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Palliser is Canada's second largest furniture company. The company has production facilities in Canada, Mexico, and Indonesia and experimented with cutting and sewing leather in China. The company is looking at further expanding the relationship with China. Ever since Palliser set up a plant in Mexico, the company faced increasing competitive pressure from Asia, especially China. The president of Palliser must decide what form this relationship should follow: an investment, either wholly or partly owned, or through subcontracting?

In 2002, Apax Partners had to decide whether to accept a less-than-perfect offer for one of its portfolio companies or to refinance it. This company, a maker of paper industry consumables with a global presence, had been purchased in 1999 and performed extremely well since then. Despite being a solid, cash-generative operation, it didn't excite a lot of interest in the market. An early exit at a good multiple would be helpful for Apax's current fund and future fund-raising efforts, whereas refinancing would allow Apax to take some money off the table and share in future upsides. Which is the better choice?

Set in the fall of 2003, covers managerial challenges facing the CEO and COO of Aspire Public Schools, a nonprofit charter school management company. In operation since 1999 and funded by prominent national foundations and venture philanthropies, Aspire operates 10 public charter schools in northern California. The leadership team at Aspire is contemplating expanding to Los Angeles, a move rich with operational and strategic complexity. Covers in detail Aspire's financial, operating, and instructional models.

Chronicles the development of Freeport's nearly 30 years of mining operations in Indonesia. Building on a mining concession awarded by the country's government, headed by General Suharto, in 1973, Freeport steadily built its mining output to nearly 200,000 cubic feet/day of ore, rich in copper. In spite of the company's attempts to address environmental issues and the stakes of indigenous people, critics were unimpressed by the company's efforts to improve. With the toppling of the Suharto regime in 1998, the company has to survive under a new government.

When the $19 billion merger of Silicon Valley legend Hewlett-Packard and Houston-based PC giant Compaq Computer Corp. legally closed on May 3, 2002, both companies had already devoted an immense amount of time preparing for the challenges that lay ahead. Chief among these challenges was avoiding the culture clashes that often accompany large mergers. This issue was particularly relevant given the very different cultures of HP and Compaq. This case provides an inside view of the integration planning process undertaken to create "The New HP," highlighting the work of the integration office, known as "the cleanroom," and the human resources team of HP vicepresident Jackie Kane. Also describes the dilemma facing one division manager, Rich Marcello, who struggled with the implications of a clean room decision.

This case examines both the nature of competition between two formidable firms and how they continue to transform themselves. See also "Package War: FedEx vs. UPS".

This note provides detailed guidance for analyzing a complex business problem using the systems thinking tools: reference behavior patterns, systems archetypes, causal-loop diagrams, and stock-flow maps. The step by step guidance is intended to help a systems thinker arrive at a clear, organized outcome, such as a presentation to a client or a professional modeler. The writing process provides a framework for approaching a problem whereby the logical transition from each part of one's thinking to the next is in place. Successfully communicating one's views and hypotheses and making relevant, supported recommendations are an outgrowth of using the writing process to support a systems analysis.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 204140

Teaches techniques of evaluating investment alternatives. A rewritten version of an earlier exercise.

Supplements the (A) case.

As the engineering of state-of-the-art jet engines becomes more and more complex, Pratt & Whitney leaders face major competitive problems. Product development projects are not meeting the cost, quality, and lead-time targets. The leadership develops a design, development, test, and launch system that treats the engineering resources as a factory and carefully designs and manages the work flows, engineering activities, and hand-offs between tasks. There is promising initial success but some question whether the "engineering standard work" system stifles creativity and whether it is appropriate for the work of other professional functions.

Abstract to follow.

Indian Oil Corp., a public sector undertaking of the government of India, faces the prospect of the deregulation of the oil industry in India and the need to compete with nimble new market entrants. A major initiative toward this end is the enterprise resource planning system that the company has commissioned. Now, several years into the implementation, a number of snags arise; the implementation is clearly not going as planned. The company must decide how to bring the implementation back on track and also use the lessons it has learned to re-evaluate whether it is headed in the right direction.

