Japanese firms dominate the facsimile machine industry, accounting for more than 90% of worldwide sales. This case explores the reasons for this dominance.
Competitive success depends on learning, but most people, including professionals in leadership positions, are not very good at it. Learning is a function of how people reason about their own behavior. Yet most people engage in defensive reasoning when confronted with problems. They blame others and avoid examining critically the way they have contributed to problems. Companies need to make managers' and employees' reasoning patterns a focus of continuous improvement efforts.
In this interview, Commissioner Brown describes the Community Patrol Officers Program -- a return to the days of the cop on the beat. This program requires a total change in the way the department is organized and operates. A cornerstone of community policing is empowering the workforce -- in this case, the patrol officers who are the backbone of the department. Brown also wants to involve the police more closely with their customers--the law-abiding citizens of New York's neighborhoods--and let the customers set the department's priorities. Change requires Brown to articulate the department's vision and its values, to alter the recruitment, hiring, training, and reward practices.
Activity-based cost management (ABC) can help managers find the places in their organizations where improvement is likely to have the greatest financial payoff. To best utilize ABC, managers must separate whatever expenses are required to produce individual products from those required to process batches, to maintain a product, or to keep a manufacturing facility up and running.
In a once-impoverished inner city section of Chicago, South Shore Bank has combined what its owners call old-fashioned commercial banking with a progressive social agenda to transform the neighborhood, without forcing out its old residents. It designated itself a community development bank, extending credit to residents to support small business, restore community self-confidence, and reinvigorate market forces.
Unions can make a pivotal contribution to competitiveness. In a world where business success increasingly depends on creating more flexible, team-based work organizations, unions can be a surprisingly effective means to integrate employees into managerial decision making. In order for U.S. unions to act in this capacity, they must reinvent themselves much as companies are trying to do.
The results of the HBR World Leadership Survey found that change is indeed everywhere--regardless of country, culture, or corporation. But the idea of a corporate global village where a common culture of management unifies the practice of business around the world is more dream than reality. In addition to profiling the views of the average manager, the survey detected the deep and powerful national differences that overwhelm age, sex, or industry distinctions among respondents.
Vermillion Paper Co. saw a proposed eucalyptus plantation in the tropical country of Equitania as an opportunity to do right by the environment after years of insensitivity. Vermillion spent almost two years obtaining the support of national and local government officials and environmentalists. But soon a renegade group broke with the Equitanian environmentalists and joined a militant U.S. group in publicly condemning the project. Four experts on environmental strategy discuss Vermillion's option.
Describes the history of Beatrice Companies from its beginning as a dairy in 1891 to 1985, when the company was a $12 billion conglomerate. Focuses on the corporate strategies that Beatrice followed under each of its CEOs and concentrates on the company's strategic change in the early 1980s, which was introduced by James Dutt.
Highlights the challenges of implementing major change in an organization. It first describes the common pitfalls so that implementors will be "forewarned." Next, it characterizes the guidelines for successful implementation as the "ten commandments", while offering a step-by-step approach for managers. Also concludes that implementation is a combination of science and art, of planning and flexibility. The role of the middle manager as implementor is stressed throughout.
Describes Jaguar's product market problems in 1989, and its attractiveness to GM and Ford as an acquisition target. Students are asked to evaluate the suitability of GM and Ford as business partners for Jaguar, and to determine how much each should be willing to pay to acquire part or all of Jaguar. They are also asked to formulate tactics for extracting the highest possible price from each bidder.
Examines Southland's financial difficulties following the LBO in 1987 up to the first restructuring plan in July 1990. The teaching objectives are: to explore the complexities of a failed leverage buyout and the operating restrictions that result from financial distress, to recognize that financing decisions can restrict future flexibility, to examine the dynamics of a restructuring with particular focus on the role of new equity, and the payoffs received by pre-existing claimholders, and to explain the complexity of accomplishing a restructuring outside of bankruptcy.
Describes McCaw Cellular Communications, Inc.'s competitive position in 1990. McCaw is the largest cellular phone service company in the United States. It faces challenges of technological change and formulating strategy in an industry with a highly uncertain future. Focuses on a strategic investment in one of two new technologies for switches. Raises the general question of how one chooses among two uncertain technologies. The tension arises from potential first-mover advantages, from network effects of the currently available technology, and the promise of a superior technology soon to be available.
Examines the Thompson's $4.9 billion leveraged buyout of the Southland Corp. in 1987. As the original founders of Southland, the Thompsons were concerned about losing control over the company upon learning of the Belzberg family's acquiring interest. The teaching objectives are: to explore the characteristics of an LBO candidate, to examine the dynamics of the corporate control process when insiders are substantial stockholders, and therefore serve as both buyer and seller, and to evaluate the cash flow forecasts in an LBO and use them to analyze bidding behavior.
This case focuses on the development of AZT, the first drug approved for the treatment of AIDS, and the issues faced by its U.K. producer, Wellcome PLC, as it decides how to set the drug's price. The case includes brief overviews of the disease itself, drugs in development to treat it, the pharmaceutical industry and its practices, and the history of Wellcome PLC and its U.S. subsidiary, Burroughs Wellcome. The A case concludes with analysts' predictions for the soon-to-be-announced price of AZT. See also the B case and the C case.
This note traces the evolution and broadening of Goldratt's thinking from his OPT finite-scheduling software to his theory of constraints. The note discusses the bottleneck thinking that Goldratt presented in his novel, The Goal, and his book, The Race.
Harnischfeger, the market-share leader, is facing increasing competition in the portal crane industry. The key question facing the company is how to respond to the competitive threat without undermining the attractiveness of the industry. The case discusses a number of ways in which Harnischfeger can try to regain market-share without embarking on a price war.
Managers often ignore uncertainty and plan as if the world were certain. Frequently, strategy is formulated based on an extrapolation of current trends into the future, or the best guess scenario of the manager involved. This note discusses four approaches to shaping the firm's response to uncertainty. The first half discusses using scenario analysis to better understand how the future may evolve. The second half discusses how to use this understanding in formulating a strategic response to uncertainty. Discusses bets, "robust" choices, choices of timing, and "changing the rules."
The plant manager of the Edgcomb Metals facility at Troy, Virginia is confronted with complaints that the current driver wage system-a guaranteed eight-hour day with time and a half for overtime-rewards drivers who "take their time" on daily assigned delivery routes. To investigate these claims, the plant manager compiles data on total hours, number of miles, and number of stops for several delivery runs made by each of two drivers-one recognized as the best and most conscientious, and the other recognized as the slowest. A supplemental handout (OM-0576) contains the results of a regression analysis of the data to facilitate a comparison of the two drivers and to suggest a method for developing standard times. (The B case is OM-0562, and the C case is OM-0571.)