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Examines business computing as it is evolving in the 1990s. Compares the highly centralized and tightly controlled systems of the past with today's flexible, networked, client/server technology. Serves as an introduction to client/server terminology and technology.

Supplements the (A) case. Designed as a class handout.

The home video-game industry began in 1972 with the founding of Atari. After riding a dramatic boom and bust in the early 1980s, most players left the business. Nintendo of Japan then rebuilt the industry--establishing a commanding worldwide position by the end of the decade. By 1990, Nintendo game systems could be found in one out of every three households--in both Japan and the United States. The company's stock market value exceeded that of Sony or Nissan. The case describes the steps Nintendo took to achieve this success. Also covers the U.S. antitrust investigation of Nintendo.

Describes the attitudes, feelings, and perceptions of the manager who will conduct the performance appraisal interview. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

Describes the events leading up to an actual performance appraisal interview--the views, opinions, and attitudes of the subordinates who are to be interviewed. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

A law firm must decide how to split partnership profits among the partners. Issues of seniority versus performance, performance evaluation, and lack of consensus of values dominate the discussions. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

Supplements the (A) case. A rewritten version of an earlier supplement.

Compares four different approaches to case teaching: lecturing, theorizing, illustrating, and choreographing a case. Argues the advantages of the "choreography" method from the point of view of students' learning. Concludes with a description of that method and some tips on how to use it.

An account executive has the task of calculating a beta value for three stocks of interest to an important client, based on five years of monthly total returns. The client is interested in these beta values as measures of the riskiness of the three investments. This case is best used near the beginning of a module on regression. It focuses on the simple linear regression model relating equity returns to market returns. This use of regression (to calculate a stock's beta) is very common in financial analyses and will be seen by the students in other courses. The case serves to clarify the distinction between systematic and unsystematic risk and between R-squared and the standard deviation of residuals as measures of forecasting uncertainty.

Presents an introduction to methods for understanding user needs in product development. Describes a number of techniques including the use of focus groups, interviews, questionnaires, the Kano method, Lead User analysis, the Product Value matrix, OFD, etc. Provides a "how to" for product developers, and includes theory as well as examples from practice.

Describes the principal conventions used to report yields on debt instruments.

Supplements the (A) case.

Five carefully constructed problems illustrate the concepts of second-market discounting, price skimming, limit pricing, random discounting, premium pricing, and bundling.

Examines Beer's actions on assuming leadership of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, the world's sixth largest advertising agency, during a period of rapid industry change and organizational crisis. Focuses on how Beers, the first outsider CEO, engages and leads a senior team through a vision formulation process. Chronicles closely the debates among senior executives struggling to reconcile creative, strategic, and global vs. local priorities. Sixteen months later, with a vision statement agreed upon, Beers faces a series of implementation problems. Turnaround has begun, but organizational structures and systems are not yet aligned with the firm's new direction. Concludes as Beers must decide how to work best with her senior team to achieve alignment in 1994.

Updates CEO Beers' progress two years after her initiation of a massive organizational change effort. Designed as an in-class handout.

Describes a problem of bankruptcy, following the treatment in the 2,000-year-old Babylonian Talmud. A person dies, leaving a number of debts that total more than the size of the estate. The question is: How should the estate be divided among the creditors? The case presents the Talmudic prescriptions for dividing three such estates. The estate division problem is then reinterpreted as the problem of how a number of partners involved in a project should divide the total cost of the project among them. The Talmudic prescription for estate division coincides with the added value approach. (In particular, it is neither equal nor proportional division.) The analysis applies beyond the context of estate division, as the cost-sharing reinterpretation demonstrates.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 495-031.

Presents the results of a service process analysis of USAA's claims processing activity in its Great Lakes Region. Explores not only issues of redesigning the process but also the organizational implications of various alternatives.

Consists of several vignettes and discussion points around issues of conflict in the workplace. Issues presented are differences of race, gender, nationality, culture, religion; access to power, training, advancement; tolerance of style of management, language, politics; implications of involvement in these issues.

Dr. Glenn Lopez, the founder and general director of GuateSalud, faces cash flow problems and some crucial choices about how to expand his innovative health maintenance organization for agricultural workers in rural Guatemala. The case describes Lopez's six-year struggle to establish GuateSalud and the organization's effort to combine business principles with a social mission. Also provides background on the tense political environment surrounding the delivery of health care, coffee growing, and the banana industry in Guatemala--factors Dr. Lopez must take into consideration as he weighs his options.