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<p style="color: rgb(197, 183, 131);"><strong> AWARD WINNER - Corporate Social Responsibility Award, European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) Case Writing Competition</strong></p><br>In early 2005, Nestle is in the midst of a decision: whether or not the Fairtrade mark should be applied on Partners' Blend, a new instant coffee product to be marketed in the growing UK 'ethical' coffee segment. Application of the Fairtrade mark on the Partners Blend product means that Nestle must go against its historical position of not offering minimum guaranteed prices to coffee farmers. As part of their deliberations, Nestle executives must consider their coffee sourcing program at large, their corporate social responsibility framework, Nescafe and corporate Nestle branding, the UK market and the potential consumer benefits or backlash that could result from releasing such a product.

This supplement to product # 9B06A020, Nestle's Nescafe Partners' Blend: The Fairtrade Decision (A) outlines the company's decision.

The co-founder of NEWAD, a media company, is considering expanding the company's scope of operations from traditional place-based postcard and board advertising to digital signage. Digital signage offers the opportunity to expand NEWAD's business. However, the co-founder wondered about the high fixed costs of entering this type of advertising business and how much the company would have to charge to turn a profit.

The technical director of Laboratorio de Analisis Argentina is responsible for ensuring that an average of 5,000 samples are processed daily. The samples have three sources: samples collected on-premises, samples sent from the organization's other 40 labs and samples sent from external labs. In one week the technical director has to give her boss a recommendation about dealing with the lab's capacity problems.

An entrepreneur has received additional information on the Cartridge World franchising concept - a store focused on the refilling of printer cartridges. The idea for Cartridge World began in Australia in 1988 and has grown to almost 200 locations in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The entrepreneur must look at the market opportunity in Canada and decide whether he should apply for the country's master franchise, a single franchise, or abandon the concept altogether. Students will evaluate a franchise concept based on market opportunity and the franchise contract.

Resina is a global manufacturer of resins and surfacing solutions headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, and has three production facilities and 12 sales offices in China. The head of Asia Pacific for Resina needs to decide what should be done about Beijing and Guangdong. Should Beijing remain in operation, be shut down, or moved to another area where demand for liquid bulk resins is stronger. Similar options exist in Guangdong. In aiming towards profitable operations, he needs to consider the buoyancy of local demand, Resina's partner in Beijing, local and foreign competitors and appropriate managers in each operation.

An entrepreneur has received additional information on the Cartridge World franchising concept--a store focused on the refilling of printer cartridges. The idea for Cartridge World began in Australia in 1988 and has grown to almost 200 locations in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The entrepreneur must look at the market opportunity in Canada and decide whether he should apply for the country's master franchise, a single franchise, or abandon the concept altogether. Evaluates a franchise concept based on market opportunity and the franchise contract.

Resina is a global manufacturer of resins and surfacing solutions headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, with three production facilities and 12 sales offices in China. The head of Asia Pacific for Resina needs to decide what should be done about Beijing and Guangdong. Should Beijing remain in operation, be shut down, or moved to another area where demand for liquid bulk resins is stronger. Similar options exist in Guangdong. In aiming towards profitable operations, he needs to consider the buoyancy of local demand, Resina's partner in Beijing, local and foreign competitors, and appropriate managers in each operation.

Managers at Norway's Hydro are wondering whether or not an economically viable business case can be made to commercialize a wind-hydrogen solution. The company has successfully installed a wind-hydrogen renewable energy system as a research and development project on the 200 person remote island of Utsira. Now, they are considering two early markets to which to sell the idea: remote island communities or grid power balancing for grid operators with high reliance on wind power. Students will be introduced to current trends in renewable energy and will look at the threats and opportunities and business drivers in launching a new project. Students will analyse the priorities of the company by looking at economic, social and environmental objectives.

Managers at Norway's Hydro are wondering whether or not an economically viable business case can be made to commercialize a wind-hydrogen solution. The company has successfully installed a wind-hydrogen renewable energy system as a research and development project on the 200-person remote island of Utsira. Now, they are considering two early markets to which to sell the idea: remote island communities or grid power balancing for grid operators with a high reliance on wind power. Introduces current trends in renewable energy and looks at the threats, opportunities, and business drivers in launching a new project. Analyzes the priorities of the company by looking at economic, social, and environmental objectives.

In June 2005, Koldo Saratxaga, the leader of Basque-based luxury coach manufacturer Irizar, decided to leave after 14 years at the helm of the worker-owned cooperative. Under Saratxaga's stewardship, Irizar was saved from near bankruptcy in 1991 and has become a highly profitable industry leader with a 23.9% compound annual growth rate since 1991. The company opened a number of manufacturing sites as far-reaching as Mexico, Morocco, India, Brazil, China, and South Africa. Irizar calls itself "a project based on people" and has realized its success through a business model characterized by a narrow product focus, strict quality adherence, an empowered workforce, and a truly customer-centric organization. Irizar's model is completely different from that of most other coach manufacturing firms given the absence of unions, departments, and hierarchy. All activities are carried out by self-managed teams (teams, for example, are responsible for setting their own work schedules and objectives). Although Irizar's model has worked fantastically well for over 14 years (since Sarataga's arrival), the question now is: Will the company continue to thrive without Saratxaga? Or is Irizar's success due to Saratxaga's leadership?

