From 2002 to 2011, coffee-machine manufacturer Keurig Incorporated had grown from a privately held company with just over $20 million in revenues and a plan to enter the single serve coffee arena for home consumers, to a wholly owned subsidiary of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., a publicly traded company with net revenues of $1.36 billion and a market capitalization of between $8 and $9 billion. In 2003 Keurig had introduced its first At Home brewer. Now, approximately 25 percent of all coffee makers sold in the United States were Keurig-branded machines, and Keurig was recognized as among the leaders in the marketplace. The company had just concluded agreements with both Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks that would make these retailers' coffee available for use with Keurig's specialized brewing system. The company faced far different challenges than when it was a small, unknown marketplace entrant. John Whoriskey, vice president and general manager of Keurig's At Home division, had to consider the impact that impending expiration of key technology patents and the perceived environmental impact of the K-Cup® portion packs would have on the company's growth. Whoriskey also wondered what Keurig's growth potential was, and how the new arrangements with Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts could be leveraged to achieve it.

Kimberly-Clark in the Andean region had hit a performance plateau. Five years prior, Sergio Nacach had taken over as general manager for the region and had embarked on a cultural transformation to build a winning culture centered on the people who worked for the organization. This case explores what he did and the context within which he did it. Similar to other cases on high commitment work arrangements, but set in a non-U.S. context, the case discusses organizational cultural change, the extent to which high performance work practices generalize across settings, and what made the Andean region a particularly receptive place for this management approach. The case also raises the issues of how to keep the enthusiasm going and the extent to which this transformation depended on a particular individual and his personal style.

In 1993, Nuria Chinchilla had recently completed her doctoral thesis at IESE Business School in Barcelona, on the topic of organizational turnover, with no particular focus on women, flexible work arrangements, or work-family issues. She chose to remain at IESE, where she had worked since the early 1980s as an assistant professor. By 2003, just over a decade later, she had attained the rank of full professor, had founded the International Center of Work and Family at IESE, and was generally acknowledged to be a leader if not the leader in workplace flexibility and work-family issues internationally, attending conferences all over the globe and being extremely visible in the media. Many observers echoed the comments of Gloria Renom, a deputy in the Catalonia parliament: "for a long time, Nuria has been considered the leading authority in the field of work-life balance." Renom attributed Nuria's success to a good understanding of the themes involved and intense preparation for the challenges she faced. Indeed, how else to explain Chinchilla's remarkable ability to influence others and to use a number of levers of power extremely successfully? It was not clear how Chinchilla had accomplished so much in so short a time, and what else she might do to be even more effective in obtaining changes in workplace flexibility in the future. And there was another interesting aspect to her career. Chinchilla seemed to have largely surmounted the trade-offs faced by so many people in positions of power-the apparent need to choose between having influence and being true to one's values and beliefs, as well as the choice between one's work and the rest of one's life. How had she been able to accomplish this?

In February 2000, Triangle Community Foundation (TCF) director of Philanthropic Services Tony Pipa presented the foundation's new mission statement and its internal ramifications to the staff. It had been over two years since TCF's board had mandated that donors, not nonprofit organizations, were the foundation's primary customers. Executive Director Shannon St. John, Pipa, and other members of the management team had met for months and wrestled with fundamental questions around the definition of philanthropy, how to achieve meaningful, long-term impact, and the foundation's role in the communities it served. They were excited about the progress they had made but knew that many questions still remained, and they expected some resistance to their proposals. Much of the staff had come to TCF from nonprofit, community-based organizations and spent much of their time working with the nonprofit sector. They were not sure what this new focus on donors as customers meant for their work, nor were they comfortable with not considering the nonprofit community their customers.

In December 2000, New Schools Venture Fund was debating the role it should play in helping one of its for-profit investees, LearnNow, attract new capital. A $20 million venture philanthropy fund, New Schools invested in for-profit and nonprofit education ventures that targeted a vulnerability in the K-12 education system. LearnNow, a charter school management company, was wrestling with the need to balance the aggressive growth demanded by most for-profit investors with its commitment to providing quality education for students in low-income communities. This tension and LearnNow's struggles to raise money highlighted a question that was always on New Schools President Kim Smith's mind: Should New Schools, a public charity seeking to improve K-12 education, be investing in for-profit ventures?

It's August 2000, and Maitri AIDS Hospice in San Francisco is reevaluating its approach to fundraising. In recent years, Maitri has been relying increasingly on government, corporate, and foundation grants. Yet Don Spradlin, Maitri's associate director for individual gifts who was hired in early 1999 to focus on individual donations and special events, has made some progress in increasing the number of individual donors over the past year and a half. He inaugurated two new earned income strategies, both of which have attracted new donors and positive publicity for Maitri. Nonetheless, individual donations still account for only 8% of annual operating expenses, and Spradlin is struggling with defining his purpose and that of individual donors within the traditionally grass-roots organization.