Raymond Jetson, an inner-city pastor, former Louisiana state legislator, and 2010 Harvard University Advanced Leadership Fellow, has embarked on a new career as a social entrepreneur. The case charts Jetson's career in public life and the ministry, his experience as an Advanced Leadership Fellow, and his efforts to establish and grow a nonprofit organization, MetroMorphosis, with a mission "to develop and mobilize a critical mass of citizens in inner-city neighborhoods to design and implement sustainable solutions to persistent community challenges." As he approaches 60 and contemplates his future and that of his organization, Jetson must consider how to position MetroMorphosis for maximum impact now and over the long term.

This case examines a distinctive leadership development program within the World Economic Forum. The program, born out of the conviction that the complexity of global challenges at the beginning of the 21st century required a new generation of global leaders, recruited a small number of "high potential" young leaders from around the world as "Global Leadership Fellows" each year. During the three-year program, Fellows combined a position at the Forum with formal classroom training modules, one-on-one coaching, peer mentoring, and extensive assessment. The case explores the Forum's understanding of its role in the world, the vision of leadership that animates the program, and the structure and content of the program. It asks how successful the program has been in providing the kind of transformational experience it envisions and whether it could or should be replicated by other organizations.

Describes the challenges and successes encountered by GE's Aviation business in implementing a teaming work structure and culture in plants across its supply chain. GE Aviation leadership had seen dramatic gains in productivity, quality, and worker satisfaction in manufacturing plants where it had implemented teaming, which was designed to move decision-making as close to the product as possible by delegating authority, responsibility, and accountability to front-line workers. The case describes what teaming looked like in two of GE Aviation's plants and discusses the benefits realized in teaming sites. It also describes the challenges GE Aviation leaders had encountered in implementing teaming in the face of an entrenched work structure and culture in one particular plant, and discusses the difficulty management had faced in moving forward in transforming the culture of the plant.

In 2010, PepsiCo India's management is working to translate PepsiCo's new mission, "Performance with Purpose," into practice in the India market. The mission calls for continued financial performance and market leadership, as well as greater emphasis on healthy products, natural resource management, and employee empowerment. PepsiCo India and other regional PepsiCo business units have significant discretion over how to implement Performance with Purpose in their local markets. PepsiCo India has made progress under the mission but continues to be challenged by the inherent tension between short-term financial performance and long-term investments in socially responsible initiatives.

This case explores a shift in strategic direction at PepsiCo, the second-largest food and beverage company in the world. It concentrates on the formation of a new group, the Global Nutrition Group, whose purpose was to bring focus to the company's efforts to significantly expand its offerings in nutritious food and beverages. The case explores the background to that decision and the complexities the company faced in altering its product portfolio over the long run (which also included efforts to make its core snack and soft drink products healthier), while at the same time maintaining short-term profitability. The evolution of the product portfolio was part of a larger effort to implement a new strategic vision, encapsulated in the phrase, "Performance with Purpose." The phrase, in brief, expressed a commitment to deliver financial results in a way that was good for the world as well as good for the company.

Jorge Tarasuk, VP of Operations and Supply Chain for PepsiCo South America Foods, and his team had worked for 10 years to realize their dream of creating an agro research center in Peru that could provide more productive and healthier varieties of potatoes for the Frito-Lay businesses in PepsiCo's tropical regions, including Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Thailand, and Vietnam, where much of its future growth would come. They were denied several times but kept the idea alive through other projects until conditions presented themselves. But now that they had secured initial funding for the center, the hard work would begin.

Max Anderson, HBS Class of 2009, founded the MBA Oath Initiative. The oath was a voluntary pledge "to create value responsibly and ethically." Anderson and a team of students and faculty worked to launch the first MBA Oath Ceremony conducted on campus during Harvard graduation week.

