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It was June 5, 2008 and the senior promotions coordinator was beginning to feel the pressure of managing a major sponsorship event for the Toronto Sun, a daily newspaper publication in Ontario, Canada. She had recently been hired and had received the responsibility of organizing the Toronto Sun's presence in the city's annual Caribana Parade after her colleague failed to make any progress following months of handling the assignment. With only eight weeks until parade day (August 2), she felt challenged to make the company's float a success. The Toronto Sun earned its place in the parade as the primary print media sponsor for the event. Pulling the company's float from the biggest parade event in the city would mean forfeiting valuable marketing exposure. This case was designed for use in an undergraduate or MBA operations management or introductory project management course. Developed to aid instructors in facilitating discussions of key project management concepts, the case content allows for an analytical approach to covering the basic skills in planning a project, including precedence relationships, critical path, due dates, uncertainty (PERT tasks), crashing, etc. It can be used to teach students MS Project or other project management software. It can also be used for a less analytic, more managerial discussion of project management.

The case is a true story with disguised names, and was developed with the help of the protagonist, "Philip Chase," who runs a "successful" executive placement agency, Retail Personnel Flow (RPF). However, the case reveals that it is perhaps not as "successful" as he seemed to think. Philip has just learned from an employee that his company's biggest client, Winterplain, is about to offer the important Kash-n-Karry contract to RPF's main competitor, NY-Lon. At first, Philip thinks it is just a rumor, but later that day discovers that a prospective candidate has already been through several rounds of interviews with NY-Lon. The HR director at Winterplain confirms that there are service quality issues. She agrees to meet Philip the next day and sends a memo listing Winterplain's concerns with RPF for him to go through before the meeting; some of the points are valid but Philip is furious about the others! It was a happy ending: RPF won back the Winterplain account, including Kash-n-Karry. NY-Lon's foray into retail placements was short-lived since it could not cope with the complexity of the retail labor market. Learning objectives: The case provides participants with an understanding of the political dynamics of the relationship between professional firms and their clients. Participants get to appreciate the role of networks in improving one's social power and influence ability. The case can also be used in role-playing how difficult political situations can be resolved.

Clayton Industries, a sixty-year-old U.S.-based firm in the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) industry, with nearly $1 billion in revenues, has gradually built a presence in a number of countries, including several in Europe. Peter Arnell, previously Clayton's successful country manager for the U.K., has been asked to take over the Italian subsidiary, which has recently been struggling on several fronts. Arnell must juggle the strategic objectives of his manager (the head of Clayton Europe) and of the firm's Wisconsin-based CEO while overseeing the day-to-day activities of the business in this new setting. Many of Arnell's challenges derive from his dual responsibilities of handling manufacturing as well as sales of Clayton products in his new home country.

Spreadsheet supplement for 4199.

This case describes the implementation of a business intelligence project in a South American holding composed of Chilquinta Energía, the third-largest distributor of electricity in Chile and one of the leading energy companies in Latin America, Energas S.A., which distributes natural gas to 34,000 customers in Chile, and Tecnored, an energy service company. Balanced scorecard concepts are not easy to put in place and the Chilean group decided to adopt an original and difficult approach: to learn and implement the BSC without the traditional leadership of external consulting. Despite the success of the implementation, the case outlines the ongoing challenges facing this type of multi-functional project.

In tough times, charities are often called upon to provide help and services that are normally rendered by governments or private entities. And we have been living in tough times. So, this seems to be a good year to investigate the research being conducted on altruism; specifically, charitable giving. Though this research does not focus solely on the antecedents or outcomes of altruistic behavior, it does help us to better understand how and why people respond to charitable requests.

In this article, we focus primarily on operational capabilities, developing the concept in a way that is easy to understand and visualize. We then briefly differentiate between operational capabilities and other closely related concepts, focusing on implications for managers.

Organizations typically depend upon performance evaluation measures to provide feedback to managers regarding the achievement of strategic objectives. However, performance evaluation is often focused on negative aspects of performance, suggesting that managers may not be receiving enough reinforcement of the positive elements of their decisions. When applied effectively, performance measures not only create desirable motivation, but also encourage communication and the exchange of information among managers. Under this scenario, individual managers achieve their personal goals, while the organization satisfies its strategic objectives. The application of positive organizational scholarship principles to performance evaluation metrics can help make the evaluation process more effective. Using performance measures framed in a positive manner can help generate more creativity, more problem-solving ability, and greater communication among managers, leading to progress toward organizational objectives. We illustrate this approach with the application of positive metrics to the balanced scorecard for mid-level managers in implementing business strategy.

