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"Hee Soap, Hee Soap," Timothy Jones sang out in a mocking fashion towards Hee Seop Choi, a fellow learning team member at a noted graduate school of business. Hoping to gain the benefits from a diversity of resources, knowledge, and ideas, MBA students at this school were assigned to learning teams. Each member was specifically chosen with an effort to mix up gender, nationalities, professional backgrounds, and interests. But those advantages may be outweighed by problems stemming from multicultural differences. This case offers a disguised, yet real, team experience that can be used in the classroom to unpack how this richly diverse group had trouble getting along and why their personality clashes intensified. The opportunity to discuss the challenges in light of culture, and the difference between that and problems stemming from personalities will help students reap the benefits intrinsic in multicultural teams.

Explores the process and inputs behind financial and operational forecasting in the Electronic Specialty Materials unit at Air Products and Chemicals, a global chemical company. The protagonist, John Goldberg, grapples with how to better integrate the two forecasting processes, while also trying to prepare for unexpected urgent orders and natural disasters.

This case considers how one project-based organization overcame deterrents to strategic risk management and enabled an effective risk management process to be diffused through its projects, without significantly upsetting the autonomy of its projects. Students will explore both the deterrents to strategic risk management and the components of effective risk management.

Saving the rain forest from yet another palm oil plantation would certainly garner a company favorable attention from environmentalists, but how would its shareholders react? Shows that by strategically practicing corporate social responsibility (CSR), a company can 'do well by doing good'; in other words, it can make a profit and make the world a better place at the same time. CSR is regarded as voluntary corporate commitment to exceed the explicit and implicit obligations imposed on a company by society's expectations of conventional corporate behavior. Hence, CSR is a way of promoting beneficial social trends in order to enhance society's basic order, which we define as consisting of obligations that cover both the legal framework and social conventions. Due to globalization, companies are now less constrained by society's basic order than they have been in the past. Because different countries have different laws and standards, there are more ways to get away with less than ideal behavior in the quest for greater profits. Nearly everyone agrees that this is not a good thing, but what can be done? Offers an understanding of CSR that could be the answer and contends that practicing CSR is not altruistic do-gooding, but rather a way for both companies and society to prosper. This is especially true when CSR is conceived as a long-range plan of action.

Zimmer Holdings, an orthopedic devices company in the United States, is suddenly faced with the prospect of its British competitor acquiring one of the Swiss companies, which would have been an ideal target for its own acquisition. With the announcement of the merger already in the news, Zimmer Holdings has a narrow time window to decide its response. Students are asked to take the position of an advisor to senior management and provide a recommendation to management on actions to pursue. The case provides an ideal platform to discuss global competition and the imperatives of a global marketplace, evaluation of a target and assessing the uncertainties in the process, discussing negotiating strategies and post-acquisition processes.

While preparing a financial forecast, the newly promoted CFO of a small and profitable, but financially constrained, ready-mix concrete company must choose between renegotiating debt obligations, postponing long overdue capital improvements that will prevent more costly future repairs, or reducing the dividend payment to a parent company that just recently purchased the firm. A potential slowdown in the business due to a slowing economy and pressure from the new parent company add additional layers of complexity.

Sometimes the good old tried and true American business team building exercises just don't work. Although frequently successful with teams made up of employees from different sections of an organization, what happens when teams consist of employees from different geographical areas like the United States and Asia-which has a whole set of unique differences. This case follows the experiences of an executive sent to Bangkok Thailand with two other managers from corporate headquarters to clean up and team build following the discovery of fiscal mismanagement and a popular senior executive's high profile firing. This three part case series puts students in the shoes of a financial auditor sent to try and strengthen weakened relationships and performance at Fasco Motors in Thailand. The material describes his efforts to rebuild trust on the Bangkok management team and the difficulties he encounters working as an outsider in every way.

Sometimes the good old tried and true American business team building exercises just don't work. Although frequently successful with teams made up of employees from different sections of an organization, what happens when teams consist of employees from different geographical areas like the United States and Asia-which has a whole set of unique differences. This case follows the experiences of an executive sent to Bangkok Thailand with two other managers from corporate headquarters to clean up and team build following the discovery of fiscal mismanagement and a popular senior executive's high profile firing. This three part case series puts students in the shoes of a financial auditor sent to try and strengthen weakened relationships and performance at Fasco Motors in Thailand. The material describes his efforts to rebuild trust on the Bangkok management team and the difficulties he encounters working as an outsider in every way.

Sometimes the good old tried and true American business team building exercises just don't work. Although frequently successful with teams made up of employees from different sections of an organization, what happens when teams consist of employees from different geographical areas like the United States and Asia-which has a whole set of unique differences. This case follows the experiences of an executive sent to Bangkok Thailand with two other managers from corporate headquarters to clean up and team build following the discovery of fiscal mismanagement and a popular senior executive's high profile firing. This three part case series puts students in the shoes of a financial auditor sent to try and strengthen weakened relationships and performance at Fasco Motors in Thailand. The material describes his efforts to rebuild trust on the Bangkok management team and the difficulties he encounters working as an outsider in every way.

