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In 2008, EADS, the European aerospace group that owns Airbus, was faced with the decision of how best to hedge a large and growing mismatch between its dollar revenues and its euro manufacturing costs. Specifically, the company needed to decide if it would continue hedging primarily with forward contracts, but in much higher volumes and at increasingly unfavorable rates, or to break with past practice and begin using foreign exchange option contracts. The decision would have consequences for EADS' profitability, cash flow, and its ability to fund strategic investment programs crucial to its ability to remain competitive with Boeing. Students must address questions concerning the proper way to measure foreign exchange exposures, the objectives of a rational risk management policy and program for a company like EADS competing in a duopoly with Boeing, the differences between hedging with FX options versus FX futures, counterparty risk, and hedge accounting, among other considerations.

In 1980, the city of Kunshan was mere countryside, registering neither on the Chinese government's nor the international business community's radar. By 2010, Kunshan had become the richest city per capita in China and a global technology powerhouse, home to companies such as Foxconn, Compal Electronics, and Wistron. Kunshan's entrepreneurial, self-starting development combined with strategic location and high levels of local government support had been responsible for Kunshan's tremendous growth and success. How could it continue to grow at a rate to maintain its leadership among Chinese entrepreneurial cities? And would the founding of an international, joint-venture campus with Duke and Wuhan University keep the city of Kunshan innovative and ahead of the curve?

Family owned and managed firms represent a large proportion of businesses operating domestically and globally. Dynamics introduced by family members can develop into significant problems for the family-owned firm, and have far-reaching implications for its performance. One challenge entails coping with a family member employee who, for various reasons, behaves in ways that have toxic and damaging effects on the business. We label this phenomenon 'the Fredo effect,' referencing the incompetent brother from The Godfather books and movies. Herein, we discuss the Fredo effect in a family firm context, why the Fredo effect is unique to family firms, and how the effect develops over time in family relationships. We further analyze how the Fredo effect hurts family firms in terms of leadership succession and performance, and what family firm leaders can do to address

The secret to true service innovation lies in shifting focus away from the service solution back to the customer. Rather than asking, "How are we doing?" managers must ask, "How is the customer doing?" For far too many businesses, service innovation means making incremental improvements to existing services. While a focus on improving current services certainly has its place, we indicate that this has constrained firms' innovation capabilities by limiting new ideas. In order to truly innovate, firms must expand their focus beyond existing services and service capabilities to address the fundamental needs of their customers, including the jobs and outcomes those customers are trying to achieve. By further focusing service innovation on developing shared solutions with customers, firms are better able to create breakthrough service offerings and processes. This will result in value co-creation that is both meaningful to customers and uniquely differentiated from competitive offerings. To this end, we present a four-step process for firms to guide job-centric service innovation.

Of all the issues boards of directors, executives, and managers face, one could argue that unethical corporate activity is one of the most significant in terms of its potential negative impact and also one of the most difficult to properly address. This article argues that three key elements must exist if illegal or unethical activity within and on behalf of organizations is to be minimized through developing and sustaining an ethical corporate culture. The three elements include (1) the existence of a set of core ethical values infused throughout the organization in its policies, processes, and practices; (2) the establishment of a formal ethics program, including a code of ethics, ethics training, an ethics hotline, and an ethics officer; and (3) the continuous presence of ethical leadership-that is, an appropriate 'tone at the top' as reflected by the board of directors, senior executives, and managers. While each of these three elements is distinct, they also overlap, relate to, and reinforce each other. This article discusses each of the three key elements necessary to develop and maintain an ethical corporate culture.

While supply chain management has been approached from a variety of perspectives, the role of the global supply chain as a mechanism to overcome severe supply chain disruptions has not been explored adequately. This article discusses the ways in which Japanese manufacturing firms have responded to the recent earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster. Based on case studies of Japanese manufacturing firms, this article presents a discussion of the supply chain restoration process after severe natural disasters and humanitarian disruptions and reflects on supply chain lessons in terms of disaster planning and recovery responses. The critical capabilities of supply chain information design, portability, and dispersion are discussed.

In this increasingly complex world, managers understandably seek experts' advice to chart a path forward. Yet they encounter a jumble of metaphors, methods, and models; too often, old wine in new bottles. This article helps managers cut through the clutter. It presents a triangular framework which integrates concepts that, despite contrasting language, are more similar than different. The schema is based on the three kinds of Venn diagram: disjunction, containment, and intersection. Disjunction implies autonomy; containment, control; and intersection, cooperation. Every organizational strategy is a balance of these three variables. Once the triadic pattern has been grasped, managers can 'speed-read' the literatures on strategy, technology/organization, mergers and acquisitions, and cognition-as well as see parallels across these writings. They also become better able to address strategic issues systemically and efficiently, and to communicate to a wide organizational audience.

