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Capital Coast Health Limited is a public healthcare facility in central New Zealand. The new chief executive is confronted with serious internal problems and a persistent annual financial deficit that has been with the organization since its inception. Working in an uncertain and rapidly changing healthcare environment and constrained by government regulations, the chief executive officer must find a way to deliver quality care to the community and at the same time, motivate a large team of professionals who were already weary after years of change. The supplement Capital Coast Health Limited: Being a Good Employer in the Midst of Change (B), product 9B05M010 looks at one of the policies the chief executive officer must focus on.

The new chief executive officer of Capital Coast Health Limited, a government funded healthcare provider, has made many changes and succeeded in substantially reducing the financial deficit in his first year and a half. However, there were still a number of pressing concerns that needed to be addressed. The governing board of Capital Coast Health Limited has requested information about the Equal Employment Opportunity policies and practices in the organization. The request serves as a reminder to the CEO that internal issues should be a priority in the future. This is a supplement to Capital Coast Health Limited: Being a Good Employer in the Midst of Change (A), product 9B05M009.

This is a descriptive note of banking in the Caribbean region. It illustrates the complex and dynamic environment in which banking takes place in the region, and it serves as a background paper for the series of cases associated with the formation and operation of the FirstCaribbean International Bank.

The category manager and category development analyst for bicycles and bike accessories at Canadian Tire Corporation were faced with making both strategic branding and tactical assortment decisions in an effort to grow the sales and profitability of the bicycle business for Canadian Tire Retail. Sales have been flat due to increased competition, lack of product innovation and a market that was not growing. The category team must evaluate opportunities to add a premium, national brand to the retail chain's brand portfolio.

Information technologies outsourcing is one the emergent fast-growth industries in the global high-tech economy. India is the leading country for IT outsourcing and Infosys is the largest Indian company in this sector. The branding challenge for Infosys is to leverage its reputation for predictable excellent results for information technology outsourcing. Management had identified overall company top-line revenue growth to achieve 30-40 per cent annual increases while allocating a negligible budget for marketing communications. Therefore, the key to the global brand strategy would not be through brand image advertising, but through communications of product strategy developments to large global IT outsourcing companies. The goal for Infosys is to be on the short-list of providers for the large, most sophisticated assignments for IT services to bid against IBM and Accenture, while leapfrogging over other competitors in the fast growing and fragmented information technology outsourcing market.

The owners of a bar & grill located in a major tourist area must decide how to deal with the non-smoking bylaw that is being considered for the township it's located in. The bar & grill serves two different groups: a large number of tourists during the summer and local patrons who frequent the bar throughout the year. The owners are concerned how this bylaw will affect business during the slower winter months. The case allow students to produce a plan that deals with how to influence public-sector decision-makers, deal with multiple customer groups with the possibly conflicting interests, and motivating staff to implement a course of action with which they might not personally agree.

Solver model for teaching note 8B05E04.

An engineer for Wind to Energy has led the creation of the North American division of a German start-up company that designs wind-energy electric power generation units - wind turbines. The engineer and his fellow engineers have licensed the technology to a small-share assembler of wind turbines and are about to receive their first payment from this firm. As they look ahead, they see opportunities for revenue in possibly supplying spare parts to wind farms, or even operating their own wind farm. The challenge is to focus this start-up company.

Quantec Geoscience is a leading global supplier of geophysical services to the mineral exploration industry. It developed TITAN 24, an award-winning highly innovative technology for deep earth imaging. TITAN 24 provided geophysical information with higher clarity at greater depths (up to 2,000 metres versus 400 of existing methods) to enable better targeting of drilling. However, by mid-2004, TITAN was far short of its sales targets. Mining companies, the major target market for TITAN, were resisting adoption. Quantec's marketing director had to rethink the company's whole marketing strategy, including its target segments, pricing, positioning and market communication.

The chief financial officer of Ontario-based Bluewater Foods Corporation has just returned from a meeting with management of County Chickens Ltd., Bluewater's largest supplier of chicken breast meat and current acquisition target. The chief financial officer must put together a recommendation as to how a purchase of County might be structured and how it would affect Bluewater's financial statement.

