The purpose of this note is to illustrate the use of Data Tables in Microsoft Excel. Data Tables are commonly used for performing sensitivity analyses, sometimes called "What If?" analyses, and for preparing data for graphs. Data Tables can also be used to enable a Monte Carlo simulation in a spreadsheet in more advanced models. The technical note includes practice exercises and their solutions, and a supporting Excel workbook for students.
Reckitt Benckiser was the world's largest manufacturer of household products and a major marketer of health-care and personal-care products. The company was at a threshold of opportunities provided by a growing market of Indian consumers who were becoming health conscious and buying antibacterial products to make their homes germ-free. At a time when more and more Indians were looking for antibacterial products to protect their health, the company wondered if it should launch an antibacterial laundry detergent powder as part of its brand expansion strategy. Would the company benefit from a first-mover advantage by launching the first antibacterial laundry detergent in India? If the company were to consider entering this market, what strategic and branding objectives should it adopt? Should this new detergent be an extension of the company's famous Dettol brand or a new brand name?
Supplement to case TCG037. This is a follow-on to the Narcolarm (A) case. It begins with the balance sheet developed in the (A) case and adds some events for the first year of operations. The case helps to bring the accounting information together.
This case gives students the opportunity to examine the operating cycle. They see how a manager's decisions can affect both the cycle, and, perhaps most importantly, how to manage the amount of cash that an entity needs to operate.
Supplement to case TCG041. This case builds on the J. Prep (A) case but adds a couple of twists, including the need for students to identify and record three adjusting entries. They also must include the effect of accumulated depreciation in the accounts.
This is a relatively simple introductory case, designed to give students practice in constructing a balance sheet and to begin to think about the meaning of assets, liabilities and equity.
Supplement to case TCG046. This is a follow-on case to the Carson Realty Company (A) case. It adds some complications to the situation. It requires students to use T accounts and to prepare a full ste of financial statements, including a statement of cash flows.
Discusses the linkages among seven different activities that take place in organizations, and that must be coordinated if an organization is to be successful. The activities comprise strategy formulation, authority and influence, conflict management, culture management, customer management, motivation, and management control.
Discusses several contentious issues involved in the development of theory in the social sciences: (1) description versus prescription, (2) deduction versus induction, (3) quantitative versus qualitative, (4) reflection versus action orientation, (5) verifiability versus falsifiability, and (6) case method versus statistical.
Based on articles published in both Healthcare Financial Management and the International Journal for Health Planning and Management, this note discusses the challenges facing healthcare organizations in the 21st century, and the nature of the strategic choices they must make.
Amazon was the biggest Internet-based retailer in the United States and had frequently been featured on lists of the most admired companies. In 2015, The New York Times published an article that portrayed Amazon as a ruthless employer with brutal human resource management practices and a toxic work atmosphere. Employees were divided in their opinions: some found the culture invigorating and others found it hard to survive in. Leaders in the industry came to Amazon’s defence, while employees at other organizations began to disclose their own experiences of toxic work environments. Could Amazon continue to grow, thrive, and retain employees if it maintained its current employee management strategy? Did stress foster innovation, and, if so, at what point did that stress become destructive?
On July 28, 2014, the eRecon technical team at Physician Services Group in Hospital Corporation of America, gathered in the main conference room just as it did every Monday morning. The goal of the meeting was to review the project plan and update task completion for the team's two-year undertaking — a six-phase, in-house development of a custom, web-based accounting software called eRecon. As the team members worked through each task and updated the percentage that they had completed to date, they grew increasingly concerned about obtaining the critical source data that they required from the human resources department. They were approaching their deadline, and it was unclear what the consequences would be if they did not obtain the data on time, and what impact the delay would have on the completion deadline of December 8, 2014, for the next phase. With 125 end users patiently waiting on eRecon’s completion, could the technical team ensure the success of the project?
The associate director of hospitality services at a large university had to address overcapacity at an on-campus eatery. The eatery was experiencing long lineups and severe bottlenecks, especially at its full-service coffee outlet. Seating capacity was also short of demand, and no additional space was available. The associate director also faced pressure from university administration to consider closing a nearby eatery as a result of its poor profitability, but doing so would put additional strain on the already overcapacity eatery. After examining profitability and completing a corporate assessment, the associate director expected to have a better idea of how to tackle the current capacity and profitability issues.
