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When Ana Lobato was transferred from Streuvels Chemicals' Brazilian operations to the company's Brussels headquarters, she was eager to apply her considerable expertise in this foreign assignment and to expose her children to another culture. Her husband, Oswald, a doctor, seemed up for the adventure. But just over a year after their arrival in Brussels, Oswald is increasingly unhappy. He is not able to practice medicine in Belgium, and the research position that Ana's company helped him find is not all he hoped it would be. Anton Danois, the head of Streuvels's international mobility program, fears that Oswald's unhappiness will prompt Ana to consider moving back home to Brazil before the end of her assignment. In fact, Anton, who's been in HR only a few years, wonders about the logic of an international mobility program that is expensive, does not necessarily provide clear-cut returns, and poses problems not just for spouses but also for the employees who need to be reintegrated after their stints abroad. Experts John Bollman and Ann Judge comment on this fictional case study.

When Ana Lobato was transferred from Streuvels Chemicals' Brazilian operations to the company's Brussels headquarters, she was eager to apply her considerable expertise in this foreign assignment and to expose her children to another culture. Her husband, Oswald, a doctor, seemed up for the adventure. But just over a year after their arrival in Brussels, Oswald is increasingly unhappy. He is not able to practice medicine in Belgium, and the research position that Ana's company helped him find is not all he hoped it would be. Anton Danois, the head of Streuvels's international mobility program, fears that Oswald's unhappiness will prompt Ana to consider moving back home to Brazil before the end of her assignment. In fact, Anton, who's been in HR only a few years, wonders about the logic of an international mobility program that is expensive, does not necessarily provide clear-cut returns, and poses problems not just for spouses but also for the employees who need to be reintegrated after their stints abroad.

When Ana Lobato was transferred from Streuvels Chemicals' Brazilian operations to the company's Brussels headquarters, she was eager to apply her considerable expertise in this foreign assignment and to expose her children to another culture. Her husband, Oswald, a doctor, seemed up for the adventure. But just over a year after their arrival in Brussels, Oswald is increasingly unhappy. He is not able to practice medicine in Belgium, and the research position that Ana's company helped him find is not all he hoped it would be. Anton Danois, the head of Streuvels's international mobility program, fears that Oswald's unhappiness will prompt Ana to consider moving back home to Brazil before the end of her assignment. In fact, Anton, who's been in HR only a few years, wonders about the logic of an international mobility program that is expensive, does not necessarily provide clear-cut returns, and poses problems not just for spouses but also for the employees who need to be reintegrated after their stints abroad. Experts John Bollman and Ann Judge comment on this fictional case study.

This case presents a brief description of the decisions the company made regarding whether or not to pursue each of the four projects that are the basis of the (A) case.

Adam Famularo, general manager, Cloud Computing business, CA Technologies, and David Dobson, WVP and group executive, Customer Solutions Group, were preparing for a presentation on communicating and positioning CA Technologies' new strategy for cloud computing. Analysts had voiced concern over several 2010 acquisitions, and highlighted CA Technologies' need to clearly state its strategy and objectives and identify a compelling way to position and differentiate its cloud offerings. Industry pundits claimed the mainframe- CA Technologies' bread and butter- was dead and would go away. Famularo knew CA Technologies' line of products was anything but outdated, having evolved to help enterprises manage and secure their increasingly complex IT environments. In 2010, analysts reported that CA Technologies' mainframe business was strong and accounted for over 60% of the firm's revenues and a majority of its profits, with no sign of slowing down. But given the attractiveness of CA Technologies' current mainframe and distributed business lines, how firmly would the company back the emergent cloud business? Should CA Technologies' cloud business be positioned as an incremental, complementary addition to its mainframe and client-server businesses or should it be framed as a disruptive and entirely revolutionary technology?

CEO Kelly Browne wrestles with the design and roll-out of a new compensation system to promote the collaboration necessary for supporting her firm's new strategy. Marshall Gordon International, a global public relations (PR) firm, has recently expanded its service offering to include Executive Positioning, which requires significantly more teamwork, higher-level client interaction and more strategically-minded consultants than their traditional PR work. This "B" case focuses on the choices the firm needs to make about roll-out, including how to measure aspects of consultants' performance, what performance management systems and processes need to support the compensation system, and who should have decision rights about consultants' variable compensation.

