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The vast majority of product safety recalls are due not to problems with Chinese manufacturing processes but to highly preventable design mistakes that Western companies keep making over and over again.

Regional health information organizations-RHIOs--are springing up in the United States to meet a vital need: to connect the nation's disparate patient-health information systems. If RHIOs can find a viable business model, they stand to improve the quality and decrease the cost of U.S. health care dramatically.

The regional manager of the Container Transportation Company, and his colleagues were looking for a new strategy to allocate containers for transportation from Korea and China to the Middle East. All the business departments had been challenged by top management to optimize their revenues and profit. The regional manager wondered whether he could improve pricing or apply other revenue management techniques to enhance revenues without negatively affecting customer service.

This case, which outlines the product recall, is a supplement to Mattel and the Toy Recalls (A).

On August 14, 2007, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in cooperation with Mattel announced five different recalls of Mattel's toys. On September 4, Mattel announced three more recalls. Some were due to the use of lead paint, while others were due to small magnets coming loose. The (B) case outlines the handling of the recalls and its consequences, such as consumer outrage, media scrutiny, government intervention, and the effect on China. Further, it discusses the design flaws for which large toy companies are responsible. The (B) case raises many issues, such as who Mattel's stakeholders are, what values Mattel followed, and whether Mattel needs to revisit its China strategy.

On August 14, 2007, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in cooperation with Mattel announced five different recalls of Mattel's toys. On September 4, Mattel announced three more recalls. Some were due to the use of lead paint, while others were due to small magnets coming loose. The (B) case outlines the handling of the recalls and its consequences, such as consumer outrage, media scrutiny, government intervention, and the effect on China. Further, it discusses the design flaws for which large toy companies are responsible. The (B) case raises many issues, such as who Mattel's stakeholders are, what values Mattel followed, and whether Mattel needs to revisit its China strategy.

The movement from jobs in the United States to developing countries, in a process known as offshoring, has become quite a controversial topic. Managers not only need to decide which activities, if any, to move offshore, but where to move them. This case describes the nature of offshoring and its effect on developing countries.

This four-case series follows a team through a weeklong kaizen event. The A case sets up the situation, and the B (UVA-OM-1259), C (UVA-OM-1260), and D (UVA-OM-1261) cases depict what happens on the successive days. The series teaches such concepts as takt time, line balancing, and managing change. The A case is intended to be handed out as an assignment, and the B, C, and D cases provide real-time exercises for the students.

Supplement case for UV1257.

Supplement case for UV1257.

Supplement case for UV1257.

This case focuses on the legal and managerial evolution of limited-liability firms in China, using the example of the Dasheng cotton mills in Nantong near Shanghai. Dasheng, one of the earliest and most successful industrial enterprises in pre-war China, was founded by the famous entrepreneur Zhang Jian (1853-1926). Having survived various economic and political crises, the Dasheng cotton mills became a state-owned enterprise in 1953. In the wake of the economic reforms the successor to the original Dasheng Enterprise was restructured as the Jiangsu Dasheng Co. Ltd. in 1996. Issues of corporate governance, legal environment, government relations and the role of family business structures are discussed in the context of how they shaped the business environment in pre-war China and continue to influence Chinese enterprise culture in 2008.

In 2007, the Philippines passed the Biofuels Act of 2006, which requires all gasoline sold in the country in 2008 to contain at least 5% ethanol by volume. The law's objectives are to reduce Philippine dependence on imported fuel, with its erratic price fluctuations, by providing a local supply of alternative and renewable energy. The success of the implementation of this law depends greatly on how well the country's agricultural sector will respond. Because of this, the Department of Agriculture is crafting a feedstock development strategy.

In 2002 Weber Shandwick, a leading global public relations agency, instituted a Client Relationship Leader (CRL) Program for its top 32 global accounts. The purpose of the program is to ensure that all of the firm's resources across geographies, practice areas, and specialty areas are coordinated and effectively delivered to Weber Shandwick's most important clients. Each of these clients is assigned a "Client Relationship Leader" and the case discusses the skills and abilities that are needed to be successful in this role in a very complex multidimensional organizational structure. There are two basic types of CRLs: hunters whose job is growing accounts with a lot of potential and farmers whose job is to maintain strong and broad-based relationships. CRLs must walk a fine line between being close to the client, even considered part of their team, and not being too close by "going native" and ignoring their responsibilities as Weber Shandwick employees. Unlike office managers, who are measured based on the bottom line, CRLs are measured on top-line growth. Another objective of the CRL program is to enable Weber Shandwick to differentiate itself in a highly competitive environment where it is very difficult for PR firms and their holding company media conglomerate parents to do so. The public relations industry in the broadest sense has undergone a tremendous amount of consolidation through acquisitions over the past 20 years. It is also being challenged to adapt to new technologies like blogging and social networking, which both change and enhance existing service offerings. Another way that Weber Shandwick is adapting to new technologies is through an Internet-based platform called WeberWorks (3.0) that fosters communication and collaboration between the firm and the client and within the client team.

