Management must choose between two mutually exclusive bids to build two drilling rigs. Both bids involve attractive export credit financing denominated in foreign currencies.
The owner of a professional baseball team is trying to figure out if promotions are having an effect on ticket sales, and if televising games is hurting attendance. He considers renegotiating the television contract.
Provides background on the assessment center used by AT&T to assess managerial potential for upper middle management. Contains assessment reports for two candidates. Raises questions about manpower training and development. Students may be asked which of the candidates has managerial potential and why, and what specific development plans can be suggested.
Keynes, in excerpts from a 1933 pamphlet, outlines his recommendations for recovery from the Depression. He emphasizes the need for public works expenditures financed by government borrowing and discusses the "multiplier" effect of deficit spending on gross national product. The case introduces Keynesian methods of macroeconomic analysis.
Gulf Oil in Italy was confronted by the need to increase the authorized capacity at a refinery in the face of substantial opposition. Raises the issue of their use of "facilitating gratuities" to minor officials, payments to influence news reports, and the employment of a consultant to assist in government relations to gain passage of the permit.
A set of twelve questions provides executives with a framework to test pragmatically the ethical content of business decisions. The inquiry draws on traditional philosophical frameworks while avoiding the utopian and anticapitalistic bias prevalent in current applied business philosophy. The ethical inquiry method articulates corporate responsibilities and lays them open for examination.
Consistently high profits have led to complacency and resistance to change throughout the commercial banking industry. The banking industry faces a new era of deregulation, technological change, and new competition that extends across industry lines and geographic boundaries and within the industry itself. In the coming decade, profitability, and in some cases survival, will depend on bank management's attention to measurements of competition and performance in six distinct areas: innovation; cost accounting and pricing; management of interest risk; people management; marketing; and planning and strategy formulation.
Factors that potential owners should evaluate prior to starting a new venture include: type of business, yearly income, and balance sheet net worth; potential market size; the advantages of multiple-product businesses over one-product businesses; the superiority of repeat sale products to single-sale products; the avoidance of elementary and unfashionable products; the intensity of initial capital outlay; pricing in relation to gross profits; the existing market's profit structure; division of stock ownership; and future prospects of the venture's price earnings relationship.
Relates the April 1979 discovery of improper income transferal practices used at the H.J. Heinz Co. Background data on the company is presented, along with a detailed description of the organizational practices, the management incentive system, and the corporate ethical policy then in use. Also contains an organization chart and financial data for the 1972-78 fiscal years.
Summarizes the investigation conducted by outside legal and accounting firms under the Heinz audit committee. Improper practices were found at three of the five Heinz domestic divisions and at a number of foreign operations. Presents restated financial data for the period, filed by Heinz with the SEC. Summarizes the committee's assessment of contributing factors and its conclusions.
Presents a condensation of the audit committee's recommendations for organizational and policy changes to help prevent a recurrence of improper income transferal practices used at the H.J. Heinz Co.
Looks at rewards in general, and pay in particular, and studies the conditions that may enhance or detract from employee satisfaction and organizational effectiveness.
A recent MBA without a stable work history in the private sector feels that he is being forced to compromise his personal convictions and professional integrity through a violation of the Robinson-Patman Act. This person is in his mid-thirties, married, and carries substantial financial and family responsibilities. He has been forced to do other unsavory business practices but wants to call a halt to such compliance before he lets himself get involved in a larger spiral of illegal activity.
Several entrepreneurs are considering the purchase of an existing cable TV business with the financial assistance of several investors. They must decide whether to establish the company as a partnership or a corporation, and how to capitalize the company for an optimal blend of tax and other business considerations. Adapted from a case by P.J. Barack.
The Vicks Health Care Division lacks a solid form entry in the OTC colds care category and has developed a "me-too" product. The main issues are whether there is an opportunity for the product, and, if so, how it should be positioned. Main teaching objectives are to use market research data as input for assessment of market opportunity and development of product positioning.
Reveals that Vicks chose a multi-condition positioning for the product. Describes testing of name and concept, and extensively reports on a four-city test market. Students are expected to evaluate both the design and results of the test, and face options ranging from termination to going national.