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This case analyzes Infosys' innovative approach to measuring performance in client relations. Infosys' strategy is evolving to build transformational partnerships from its original position as an outsourcer of end-to-end IT projects. A transformational partner helps clients to devise and implement strategies that will allow them to achieve a competitive advantage. The traditional paradigm of service-level agreements (SLAs), while sufficient for Infosys' needs early on, is not able to achieve the level of understanding that transformational partnerships require. Infosys applies the principles of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) to produce a feedback mechanism that allows the partnership to grow to the benefit of both parties.

A service delivery failure in the Mount Rundle Hotel escalates into a full-fledged confrontation between hotel management and the customer. The hotel general manager has an inward focus and is more intent on managing internal company systems and processes than catering to customer needs. The delay in responding effectively to the service failure leads to the involvement of the Better Business Bureau of Alberta, the Banff Lake Louise Tourism Development Board and the Banff mayor's office.

Melco is a gaming firm based in Macau. Melco is planning an initial public offering (IPO) but receives a takeover bid from MGM Mirage. How much was the company really worth? Which route was best for Melco shareholders? Students assume the role of the investment banker advising Melco's chief executive officer on how to react. The case permits the valuation of the firm using discounted cashflow methods and relative valuation. Also, consideration of strategic issues, industry buyer versus IPO, potential synergies, ownership and control issues are involved.

Initiatives to build and maintain trust with various stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers and investors, are at the top of the executive agenda at many organizations. But most companies don't really understand how to manage stakeholder trust effectively. In fact, the authors' research suggests that many trust-building initiatives and approaches that organizations invest in may be of questionable value. Others might actually be counterproductive. Managing stakeholder trust is difficult because there are many different stakeholder groups, each with its own particular needs and perspective. That is, trust is multidimensional, and it's not obvious which dimension executives need to focus on when dealing with any particular constituency. To answer such questions, the authors conducted a study of stakeholder trust in four different organizations. They analyzed the relevance (if any) of various factors: benevolence, integrity, managerial competence, technical competence, transparency and value congruence. In essence, the study asked what matters -- and to whom. Some of the results were unexpected, and a few were even counterintuitive, leading to the following key insights: Transparency is overrated; integrity is not enough; the right kind of competence matters; building trust with one group can destroy it with another; and value congruence matters across the board. The new framework challenges some existing beliefs and sheds light on areas that companies would be wise not to ignore. Indeed, as the authors illustrate, fundamental misunderstandings about stakeholder trust have tripped up corporations such as Coca-Cola, Google, Apple, Delta Air Lines, Mattel and Sprint. A deeper knowledge of stakeholder trust will help businesses reap numerous benefits, including improved cooperation with suppliers, increased motivation and productivity among employees, enhanced loyalty from customers and higher levels of support from investors.

Many Western managers were introduced to lean production in 1990, with publication of "The Machine That Changed the World," based on a five-year study of Toyota by MIT's International Motor Vehicle Program. Since then, thousands of managers have used the principles of lean management to achieve faster cycle times, reduced defect rates and sharp gains in on-time deliveries. Lean management permits a marked reduction in inventory levels across the supply chain, which should result in better financial performance -- especially because companies achieve simultaneous declines in manufacturing and service costs. But, as the authors point out, the transition takes time and is full of obstacles. One predictable hurdle is the crisis in confidence that occurs when management isn't able to improve financial performance quickly. Lean transformations generally have short-term adverse impacts on the company's bottom line (that is, things get worse before better). Management needs to anticipate these challenges and explain them clearly. To help managers overcome the financial hurdles on the path to lean, the authors offer new tools for anticipating the deterioration in financial performance that occurs as a mass producer goes lean and for understanding the real performance improvements that take place during this period. Their approach, called "value-stream accounting," helps managers plan for the short-term financial impact, monitor progress, understand the operational improvements and develop strategies to maximize the longer-term benefit. Managers need to understand that the "bad" news isn't really bad -- it's part of the necessary process of establishing a stronger, more productive organization. The authors' approach replaces the traditional cost-accounting system with a transparent accounting system that tracks the company's value streams, which incorporate all of the value-adding and non-value-adding activities required to bring a product or service from start to finish.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. In global supply chains, managers have consistently struggled with sharing valuable knowledge with buyers and suppliers across borders. Increasingly, talk of the "dark side" of collaborative relationships has left managers wondering who benefits most from knowledge-sharing activities: their companies or their partners. In order to find the answers to these questions, the authors conducted an in-depth study of more than 100 cross-national supply chain partnerships in the industrial chemicals, consumer durables, industrial packaging, toy and apparel industries in multiple locations in 19 countries. The authors found three types of knowledge sharing within the supply chain, each offering distinct benefits to buyers and suppliers: information sharing, joint sense making and knowledge integration. They also found that no matter how "diverse" the home cultures of the buyer and supplier companies, these differences had no impact on the propensity to share knowledge. Drawing on examples from the auto (Toyota), aerospace (Boeing, Lockheed Martin and United Technologies) and toy industries, they examine how different types of knowledge sharing can benefit buyers or sellers individually, but more importantly, how it can enhance the performance of the partnership as a whole. They conclude that, while suppliers generally benefit more from knowledge-sharing activities, both buyers and suppliers profit; understanding the benefits of absolute versus relative gains is critical when building world-class global supply chains. Sharing knowledge effectively means understanding that a disparity in benefits is part of what it takes to build partnerships that last.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Much lip service is given today to "values-based decision making," with the implication that the underlying values are "good" values, occupying high moral ground. But the fact is that all decisions--whether highly ethical, grossly unethical or anywhere in between--are values-based. That is, a decision necessarily involves an implicit or explicit trade-off of values. The values represented in a particular decision are not always easy to identify and evaluate, however, and the shortcuts that people often take in decision making can make deeper analysis of values all the more difficult. This article presents a framework designed to explore the values implicit in decisions. Moving systematically from concrete consequences to higher-ordered values, the framework, embodied in a decision-mapping technique, helps the decision maker think through what is gained and what is given up as a result of a decision. It also encourages an expansion of choice options, motivates a more balanced view of positive and negative consequences, and provides insight into the dynamics of decision making. When good people at times say yes to bad--unethical or illegal--actions, there are four possible reasons: (a) the organization's values are fuzzy to them, leading them to resort to undeveloped intuition and expedient criteria, (b) they may not be clear on their own values, (c) their interpretation of probability conveniently favors their a priori preferred option, or (d) they see no other options (they believe their hands are tied). Each of these possibilities reflects issues that senior managers need to account for directly in addressing ethical decision making in their organizations. Illustrating the framework through a case study based on actual events, the article aims to help managers build a culture that better integrates the organization's values into staff members' decisions.

