This short, engaging case challenges students to review a series of corporate financial metrics and match them to one of 13 listed industries. As such, students are to use their intuition and common sense pertaining to the distinctive characteristics of, and the key differences between, the 13 industries and then identify the financial metrics that are most indicative of those traits. The 2023 version of this case replaces several of the companies used in the 2021 version. Over the years, various versions of this case have been used at Darden in the full-time MBA program as well as in our EMBA and Executive Education programs. It is also appropriate for undergraduate courses in finance and accounting.

Patricia Skeen, a well-respected full professor at a prestigious business school at a major university, has accepted the role of chairing the school's important Academic Design and Delivery Committee (ADDC). During the week she was given to think about the role and to come to a decision, she gave some serious thought to how she wanted to lead her peers in such an endeavor. In this case, students are asked to engage in a similar reflective mode, identifying the commitments and to-do list with which they would undertake this, or any other similar, important task. The setting is simply one where the protagonist must lead from a collegial position absent any budget, any personnel decision-making authority, or an official title/position other than serving one term as committee chair and as an on-going colleague. This case is suitable for an undergraduate- or graduate-level introductory course on leadership and/or teams. The case provides an opportunity for students to consider the leadership qualities of those that they have observed when leading peers, their own prior experience leading groups of peers, and then synthesize and crystallize their own best thinking on how they would subsequently want to approach their next opportunity for leading peers. The case is fairly open-ended, thus galvanizing students' reflective thinking and refinement of their shared perspectives.

Leslie Castle, a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and accounting firm partner, finds herself in a reflective mode, recollecting several previous conversations with several nonaccountants that had questioned some core contemporary financial reporting practices pertaining to balance sheets. In particular, she had been challenged to consider that balance sheets and their related disclosures should: •move from acquired-only to acquired and internally created intangible assets; •move from financial-only to financial and nonfinancial measures; •move from many acceptable accounting method choices to fewer acceptable accounting method choices; •move from single-measure numbers to ranges, probabilities, and sensitivity analyses; and •move from articulated to nonarticulated balance sheets and income statements. The case provides an opportunity for reimagining some of accounting's traditional balance sheet conventions and related disclosures. The two questions posed in the case title undergird the case tasks for student pursuit and are in part the foundational questions posed in the general process of design thinking, an appropriate mindset for discussing this case.

This short, engaging case challenges students to review a series of corporate financial metrics and match them to one of 13 listed industries. As such, students are to use their intuition and common sense pertaining to the distinctive characteristics of, and the key differences between, the 13 industries and then identify the financial metrics that are most indicative of those traits. This case is used at Darden in full-time, EMBA, and Executive Education, and would be appropriate for undergraduate courses in finance and accounting.

This case provides a three-pronged opportunity to explore a process for establishing an initial talent development plan for a growing and successful company desirous of investing in its existing managers and other potential management personnel. Students are presented with a generalized talent development framework, along with some company-specific facts and then are asked to flesh out pertinent parts of that framework in ways they see as purposeful and pertinent.

A change in the corporate US federal income tax rate necessitates an adjustment to a company's balance sheet deferred tax account. Stephanie Allen has been tasked with determining the projected effects of several "what if" changes in the corporate income tax rate on her employer's (Software for Seniors, Corp.) and a peer's DuPont ratios and earnings per share performance measures. This general experience-based case uses data created by the authors that generally model the proportionalities of various line items within the financial statements of some real-world companies. As such, the financial statement effects due to an income tax rate change explored in this case are reasonable. It is suitable for an undergraduate or graduate level financial reporting course or a financial statement analysis course.

This case provides an opportunity for students to consider and discuss the multifaceted responsibilities of an executive education (EE) custom program faculty leader. The case suggests that such a faculty leader has responsibilities and tasks paralleling many of the protagonists involved in building a custom home (i.e., builder/general contractor, designer/architect, site supervisor, county inspector, and key operations client liaison). As a starting point, students can identify what is involved in each of these familiar roles for building a custom home and then extrapolate those into the custom EE program setting for a faculty leader.

This case presents the coming year's performance goals as established by Marietta Austin, the new president of Tractors, Inc. (a subsidiary of AA Equipment Corporation [AAEC], a fictional company), along with data pertaining to several years of actual financial performance. Austin has asked her direct reports to come to a meeting with specific ideas for actions that they plan to pursue in order to help the business unit achieve those performance goals. Students are tasked with creating their own ideas for action to meet the stated goals.

Harry Miller, the new CEO of a large and growing multinational transportation and logistics company, has asked Allison Freeman, his CHRO, to brief him on the impact that their off-site custom executive education program has had. In turn, the CHRO has enlisted Jack Drake, the program's faculty leader, to collaborate with her in responding to the CEO's request. Students are asked to step into the role of the faculty leader, who has formulated a general framework to do so, and must fill the framework with as many potential ideas regarding the impact as possible.