CEO Kelly Browne wrestles with the design of a new compensation system to promote the collaboration and cross-selling necessary for supporting her firm's new strategy. Marshall Gordon International, a global public relations (PR) firm, has recently expanded its service offering to include Executive Positioning, which requires significantly more teamwork, higher-level client interaction and more strategically-minded consultants than their traditional PR work. The CEO is pressured to find a compensation system that helps retain and motivate the firm's valued PR consultants, attract new talent, and get all professionals aligned behind the new strategy.

Dr. Elizabeth Harris, chair of the Department of Anesthesiology (DA) at North Atlantic Hospital (NAH), faces several significant challenges. Staff satisfaction surveys confirmed her assessment that department faculty morale was low; the tenure and promotion system was perceived as opaque and biased toward researchers over clinicians; and overall, faculty felt the organization had little interest in their professional development and well-being. NAH had mandated career conferences across all departments one year prior, and Harris felt this initiative could serve as an important building block for a comprehensive staff performance and development program for the DA. In designing the DA career conference initiative, Harris and her team polled DA faculty representing all promotion tracks and lengths of service. They also captured best practices from across other NAH divisions and other peer institutions.

By 2010, TripAdvisor was the largest travel site in the world operating in 24 countries and 16 languages, with listings for 455,000 hotels, 92,000 attractions and 564,000 restaurants in over 71,000 destinations worldwide. It had over 40 million reviews from 35 million unique monthly visitors who were contributing 21 new reviews every minute. Known for its hotel reviews, TA expanded into flights, vacation rentals and international markets like China. Each of these expansion paths provided unique opportunities as well as new challenges. In August 2010, Stephen Kaufer, CEO, was debating how to prioritize his growth plans for the company.

In September 2010, faced with increasing threat from social game companies such as Zynga, Ben Feder, the CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software. Inc., had to decide the long-term strategy of his video-game company. As a publisher of traditional video games for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo, Take-Two had several popular video games, such as Grand Theft Auto, to its credit. However, the video game industry was undergoing a major transition. In addition to digital downloading and cloud gaming, casual and social games were transforming the video game industry. Electronic Arts, one of Take-Two's major competitors, acquired a social gaming company in November 2009 for $400 million. In August 2010, Disney bought another social gaming company for $763 million. Social games were developed, marketed and monetized very differently from traditional console games. Should Take-Two follow the lead of its competitors or continue to focus on its core business?

Daren Kemp, a partner at leadership consultancy and executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, is responsible for the firm's relationship with Standard Chartered Bank (Standard Chartered). Standard Chartered is one of 94 companies in Heidrick's strategic partners program (SPP). The purpose of the SPP is to build strategic, value-based relationships with clients. Kemp joined Heidrick in 2008 and by 2010 has successfully built a strong relationship with Standard Chartered. The case describes how Kemp and his team grew this relationship and raises questions about what can be learned from this experience and applied to the other accounts in the SPP.

George Martin, managing partner at The Boston Consulting Group, is worried as some of his best performers have recently pulled him aside to discuss the challenges they face managing the demands of their work lives with their desire for more predictable time with their families. BCG had instituted multiple initiatives to help its consulting staff better achieve work-life balance, yet some of Martin's top consultants still struggled. The case considers the challenges professional service firm employees face in terms of work-life issues.

George Martin, managing partner at The Boston Consulting Group, is worried as some of his best performers have recently pulled him aside to discuss the challenges they face managing the demands of their work lives with their desire for more predictable time with their families. BCG had instituted multiple initiatives to help its consulting staff better achieve work-life balance, yet some of Martin's top consultants still struggled. The case considers the challenges professional service firm employees face in terms of work-life issues.

George Martin, managing partner at The Boston Consulting Group, is worried as some of his best performers have recently pulled him aside to discuss the challenges they face managing the demands of their work lives with their desire for more predictable time with their families. BCG had instituted multiple initiatives to help its consulting staff better achieve work-life balance, yet some of Martin's top consultants still struggled. The case considers the challenges professional service firm employees face in terms of work-life issues.

