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Describes the organization of the post-merger integration, cultural issues, and the attempts to align the merged company through a mission/vision statement. Explains the complexity of this merger by highlighting implementation issues (e.g., corporate governance, brand separation, etc.).

This case looks at how Lincoln Electric, the US-based company renowned for its compensation scheme, tried to implement its human resource policies globally and particularly in China.

Competition in the information age often takes the form of a standards war: a battle for market dominance between incompatible technologies. A company's success or failure can easily hinge on its ability to wage such a standards war. Standards wars are especially bitter in markets with strong network effects, where consumers place great value on compatibility and interconnection with each other. These markets tend to exhibit positive feedback and "tip" to a single winner. Based on a study of dozens of standards wars going back over 100 years, this article offers a "battle guide" for waging a standards war. After classifying standards wars and identifying seven key assets that firms can use to successfully establish a new technology, the authors recommend three tactics in standards battles: building alliances, exploiting first-mover advantages, and managing consumer expectations.

Corporate restructuring has been the focus of much debate in the past few years. This article addresses the debate about the effectiveness of corporate restructuring by examining 52 studies presented within 25 research articles on restructuring and its impact on economic performance. The authors distinguish three forms of restructuring: financial, portfolio, and organizational. Based on the research reviewed here, financial restructuring has the highest positive impact on performance, followed by portfolio restructuring. Organizational restructuring has little consistent impact on performance.

The most important contribution of management in the 20th century was to increase manual-worker productivity fifty-fold. The most important contribution of management in the 21st century will be to increase knowledge-worker productivity--hopefully by the same percentage. So far it is abysmally low and in many areas (hospital nurses, for instance, or design engineers in the automobile industry) actually lower than it was 70 years ago. So far, almost no one has addressed it. Yet we know how to increase--and rapidly--the productivity of knowledge workers. The methods, however, are totally different from those that increased the productivity of manual workers.

This article analyzes how Knowledge Management (KM) is likely to affect competition in the management consulting industry. KM represents a fundamental and qualitative change in this industry's basic production technology. Because management consultants acquire information directly from their customers, for these firms, KM technology exhibits increasing returns to scale. As such, although KM clearly represents an opportunity for some consultants to build a sustainable competitive advantage, it is likely to lead to a shake-out. Based on the industry's early experience with KM systems, this article describes a number of possible future outcomes as well as strategies that consultants can follow.

Silicon Valley is built on social capital, but it is social capital of a fundamentally different type from the concept of "deep civic engagement" that has come to dominate development theory and to influence policy. Social capital in Silicon Valley is best understood as performance-based trust. It emerges among economic and institutional actors in the pursuit of objectives related specifically to innovation and commercialization. In Silicon Valley, the sequence runs from performance to trust, not from community to trust as the civic engagement theorists would have it, Silicon Valley is an open society--open to ideas, to institutions, and especially to people. Community-based trust implies a closed society. The openness of Silicon Valley to foreigners is one of the region's most valuable assets; it has also been the best social capital investment for the home countries.

This survey of employees at six large American companies asked the question: "What works and what hurts in corporate ethics/compliance management?" The study found that a values-based cultural approach to ethics/compliance management works best. Critical ingredients of this approach include leaders' commitment to ethics, fair treatment of employees, rewards for ethical conduct, concern for external stakeholders, and consistency between policies and actions. What hurts effectiveness most are an ethics/compliance program that employees believe exists only to protect top management from blame and an ethical culture that focuses on unquestioning obedience to authority and employee self-interest. The results of effective ethics/compliance management are impressive. They include reduced unethical/illegal behavior in the organization, increased awareness of ethical issues, more ethical advice seeking within the firm, greater willingness to deliver bad news or report ethical/legal violations to management, better decision making because of the ethics/compliance program, and increased employee commitment.

The creation of Lucent Technologies was the result of AT&T's "trivestiture" in 1995. In this split, three companies were formed: AT&T, a $50 billion telecommunications services company; NCR, a computer firm; and an unnamed $20 billion "Systems and Technology" company that designed, built, and delivered a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, consumer and business telephone systems, and microelectronics components. Given that AT&T was one of the largest, oldest, and best known corporations in the world, the new "S&T" company's management was faced with a series of strategic issues which had to be resolved quickly. Presents the process used by the company and its corporate identity consultants to identify corporate values that were important in the marketplace, to create a name for the company, to design a logo and identity system, and to implement the strategy. Also provides an opportunity to follow the process used by a company at the time of change in its identity and positioning in the marketplace. Such change may come as the result of a merger, acquisition, new alliance or, as in this case, the result of a spin-off. Comparing this process to the one generally followed in the formation of a truly new "start-up" venture; analyzing the effect of business, financial, and regulatory pressures on the process; and examining the role of consultants and research in the development of a name and visual identity for the company. Comparisons to current publicized examples of identity change can foster meaningful debate in the classroom.