When companies put seasoned managers in charge of important projects, they don't expect missed deadlines, budget overruns, and rampant defects. However, that's what researchers found when they tested hundreds of experienced project managers with computer games that simulated software development projects. The study, conducted by two professors from Insead and one from Naval Postgraduate School, strongly suggests that veterans in complex environments suffer a breakdown in the learning process. The research reveals three reasons for the breakdowns: Time lags between causes and effects make it difficult to see how they're connected; fallible estimates color the chain of decisions that determine a project's outcome; and a bias toward the initial goals prevents managers from setting revised, more appropriate, targets when project circumstances change. Sticking to an initial low budget goal after a project grew in scope, for instance, led subjects to ignore quality assurance, which led to soaring defect rates - and costs. Companies can take practical steps to fix the learning cycle. They can provide feedback that shows the relationships between important variables in the environment. Such feedback might reveal, say, the 20-day ramp-up that a new quality assurance team needs before becoming fully effective. Tools that apply formal models to calculate such things as the effect of turnover on team productivity also help. Setting goals for behavior, instead of targets for performance, is critical as well. Finally, firms can create project "flight simulators" that mimic actual learning environments but don't let complexity overwhelm trainees. Managers can continue learning only if they get decision support tailored to the challenges they face. Firms would do well to focus more on training people higher up in the organization and stop leaving them to fend for themselves.

Sustainability, defined by natural scientists as the capacity of healthy ecosystems to function indefinitely, has become a clarion call for business. Leading companies have taken high-profile steps toward achieving it: Wal-Mart, for example, with its efforts to reduce packaging waste, and Nike, which has removed toxic chemicals from its shoes. But, says Unruh, the director of Thunderbird's Lincoln Center for Ethics in Global Management, sustainability is more than an endless journey of incremental steps. It is a destination, for which the biosphere of planet Earth - refined through billions of years of trial and error - is a perfect model. Unruh distills some lessons from the biosphere into three rules: Use a parsimonious palette. Managers can rethink their sourcing strategies and dramatically simplify the number and types of materials their companies use in production, making recycling cost-effective. After the furniture manufacturer Herman Miller discovered that its leading desk chair had 200 components made from more than 800 chemical compounds, it designed an award-winning successor whose far more limited materials palette is 96% recyclable. Cycle up, virtuously. Manufacturers should design recovery value into their products at the outset. Shaw Industries, for example, recycles the nylon fiber from its worn-out carpet into brand-new carpet tile. Exploit the power of platforms. Platform design in industry tends to occur at the component level - but the materials in those components constitute a more fundamental platform. Patagonia, by recycling Capilene brand performance underwear, has achieved energy costs 76% below those for virgin sourcing. Biosphere rules can teach companies how to build ecologically friendly products that both reduce manufacturing costs and prove highly attractive to consumers. And managers need not wait for a green technological revolution to implement them.

Emily Holland-Power was eager to start looking for permanent employment. Holland-Power was entering the final year of the two-year honours bachelor of arts program in business administration at the Richard Ivey School of Business at The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. From her summer work at Lalani, O'Hagan & John, an accounting firm in London, she had concluded that accounting was not for her. However, she had also decided that she wanted to work in a professional firm. Thus, Holland-Power wanted to learn more about opportunities in management consulting and investment banking. She decided to meet with two of her classmates who had worked in each of these occupations. After asking them about various aspects of their jobs and the firms for which they worked, Holland-Power needed to decide which career path to pursue.

In December 2004, Donald Berwick, MD, president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), challenged U.S. hospitals to reduce unnecessary deaths by 100,000 within the following 18 months. By the end of this 18 month period, over 3,100 hospitals enrolled in the "100,000 Lives Campaign," representing more than 70 percent of U.S. hospital beds. Calculations estimated that approximately 123,000 preventable deaths were avoided in participating hospitals. The case describes the state of quality in the healthcare industry, the history of the IHI, and the IHI's efforts to bring modern quality practices to health care. After seeing pockets of improvement, the IHI launched the 100,000 Lives Campaign in an effort to stimulate large scale change. The campaign approach incorporated lessons from political campaigns and social activism. The operation of the campaign is described. The impact of the campaign on hospitals is also discussed, with particular emphasis on one hospital that used the campaign as the basis for fundamental transformation.

Pay Zone Consulting is a small, highly-specialized, global consulting group providing information management solutions for the exploration and production sector of the oil and gas industry. The company operates entirely virtually with consultants and software developers in different parts of the world. The principals are considering growth options but are intent on preserving the quality of life benefits provided by their virtual business model. The case examines the communication technologies employed by the principals in support of their virtual teamwork and describes the administrative information technology (IT) infrastructure that enables the firm to operate with no administrative staff or office. The case also discusses the organizational and personal factors underlying the company's ability to operate successfully virtually.

Mapleleaf Corporation is a mid-size player in the paper products industry. The firm has recently become aware that growing demand will soon outstrip its present production capacity. The primary objective of this case is to introduce students to the world of capacity planning and optimization.