In early 2005, Nestle is in the midst of a decision: whether or not the Fairtrade mark should be applied on Partners' Blend, a new instant coffee product to be marketed in the growing UK 'ethical' coffee segment. Application of the Fairtrade mark on the Partners Blend product means that Nestle must go against its historical position of not offering minimum guaranteed prices to coffee farmers. As part of their deliberations, Nestle executives must consider their coffee sourcing program at large, their corporate social responsibility framework, Nescafe and corporate Nestle branding, the UK market, and the potential consumer benefit or backlash that could result from releasing such a product.

The technical director of Laboratorio de Analisis Argentina is responsible for ensuring that an average of 5,000 samples are processed daily. The samples have three sources: samples collected on-premises, samples sent from the organization's other 40 labs and samples sent from external labs. In one week the technical director has to give her boss a recommendation about dealing with the lab's capacity problems.

As of 2005, over 10 million people were using peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks to swap music, movies, and software for free. P2P software programs such as Kazaa, Limewire, and eDonkey received a great deal of media attention. Music and movie industry organizations believed that downloading copyrighted material was stealing. The same industry associations took the P2P companies to court, maintaining that the P2P software developers should be held responsible when users unlawfully copied copyrighted songs, movies, and television programs. P2P software creators claimed that they were merely promoting a technology with multiple uses. Indeed, P2P was a network architecture that could be deployed to a number of other applications, such as distributed computing, instant messaging, voice telephony, spam filtering, and other commercial activities. In the midst of high-profile battles between the entertainment industry and P2P file-sharing software developers, a number of proprietary systems offering legal downloads had emerged. Entertainment industry supporters pointed to Apple's iTunes .99 cent download fee per song as an indicator of the future. Although iTunes satisfied entertainment industry executives that it was possible to pay for downloads successfully, the battle between proprietary systems and P2P file sharing seemed to continue. Who would win in the long run?

The chief executive officer of Western Union had just begun implementing a new organization structure. Changing the structure set out a clear message of Gold's desire to change the company's mindset to a new more global culture. Already the CEO was finding that leaders in the United States were reluctant to give up control of product lines. At the regional level, she had keen leaders in place who wanted to push out the responsibility within their own regions and move towards a decentralized plan. While the CEO supported this notion in principle, she wanted to ensure that the right leaders could be placed in decentralized offices in order to execute on the six strategic pillars that she had laid out for the organization. One thing was certain - the CEO had made it clear that no revenue decreases would be forgiven amidst the change. Many considerations had arisen: What pace of change should she take? How would she deal with resistance to change? How could she ensure that the new structure would support Western Union's global expansion?

The chief financial officer of VF Outdoor Americas - a division of the world's largest apparel company, VF Corporation, must decide on the financial viability of purchasing the skateboard VANS lifestyle brand. In his decision, the chief financial officer needs to develop an offer of what VF should pay for VANS and prove to the parent company that the acquisition will be accretive to earnings per share.

The chief executive officer of Western Union had just begun implementing a new organization structure. Changing the structure sent a clear message about Gold's desire to change the company's mindset to a new more global one. Already the CEO was finding that leaders in the United States were reluctant to give up control of product lines. At the regional level, she had good leaders in place who wanted to push out the responsibility within their own regions and move toward a decentralized plan. Although the CEO supported this notion in principle, she wanted to ensure that the right leaders could be placed in decentralized offices to execute on the six strategic pillars that she had laid out for the organization. One thing was certain--the CEO had made it clear that no revenue decreases would be forgiven amidst the change. Many considerations had arisen: What pace of change should she take? How would she deal with resistance to change? How could she ensure that the new structure would support Western Union's global expansion?

The chief executive officer and the marketing director of Saku Olletehase AS of Estonia must decide on the company's product portfolio plan. Saku enjoyed market leadership in Estonia with its brand Saku Originaal; however, the strength in market share has weakened in recent years due to increasing competition and greater marketing acumen from other domestic producers. While domestic beer sales have fallen, the company has experienced increases in other product lines such as alcoholic long drinks, cider and non-alcoholic beverages, which compliment its existing agreement to sell Pepsi and 7Up. For the last three years, the company has had the exclusive right to resell three well-known international beer brands (Guinness, Kilkenny and Carlsberg) in Estonia. With so many options and finite marketing resources, the company needs to decide where to focus its effort.

In September 2004, four months after Hungary joined the European Union, the strategy group of Matav - Hungary's largest communications company - is working on its mid-term strategic plan. Since being privatized from state ownership in 1993, the company has seen several changes in its strategy, structure and culture. Nearly 15 years later, the company is a fully integrated telecommunications company involved in a broad range of services including fixed line telephony, mobile communications, Internet services, data transmission and outsourcing. The company's latest acquisition of a formerly state run telecommunications company is considered a success, and management believes that international expansion is necessary to realize dynamic growth as its domestic fixed line business is declining. As well, Hungary's mobile market is highly competitive and saturated with 80 per cent of the country having a mobile phone. The management team feels that Matav is at a crossroads with three main options: expansion in Hungary, regional expansion or focusing on organic growth in existing product lines. The team has to consider all of the lines of business in forming a strategy and whether Matav's resources and organization are suitable for a healthy future.