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New reports announcing that yet another business has stumbled into a crisis--often without warning and through no direct fault of its management--seem as regular as the tide. And the spectrum of business crises is so wide that it is impossible to list each type. On a single day this year, the Washington Post reported a series of crashes suffered by American Eagle Airlines, the bankruptcy of Orange County, and Intel's travails with its Pentium microprocessor. Fortunately, almost every crisis contains within itself the seeds of success as well as the roots of failure. Finding, cultivating, and harvesting that potential success is the essence of crisis management.

A decade of process improvements has transformed the way most corporations operate and, at the same time, the job of the senior executive. Top-down autocrats are out and bottom-up teams are in. The message seems to be: Get the processes right, and the company will manage itself. But this message belies a simple truth: Managers, not processes, run companies. In fact, process-focused companies need more top-down management, not less. However, given the complexities of modern business competition, no single individual can do all that it takes to achieve success for a company. Success depends on the willingness and ability of the entire senior executive group to address not just their individual functional or divisional responsibilities but also their collective responsibility for the company as a whole.

Most managers rejoice if the majority of customers that respond to customer-satisfaction surveys say they are satisfied. But some of those managers may have a big problem. When most customers are saying they are satisfied but not completely satisfied, they are saying that they are unhappy with some aspect of the product or service. If they have the opportunity, they will defect. Companies that excel in satisfying customers excel both in listening to customers and in interpreting what customers with different levels of satisfaction are telling them.

Just because the competition is tough, that's no reason to be tough on customers, says Sir Colin Marshall, chairman of British Airways. Even in a cutthroat, mass-market business such as air travel, he argues, many people will pay a premium for good service--even those who travel economy. Marshall's views may be unconventional, but so is his company's performance: While the world airline industry has racked up billions of dollars in losses, British Airways has remained solidly profitable.

For large corporations that are refocusing their portfolios, the problem of how best to dispose of basically sound but underperforming businesses remains. Putting a business up for sale can be its kiss of death, with employee morale plummeting and prospective buyers unaware of the business's true potential value. The solution may be a restructuring joint venture, an arrangement that allows the buyer to learn about the business's untapped possibilities before buying it outright, and that often results in higher returns to the seller than a straight sale would. The authors contrast the successful joint venture involving Whirlpool and Philips with the disastrous results of Maytag's purchase of the Chicago Pacific Corp.

Wherever you look in business, there's a new level of interest in entrepreneurship. As attention at corporations swings away from retrenchment and toward growth, more and more people are wondering why some companies are able to stimulate creativity and initiative among their employees more effectively than others. What do those organizations do to convert intriguing ideas into commercial ventures?

Every business today competes in two worlds; a physical world of resources that managers can see and touch and a virtual world made of information. Executives must pay attention to how their companies create value in both arenas--the marketplace and the marketspace. But the processes for accomplishing this are not the same in the two worlds. Managers who understand how to master both can create and extract value in the most efficient and effective manner. Creating value in any stage of a virtual value chain involves a sequence of five activities: gathering, organizing, selecting, synthesizing, and distributing information. Just as someone takes raw material and refines it into someting useful, so a manager today collects raw information and adds value through these five steps.

When Jim Merrick left a well-known computer graphics company for California Vision Tools, he was excited about creating a dynamic marketing department of his own. But he failed to ascertain how much financial support his new company was likely to provide for dynamic product campaigns. Founder and CEO Mark Felton had seen his first product take off like a rocket. But now, when there are imitators all around, will Felton understand the importance of a big marketing push for his second product? Some on the executive staff like Merrick's ideas for a marketing campaign but don't see why he needs an extra $100,000 over his budget. Is Merrick just trying to keep his department's new hires happy? Should he try to implement his intro without incremental funds? Or are the other members of the executive staff being myopic? Five experts try their hands at setting California Vision Tools on the right course.