In January 2010, Jen McDonald, head of Bank of America Corporation's (BoA) Digital Marketing group, was discussing the bank's mobile strategy with Douglas Brown, senior vice president, Mobile Product Development. BoA launched mobile banking in 2007 and within three years it had 4 million active customers. This success prompted line-of-business managers to request Jen and Doug to include more functionality in the bank's mobile app that were specific to their businesses such as credit cards and mortgages. Jen and Doug had to decide how to leverage the mobile platform for various businesses of the bank without creating confusion or increasing complexity for the consumers. Recognizing the potential impact mobile technology could have on the entire banking industry, they also had to decide on how to position BoA's mobile banking in the long run.

Bertelsmann's EVP HR Immanuel Hermreck and his team were focused on four key HR issues. Three of these were somewhat discreet: improving Bertelsmann's employer brand; managing Bertelsmann talent across the firm's decentralized businesses; and ensuring early identification and appropriate development of Bertelsmann's top 100 high potential managers (hi-pos) to better seed the company's future top management. The fourth issue-recruitment and retention-played an integral role across all three challenges and had to be strengthened and made consistent across the firm, not an easy prospect given Bertelsmann's highly decentralized structure. Hermreck knew navigating these issues would pose significant challenges, but getting them right was critical to Bertelsmann's competitive advantage and survival as a robust media company. He had some good results in from his early efforts, but as he looked forward, what should his action plan set out to do?

Padraic Kelly became Managing Director (MD) of the engineering services firm Buro Happold in 1996. One of his first initiatives was "Aim for Growth," which was intended to help the firm grow beyond its current size where it was constrained by a structure of having each of the firm's founding partners responsible for a group of 25-30 engineers. This initiative was very successful, but the firm then found itself with a lack of leadership skills at all levels of the organization to manage a company of a much larger size, growing by a factor of 10 over 10 years. In response, Buro Happold developed its first formal internal training programs under the name of "Archimedes Academy." The first two programs were (1) the Job Leader Program, targeted for senior engineers and designed to help them be more effective in working with clients, and (2) the Project Leader Program, targeted for project leaders and designed to help them develop the "softer" management skills to complement their technical ones. A distinctive aspect of Archimedes Academy is that these first programs were developed and delivered by the cohors who first attended them. Rather than partner with a university to develop an accredited program, the firm decided it would be better off developing the program itself, with the help of an outside consultant who had done something similar at his previous employer, in order to make sure the programs were specific enough to Buro Happold's needs and relevant to the firm's culture. The first two programs were a big success and the firm expanded the training offerings under the Archimedes Banner. The case ends with a client, a Middle Eastern city authority, asking Buro Happold Consulting, a new unit created by Padraic Kelly after stepping down as MD in 2006, to develop a training program for them. This request raises the question of whether this internal training capability should become the basis of an external service offering.

In 2001, Allianz Capital Partners and Goldman Sachs acquired a majority stake in Messer Griesheim, a European industrial gas concern held by Hoechst. The dealmakers faced several challenges, including delicate corporate governance issues due to partial family ownership and a consolidating market for industrial gases. Aiming to make Messer Griesheim a more attractive potential acquisition, Messer Griesheim management had drawn up a restructuring plan as early as 2000. By late 2003 the private equity players were ready to exit and the Messer family agitated for further control. Several factors were in play: the family had a buy-back option, the window of which was quickly closing; there were few possible strategic buyers, given the anti-trust issues facing a European player interested in buying the firm; and the family made no secret of its desire to retain a piece of the firm, at the very least, and some measure of control. The case explores the steps taken by the private equity investors to restructure the firm, and the relationship the partners forged with the family owners, to bring about a favorable exit for the private equity partners and ownership for the Messer family.

In 2001, Allianz Capital Partners and Godlman Sachs acquired a majority stake in Messer Greisheim, a European industrial gas concern held by Hoeschst. The dealmakers faced several challenges, including delicate corporate governance issues due to partial family ownership and a consolidating sector. By late 2003 the private equity players were ready to exit and the Messer family agitated for further control. Several factors were in play: the family had a buy-back option, the window of which was quickly closing; there were few possible strategic buyers, given the anti-trust issues facing a European player interested in buying the firm; and the family made no secret of its desire to retain a piece of the firm at the very least and some measure of control. The case provides an update post-exit.