Describes a major electric utility's highly successful effort to institute a comprehensive quality improvement program throughout the organization. Designed to be used in a comparative analysis of the quality improvement effort described in Paul Revere Insurance Co. (A). Students learn that there is no one "right way" to build the concept of defect-prevention into an organization (as espoused by such quality experts as Deming, Juran, and Crosby). Rather, the design and implementation of a quality improvement strategy need to be tailored to such variables as the nature of demand for an organization's service, its service-delivery process, corporate culture, organizational climate, financial performance, industry structure and trends, and competing demands for organizational attention. Important topics dealt with are program implementation, problem-solving methodology/philosophical roots, rewards and recognition, measuring results, maintaining momentum, and limitations/problems.

Describes the competitive situation facing the market leader in antiknock additives, the Ethyl Corp. Demand is declining rapidly and Ethyl has to decide whether to close capacity, and if so, how. Raises issues of corporate as well as SBU strategy because antiknock additives are Ethyl's principal product.

Describes an interfunctional approach to product mix management and account selection. The approach uses a matrix of products and accounts. Also describes the concepts and implementation of the approach.

Material on 1984 negotiations between General Motors and the United Auto Workers, background for a film on the negotiations. Film available from California Newsreel in San Francisco.

The CEO of ServiceMaster Industries has convened an internal task force to come up with ideas for reorganizing the company to accommodate unusually fast growth. In developing both alternatives and criteria for appraising them, the task force has to keep in mind the strong company culture.

Describes the challenges facing the president of an old-line foodservice and food processing equipment manufacturing company as it attempted to accelerate sales and profit growth through the introduction of innovative products. The introduction of a "revolutionary" combination oven, ongoing labor confrontation at the headquarter's plant, and a series of acquisitions were among the issues occupying Louise O'Sullivan as she prepared to enter her third year as the senior executive of Groen. The policies and practices of Dover Industries, designed to motivate operating company presidents "to think like owners," are also described because of their relevance to her behavior and performance in that job.

Traditional programs of quality control in the United States have emphasized mainly defensive actions--preventing defects--and even these programs have been pursued halfheartedly. But high quality means pleasing consumers, not just protecting them from annoyances. Therefore, U.S. consumers have become skeptical about the quality of goods and services offered by U.S. corporations, while Japanese electronics, automobile, and semiconductor companies have come to dominate important U.S. markets. In order for a company to compete on quality deliberately and strategically, its managers must first divide the concept into manageable parts--the eight dimensions of quality by which consumers judge products: performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability, aesthetics, and perceived quality. Managers should research potential markets and the strengths of their competition to ascertain which of these dimensions they can emphasize.

Almost every company wants to develop its businesses over time and earn high profits immediately, to respond quickly to market changes and make careful decisions, to coordinate business units and make unit managers accountable. But these goals are contradictory. They cannot all be achieved, no matter what the strategy decisions. Senior managers can decide, however, which goals are most important and choose a management style that works toward them. Success depends on choosing an approach that maximizes one's strengths and goals.

The process quality management technique (PQM), used by IBM and its customers in intensive one- or two-day planning sessions, gets management teams to identify their mission, agree on what they must do to achieve it, and accept individual responsibility for the tasks deemed most important to success. The heart of PQM is a matrix that reflects the organization's unique goals and needs. To develop the matrix the team goes through four levels of consensus building that often spur new ideas to improve basic procedures.

What may be appropriate for managing the finances of large public corporations doesn't necessarily (or often) fit private companies. Standard financial statements are unreliable when money moves freely between the business and owner. And rules of thumb for investment decision making and growth aren't useful either. When a company is largely operated as a vehicle for a family--to provide jobs, security, flexibility, and access to opportunities that suit the family as much as the market--conventional financial protocols don't always matter.

Many U.S. corporations are shedding operations that are doing poorly, are superfluous because of mergers, or are obsolete because of a strategy of streamlining and returning to the "core" business. Often the human element is forgotten. The plight of white- and blue-collar employees who have lost jobs because of a management decision is not considered a top priority. When the Stroh Brewery closed a 70-year-old facility in Detroit after acquiring Schlitz and its five modern plants, 1,159 jobs were eliminated. The company set up an elaborate job-search and placement apparatus to help ease the trauma for employees who would be turned out.

Managers must stop arguing about whether the market has valued their company's stock price fairly and learn to interpret what share prices tell them about market expectations of their future performance. Here is a "market signals approach" that allows management to compare its own plans against those of the market. This technique enables executives to: determine whether a suggested acquisition price is too high; use share price to ascertain whether market expectations about a company's hurdle rates are reasonable; discover at what level it should set hurdle rates for capital investment projects; and better align management and shareholder interests.

A leading venture capitalist--who looks at people, particularly financial people, rather than at the financial projections in business plans--sets forth his beliefs as to how entrepreneurs can create successful, thriving enterprises. They must be brutally honest with themselves, accepting bad news and staying on top of disappointing developments. At the same time, they must believe in their ideas; understand how vital good management is to their company; if they can't provide it themselves, bring the right person in; be skilled managers who can be tough-minded with themselves and their team, can say "no," and ideally, are well versed in the technology on which the company is based.

Large U.S. consumer goods manufacturers and retailers have seen profits decline disastrously when they have overpromoted lines to stimulate short-term volume. A simple application of economic theory shows that overpromotion costs too much - whatever extra volume is generated will be eaten up by increased competition, overhead costs, and customers who learn to wait for a sale rather than to buy at full price.

Describes Ruth Linsky's charges of sex discrimination against Triton, where she is a sales manager. Ruth believes that she has been denied promotion because of an institutionalized system of sexual discrimination. Barbara Smith, Triton's personnel director, must weigh the issues: Where does the law draw the line? Does the company personnel policy favor men? Why didn't the affirmative action policy work? A panel of experts from business and the law discuss the case.

Describes in detail the research mounted by five individuals with a $20,000 budget to combat drug abuse among Boston's school-going population. Using the focus group methodology they discover that most of the current anti-drug advertising is useless. They create their own storyboards but are not sure if they are truly better.

Describes the results of the advertising pre-test described in the (A) case. The group must now decide how to implement its findings for maximum impact.

United Parcel Service (UPS) in 1987 faced serious challenges to its long-standing policies of on-the-job training and promotion from within. Increased competition in its traditional business of ground transport found UPS lagging in computerization and in need of technical expertise it could not simply cull from within its ranks. Whether, when, and how the new people were to be hired and assimilated, and to what extent the UPS culture and/or the new people would have to adapt, were the key questions.

With expansion into other countries (Germany), new areas of service (air express), and new ventures (two small acquisitions), UPS had to decide how to adjust its human resource policies to businesses and people which were substantially different from its traditional ones. The objective is to examine the tradeoffs in changing strong cultures and well established hiring, promotion, and reward practices to meet business needs.

Microsoft must decide how to design a new software product for global markets, identify the timing for entry into different countries, and position the product around the world.