Large-scale societal issues increasingly appear on the agenda of business leaders, including poverty, health, education, business-government relations, and the degradation of the environment. These problems are not entirely new, but the forces of globalization and the economic crisis have made them more visible and increase their urgency. They share several characteristics that signal the need for new kinds of societal leadership and academic scholarship. From the perspective of leadership, one common characteristic of these global problems is that they include both technical and political components. The political context surrounding any problem must be understood and managed, and a variety of institutions across sectors must be mobilized before technical solutions can be applied. Along similar lines, technical knowledge of solutions alone is not enough to scale successful demonstration projects that address these complex problems. That step involves resources and skills centered on forging appropriate systemic connections to effectively distribute solutions. Thus, these challenges cannot be dealt with by one profession or institution acting alone; indeed, effective action most often occurs at the intersections of professional and institutional fields. Holistic solutions, however, can be difficult to implement because of the complex interactions (or failures to interact) among many participants who deal with just one piece of an issue. Finally, solutions to these problems require concurrent actions at several system levels and/or among many stakeholders. This means that social capital as well as financial capital is required to forge relationships, influence opinion leaders and gatekeepers, and ensure cultural appropriateness.

Steel Partners is a U.S.-based hedge fund that has made a large investment in Japan-based wigmaker Aderans. The case is set at the close of the annual meeting in May 2008, when shareholders have voted against all incumbent board members. Steel Partners must act quickly. The case serves as an overview of corporate governance issues in Japan, as well as describing the costs and benefits of the "stakeholder" view of corporate governance.

In the face of the recent institutional breakdown of trust in business, managers are losing legitimacy. To regain public trust, management needs to become a true profession in much the way medicine and law have, argue Khurana and Nohria of Harvard Business School. True professions have codes, and the meaning and consequences of those codes are taught as part of the formal education required of their members. Through these codes, professional institutions forge an implicit social contract with society: Trust us to control and exercise jurisdiction over an important occupational category, and, in return, we will ensure that the members of our profession are worthy of your trust - that they will not only be competent to perform the tasks entrusted to them, but that they will also conduct themselves with high standards and great integrity. The authors believe that enforcing educational standards and a code of ethics is unlikely to choke entrepreneurial creativity. Indeed, if the field of medicine is any indication, a code may even stimulate creativity. The main challenge in writing a code lies in reaching a broad consensus on the aims and social purpose of management. There are two deeply divided schools of thought. One school argues that management's aim should simply be to maximize shareholder wealth; the other argues that management's purpose is to balance the claims of all the firm's stakeholders. Any code will have to steer a middle course in order to accommodate both the value-creating impetus of the shareholder value concept and the accountability inherent in the stakeholder approach.

On a winter day in December 2007 at the American Family Mutual Insurance Company (AMFAM) headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, Dave Anderson and Jack Salzwedel remained in the conference room after the senior management meeting had concluded. Anderson, CEO of AMFAM since January 2007 and Salzwedel, named President in August 2006, reflected together on how far the company had come over the past two years. Both recalled meetings in which top executives simply read out activity reports to help prepare a previous CEO for a largely ceremonial board meeting. These days, they sensed energy and movement at different levels--whether in a strategic planning meeting, or in Salzwedel's recent visit to a regional office to explain in person the content of and motivation for the company's new strategic plan. Anderson and Salzwedel were pleased that the just-ended meeting exhibited the kind of engaged discussion, "pushback," and argumentation they had been encouraging.

Examines how Tyco and its board recovered from its corporate scandals. Describes how its CEO and board set out to institute processes, guidelines, and a culture that would make Tyco into a company widely recognized for its world class corporate governance.

Describes the AFL-CIO: Office of Investments activities in their campaign to improve governance at Home Depot by calling attention to Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli's compensation package and the company's poor performance. The AFL-CIO Office of Investments advocates for improved corporate governance at public companies, focusing on the problems of excessive chief executive compensation, improperly backdated stock options, insufficiently independent corporate board members, poor responsiveness to shareholders concerns, and a lack of transparency in the activities and decisions of boards. The AFL-CIO believes that such problems were indicators of underlying problems in corporate governance that could impact the long-term value of a public company. To advance its cause, the Office targeted Home Depot. In an effort to bring about change at the company, the AFL-CIO and AFSCME corresponded with Home Depot executives, staged public protests, appeared on talk shows, and maintained several Web sites. The trillion-dollar size of the union pension funds gave the Office a platform from which to work. The departure of Home Depot's CEO had been a significant step by Home Depot and the company had made other concessions as well. The AFL-CIO Office of Investment now needed to decide whether to continue to use its limited resources focusing on Home Depot or find a new target to forward their cause.