When it comes to judging the success of innovations, the important measure to track isn't sales; it's net prices.

The high failure rate among new business ventures is usually chalked up to the fundamental uncertainty of the process. In actuality, say McGrath and Keil, flawed ways of assessing and managing ventures may account for the disappointing amount of value they generate. Instead of taking the go/no-go approach, whereby a project either advances toward launch or is killed, decision makers should consider a range of alternatives: recycling the venture by aiming it at a new target market; spinning it off to other owners or a joint venture; spinning it into an established business unit; or salvaging useful elements such as technologies, capabilities, knowledge, and patents. Firms that excel in value extraction--the "value captors" whose practices and mind-set this article explores--have created formal processes to systematically mine successes, failures, and everything in between. They know that a venture should be treated like a scientific experiment, in which learning plays a critical role. They are ready to seize new opportunities if a venture falters on its original course. They foster networks to promote cooperation and collaboration between established business leaders and venture teams and involve people from throughout the company in the venture review process. They don't allow financial criteria to dominate the reviews, and they recognize that the best people to launch a business may not be the ones who developed the idea. If your innovation pipeline is dry, your promising projects are being strangled for lack of a speedy payback, or someone else has made a fabulous business out of a slightly altered idea that you abandoned, consider the value captor's path.

The president and founder of a premier luxury car rental agency located throughout Europe must decide on the composition of the fleet of cars for the upcoming summer season. She has to balance a desire for high utilization versus the possibility of having to turn away clients if they request a car that is not in stock. Can be used to introduce or reinforce a number of concepts, including break-even analysis, basic descriptive statistics, and the new vendor model.

Alan Kendricks struggles to address many challenges facing him as a recently promoted medical director for Cardiology Associates at Southeastern Pennsylvania University Hospital. He must balance his time taking care of patients, running a practice, managing up, down, and laterally, managing stars with little formal authority, allocating resources fairly, developing his people, providing strategy and direction, building an organization, and spending time with his family. Offers insights into the dilemmas of a "producing manager," a person who is simultaneously responsible for producing and managing.

Dr. Iqbal Surve, a self-described "medical doctor, philanthropist, and social entrepreneur," was born in 1963 and grew up in poverty, like virtually all non-white South Africans during apartheid. During the 1970s and 1980s, he served in leadership positions in the ANC, struggling against apartheid. After apartheid ended, Surve served as a medical doctor to many prominent South African leaders, like Nelson Mandela, and to the national soccer team. But by the mid-1990s, Surve, like many of his comrades, grew frustrated by the huge economic disparities that existed in South Africa, even though its progressive constitution afforded all citizens equal rights. It seemed the government's Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policies were only enriching a few. In 1997, Surve and three of his comrades founded Sekunjalo, an investment holding company that sought to offer "a gentler capitalism" that stressed putting people before profits, and talent development as a means of raising the lives of previously disadvantaged South Africans. By 1999, the company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, making 36-year-old Surve the youngest CEO of a listed diversified conglomerate. From its inception, Sekunjalo only purchased controlling stakes in companies, hoping to empower black workers. In 1999, it had purchased a 5% stake in LeisureNet, a white-owned and -run South African company that operated health clubs globally and was seeking a BEE partner. Surve hoped to eventually purchase a majority stake in the company, but in 2000 the company went under in the biggest corporate scandal in South African history. In one day, Sekunjalo's stock dropped 44%. Surve, already a very public figure in South Africa, had to decide what to do, especially what to tell his loyal employees who had invested so much in Sekunjalo's mission.

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This case illustrates a comprehensive valuation of a publicly-traded firm specializing in building and managing prisons. Students must assess the firm's strategy and risks, evaluate key financial reports, derive forecasts of future performance, and use these forecasts to value the firm.

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Disney began internationalizing its theme park operations with the opening of Tokyo Disneyland in 1983, which is regarded as one of the most successful amusement parks in the world. Disney attempted to replicate this success in France, which is the largest consumer of Disney products outside of the United States. In 1992, they opened Disneyland Resort Paris, which is largely regarded to be much less successful than the park in Japan. This case explores Disney's efforts to open its third park outside the United States; Hong Kong Disneyland. It begins by discussing the experience of Tokyo and Paris Disneylands, and then discusses the opening of Hong Kong Disneyland, including the structure of the deal, and how the operations, human resources management and marketing were tailored to fit the Chinese cultural environment. The case also discusses the tourism industry in Hong Kong and the particular problems that were encountered during the first year of operations. The stage is set for students to discuss whether Disney's strategic assets have a good semantic fit with Chinese culture.