This teaching case focuses on a collaborative project between a major software and services outsourcing company in China (VanceInfo Technologies) and one of its major Western clients (Microsoft Inc.). VanceInfo and Microsoft had been engaged in a long-term client/vendor relationship since 1997 and the project had been the result of this long-term partnership arrangement. The project was deemed quite successful and innovative; hence it provided an opportunity to determine how collaborative innovation could work between two remote and culturally different supply chain partners and how the lessons from this project could be used to inform SSO providers of ways in which they could move up the value chain to more client-focused value added services. The case looks in-depth at the actual working practices that enabled the distributed Microsoft/VanceInfo team to produce a market-led innovative product. Agile methods were highly integral to the functioning of those work practices and are quite carefully scrutinised from the point of view of how they were adapted for use in a distributed, cross-cultural environment. Users of the case study will be asked to formulate answers to several questions geared towards providing general guidelines that SSO providers can follow to achieve similar successful outcomes.

Supplement for case 813122

Spreadsheet for product W11710.

In 2011, The Walt Disney Company and other content owners aggressively lobbied Congress to pass the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The intent was to prevent unauthorized copying and transmission of copyrighted materials. This had been largely eliminated on U.S.-based websites, but some copyright owners claimed it was prevalent overseas. SOPA (and its companion legislation "Protect IP Act," or PIPA), would allow the government or private companies to request court orders to bar any U.S. company from "enabling" alleged infringing sites. SOPA initially had bipartisan support, and previous efforts to strengthen copyright protection had faced little opposition. The bill supported the commercial interests of Disney and other content owners. However, many of the specifics of SOPA and PIPA had the potential to stir powerful opposition from a wide variety of sources. The case discusses copyright law and the impact of technology advances on protection of copyrighted materials. It also describes SOPA and aspects of the proposed law that might attract opposition. The case concludes by asking students to consider SOPA from the perspective of both Disney and potential opponents.

After a massive storm hit the northern Illinois service area of electric utility Commonwealth Edison on July 11, 2011, more than 900,000 customers were left without power during a hot, humid summer. ComEd crews and reinforcements from more than a dozen other states worked for days afterward to restore service. Meanwhile, the company's months-old social media strategy faced its first major test. The eChannels social media team, part of ComEd's customer operations division, worked around the clock to respond to posts from customers on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter. At a time when the company faced public debate and criticism over its plan to raise electricity rates, in part to invest in smart-grid upgrades, engaging directly through social media was a way to strengthen relationships with customers and the general public, consistent with an important corporate goal: "Keep the lights on and information flowing."

iLinko is a small-to-medium enterprise (SME) based in Hong Kong. It has two major lines of business: providing business-to-business sourcing and procurement services for its customers (mainly medium-size companies located in the United States and Europe), and distributing babies and children products under the brand name Bloom. Simon May, the protagonist of the case, is the founder and CEO of iLinko. Given the rapid growth of the company, the existing ERP system can no longer satisfy the operational needs and requirements at iLinko. Simon has to choose whether to upgrade the existing ERP system or replace it with a brand-new system altogether.

This case is set in April 2013, and discusses the key elements that have contributed to the success of Infosys Ltd's Campus Connect Programme (CC) in developing India's Information Technology talent over the past eight years. The CC programme is an industry-academia initiative that re-constructs the education experience of engineering students. The programme was launched in May 2004 with 70 colleges. By December 2012, the model had been successfully scaled up to cover 400 colleges, and more than 180,000 readers and 8,300 faculty members across India had benefited from the programme's technical and soft skills training, and exposure to industry practices. Since CC's launch, Infosys has experienced a measurable improvement in the quantity and quality of their new recruits. Infosys understands the value of creating a talent ecosystem, and this case explains just how, and why, Campus Connect has worked as a successful example of industry-academia partnership in the talent management space.

The Basque country, with a population of 2.1 million and covering 7,233 square kilometers, is an autonomous region located in the north of Spain, physically separated from it by the Pyrenees mountains. Presents the history of the region--highly prosperous at the turn of the 20th century, but nearing bankruptcy by the 1950s. By 2001, the Basque GDP per capita had risen to a level well ahead of Spain and most European countries. At the same time that the region was enjoying the spoils of admirably executed cluster initiatives, it was being threatened by the destabilizing violence of the Basque separatist extreme, a slowing global economy, and an always-precarious balance of power between the Basque's own government and the government of Spain.

Hillary Mallow, founder-CEO of ProLab, learns that her health-services company is two months shy of bankruptcy. She needs to act - immediately - but isn't sure where to begin. Prolab's client list and geographic presence have grown steadily over the years, so the recent downturn is quite unexpected. Most worrisome, ProLab's executive team is in major trouble; contentiousness has developed between Hillary's husband, ProLab's CFO, and Hillary's business partner, ProLab's COO, which now threatens to envelop everyone else. With her company at stake and personal relationships on the line, Hillary must scramble to resolve the complicated mess that could mean the end of her company, or worse.

A short history of Apartheid in South Africa.

This second part of a two-part case provides the epilogue to the story of BP's conflicts with Russian oil partners and underscores the importance of alliance management.