On July 6, 1998, the Indonesian government announced that Cementos de Mexico (Cemex) was the preferred bidder for the largest government-owned cement company in Indonesia PT Semen Gresik. The first round of bidding had pitted Cemex against Holderbank of Switzerland and Heidelberger of Germany, two of the largest cement manufacturing firms in the world, and a mere seven weeks had passed since the resignation of President Suharto, a turning point for Indonesia's political and economic future. Cemex was informed on August 20 that their first round bid would have to be restructured, the primary change being a maximum of 14% of ownership passing from the government to Cemex. Then, as preferred bidders, Cemex would wait for the other round bidders to submit second bids. If their second bids were superior to Cemex's first bid, Cemex would have the right to match them if it wished. The vice president for finance of Cemex, Hector Midina, and his acquisition staff and consultants, now had only a few weeks to finalize their position

The case introduces Quentin Wahl, the founder and president of Toronto-based Cadet Uniform Services Ltd. Cadet was the third largest uniform cleaning company in the world and occupied a 10% share of the $300 million uniform-cleaning business in Canada. In 1993, Cadet was among the five companies awarded a Certificate of Merit under the federally sponsored Canadian Awards for Business Excellence. The case studies the basic strengths of Cadet and what made the company one of the leading players in their industry.

Instructions for Case Selection for Role Reversal In this exercise participants select an actual negotiation situation from their own lives that they found particularly difficult, and negotiate in the role of their opposing party.

In response to the changes in the European small car market, Ford decided to launch a second small car, the Ford Ka. The Ford Ka has already been developed, the production capacity determined, and the launch set for October 1996 in France. Before Gilles Moynier can get to the specifics of the marketing strategy, he must decide who the target customer for the Ford Ka should be.

Case B reveals that Ford chose an attitudinal segmentation and presents initial sales results. The change in the segmentation approach made it difficult to assess the success of the launch and to determine what needed to be done next to continue to build the brand.

Gives a straightforward overview of business governance. Discusses why a board is needed, the ideal size of a board, and the differences between a board of directors and an advisory board.

Although the Great Depression stands as the most punishing economic event of the 20th century, there is still remarkably little consensus about its causes. This case presents a number of prominent explanations including those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and Anna Jacobson Schwartz. Four additional theories are presented in the appendix.

Set in the Great Depression, this case explores the origins of national income accounting in the United States. Highlights Senator La Follette's 1932 proposal for the federal government to begin collecting national income statistics.

Examines sports sponsorship at John Hancock through 1998 and prospectively beyond. From its early sponsorship of the legendary Boston Marathon, the company had expanded its activities substantially. It was one of the worldwide "Top Sponsor" companies of the Olympics, a very significant expenditure. The company also sponsors the U.S. Tour of World Gymnastics Champions and Figure Skating Champions. Students must analyze the company's activities in the context of benefits to John Hancock and its constituencies. Considerable description is included of ways the company tries to "leverage" its sponsorships. The company's principles of sports sponsorships are included.

Describes the strategic, organizational, and management changes that led Acer from its 1976 startup to become the world's second-largest computer manufacturer. Outlines the birth of the company, the painful "professionalization" of its management, the plunge into losses, and the transformation under founder Stan Shih's radical "fast food" business concept and his "client-server" organization model, which are put to the test when a young product manager in Acer America develops a radically new multimedia home PC with global potential. Shih must decide whether to give an inexperienced manager in a loss-generating subsidiary the green light.

Follows the development, national launch, and global rollout of the Aspire, Acer's first new product developed outside of Taiwan. Implementing a very promising new PC concept proves challenging to Mike Culver and his U.S. team, who are plagued by coordination problems with experts and resource managers in Taiwan. Leading the global rollout proves equally difficult, with local managers wanting to make local adaptations. After 2.5 years of missed forecasts and unexpected losses, CEO Stan Shih must decide whether to abandon the Aspire. More profoundly, what changes does this failure suggest for his radical "fast food" business concept and his "client server" organization model?