Dan should return at all. Five commentators offer general advice about managing mental illness in the workplace.
Many managers fail to realize that traditional measures, which focus on results, may help them keep score on the performance of their businesses but do not help a multifunctional team monitor the activities or capabilities that enable it to perform a given process. Nor do such results measures tell team members what they must do to improve their performance. Senior managers play an important role in helping teams develop performance measures by dictating strategic goals, ensuring that each team understands how it fits into those goals, and training a team to devise its own measures. But managers must never make the mistake of thinking that they know what is best for the team.
Transforming inefficient bureaucracies into dynamic, customer-oriented organizations is challenging under any circumstances. It is particularly daunting when revamping an enterprise as vast and multidimensional as the federal government. Many argue that it can't be done. David Osborne disagrees. Coauthor of Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector and senior advisor to the Clinton Administration, Osborne believes that change at the federal level is not only possible but also inevitable. In fact, many of the tools used to improve the performance of companies--worker empowerment, internal competition, and measurement--can be marshaled to "reinvent" the federal government. Reinvention is not about cutting waste or finding fraud. Its about restructuring and replacing large, centralized command-and-control bureaucracies with decentralized, entrepreneurial, customer-driven agencies that are pushed by competition and accountable for the results they deliver.
The Outward Bound raft trip in 1977 was meant to build better teamwork and teach the art and techniques of survival under difficult conditions. Over the week that followed, the five people on Raft No. 4 created a supportive atmosphere. Everyone was required to take a turn at the helm, a challenge that the men embraced but that the women tried to avoid and then carried out badly. On the fifth day, with one of the women at the rudder, the raft overturned in a rapids. The dunking was a narrow escape for them all, and from then on, only men took the helm. It was only when the trip was over that the author began to realize what really lay behind Raft No. 4's accident. The men had unconsciously worked together to hold on to their power, building on the women's individual doubts about their own capacities for leadership. The author draws parallels with the gender rivalries that keep women from rising to positions of power within organizations. The author and three women--including one of the two women on Raft No. 4--comment on whether and how circumstances have changed since HBR first published this article 17 years ago.
Forced to explain why businesses should continue to give money away while laying off workers, contributions managers in hundreds of companies have come up with an approach that ties corporate giving directly to strategy. In those companies, philanthropic and business units have joined forces to develop philanthropic strategies that give their companies a powerful competitive edge. The new corporate philanthropy encourages companies to play a leadership role in social problem solving by funding initiatives that incorporate the best thinking of governments and nonprofit institutions. The new approach to philanthropy is best illustrated by the AT&T Foundation, which has set up a dynamic relationship with the company's business units to support social causes while advancing AT&T's business goals.
Responding to environmental problems has always been a no-win proposition for managers. Help the environment and hurt your own business, or irreparably harm your business while damaging the earth. Recently, however, a new common wisdom has emerged that promises the ultimate reconciliation of environmental and economic concerns. The proponents of this new popular wisdom cite a mounting body of "win-win" projects that benefit the environment and create financial value. In this new world, managers might redesign a product so that it uses fewer environmentally harmful or resource-depleting raw materials--an effort that if successful could result in considerable cuts in direct manufacturing costs and inventory savings. This new vision sounds good, yet it is highly unrealistic.
In a turnaround situation, a new CEO must take actions in the short term to gain control and exercise executive leadership and lay groundwork to formulate a long-term strategy to rebuild a viable business.
In January 1993, the American Express board met to decide who would succeed James D. Robinson, III as chairman and CEO. The board needed to act in the spotlight of intense media and investor scrutiny, and after leaks had revealed that there was a conflict among the board members about whether Robinson should have been asked to leave. The board needed to find a way of calming the public's concern over the future of American Express, at the same time choosing a leadership structure that would lead American Express for the foreseeable future. The case brings up several critical issues revolving around CEO succession and performance evaluation: What should the board take into account when deciding when to ask a CEO to step down? What kinds of processes can boards institute so that such battles over CEO succession will not ensue?
Set in April 1990, this case focuses on H.J. Heinz and its subsidiary, StarKist, the largest producer of canned tuna in the United States. During the 1980s, the public became increasingly concerned about tuna fishing practices that killed dolphins. StarKist was the target of a consumer boycott initiated by the environmental community. Worried that bad publicity from the boycott would threaten the StarKist brand name, as well as Heinz's other branded products, senior management at Heinz decided that StarKist would become the first tuna processor to no longer purchase tuna caught by methods that killed dolphins. In making the decision, Heinz executives were not sure how StarKist's two major competitors would react, or how the decision would impact the procurement of raw tuna, StarKist's single largest expense item. Discusses the harvesting (fishing) and processing (canning) sector of the tuna industry. Also discusses the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and U.S. trade sanctions against Mexico and other countries.
Describes the changes in structure, management systems, people, and processes instituted by the company. Provides students with an opportunity to explore the nature of "IT-enabled" organizational change and the process through which it is implemented. Also enables a more general discussion of the challenges that companies face in organizing and managing in the 1990s and the actions that they are taking to meet those challenges. Affords an opportunity to confront the rhetoric of the emergence of a "new organization paradigm" with the reality.