Sponsorship of large sporting and cultural events has become a major marketing communication tool, particularly when firms obtain exclusive rights and garner the hype associated with this honor. Concomitantly, ambush marketing-defined as attempts by competitors to exploit the event-has also increased in prominence. This article outlines what is known as the Li Ning affair, whereby major Olympic sponsor Adidas was ambushed by lesser-known Chinese sportswear company Li Ning, whose namesake founder was the most decorated Chinese Olympian and who lit the Olympic flame at the 2008 Beijing Olympiad. Data collected immediately following the closing of the Beijing Games isolates what we call the Li Ning effect-or, being incorrectly identified as an official sponsor-and the positive effects this has on measures of brand attitude and recommendation likelihood. As presented herein, seven lessons about ambush marketing can be derived from the Li Ning affair, which sponsors and those considering sponsorship opportunity might wish to learn.

One unfortunate consequence of the focus on "charismatic," "transformational," and "visionary" leader behaviors during the past few decades has been the tendency to diminish the importance that transactional leadership behaviors have on leadership effectiveness. We say that this is unfortunate because recent research has shown that transactional leadership, in the form of contingent reward and punishment behaviors, can have substantial effects on a variety of important employee attitudes, perceptions, and measures of job performance. Therefore, in this article we discuss some possible reasons why transactional leadership has been relegated to a lesser role than transformational leadership, summarize the research that indicates the importance of leader contingent reward and punishment behavior to leadership effectiveness, and identify some of the mechanisms that these forms of leadership behavior work through to influence employee attitudes and behaviors. Following this, we address ten misconceptions managers often have regarding the administration of rewards and punishments, and provide some recommendations about how leaders can improve their effectiveness in administering recognition and discipline in organizational settings.

In this article, we present the findings of a study examining the exploding problem of counterfeit trade via the opinions of U.S. executives as compared to their counterparts from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Tahiti. Their responses provide insight as to how companies in different countries are attacking piracy and consumer complicity with counterfeit products. Per our study, executives in Australia, Tahiti, and the U.S. had similar perspectives: they viewed the seller as the main driver of counterfeit trade for reasons of profit. These executives perceived the demand for counterfeits as being driven by desirable product attributes and the ease of obtaining them. Likewise, they cited two anti-counterfeiting actions-site licenses and reduced price/rebates-as being able to reduce the demand for illicit products. In contrast, South African executives observed the main reason for piracy as weak enforcement of intellectual property (IP) and the lure of exorbitant profits, with little value in any anti-counterfeiting actions other than special packaging. These executives put forth that South African consumers are complicit due to limited education and low disposable income, and the ready availability of counterfeits. Executives from New Zealand were the most optimistic, believing that piracy and complicity can be reduced by many anti-counterfeiting actions, including special packaging, reducing price, emphasizing product benefits/warranties, stressing the harmful effects of using fake products, offering site licenses, and listing of authorized sellers.

Faced with the challenges of consumer resistance due to the separation of roles between producer and consumer, as well as overpowering marketing tools and techniques, a company can resolve the problem by letting consumers join in the process of value co-creation. Advocating the consumer-oriented perspective, this article explains how and why consumers co-create, which leads to the development of a typology of consumers' co-creative practices. Four interrelated categories (participation-for-self, creation-for-self, participation-for-others, creation-for-others) are illustrated with the proposed four Cs strategies-choice, complement, cause, and communality-to foster these different practices accordingly. From well-established to newly-developed, these consumer-oriented strategies work to enhance deeper consumer involvement yielding a possibility to attain continual and interconnected benefits for a company. However, implementation is based on a company's readiness and willingness to achieve different degrees of commitment. This article promotes collaborative efforts between consumers and companies, and highlights mutuality of benefits which leads to sustainable relationships.

