As Symantec grew from a small, upstart software development company to a major player in the software development industry, the channels of information flow and the internal communication needs of the company became more complex. The geographically-dispersed structure of the company, in which product development groups stayed together, lead to the development of great products but hindered information flow. The top managers set out to facilitate information flow across product groups and within the company as a whole through both improving the information technology systems and bringing together employees in certain functional areas for regularly-scheduled meetings. A challenge for Eubanks, the CEO, was to balance the implementation of certain formal systems, and the maintenance of employees' entrepreneurial spirit and development of employees' managerial skills.
Examines Kaiser Steel's initial equity offering in 1950. The first case in a sequence that will trace the history of corporate restructurings that occurred 30 to 40 years later, in the 1980s. Subsequent cases examine foreign competition and labor unrest, hostile takeover attempts and LBOs, and bankruptcy and reorganization. Students are asked to recommend a recapitalization for Kaiser Steel in the context of steel industry competitive dynamics, Kaiser's ownership structure, and the U.S. capital markets in 1950.
Explores how a cost system can help support a firm's decision to change strategies. In the process, the students are introduced to a simple activity-based cost system. Siemens Electric Motor Works found itself facing an increasingly competitive environment and so made a decision to move from mass production of specialty motors to the production of small lots of custom motors. In doing so, they found their old cost system led them to poor decision making. By switching to a simple activity-based system, more accurate product costs were computed, facilitating better divisional performance.
Describes the perceptual mapping technique in a non-technical fashion. The procedure is useful for the depiction of the structure of the market. Discusses alternative methods, presents examples of each, and shows how the maps can be used in marketing decision making.
A paper company whose subsidiary, a mill, was on the verge of bankruptcy turned the mill into a profitable operation within a few years. It used a multiyear learning process in which employees developed four progressively more sophisticated problem-solving loops: fix-as-fail; prevention; root causes; and anticipation.
After a period in which many companies experimented with decentralizing their information systems (IS) organization, companies are now consolidating data centers, giving central IS staffs more authority, and establishing companywide standards and procedures. The result is a hybrid organizational model that allows companies to benefit from the cost savings and control that centralization provided but with the user-responsiveness and flexibility that decentralizing permits.
Motorola began a program of skills training in 1980 to teach its work force statistical process control and other quality improvements techniques. After many problems, Motorola changed the program from a narrow emphasis on specific techniques to one including everything from reading and English comprehension to graduate work in computer-integrated manufacturing. The company forged partnerships with local schools and colleges to provide elementary education as well as business courses. The result is Motorola University. McKinsey Award Winner.
In many companies, strategic thinking has outdistanced organizational capability. Often these companies make the mistake of adopting elaborate organizational matrices that actually impair their ability to implement sophisticated strategies. Keeping a company strategically agile while still coordinating its activities across divisions, even continents, means eliminating parochialism, improving communication, and weaving the decision-making process into the company's social fabric. The goal is to build a matrix of corporate values and priorities in the minds of managers and let them make the judgments and negotiate the deals that make strategy pay off.
Logistics alliances are becoming commonplace in business today. Each party involves itself in the operations of the other, to the benefit of both. Often one party is a product marketer (sometimes two or more product marketers) and the other is a distributor or warehousing specialist. Fueling the drive toward logistics alliances is the escalating competitive environment that is forcing businesses to become low-cost competitors in order to keep prices down and maintain customer loyalty. To meld parts of two or more organizations into one smooth-running operation is not easy; turf battles rage. But trust is necessary because each party must not only perform its own task efficiently but also act on behalf of the strategic objective.
U.S. and European information technology companies face a choice: cooperate or become design and marketing arms of their Japanese competitors. As digital technology ushers in an era of inexpensive personal systems built from standard, mass-produced components, industries are converging to form a huge information technology sector. Companies able to manufacture components are gaining ground. This trend plays to the strengths of the Japanese; embedded in industrial combines known as keiretsu, they invest in technology and manufacturing, command the supply chain, and coordinate strategy to block foreign competition and penetrate world markets. McKinsey Award Winner.
Companies rarely achieve radical performance improvements when they invest in information technology. Most companies use computers to speed up, not break away from, business processes and rules that are decades, if not centuries, out of date. But the power of computers can be released by "reengineering" work: abandoning old ways of working and creating entirely new ones.
Service companies often cannot prevent mistakes, but they can learn to recover from them and thereby retain an unhappy customer. Recovery begins by identifying the problem, then acting quickly to correct it. Most important, service companies should give front-line employees the authority and responsibility to do what is necessary to correct a service mistake, even if it means deviating from the rules.
At Cypress Semiconductor, management systems track corporate, departmental, and individual performance so regularly and in such detail that no manager can claim to be in the dark about critical problems. The systems give managers the capacity to monitor all levels of the organization, anticipate problems, and intervene when appropriate without creating layers of bureaucracy.
An emerging synthesis of financial strategies, organizational structures, and operating philosophies is revitalizing the publicly held corporation by addressing deep-seated structural weaknesses. This synthesis reflects three insights: the power of entrepreneurial motivation, the impact of balance-sheet restructuring and strict financial discipline, and the benefits of decentralizing authority and ownership.
How do you manage yourself and your interaction with others when you feel your personal values challenged? What should you be aware of as you proceed with sensitive, ethical issues? Jonah Creighton coordinates the company's fast-track training program, and when he tries to place some participants at two of the company's overseas divisions, he learns of their discriminatory hiring practices. He finds this deeply troubling and attempts to have the issue addressed by his supervisor and others at the company. As he tries to act in accordance with his personal standards and convictions, his relationship with his supervisor deteriorates, and he feels increasingly uncertain about his future at the company. People do not seem to be responding to the problems he sees, and Jonah wonders how to proceed.
Covers Jonah's two-hour meeting with the company's executive vice president who is next in line to become president, and the outcome of the discriminatory hiring incident that initially troubled Jonah.
Traces the history of a collaborative effort to create an organization to manage a major international development project in the slums of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Focuses on a serious set of disagreements which develops several months into the project between the two principals, an Ethiopian woman who founded the project and a British entrepreneur who is the coordinator of the donor consortium. Designed to provide 1) an example of entrepreneurial action in the nonprofit sector, particularly in international development, 2) the opportunity to diagnose problems in the working relationship of two people who have very different backgrounds, and 3) the opportunity to devise plans for each person to take in addressing the problems.
The desktop printer industry in 1990 is characterized by significant uncertainty about new technologies and about the types of features customers may demand in the next decade. The case looks at the positions of Hewlett-Packard, Canon, Kodak, Xerox, and IBM enabling students to consider different approaches competing firms may take to manage strategic risks in a rapidly changing, high technology industry.