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Laura Wollen, group marketing director for ARPCO, was about to recommend her best product manager, Charles Lewis, for a position in the London office. Yet David Abbott, Wollen's counterpart in the United Kingdom, admitted that Lewis looked good on paper, but doubted he would fit in with the team and adjust to the British market. Wollen finally understood that Abbott's reservations were because Lewis was black. Wollen was wary of promoting Lewis into the London job only to have him fail there because of racism. Four experts analyze her alternatives.

In the 1990s, competitive success will come from building and dominating fundamentally new markets. Core competencies are one prerequisite for creating these new markets. Corporate imagination and expeditionary marketing are the keys that unlock the markets. Corporate imagination is unleashed when companies escape the tyranny of their served markets, think about needs and functionalities instead of marketing's more conventional customer-product grid, overturn tradition price-performance assumptions, and lead customers rather than follow them.

By the end of the century, the most successful computer companies will be buying computers rather than building them. Defining how computers are used, not how they are built, will create real value. Three new rules will guide the computer industry's strategic transformation: 1) compete on utility, not power; 2) monopolize the true sources of added value; and 3) maximize the sophistication of the value delivered, while minimizing the sophistication of the technology consumed. McKinsey Award Winner.

When GE's retiring Reginald Jones turned the job of CEO over to Jack Welch on April 1, 1981, the Wall Street Journal reported that GE had "decided to replace a legend with a live wire." Some wondered if the young dynamo could fill the elder statesman's very large shoes. But Welch had a very powerful and well-articulated vision of where he wanted his company to go. By 1984, he had regrouped GE's sectors, redefined its core businesses, made massive investment and disinvestment decisions, changed the company's approach to planning, and drastically cut personnel. Despite a major recession in the world economy and flat sales, profits rose from $1.5 billion in 1980 to $2.3 billion in 1984. This case chronicles the evolution of GE through the 1970s and early 1980s, focusing particularly on the changes wrought by Reg Jones and the way in which Jack Welch took that heritage and reshaped it to fit the demands of a new decade.

By the mid 1980's Jack Welch had completely transformed General Electric with more than 300 divestitures and acquisitions since the beginning of the decade. Welch insisted that his business units be number one or number two in their markets, and have the strength of large companies and the leanness and agility of small ones. Yet, although Welch had succeeded restructuring GE the way he wanted, employee morale was low. The case focuses on Welch raising employee productivity by continuing to remove layers of management and by allowing employees to have a greater voice in their own affairs.

Astor, the wealthiest American of his time, engages in fur trading, shipping, real estate investment, and general merchandise trading. Astor's career illustrates the immediate pre-modern management era: types of decisions, time horizons, and number of transactions.

After a decade of mediocre performance, the Norton Co. enters 1990 with the prospect of increased sales in the next few years. Yet Norton is pursuing slow growth industries, and a lower than expected earnings announcement at the beginning of 1990 has depressed earnings forecasts by brokerage firms. BTR, a large highly successful British conglomerate, is considering making a takeover offer of Norton but is troubled by a number of issues. This case takes a behind-the-scenes look at how a company like BTR would value a potential takeover target and analyze how the acquisition would impact BTR's operations and performance, and how it might stave off competing bids if it were to make an offer.

Japonica Partners, an investment firm, is trying to determine whether there is any unseen value in Sunbeam Oster Co., Inc., a Chapter 11 debtor. If there is, Japonica must consider the means by which they can acquire control of a company in Chapter 11.

William Apfelbaum, president and CEO of Transportation Displays, Inc., must restructure both the company's method of doing business and its liabilities to keep it from bankruptcy. The value he hopes to receive from the reorganized company will be an important issue in the restructuring negotiations with creditors.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 291002

Cumberland has been in Chapter 11 for 18 months and is trying to formulate a plan of reorganization that will satisfy a variety of claimants. Teaching objective: valuation and negotiation issues.

A U.S. trucking company is considering using debt for the first time to acquire another company. The directors of the company are divided in their opinion of the likely impact of leverage on Continental Carriers' performance. Their differences must be reconciled and a decision reached about whether to issue new debt or equity to fund the acquisition. Students are introduced to the impact of leverage on performance variables such as profits, growth, earnings per share, and stock price. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

A company in financial distress must design a successful exchange offer or face Chapter 11. Covers valuation and negotiation issues related to financial distress and the decision to file under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 291081.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 291020

This case series introduces the strategic human resource management (SHRM) process. SHRM is an action research program designed to align the organization and management of human resources with strategy. This case describes the health care industry, Becton Dickinson's (BD) corporate history, and the way the company is organized and managed. Does BD's corporate strategy make sense? Analyzes the fit between strategy and HRM.

Designed to bring closure to the discussion of the (B) case.

Describes a strategic human resource management process applied at the business unit and corporate level. The purpose of the process is to provide a means for aligning human resource management policies and practices with strategy and to hold managers accountable for managing change and improvement.

Makes possible a discussion of the growth of the railroads in the nineteenth century and the impact of that growth on the American economy.

Examines the coming of mass production (continuous and large-batch processes and those involving fabricating and assembling of interchangeable parts), and relates the beginnings of modern factory management to the needs and opportunities created by the new technology. Besides focusing on the interrelatedness of technology and management, it examines issues created by the responses of management and labor to the new machines and methods.