In the mid-1980s, Arrow, the world's largest electronics distributor, implemented a college recruiting program to hire salespeople. The program was part of an effort to increase the professionalism and skill set of the sales force in an industry where few salespeople had college degrees. After an expensive and thorough training program, many of the new college grads hired were poached by Arrow's competitors for higher salaries. Arrow was ultimately unsuccessful in persuading the college grads to stay, and the recruiting program ended after five years. In 1997, CEO Steve Kaufman decided to start a new college recruiting program, determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past. A rewritten version of an earlier case.
Examines the transition of an orthopedic surgical group at a premier teaching and research hospital from a system in which the surgeons are compensated with flat salaries to a system where they are compensated based on profitability. Allows for an examination of several critical issues in incentive strategy, including pay-to-performance in a not-for-profit environment, whether a compensation system is truly aligned with value creation (issues of quality of care and research time), and the difficulty in designing a compensation system in a competitive labor market when the objectives of the institution extend beyond pure profit maximization. This is a rewritten version of an earlier case.
This exercise provides an opportunity to gain insight about designing, negotiating, and responding to incentives. The setting is investment management. A class is divided into a certain number of investment firms. Each company has one CEO and begins with four portfolio managers (PMs), who manage their portfolios by choosing from a restricted set of assets. The game takes place over approximately two weeks and is divided into three periods. Each period will last from two to four days. At the end of each period, new funds flow to high-performing portfolios, wheras funds flow out of poorly performing portfolios, simulating contributions from investors. CEOs and PMs negotiate compensation arrangements and PMs may move from one company to another, subject to some costs and rules regarding how much of their portfolio they take with them to their new companies. CEOs try to maximize the value of their companies at the end of the game, whereas PMs attempt to maximize their total compensation during the game.