The director and chair of the governance committee at MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates Ltd. (MDA) considered how to advise the company's chief executive officer (CEO). As a company in the space industry, MDA relied on its exports to the United States. Joint ventures were helpful in securing contracts from the U.S. government but they were not always advantageous in other ways because these ventures required partnerships with competitors. At this time, MDA had no long term strategy to address this issue. The supplements MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates Ltd. (B) and (C) look at subsequent events that were unforeseen at this particular time.

The director and chair of the governance committee at MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates Ltd. (MDA) had been informed that U.S.-based Alliant Techsystems Inc. (ATK) had proposed a takeover of MDA's main business line - its security and intelligence business. The director was faced with several financial and ethical dilemmas which he needed to resolve before meeting with the board. The supplement MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates Ltd. (C) looks at the decisions that were made and the results of these decisions.

MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates Ltd. (C) is the third part of a three-part case. The director and chair of the governance committee at MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates Ltd. (MDA) reflects upon the past two-and-a-half months. He and other members of the board of directors faced difficult decisions but were pleased to see that their decisions had almost unanimous support from stockholders. As he read the business section of the newspaper, he wondered whether the decisions had been considered carefully with all the stakeholders in mind.

A consultant with CARE Enterprise Partners (CEP) is tasked to provide consulting for three social enterprises in different stages of development, each benefiting from CEP funding and support. CONASE - an oatmeal manufacturer selling to the government's vaso de leche free breakfast program - asked for advice on strategic analysis and creative approaches to customer relations. Seviagro - a market linkage social enterprise aggregating produce from smallholder artichoke farmers for resale to a large processing and export company - requested support with cost analysis and accounting. Corporacion Solar - initially established as a buyer and reseller of spinach produced by Andean farmers but currently transitioning from a market linkage model to a hybrid model - was looking for assistance in reshaping its growth strategy to target major buyers in Lima with a more diversified product offering. The three for-profit social enterprises profiled in this case sample a new breed of locally-reliant, market-driven models, which could further Peru's rural development in mountainous regions like the Ancash province. Their success could be tremendously influential in charting a new approach to development in the Andes. Success here could also endorse CEP's pioneering approach to development around the world. But despite careful start-up planning and very promising triple-bottom line projections, each enterprise confronted unexpected challenges in customer relations, cost management, sourcing and distribution. As these social ventures were getting off the ground, their founders' ability to simultaneously meet their social goals and remain economically viable was in jeopardy. The case asks students to put themselves in the consultant role and reposition these social ventures for sustainable growth.

As of mid-2008, Regio's sole shareholder, chairman and president is leading his team through a strategy refreshing process. Regio, an Estonian company established in 1989 as a map-maker, is now involved in four principal business activities: location-based services for mobile phones, geographical information systems (GIS) software development, the creation of geospatial data and the production of maps. The company's current revenues are about 5 million euro dollars and the president is wondering what he can do to propel the company to new heights of 40 million euro dollar to 50 million euro dollars in revenues by 2015.

