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Supplement case for W14562.

The marketing director of an advertising agency is considering marketing options to present to Porsche Canada. The goal is to generate sales of Porsche vehicles in Canada by using social media to highlight the fact that Porsches can be driven in winter conditions. The objective of this program, which includes a variety of social media tools and messages, augments Porsche Car Canada's traditional marketing campaign of billboards, event sponsorships and print ads in premium publications. The marketing director faces resource constraints: he has only a three-person marketing team and the limited marketing budget means the program can likely focus on only three distinctive social media vehicles. In addition, much of Porsche's social media efforts are run out of the United States. The marketing director needs to work within these constraints to build a social media campaign with a Canadian focus.

Dr. Mark Post and his team at Maastricht University were perfecting their tissue culture beef product-made entirely from muscle grown in his lab-to give it the same taste, texture and appearance of a traditional beef hamburger. A previous iteration of this product had been taste tested live, with good results, and Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, had provided Post with much of the funding to make the burgers. The next step was to form an independent company around this technology and take it to market. This innovative product could both radically disrupt the existing beef production and supply chain, and provide an animal welfare and environmentally-friendly food that had far less of an environmental impact than traditional beef products. Post faced several challenges in making this a commercially viable product though. He had to get price down, as it currently cost roughly $330,000 to make a single burger. He also had to find the right partner(s) to help him bring the product to market, but who should he work with: someone from the established beef production and supply system, a retailer, or someone entirely outside the traditional beef system? How could he expect established companies to react to this disruption of the status quo? Messaging around this product was critical: How should Post communicate with the public to convey that this was a natural product-the way muscle tissue grew in his lab was the same way it developed in cattle-and overcome public skepticism of overt scientific involvement in their food?

Mental illness has been described as an epidemic affecting nearly a quarter of all Americans in their lifetimes, often during their most productive working years. Managers who can design organizations that maximize mental health can minimize these risks and boost productivity. This note serves as a guide to understanding mental health in the American workplace. It provides an overview of the most prevalent mental health conditions among employees and the aspects of the work environment that can exacerbate the issues. It also looks at the costs, both to individuals and to companies, of treating or not treating mental health conditions, and outlines the legal framework, insurance plans, and managerial responses to accommodating employees who struggle with mental health issues. To engage students in a role play, the note includes a vignette featuring a struggling CEO.

This case has a twofold focus: first, to project a budget for pharmaceuticals based on morbidity patterns, required drug regimens, and unit costs, and to focus on ways the budget might be cut if necessary; second, to prepare a modified version of a breakeven analysis for the community pharmacies.

Supplement case for TCG165.

Discusses the various types of costs that can exist in manufacturing settings; how to compute cost of good manufactured and cost of goods sold; how to determine predetermined overhead rates; how to compute flexible overhead budgets; the managerial use of overhead variances; the distinction between absorption and variable costing; and the impact of JIT on the differences between absorption and variable costing.

Discusses several analytical techniques that incorporate the multi-year period over which a new asset will be used, and looks at three of these techniques (payback period, net present value, and internal rate of return). Examines the choice of a rate of return (or discount rate), the issue of risk, and how companies deal with risk in assessing investment proposals. Also discusses some non-quantitative considerations that can influence senior management's decision about a capital investment (or programming) proposal. Concludes with a description of ways that programming relates to several other organizational activities.

Focuses on the way managers can affect the items on an organization's financial statements. In particular, financial management is concerned with the choices that managers make about (a) the use of debt or equity to finance assets, (b) the structure of debt, (c) the magnitude of net income, and (d) the management of cash. Discusses both the operating cycle and the financing cycle as two cash-related cycles that must be carefully managed.