This case, based on general business experience, casts students in the role of analyzing the financial effects of a possible outsourcing decision. Lee and Marcia Mills, owners of LeMar Outdoor Play Products, Ltd. (LOPP), a Canadian company that designs, manufactures, and installs outdoor play equipment, are faced with a decision pertaining to whether LOPP should outsource the company's back-office information technology enabled services (IT-ES) functions. Lee engages with an outside advisory firm specializing in matching companies with suitable outsourcing partners in India, and eventually a contract is presented. From just a financial perspective, students must ascertain whether Lee and Marcia should accept the outsourcing offer.

This short case challenges students to review an array of corporate financial metrics and to match them to one of 13 listed industries. As such, students must use their intuition and common sense pertaining to the distinctive characteristics of, and the key differences between, the 13 named industries, and then identify the financial metrics that are most indicative of those traits.

This short, fictional case chronicles the story of Susan Hughes, the CFO for 4 Sisters Construction Co. (4SCC), who introduces the economic profit (EP) construct to her fellow executives (and sisters) as a viable means for signaling to owners the value the company created for them that year. As such, she has also created a one-step reference table that converts their more familiar earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) financial measure to an EP measure. The case explains the use of the reference table, and poses several scenarios for students to use it, explain it, and anticipate the effects of rising or falling income tax rates.

Sara Hughes, the CFO at Sports Equipment, Inc. (SEI), is striving to make financial analysis more easily and uniformly done by the company's investment center managers. As such, she has presented her boss COO George Noland with a pair of tabular tools for deconstructing profit variances into three component parts. Those three parts pertain to the variance amounts due to: (1) utilizing more net assets (NA), (2) achieving higher margins on those NAs, and (3) the interaction effect of these first two factors. Hughes has walked Noland through an example of using the tools, and he is now taking some time to verify his own understanding of the tools by working through four additional examples. Hughes is hopeful that Noland will find the tools conveniently useful, and thus will give Hughes permission to distribute and explain the tools to the operations investment center managers. In addition, Noland has envisioned some additional, typical two-factor variance analysis situations where the tools might also be applicable-he wants to think a bit more about those possibilities.

The financially savvy (fictional) protagonist in this case is an independent artist, intrigued with the possibility of becoming a seller on the Etsy, Inc., marketplace. As such, she is seeking to learn about the company-that is, its culture, recent history, and incentive compensation philosophy and practices for top executives. The case provides pertinent, publicly sourced information for exploring and discussing such issues. This case is suitable for an undergraduate, graduate, or non-degree executive education course where the focal topic is, in general, performance management, and more specifically, the use and design of executive incentive compensation plans. A valuable secondary objective is to introduce students to some of the company information disclosed in a publicly available corporate proxy statement. That document, filed with the SEC as Form DEF 14A, is filed in preparation for a public company's annual shareholder meeting.

This case uses an array of carefully selected and excerpted revenue recognition related information contained in Salesforce.com's January 31, 2019, 10-K. Maria, the fictional protagonist, is seeking to understand those disclosures as part of her preparation for an upcoming job interview with the company. As such, she is relying on those disclosures to provide insights as to the company's main product/service lines, the events that signal when and how much revenue the company has earned (i.e., the essence of its business model), along with the related official generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) criteria pertinent to the valuing and timing of recorded revenues.

Based in Omaha, Nebraska, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is a holding company that invests in many diverse businesses. The most significant of those are property and casualty insurance businesses, although the company owns businesses in the railroad, utilities, energy, and finance industries as well. The case focuses on accounting for investments at Berkshire Hathaway. The company adopted the new US guidance (ASU 2016-01) on accounting for investments in its 2018 10-K, and key excerpts from that report comprise much of the case. Students are asked to review Berkshire Hathaway's financial statements and the footnotes related to its investments, consider the method of accounting for those investments, and decipher their impact on the financial statements.

This case asks students to review 10 columns of financial data drawn from 10 different companies and to match each with an industry in a list of 10 industries.

This case provides instructors with an opportunity to discuss some of the fundamental aspects of a typical public company's shareholders' equity financial reporting and financial disclosures. As such, students are provided with information pertaining to PepsiCo's common stock, preferred stock, stock repurchases, cash dividends, stock splits, and GAAP earnings per share (EPS) versus non-GAAP EPS. In addition, the case also provides an interesting bit of information regarding PepsiCo's 2017 move from the NYSE to the Nasdaq.

An MBA graduate prepares for a possible interview with Caterpillar Inc. by reading about the company's longtime presence in China manufacturing heavy equipment and its continued optimism about the heavy equipment market in that country. He also learns that the company financed part of its operations and growth in China by issuing bonds in Hong Kong and wonders whether the company would return to that bond market in Hong Kong.

Preparing for a potential interview, an MBA graduate reads extensively about Daimler AG. She learns about company's longtime presence in China manufacturing luxury automobiles and its continued investment in manufacturing and R&D capacity in that country. She also learns that the company financed part of its operations and growth in China by issuing bonds in both China and Hong Kong and wonders whether the company would return to those bond markets.