David Langstaff, the CEO of Veridian, a defense company, struggles with the decision of selling the company. Langstaff has concerned himself with inculcalating his organization with the values necessary for superior achievement over the long term. But as a fiduciary, he had to come up with a single value to monetize the reputation the company had built. Langstaff wondered what was best for the firm and its customers and what his other options were. He also was concerned with how the prospect of selling the firm would square with Veridian's commitment to its constituencies and values-based leadership.

Star India, a subsidiary of Murdoch's News Corporation, and the leading TV network in India, is considering whether to acquire (or continue its arms-length relationship) with one of its major content providers, Balaji Telefilms. The case provides information on the industry context, regulatory environment, key competitors, and the Indian TV market. The case is a good vehicle to discuss value chain concepts and understand the relative strategic positions of different players within a value chain. The case also provides a good introduction to one of the largest television markets in the world.

Describes the start-up, growth, organizational design, and operations over the first 10 years of a professional services firm. Focuses on the creative use of organizational purpose and values as an integral part of strategy and alignment of organizational activities.

Traditionally, corporate boards have left leadership planning and development very much up to their CEOs and human resources departments--primarily because they don't perceive that a lack of leadership development in their companies poses the same kind of threat that accounting blunders or missed earnings do. That's a shortsighted view, the authors argue. Companies whose boards and senior executives fail to prioritize succession planning and leadership development end up experiencing a steady attrition in talent and becoming extremely vulnerable when they have to cope with inevitable upheavals--integrating an acquired company with a different operating style and culture, for instance, or reexamining basic operating assumptions when a competitor with a leaner cost structure emerges. Firms that haven't focused on their systems for building their bench strength will probably make wrong decisions in these situations. In this article, the authors explain what makes a successful leadership development program, based on their research over the past few years with companies in a range of industries. They describe how several forward-thinking companies (Tyson Foods, Starbucks, and Mellon Financial, in particular) are implementing smart, integrated, talent development initiatives. A leadership development program should not comprise stand-alone, ad hoc activities coordinated by the human resources department, the authors say. A company's leadership development processes should align with strategic priorities. From the board of directors on down, senior executives should be deeply involved in finding and growing talent, and line managers should be evaluated and promoted expressly for their contributions to the organizationwide effort. HR should be allowed to create development tools and facilitate their use, but the business units should take responsibility for development activities, and the board should ultimately oversee the whole system.

Since its founding in 1908, Harvard Business School's mission has been to perform a much-needed service for American society by turning business management into a profession. One of the most important factors in the founding of HBS and the nation's other new business schools was the demand for managers created by the rise of the modern business corporation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Additionally, in the years just after the turn of the century business careers were becoming increasingly attractive to young men who would have previously entered one of the older, more traditional professions: law, medicine, education, and the ministry. The process of formulating "business principles" that would put the study of management on a scientific basis was a crucial part of what the founders had set out to achieve in creating the HBS curriculum and building a faculty. By discovering business principles, HBS would also help lay the foundation of the new profession of business. The HBS founders also believed there was another dimension to professionalism in business--one that involved not just the expertise that students acquired but also the attitudes they held and their contribution to society.

Focuses on a crisis in the board at Vivendi. Highlights the difficulties that arise when dramatic pressure from outside the boardroom affects boardroom dynamics. In this case, there are two events. The first is an unexpectedly large financial loss and a pending cash flow crisis that forces Vivendi's directors to deal with the issue of dismissing their CEO. Whatever they decide, their actions will be scrutinized by the press and investors and will likely be revisited in a legal environment. The second is the board diagnosing its role in the financial crisis by approving a series of costly acquisitions in recent years that led to the crisis.

Describes the start-up, growth, organizational design, and operations over the first 10 years of a professional services firm. Focuses on the creative use of organizational purpose and values as an integral part of strategy and alignment of organizational activities.