IBP, the largest U.S. beef and pork processor, is facing deteriorating earnings and undertakes a fundamental strategic review in 1990. Having grown from its founding in 1961 to its current position as a low cost, innovative producer of boxed beef, and more recently pork, IBP's competitors have pursued very different corporate strategies that appear to be more successful. IBP must reevaluate its own corporate strategy and decide whether its distinctive competence is still relevant, and where it should be active in the three dimensions of product, geography, and vertical integration.
Less than three years ago, Steve Mariotti created NFTE, a nonprofit organization for teaching entrepreneurship to disadvantaged youths. The organization has gained national recognition, and offers a variety of programs on a budget of nearly half a million dollars. It is still run out of Mariotti's apartment. Mariotti is beginning to feel the stress of rapid growth and is concerned that further expansion will require significant organizational change. Students are presented with the challenge of advising Mariotti on this change process. The case is about the challenge of taking an organization beyond the founder-dependent, informal start-up stage of development.
The uncertainty and complexity of most business environments make successful management a difficult art. Frequently, bright, experienced, well-educated people manage their companies into strategic distress. Many of these bad results are not simply a matter of bad luck. This note discusses problems caused by cognitive biases and heuristics (ways of thinking about problems) that managers commonly use when analyzing strategy under uncertainty. Shows where these problems are likely to arise in strategy analysis and discusses five practices that help to mitigate the biases.
This technical note describes, compares, and contrasts the strategic-planning techniques developed by the Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey, and Arthur D. Little consulting firms in the mid-1970s. The approaches were developed to classify the businesses within a diversified firm in order to decide which businesses to fund for growth. The assumptions and philosophies underlying each approach are contrasted, as are the consultants' relationships with client firms.
This case follows the A case (UVA-BP-0253) by three years, chronicling the indigestion Dollar General (DG) suffers after the acquisition of the Eagle Store chain. The DG organization, originally held together by a strong sense of "rural American" values, deteriorates because of (1) dramatically different cultures (Dollar General vs. Eagle); (2) massive internal theft, which spreads from Eagle throughout the Dollar General organization; and (3) an irreparable rift between Cal Turner Jr., the president, and his brother Steve, the COO. The stock price has plummeted from 29 to 12. How can Cal Jr. regain control of his company and turn it around?
To assess whether a company should enter the household-products market, Procter and Gamble's weighted-average cost of capital is computed. Clorox's cost of capital is also computed as a check on the P&G estimate. The case emphasizes the conceptual as well as mechanical aspects of computing cost of capital for a company with homogeneous business risk and stable capital structure.
Percy Barnevik, president and CEO of ABB Asea Brown Boveri, is moving more aggressively than any CEO in Europe, perhaps in the world, to build the new model of competitive enterprise: an organization that combines global scale and world-class technology with deep roots in local markets. He offers a detailed guide to the theory and practice of building a "multidomestic" enterprise. He describes ABB's matrix system and a new breed of global managers.
The 20 largest U.S. pension funds hold 10% of the equity capital of the largest U.S. companies, and, in total, pension funds have assets worth $2.5 trillion. They have grown to the extent that they must now address two issues: for what should corporate management be held accountable, and how should accountability be structured? Some answers can be found by looking at Germany and Japan, where ownership is even more concentrated than in the United States. These countries define performance results by maximizing the wealth-producing capacity of the enterprise.
During the next decade, computers and televisions will give way to "telecomputers" that will not only receive but also store, manipulate, create, and transmit digital video programming. These technologies will transform business. But this vision is being held back by the telecommunications infrastructure, which is not keeping up with the power of computers. The solution is a system of fiber-optic cables reaching every home and business in the country. Business must push for a new regulatory climate that will allow these new technologies to proliferate.
A growing imbalance between the world's labor supply and demand is driving the globalization of labor. While the developed world accounts for most of the world's gross domestic product, its share of the world work force is shrinking. Meanwhile, in the developing countries, the size and educational level of the work force is quickly rising. Developing nations that combine their young, educated workers with investor-friendly policies, and industrial countries that keep barriers to immigration low, will benefit from the new global work force.
Global negotiations are increasingly between the people of the United States and global managers, rather than between American companies and foreign nations. These global managers are supranational corporate players who have no particular allegiance to any one nation. The United States is disadvantaged in negotiations because states and cities bid against each other, permitting global managers to play us off against ourselves. To remedy the situation, Reich suggests the creation of a U.S. Investment Representative and a GATT for Direct Investment.
This article, first published in 1974, answers one of management's most important questions: Why do so few organizations reach their productivity potential? The author answers that most executives fail to establish expectations of performance improvement in ways that get results. To set high goals that employees respond to and are accountable for, managers must invest their own time and energy. The first step is to set a modest, measurable goal concerning an important organizational problem. If this goal is met, management uses the success as a springboard for more ambitious demands.
Shrinking revenues and taxpayer uprisings that threatened the town of Madison, Wisconsin's financial security led the author, during his six years as mayor, to introduce W. Edwards Deming's business quality concepts to city government. He learned that, like problems in business, problems in government are more likely to lie in flawed systems than in flawed workers, and that empowered frontline employees generate more improvements than management can.
A division manager must decide whether to fight 11% across-the-board personnel cuts or, if he is to go along with the decision, how to implement the layoffs in his division. He receives conflicting advice from his vice presidents: one suggests he make up a new cost-cutting plan that will help the company while not hurting his division; the other wants him to support the downsizing decision wholeheartedly.
This case traces the history of a successful discount retailer, with a clearly developed low-cost strategy, from its founding to a major decision point, where the president must decide whether to acquire a Florida-based chain of 206 stores with a very different product mix. The basic issue is not so much whether the price is a good one but whether the acquisition fits the company's strategy and whether the president should put his personnel through another acquisition only months after completing another large acquisition. If he decides to move forward with the acquisition, how should it be managed?
A set of five exercises in capital budgeting. Student calculates and compares various decision criteria (including IRR and NPV) for capital investment projects. This is an introductory case, where relevant cash flows are provided, and the focus is on the discounting mechanics and the decision to invest. In addition, one exercise directly probes the link between positive NPV projects, and value added to the shareholders. The final "exercise" is a three page mini-case analyzing Lockheed's decision to invest in the TriStar L-1011 Airbus project. This drives home the importance of discounting and NPV, and shows the adverse effect of a negative NPV project on shareholder value.
Burlington Northern's decision whether to invest in ARES, an automated train control system, is a ($350 million) strategic investment in information technology. Although set in a service industry (railroad) the issues around this decision arise in many organizations and require the company to analyze the project from many perspectives. ARES offers the potential to change the basis of competition in the industry through technology. The company must consider the value, if any, of being first in the industry to adopt a technology; the potential impact on customer services, quality, and reliability; and the role and value of information systems technology. Burlington grapples with how to quantify both tangible and intangible benefits, and deliberates whether investments that yield improvement in hard-to-quantify factors such as reduced delivery time and improved service reliability can be subjected to the same financial scrutiny as equipment replacement decisions such as new locomotives. Demonstrates thoughtful, creative approaches to measuring hard-to-quantify benefits.