Offers the opportunity to examine two important challenges in starting a company: selecting partners and finding capital. Presents a candid view into the struggle of a young entrepreneur, Dan Stilton, and his two newly acquired partners, Scott Bettor and Henry Tellsworth, as they look for capital to launch their venture, Florida Air, a regional airline.

ABN-AMRO, the largest bank in the Netherlands, must decide whether to take any action in regard to the poor performance of Smit Transformatoren, a Dutch transformer manufacturer. ABN-AMRO acted as lead underwriter for the IPO of Smit, and also released a favorable equity research report around the time of the IPO. Smit's stock price initially performed favorably, but then fell significantly in conjunction with poor earnings announcements and other bad news.

Supplements the (A) case.

Students assess the performance of the Magellan fund, consider the sources of that success, and to decide on its sustainability. Designed for beginning finance courses, the case requires no numerical calculations to perform the analysis; but the absorption of capital market background and the implications of finance concepts in the case will fully occupy the novice. Set in fall 1995, the case describes the investment styles of three of the fund's managers-Peter Lynch, Morris Smith, and the current manager, Jeffrey Vinik.

The partners of Apex Investment Partners are seeking to provide financing for Accessine Technologies, a small firm specializing in providing "One Person, One Number" telecommunication services. The negotiation of the terms-and-conditions of the deal, as well as its pricing, prove challenging.

Examines the warrant pricing.

Indian apparel exports are enjoying considerable success in the international markets. However, the future is uncertain owing to impending technological, regulatory, and market changes. This case explores the long lead times for sourcing apparel from India and provides situational context for students to explain this phenomenon.

Li & Fung, one of the largest export trading companies in Asia, works primarily as an agent to connect U.S. and European manufacturers and retailers of nondurable, mass-market consumer goods with suppliers located all over East Asia who manufacture products according customer designs. Li & Fung's network of 2,000 suppliers in over a dozen countries is one of its most important competitive assets. This network consists of relationships with suppliers and knowledge of their capabilities and strengths. The network provides a number of benefits to customers, the most important being a wide variety of manufacturing options that differ by price, quality, and delivery time. Li & Fung's trading operations are organized into largely-independent, customer-focused divisions aided by regional branch offices. Its internal structure and incentives (especially compensation) are designed to motivate staff to customize service to each customer and to use the entire network to place each customer order with the supplier that most closely fits customer requirements. This design is especially important because of trading's low margins.

The Executive Shirt Co. is contemplating a move into custom-made shirts. The company's general manager has charged two of his managers to come up with plans for incorporating production of custom shirts into the existing manufacturing process.

In 1993, Booz.Allen & Hamilton forsook its previous, highly local organizational structure. It was motivated by a desire to serve multinational clients more effectively and to provide greater value to clients with more localized business by collecting best practices from around the world. Following a plan entitled Vision 2000, the firm created unified staffing pools based on industry and functional (strategy, operations, or information technology) expertise, within each of the three large regions, Atlantic (containing Europe and N. America), Asia-Pacific-Japan, and Latin America. In staffing each client engagement, partners considered all available staff within their regions attempting to provide the best consultants for the project, regardless of where they were located. The firm also redesigned compensation and evaluation methods, segmentation strategy, and staff development programs to fit its more integrated service delivery system. New systems and programs for sharing intellectual capital between consultants increased the firm's ability to provide value.

Supplements Identify the Industries.

Should South Bank offer a lower rate or more lenient loan terms to compete for a $120 million working-capital facility agreement with a telecommunications corporation? In this case, students are placed in the position of Yousuf Omar, a relationship manager at SouthBank (SB) whose longtime prospect, DSC Communications Corporation, has asked SB to bid as the agent bank on a $120 million working-capital facility. This could be an ideal client given the opportunity for significant credit and other business in the years ahead. To win the bid, however, Omar must be willing to recommend to his superiors that the bank aggressively pursue the deal by offering a lower interest rate or more lenient security and covenants for the loan than its rival bank has offered.