The Russian Federation (Russia) was the largest of the 15 geopolitical entities that emerged in 1991 from the Soviet Union. Despite a series of reforms initiated in 1992 to help the country transition from its centrally planned economy, Russia plunged into a deep recession that was exacerbated by a financial crisis in 1998. It was not until 1999, following eight years of turmoil, macroeconomic stabilization and economic restructuring, that the economy slowly began to grow again. When Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin became president on December 31, 1999, Russia was the world's tenth-largest economy and its foreign reserves stood at $8.5 billion. By 2007, the country's economy had become the world's eighth-biggest, with reserves of $407.5 billion. In May 2008, when Russia's new president, Dmitry Medvedev, was inaugurated and Putin assumed the role of prime minister, western companies with interests in Russia faced great uncertainty. Would Putin's hand-picked successor, under Putin's powerful and watchful eye, continue to enact policies and take actions that would make the business environment increasingly unfavorable to foreign investment? Or, would the new regime chart a more liberal and democratic course for Russia that would enable the country to improve its global competitiveness and allow outside investors to participate in its prosperity? Russia had made great strides to improve its position in the world since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Yet, it remained to be seen whether the country, particularly under its current circumstances, could create and sustain lasting international competitive advantage, which many western critics believed would require a more democratic political regime. This paper provides a brief overview of the country and explores the status of China's competitive advantage through the framework of Michael Porter's Competitive Advantage of Nations.

In July, 1991, Irfan Mustafa, West Asia Area Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of Pepsi Cola Pakistan Incorporated (PCI), faced several dilemmas. First, as part of the 7-Up acquisition, Mustafa had to convince the remaining Pakistani 7-Up bottlers to sell their plants to PCI bottlers and oversee the resulting integration. Second, Pepsi Cola International had shifted focus to its global brands, and since acquiring 7-Up International in 1986, had withdrawn all marketing and technical support for Pepsi's local yet successful Pakistani brand, Teem. In light of the focus on global brands, Mustafa needed to determine the role of each brand in his portfolio (Pepsi, 7-Up, Teem, and Mirinda), with particular focus on 7-Up and Teem. Lastly, in an effort to distinguish 7-Up from Teem, formerly competitors, PCI had developed Cloudy Teem-a milky colored lemon-lime soft drink. Mustafa had to assess whether Cloudy Teem had major growth potential and if so, figure out how to role it out across Pakistan despite resistance from his bottlers. This case explores Mustafa's dilemmas, also touching on urban versus rural marketing and distribution challenges.

With prices of oil, coal and gas at historically high levels, the wind industry had installed more than 20,000 MW of wind energy, representing a $37 billion investment in 2007. Besides high prices, wind energy represented a solution for consumers seeking an energy source that would not add to the problems associated with global climate change. Suzlon Energy Limited (Suzlon), India's largest manufacturer of wind turbines had evolved from a small family-run business into a global enterprise spanning across four continents in just over a decade. But would the costs associated with the aggressive growth policy be too much for a young company to handle?

This case provides background on the U.S. TV industry at the end of the 20th century.

Many of us will at some point in our professional lives encounter situations involving what we believe to be wrongful or injurious activities that may cause harm to innocent parties, our company, or the public. It may be necessary to bring the matter to the attention of someone who can do something about it--to engage in what is sometimes called "whistleblowing." This note outlines some factors that should be considered when that happens.

This case focuses on Kit Hinrichs, a 65 year-old partner at Pentagram, a privately-owned multidisciplinary design firm. One of the world's most prestigious design firms, Pentagram was founded by five designers from different disciplines in London in the 1970s. By 2008, Pentagram remained small, with less than 30 partners, each a veritable star in his or her own right. Pentagram had two founding principles, the first of which was equality. The equality principle meant that leadership was evenly distributed; partners with seniority had no greater formal authority than newer partners, and the only formal leadership role was a chairman position, which, after being held with a founder for 30 years, was rotated every two years. Further, Pentagram had no corporate office; each partner was expected to manage their own financial, marketing, and human resource functions. Pentagram's second principle was generosity. All partners were equal shareholders in the firm. Pentagram branched out to New York in the early 1980s, and in the late 1980s, Hinrichs established a San Francisco location. This case traces Hinrichs as he builds Pentagram's San Francisco office, and it also details the evolution of Pentagram itself. In addition, this case offers a thick description of Hinrichs and his team working with a client. This case can be used in business and executive education courses on professional service firms, leading a creative organization, and the role of design in business. It should also be used by schools of design.

In a series of vignettes, Nigella Hardy-Smyth of an international development agency that invests partners in emerging markets private equity firms must decide how to handle various situations that arise. As a member of the Limited Partner Advisory Board of each of the five firms, she must contend with a fund manager with an indistinct mandate, a manager who wants to exceed the concentration limit in an investment, tension between a star investor and her other partners, a founding partner who wants to fire the rest of his senior team, and a limited partner seeking preferential treatment that might benefit his fund to the detriment of the other limited partners. The process of discussing these helps the class explore the nuanced role of a limited partner in a private equity firm.

This note explores the limited partner advisory boards. Based on interviews with seven experienced limited partners who serve on a number of different advisory boards, it presents the roles of the advisory board, the ways it can influence the general partner, and the reasons for limited partners to serve on them. It also contrasts the findings of this survey with a paper on the performance differential between university endowments and other institutional investors and hypothesizes the reasons behind it.