Discusses some basic techniques for financial statement forecasting, including the operating and financing cycles. Discusses three important financial management concepts: debt structure, leverage, and the role of profit. Makes a distinction between financial risk and business risk. Examines some issues related to financing fixed assets, including issues related to financing growth. Discusses cost behavior and its relationship to forecasting financial statements, and the differential cost concept, Examines some techniques for undertaking alternative choice decisions concerning discontinuing a product line, and discusses several important principles associated with alternative choice decisions. Concludes with a discussion of the concept of contribution and the structure of a contribution income statement.

Discusses the gap between reality and the NPM paradigm and the lessons that can be transferred from the private to the public sector. Address the difference between bureaucratic control and managerial control, and how to move toward managerial control. Focuses on the barriers to effective managerial control and how to overcome them, including the control culture, centralized decision making, the distinction between planning and control, absence of market forces, task complexity, and personnel policies. Includes a discussion of responsibility centers as a decentralizing mechanism, and how a well-prepared set of management control reports can assist managers.

Discusses some basic concepts of financial statements, including the balance sheet and what it measures, the nature of some specific assets and liabilities, the income statement and what it measures, the creation of owners' equity, and the basis for changes in it. Also addresses several fundamental accounting concepts (entity, dual aspect, money measurement, cost, realization), and some basic accounting and finance matters, including the nature of an account, leverage, unmeasured value, and depreciation.

The case explores a public-private partnership initiative on environment education in India, highlighting the strategic, institutional, and reputational implications for corporate social responsibility in an emerging country context. Launched in 2010 with a target to reach 200,000 schools, "Paryavaran Mitra" (Friends of the Environment) was a multi-layered collaboration with three primary and more than 160 secondary partners. The case is positioned in 2013, when the senior manager of corporate responsibility for the firm that serves as the corporate sponsor of the project must make a decision about the future of the initiative.

The director of analytics and reporting at The Leading Hotels of the World and his team were to present their new idea to the company's executive team: the hotel engagement scorecard (HES). HES was received well and gained recognition from the executive team of 10 members, becoming one of four company goals for the year. HES was to be implemented across all of The Leading Hotels of the World's 25 global offices and more than 430 member hotels. As the founder of the idea, the director of analytics and reporting felt responsible and motivated to make HES as strong as possible before its implementation. He wondered how HES innovation could move forward and assist member hotels as much as possible.

Student spreadsheet for W14554.

Amway Korea Ltd. faces both motivations and challenges as it pursues enhancement of the firm's social responsibility in a multi-level marketing industry. This case asks students to consider whether the firm's social participation can be an effective solution to gain legitimacy and enhance its reputation. Stakeholders and the general public have two different views about the firm's attempts at corporate social responsibility: the window-dressing view (that the firm is making a distrustful attempt to deceive stakeholders) and the value-enhancement view (that the firm is making a genuine investment to improve its responsibility and stakeholder value). Students are also introduced to the concept of creating shared value, which Amway Korea adopts as a strategic initiative in its role as a corporate citizen.

The case focuses on a European private equity form - Ardian - and the process it uses to sell one of its portfolio companies, and the decisions around that sale. Key issues include the choice of an auction or acceptance of a pre-emptive bid, and the role of the portfolio company's management in the process. The case explores the kinds of influence company management can, and should, have in the sale process. The case also explores issues at the PE firm level, including the fact that the firm has recently been spun off out of its large parent financial services firm, and how the GP entity was valued during that spin-out.

Tin Mining, Inc. was a company located in a developing country called Boldavia mainly dedicated to tin exploitation and production. During its initial thirty-three years of operation (1971-2004), it developed three organizational capabilities (technical, productive, and trust building). The case illustrates three typical characteristics of capabilities: effective solution to complex problems, regular and successful practice, and reliability and development over time. Additionally, it also illustrates the organizational capabilities paradox which emerges during the 2004-2008 period and three of its causes: path dependency (lock in), structural inertia, and the absence of a capability dynamization function. In 2009, Tin Mining, Inc. faced the need to reshape its organizational capabilities, and the arrival of a new president to the company was a propitious moment to analyze this option.