Porter Airlines is a regional airline operating out of Toronto City Airport on the Toronto Islands in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Porter operates only Bombardier Dash-8 Q400 turboprop aircraft and has flights to destinations in Canada and the United States. Porter targets business passengers who find the Toronto International Airport unattractive. Since its inception, Porter Airlines disproved many who thought it was doomed to failure by successfully navigating the first few years of its existence. It tapped into unmet customer needs with a unique strategy. However, a critical question that needed to be addressed was whether this particular business model, so successful thus far, would remain valid. Additionally, Porter needed to decide how it planned to expand and how aggressive it should be when entering new, highly competitive markets.

This case presents a series of decision points along with a simple process for ascertaining underlying source(s) of disagreement, which represents an important managerial tool. The president of First Mates' Wholesale Boating Supply Company, is faced with the reality of missing year-end earnings projections and breaking a 30-year streak of successive earnings increases. He has asked all his direct reports to meet with their teams and brainstorm about ways to finish the year in strongly and successfully. The case presents a number of those ideas for students to debate and discuss as they decide which ones the company should pursue.

Brett Barakett, CEO and founder of Tremblant Capital Group, a New York-based hedge fund, must decide what to do with his fund's position in Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, which has dropped in value by more than 40 percent in recent months. Tremblant is a hedge fund that specializes in forecasting consumer behavioral change, and capitalizes on the disconnect between stock prices and consumer behavior. In the case of Green Mountain Coffee, many other sophisticated investors have taken short positions in the stock, leading Barakett to question whether his fund had the right trade thesis.

Cambridge NanoTech (CNT) is an interesting example of how a successful university research project was used to build a small scale business which designs and manufactures research equipment for a new class of chemical reactions called Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD). CNT's business model is particularly interesting since the university researchers/founders developed a product that was specifically meant to serve other university researchers rather than trying to immediately jump to commercial, high volume manufacturing applications. Their product was specifically designed to be low cost, easy to use, flexible, and to have very short delivery times which made it very attractive to university researchers operating large research projects (typically on the order of millions of dollars/year). A large profit margin was possible due to the lack of competition and the perceived high value associated with having these technical capabilities since commercial machines of this type were typically a significant fraction of a million dollars. After a successful launch in 2005, the company experiences serious friction between the co-founders which is resolved when one of the co-founders buys out the other. In 2010, the company is profitable but is facing increased competition and the need to grow its business. The company is considering several different strategies.

This case supplements the "Flying J (A)" case.

In late 1996, Sherwin-Williams CEO John Breen sat at his desk, preparing for another meeting with his board of directors. The room was dark except for a small stream of light that escaped the curtains hung heavily over the windows. Outside, rain was falling onto the company's corporate headquarters and on the streets of Cleveland. Breen stared at the portraits of company founders Henry Sherwin and Edward Williams that loomed above him on the wall. What would they think about the company's direction under his watch? Both had invested their life savings to create Sherwin-Williams in 1870. More than 125 years later, a market shift was taking place. Some paint companies were experimenting with new formulations-using different materials to make paint that would send fewer toxins into the air. Would the founders agree with the decisions Breen had made as he guided the company into this new era?

Finalist and 3rd Place winner in the 2011 Oikos Casewriting Competition. In early 2008, Clorox released a new line of environmentally friendly cleaning products called GreenWorks. Following the success of smaller firms such as Seventh Generation and Method, Clorox targeted the niche market of green products, with an estimated market size of $150 million. Using its competitive advantages in distribution and economies of scale, Clorox priced its GreenWorks products below those of smaller competitors. Surprisingly, Clorox's market entry did not steal revenue from smaller players, but instead caused the market for green cleaning products to explode, leaving Clorox with several strategic questions.

Delta Electronics, the world's largest manufacturer of switching power supplies, hoped to enter the market for gasoline-electric hybrid power trains for automobiles by being a major component and subsystem supplier. While most public awareness of hybrid vehicles fell to the tier one integrated vehicle manufacturers, Delta felt it had an opportunity to enter the market via new automotive market entrants in China who had comparatively fewer capabilities and were willing to purchase major subsystems. Yet the company faced a dilemma -- a major customer wanted Delta to transfer ownership of key intellectual property as a condition of doing business. The case affords students an opportunity to consider whether a technological shift will enable what seems traditionally to be a highly integrated product designs to shift to a modular architecture, and consider the implications for appropriability of returns.