Following his successful turnaround of WTXX, Waterbury, Mike Finkelstein joined Odyssey Partners with a mandate to build a communications company. From 1982-1985, he acquired three more stations, financing each as an independent partnership. However, increasing competition has caused some of his stations to experience cash shortfalls. Finkelstein must decide whether to sell the stations, hold and finance them out of Odyssey Partners capital, or incorporate them into a single company with a new financial structure based on zero coupon bonds.
Lotus 1-2-3 exploded on the American market in the spring of 1983. Nine months later Jim Manzi, vice president of marketing, hired Chuck Digate to develop an international strategy for Lotus. Case explores Lotus' rapid rise to the top of the software market in the United States and looks at the considerations surrounding its initial efforts to sell abroad. Can be taught with Note on Comparative Advantage.
At the end of the budget cycle, the manager must test whether plans are feasible given financing arrangements and constraints. Cash needs are great due to seasonality. Needed loans must be calculated at five separate dates, and financial position projected. This is a rewritten version of Hanson Industries (B) and (C).
Describes the efforts of the Timken Co., a major international producer of bearings and steel, to develop an effective employee communication program. The case examines the intense international competitive atmosphere, the recent record of job losses in related industries, Timken's extensive reorganization efforts, and the company's labor relations history insofar as these bear on the effort to formulate internal communications policy. Encourages students to analyze the essential elements of a communications decision: scope, structure, audience, goals, message, and media.
Joan Macey, Rohm and Haas' market manager for Metalworking Fluid Biocides, found that sales of a new biocide, Kathon MWX, was utterly disappointing. This was all the more puzzling since sales of her other product--Kathon 886 MW, a liquid biocide used only in large-capacity tanks--was well on target and held a steady 30% market share. In May 1984, about five months after the new product was launched, Joan Macey was reviewing her entire marketing strategy with a view to bringing Kathon MWX sales closer to target. Of particular concern to her were the distribution and communication strategies used for the new product.
Discusses David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage and the refinement of his model developed by Eli Heckscher and Bertil Ohlin. Presents several criticisms of the Heckscher-Ohlin theory, including Wassily Leontief's empirical demonstration that the nature of U.S. imports and exports were exactly contrary to the predictions of the theory.
A recent MBA graduate has reached tentative agreement for an LBO of a forms-printing business with $43 million sales. At the eleventh hour, however, the seller has demanded that the buyer personally guarantee $4 million of accounts payable.
Mason Instruments has become a second source for the electronics guidance system for a Navy missile. The case decision involves bidding in the third-round competition.
When abroad, managers often don't know what to do about "requests" for funds or gifts. Walking out on the deal could ruin business relations. Paying up may mean violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act as well as personal moral standards. Understanding the importance of gifts in some societies may help U.S. executives find ways to satisfy both the foreign request and U.S. standards. They can, for example, make an equivalent, public donation to a social project in the requester's country; offer services to local causes in lieu of private payments; offer to create local jobs.
How can usually honest, intelligent, compassionate human beings act in ways that are callous, duplicitous, dishonest, and wrongheaded? Unethical behavior is found everywhere, and ambitious managers facing murky borderlands between right and wrong sometimes cross over the line. Their decisions ruin people's lives, destroy institutions, and give business as a whole a bad name. But executives can establish effective guidelines to ensure their corporations' survival. There are practical solutions to the rationalizations that give way to unethical behavior.
When portfolio planning was introduced in the late 1960s, its advocates believed it to be the key to most strategic planning problems. Now, interviews with CEOs, staff planners, and division line managers reveal that portfolio planning can improve business strategy, but only when it is used with other techniques for analyzing industries and competitors. It helps individual business units understand their competitive strengths, guides top management in identifying divestiture candidates, and promotes the efficient management of existing resources.
Factors like foreign and domestic market structure determine a company's operating exposure to exchange rates. But sophisticated managers have learned to manage foreign-exchange exposure in new ways. For example, companies can approach production units not as fixed, but as flexible, facilities whose importance to the corporation can be adjusted when exchange rates shift. The company can also shift sources of raw materials, subassemblies, and components. Above all, managers are more likely to adopt appropriate courses of action if their performance measurement takes into account the effect of exchange rate changes on operating performance.
In approaching the prospect of a joint venture in the People's Republic of China, foreign executives often plunge ahead with insufficient attention to the strategy of deal making. They waiver in their purposes and seem vague or noncommittal. When such weaknesses come up against the subtle strength that the Chinese bring to the art of negotiating, they become stumbling blocks to the development of effective and profitable commercial relationships. A better understanding of Chinese culture and practices will lead to a better deal.
For more than ten years, American manufacturers have been trying to improve productivity--and thereby enhance their international competitiveness--through cost-cutting programs. But costs have not declined enough, nor has international competitiveness much improved. Instead, our decline has intensified. Real productivity improvement is not easy. Approaches that pare down direct labor costs and make factory workers more efficient have proven fundamentally flawed. Manufacturers need to direct their thinking away from straight cost cutting toward quality enhancement, strategy, and product technology. McKinsey Award Winner.
A credit analyst for a furniture manufacturer is confronted with two customers who have exceeded their credit limits. The financial performance of each has been weak, and one of the customers has a highly leveraged balance sheet. Industry conditions are weak; the manufacturer apparently has excess capacity; and the credit analyst is caught between the conflicting demands of the sales managers and the credit manager. The case provides an opportunity for ratio analysis.