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Describes the life and career of the first Japanese female investment banker at Nomura Securities, Sumiko Ito, who later became a partner at Alex Brown, a U.S. investment bank. Organized around the major life events and career transitions Ms. Ito experienced. Set in three distinct cultural milieus: Japan, England, and the United States. Eventually, Ms. Ito resigns from Alex Brown and starts her own investment company.

After 10 years of running a small laboratory at Yale Medical School, Dr. R. Bernd Sterzel assumes leadership of a nephrology clinic in Nurnberg and Erlangen, Germany. In his ambitious efforts to transform the clinic into a leading academic research institution, he encounters numerous challenges associated with health care management in a socialized medicine context.

Supplements the (A) case.

Supplements the (A) case.

David Fletcher, manager of the Emerging Growth Fund at a New York investment management firm, decides to assemble a team of analysts to which he can delegate part of his workload. The case explores the challenges of being a producing manager and Fletcher's efforts to select and manage a team of professionals.

The two crucial responsibilities of corporate boards--oversight of long-term company strategy and the selection, evaluation, and compensation of top management--were not well met during the 1980s. There should not be government reform of board practices, but the size of boards should be limited and the number of outside directors on them should be increased. Three insiders belong on a board: the CEO, the COO, and the CFO. There should also be reform in the functioning and responsibilities of audit, compensation, and nominating committees. On a revitalized board, directors have enough confidence in the process to challenge one another, as well as the CEO. A group of experts, including CEOs, consultants, and institutional investors, propose specific strategies to help strengthen corporate boards. Some argue for appointing more independent outside directors. Others focus on improving shareholder/management relations. Suggestions for immediate action include board-member retreats, annual CEO evaluations, regular meetings with institutional shareholders, and the general admonition that directors must start asking more difficult questions.

Throughout his 35-year football coaching career, at the high school, college, and professional levels, Bill Walsh has produced winners with his structured and businesslike approach to maximizing the potential of players and coaches. It is his highly successful management style in the most intense competitive situations that makes his organizational insights so applicable to today's corporate environment. Taking over as head coach and general manager of a dreadful San Francisco 49ers team in 1979, Walsh immediately began to develop and chart meticulous, long-range strategic and personnel plans for the organization. He defined responsibilities for both players and coaches, with objectives and priorities set for all. His practices focused on being prepared for every possible game situation.

This case is an in-basket exercise. Sarah Conner has just assumed control of Astral, a successful compact-disc manufacturer with some looming problems. Previously run by an autocratic manager, Astral is paralyzed following Sir Maxwell S. Hammer's death. Sarah Conner must work through a stack of messages, memos, and faxes, and decide where to begin and what to do.

Tidewater Corp. CEO Bob Salinger faces a dilemma: his most valuable employee, boat designer Ken Vaughn, is also his most destructive. Because of his great talent, Vaughn is critical to the company's future growth and profitability. But his antagonism toward Tidewater's recent reorganization is causing disruptions all over the company, and Vaughn has become increasingly violent. If Salinger fires Vaughn, he risks losing him to a competitor, who would than be in position to grab Tidewater's market share. But if he keeps Vaughn, the company's necessary reorganization may be seriously damaged. Salinger is waffling in the decision and has made a tough situation even worse.

Focuses on the communications in the period immediately following the March 24, 1989 Alaska oil spill caused by the Exxon Valdez. Includes the text of Exxon Chairman Rawl's "open letter" in an April 3 newspaper advertisment. Addresses the timing and content of corporate communications and actions following crisis.

Describes the changes fashioned by Iacocca during his tenure as CEO of the Chrysler Corp. Pays particular attention to the rhetoric he employed in mobilizing change and the actions he took to implement change.

Paul Allaire leads a company that is a microcosm of the changes transforming American business. With the introduction of the first plain-paper copier in 1959, Xerox invented a new industry and launched itself into a decade of spectacular growth. But easy growth led Xerox to neglect the fundamentals of its core business, leaving the company vulnerable to low-cost Japanese competition. Starting in the mid-1980s, Xerox embarked on a long-term effort to regain its dominant position in world copier markets and to create a new platform for future growth. Thanks to the company's Leadership through Quality program, Xerox became the first major U.S. company to win back market share from the Japanese. Since becoming CEO in 1990, Allaire has redirected the company's strategy to position Xerox as "the document company," at the intersection of the worlds of paper-based and electronic information. And he has guided the company through a fundamental redesign of what Allaire calls the "organizational architecture" of Xerox's document processing business.

Managers must build change into their organization's structure. This means being prepared to abandon everything that the organization does as well as constantly creating the new. Without this creation and abandonment, the organization will lose performance and with it the ability to attract and hold the people on whom its performance depends. The nature of the organization drives the imperative of change. Every organization exists to put knowledge to work, but knowledge changes quickly. The organization as well as the knowledgeable individual must acquire knowledge every several years or become obsolete. We have only begun to reckon with the implications of living in a world in which the fundamental unit of society, the organization, is and must be destabilizing. That is why questions of the organization's social responsibility now arise so often and why we need new ways to understand the relationship between organizations and their employees and between organizations and society overall.

Depicts the conflict and organizational problems that emerged in a franchise operation owned by Paul Logan, an African American, and John Heyman, a white American. Provides the opportunity to examine the ways in which race influences managerial behavior and organizational dynamics. Also raises issues of organizational performance, headquarters-franchise relations and conflict resolution.

Presents the dilemma of Don Waters, vice president of Franchise Operations at Belmont Beverages. Waters must must decide what to do about the conflict between two partners in one of Belmont's franchises.

A two-year bank employee is at a decision point in her career. She must assess whether or not the actions and recommendations of the Task Force on the Advancement of Women in the bank will be successful in managing change. Specifically, she is concerned with the glass ceiling - the barriers to the advancement of women - and the process used by the bank to eliminate the barriers. (A sequel to this case, The Bank of Montreal - The Task Force on the Advancement of Women in the Bank (B) is available.)

A project team manager faces the issues of managing employee's expectations and minimizing the resistance to change while implementing an automated Job Vacancy Notification System (JVNS) at the bank. The JVNS was proposed by the Task Force on the Advancement of Women to promote equal access to job information to all employees. This is a continuation of The Bank of Montreal - The Task Force on the Advancement of Women in the Bank (A).

While it is easy to recognize leadership in action, defining the essence of leadership is hard because it cannot be reduced to a set of personal attributes or particular activities. Intent on capturing the essence of leadership, Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne turned to lessons that Kim had learned as a youth in the temples of Korea's Kyung Nam province. These lessons dealt with the qualities that define true leaders. Their points were made through stories, not through statistics or research. Thus they provided the inspiration for five parables of leadership.

Two partners, Anne Salpryn and Tom Hilliard, successfully develop a creative software company. While Anne becomes more managerially oriented, Tom wants to remain a software project creator. The partnership becomes jeopardized as Tom's personal life begins to fall apart and he is faced with sexual harassment charges at work. Anne seeks to buy him out. Examines the perils of partnership, man/woman business relationships, and the tensions posed by creativity and organization.

Two sisters begin a bakery/cafe and have difficulties organizing the work and defining their roles. The case is written from the mother's perspective as she tries to figure out how to keep the business from falling apart.