One of the biggest challenges for brick-and-mortar retailers is competing with online-only sellers such as Amazon. The conventional "omnichannel" strategy is to encourage consumers to shop across channels. But few retailers have closely examined the profitability of such efforts, and they typically pay little attention to how far a customer lives from the store. New research led by Temple University's Xueming Luo shows that distance is a crucial variable. Working with a Chinese department store on its coupon strategy, the researchers found that the most profitable promotions coaxed distant online shoppers (ones who lived more than five kilometers away) into physical stores, where they were more likely to make impulse purchases and to buy "experiential" goods such as apparel and makeup. Luring distant in-store shoppers online was actually counterproductive--profits from those customers fell. (Coupons made no significant difference when customers lived close to a store.) Retailers should also consider giving online customers incentives (such as free shipping) to have orders sent to a local store for pickup rather than delivered to their homes, the researchers say. And they should reduce the real or perceived costs of traveling to a store--for example, by locating stores near public transit or ensuring ample parking.
A team of researchers asked executives from 114 companies to describe the leadership style of their CEOs and the culture of their organizations. The responses revealed that the two were often in sync. But as it turns out, that may not be a bad thing, since the firms experiencing mismatches also had better performance.
ISlide is the story of a nascent entrepreneur, Justin Kittredge, who used his experience and knowledge of the athletic footwear market to start his own footwear company, a manufacturer/distributor of customizable athletic sandals known as "slides." The case illustrates many of the concepts of Entrepreneurial Thought and Action-where an entrepreneur starts with the concepts of Who am I, What do I know, and Whom do I know. The founder, Justin, a former Reebok executive and college basketball player, is passionate about basketball and coaching young people. The case illustrates how Justin builds a company in a niche that has not yet been exploited by the big footwear companies.
The Grupo SALA case focuses on entrepreneur Humberto Rodriguez's venture based in Bogota, Colombia. Rodriguez saw an opportunity in the environmental-solutions space when the Colombian government decided to privatize public services. Rodriguez started his venture in 1997 in a 62-square-meter office with an investment of $100,000 by a U.S.-based investor. By June 2015, the time of the case, Grupo SALA operated in three areas-solid waste, dangerous residues, and water and sewer-and had grown at an average rate of 21.3% over the 2002-2014 period. The group drew on three foundations-entrepreneurship, technology innovation and regulatory management, and successful environmental management-and, with 3,270 employees working in eighteen companies, recorded Colombian pesos 256 billion in revenue in 2014 (US$128 million at 2014 conversion rate of 1 Colombian Peso = US$0.0005). After a quick introduction, the case takes the reader through the following six sections: (1) Rodriguez's personal background and approach to risk-taking and entrepreneurship; (2) a window into Grupo SALA's businesses, organizational structure, and ownership; (3) the group's opportunities transforming Colombian attitudes and behavior toward waste, the introduction of containerization, the incineration of hazardous waste, water treatment, and the eventual end game around sustainability and improved lives, spaces, and the environment; (4) Rodriguez's and Grupo SALA's approach to management; (5) the staging of a first "shark tank" to encourage ideas to fuel Grupo SALA's future growth; and (6) Rodriguez's questions for his group regarding the road ahead.
This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. In today's world, the traditional news media do not always control how crises unfold. Executives may face stakeholder communities that control their own sources of information and their own media and have their own ideas about how companies should resolve crises. These stakeholder groups wield considerable power to influence other stakeholders, organizations, and the public, and executives who ignore them do so at their own peril. On more than one occasion in the past decade, entire divisions of multinational companies were sold off to competitors after stakeholders criticized those businesses through their proprietary media. Thus, companies need to know how stakeholders gained this power, how they use it, and what to do about them. Stakeholders have become both increasingly active and more diverse. Their numbers now include social activists, expert financial analysts, and liability lawyers in addition to employees, customers, and business partners. To spread their messages and encourage people to connect and interact with one another, stakeholders are now deploying a variety of channels, including websites, user forums, e-newsletters, videos, and social media platforms. By following the connections among their various media, the authors have observed the ways these stakeholder groups find and influence one another, building their communities and aligning with others who share similar objectives. Individually, many of these stakeholders may be powerless, but together, they can have a huge impact on how a crisis evolves. Moreover, by creating their own media, these stakeholders can bypass the "gatekeepers"of traditional media: the editors and journalists who in the past decided what news was fit to publish.