On June 12, 2003, the proposed merger of Random House and Time Warner Book Group was called off by the CEO of Random House's parent company, Bertelsmann. The announcement was welcomed by several critics who had questioned the logic of further consolidation in the book publishing industry, citing the power of the major publishing houses--Random House was already the world's largest book publishing company--and the accompanying commercialization of literature. Peter Olson, CEO of Random House, had to decide how to proceed and confront several other challenges facing the publishing industry: most notably, backward integration by Barnes and Noble into book publishing and the potential for digital devices such as e-books to undermine the traditional value chain of book publishing. Describes each of these tensions.

Details events in the home video-game industry from the late 1970s until the early 1990s. Tells the story of the rise and fall of Atari Corp., the dominant player in arcade and home video games in the 1970s and early 1980s. During this period, Atari became the fastest growing company in the history of the United States, but the wild ride came to a crashing halt in 1983, when the bottom dropped out of the video-game market, partly as a result of Atari's actions (or inaction). Describes Nintendo's revival of the home video game industry in the mid-1980s and its dominance of the market in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Addresses the creation of value by sparking dormant demand and the capture of value relative to other players in the industry. Part of a case series examining the competitive dynamics in the home video-game industry from 1970 into the new millennium. A rewritten version of two earlier cases.

Part of a series on the home video game industry that illustrates the underlying economics and competitive dynamics of the industry. Provides general information about the industry.

Central to the work of leaders and professionals are tasks that entail harming one party to deliver benefits or advance valued and worthy goals. Sometimes a person must, as part of his or her job, perform an act that causes emotional, material, or physical harm to another human being in the service of achieving a greater good or purpose. Examples in management include firing people, laying people off, delivering bad news, delivering negative performance feedback, and, in medicine, performing a painful procedure. Through a series of introspective questions, punctuated by small group discussions and concluding with a large group discussion of insights, students and practicing professionals are better equipped to manage the challenges of necessary evils.

The Developmental Network Questionnaire is an instrument designed to reveal information about the sources of developmental assistance in an individual's career. Teaching Purpose: To facilitate a session on developmental relationships. Includes color exhibits.

Reggae music has swept the world. From its origins in Jamaica, it can now be heard in clubs and bars from Senegal to Samoa. It has also influenced music from other countries, such as American rap. In the late 1990s, annual sales of reggae recordings were estimated to be $1.2 billion, of which Jamaican musicians, producers, and songwriters earned about $300 million, plus another $50 million from live performances and ancillary product sales. Describes the evolution of Jamaican musical forms, the development of the country's music industry, and the industry's structure in the early 21st century; introduces the concept of industrial clusters--localized groups of firms that grow around a single industry and include all the necessary supporting companies required by the industry; and asks how industrial clusters provide benefits to participants, how they can be grown, and how a developing country can build an industry.

With the increased liquidity in markets for credit derivatives around the turn of the century, coupled with dramatically increased corporate default rates, fixed-income investors and buyers of credit protection were receptive to a new generation of structured credit products that would further enhance their abilities to transfer credit risk efficiently, especially products offering improved liquidity and diversification. In April 2003, Morgan Stanley partnered with JPMorgan to co-market and co-design a suite of credit indices. Their first product, named TRAC-X, was a portfolio of underlying, single-name, credit default swaps. To enhance liquidity and make TRAC-X the new benchmark for credit trading, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan offered to make two-sided markets (subject to market conditions) at bounded bid-offer spreads and licensed TRAC-X to other dealers. In early 2004, Lisa Watkinson was the executive director and global product manager for credit default swap and credit indexation products at Morgan Stanley in New York, responsible for the development and marketing of all credit derivatives and credit indexation products globally. Recently, the TRAC-X products had faced criticism in the market and, opportunistically, competing basket credit products had been launched. Although Morgan Stanley was still at the leading edge of an explosive and profitable line of structured credit products, Watkinson faced significant business development risk, trying to maintain the liquidity associated with her first-mover advantage.