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In the 1980s, U.S. business experienced an explosion of new managerial concepts unparalleled in previous decades. Many American managers felt that the emergence of new managerial ideas signaled a rejuvenation of U.S. business. But their thinking doesn't jibe with the facts. American managers did not take charge in the 1980s. Instead, they abdicated their responsibility to a burgeoning industry of management professionals. If business leaders want to reverse this trend, they must reclaim management responsibility--and pragmatism is the place to start. Pragmatic managers are sensitive to their company's context and open to uncertainty. They focus on outcomes and are willing to make do. Pragmatic managers also avoid three common pitfalls, the "let's do it better this time" syndrome and the "flavor of the month" and "let's go for it all" approaches.

By the early 1990s, Amgen--a pharmaceutical company started little over a decade ago as Applied Molecular Genetics--was within range of becoming a billion-dollar company. With two extremely successful biotechnology drugs on the market, Amgen stood as the largest and most powerful independent company of its type in the world. Top executives in the company viewed long-range planning as an important ingredient in the firm's success; many others--including some of the firm's scientists--were less sure. With Amgen's sales expected to continue to grow rapidly, the firm's long-range planning process would be put to the test. Shows the different, sometimes paradoxical perspectives held within a single, dynamically changing company toward the issue of long-range planning. Students are challenged to synthesize these views into a coherent picture of a firm's growth amid great uncertainty.

In early 1991, a spirit of innovation and organizational change was in the air at Mutual Benefit Life, with the success of the new "case manager" program its most concrete manifestation. Using powerful computer workstations, case managers could see insurance applications through from start to finish, and many had been trained to do their own underwriting. The shift from manual bureaucracy to a new era of "Personalized Computing" would however present many new challenges to the company, particularly its human resources function. Objective is to explore the organizational changes necessitated by personal computer technology in the setting of a rapidly changing firm.

Allen-Bradley's Industrial Computer and Communication Group (ICCG) underwent a period of rapid transformation in the 1980s, instituting a wide array of innovations from product development to information systems. In 1990 the Ohio-based group announced a major reorganization of its business and began carrying out a sweeping program of cultural change. The case requires students to develop an overall perspective on the process of organizational change and to think critically about the kind of challenges that lie ahead for ICCG.