A loan assessment officer at Export Development Canada is evaluating a proposed deal involving the export of refurbished machines used in the forestry industry. He must decide whether Export Development Corporation should extend loans to a foreign firm that is interested in purchasing from a Canadian supplier. Issues include international business risk and the role of an export development agency in facilitating a country's exports.

This case is designed to stimulate students' reflections on ethics. The context of the case is a familiar one to most students (plagiarism on a student essay); it therefore allows them to experience more personally the range of emotions and perspectives involved in ethical issues. Yet the parallels to business ethics situations are strong, and can be discussed in depth. Students are assigned to one of two roles in advance of class (a student who has plagiarized text for an assignment and a professor), supplement cases A Minor Assignment: Role of Rob Thatcher and A Minor Assignment: Role of Lydia Katz, products 9B05C007 and 9B05C008 are given out to support the roles.

In this role play supplement to A Minor Assignment, product 9B05C006, Professor Lydia Katz catches a student plagiarizing and must decide what to do about it. She calls a meeting with the student.

Rob Thatcher is a student in an honours business administration program. He copies and pastes some text from a web site into an essay. He is under time pressure and does not consider this assignment important and most likely will not be read. This is a role play supplement to A Minor Assignment, product 9B05C006.

A graduate of a business school must consider two options available to him with similar salary packages. The first is to accept an offer to start as an assistant marketing manager with a consumer packaged goods firm, the other is a consulting assignment with a small tool & die firm. The case provides students the opportunity to value different benefits based on their risk tolerance and career aspirations.

The vice-president - RBC Banking business & information solutions must develop an implementation plan for the bank's new paperless transaction system. The new system will reduce costs in proof processing and will facilitate the role of the customer service representatives, allowing the CSRs to shift from transactional to sales oriented roles. The system must be implemented across the company within 12 months. Challenges concerning the timing of installation, sequence of rollout, scope management and prioritization must be addressed.

Mars Inc., one of the world's largest privately owned businesses, purchased over $4 billion of materials annually, and was aware that many major firms were achieving savings of around five per cent through the use of online procurement auctions. The vice-president for Business Solutions at Mars wondered whether an online auction could be designed that would meet the special needs of the Mars company while enabling Mars to achieve the savings necessary to allow the company to prosper and grow in its highly competitive markets.

Ireka Construction Berhad is a small Chinese family business in Malaysia founded in 1967. The company's primary business was earthmoving for the mining industry, factory sites and housing lots, and has expanded its business into civil and structural engineering projects, building and construction, and hotel and property development. In 1992 it became a public company. This case illustrates the process of going from a private to a public company and discusses change management processes.

In 1996, Gillette acquired Duracell batteries for $7.3 billion in stock. The purchase was met with optimism not only by Gillette's senior management and its highly visible director, Warren Buffet, but also Wall Street analysts. The case highlights the numerous challenges that Gillette has encountered since its acquisition of Duracell. Despite the initial enthusiasm, Duracell has proven to be a drain on Gillette's earning and has cost Michael Hawley, James Kilt's predecessor as CEO, his job after only 18 months in the position - in large part for his inability to turn around the financial hemorrhaging at the Duracell division. The key strategy questions revolve around what can be done to turn around the battery business to help it achieve the potential for Gillette that everyone had assumed it possessed. The supplement Gillette's Energy Drain (B): Energizer's Acquisition of Schick, product 9B05M027 highlights Energizer's October 2003 acquisition of Schick.

This is a supplement to Gillett's Energy Drain (A): The Acquisition of Duracell, product 9B05M026. Highlighted is Energizer's acquisition of Schick. Gillette was just dabbling in batteries but its source of profits always been in razors and blades. Now, that business is under direct threat by Energizer, with its acquisition of Schick. This supplement provides an excellent example of multipoint competition, and raises the question, should Gillette have anticipated that the acquisition of a battery company would ultimately put razor profits at risk?