個案總覽

Supplement for W13222

Rio Tinto, a major multinational mining company, signed a contract with the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games and the International Olympic Committee to supply all the gold, silver and copper for medals to be awarded at the London 2012 Olympic Games. Just three months before the opening ceremonies, a coalition of non-governmental organizations, titled Operation Greenwash Gold, combined with labour unions in Canada, Australia and around the world representing millions of workers to protest Rio Tinto's alleged environmental, human rights and labour relations abuses. A number of damaging social media campaigns aimed to get the Olympic committees to cancel Rio Tinto's contract were supplemented by street protests in front of the company's headquarters during its annual general meeting. Rio Tinto's chief executive officer must decide on a communications strategy in order to respond to its already tarnished reputation.

In early 2013 the leaders of McKinsey & Co., were reflecting, as they did periodically, on the path forward for their firm. Founded in Chicago in 1926 by "James O. "Mac" McKinsey," with only a small staff in one office, the firm had grown to be a global company with more than 17,000 firm members, including more than 9,000 consultants. It was arguably the world's preeminent management consulting firm. This case describes the history of events and decisions which have led to this enviable record of success, and poses the questions before the firm's senior leaders in 2013. What should be their path forward? Could the firm continue to grow successfully with its current strategy, organization, and culture?

Over the years, Zingerman's Community of Businesses (ZCoB) has regularly won accolades and awards - including being named "the coolest small company in America" by Inc. in 2003 - for its food, service, mail order catalog, training, and overall success. This case shows how Zingerman's went from a single delicatessen in 1982 to nine unique but complementary companies with combined revenues of $45 million in 2012. It details the novel methods ZCoB employs to create "a great place to eat and work" and touches on the challenges it faces moving forward. This case can be used in conjunction with Zingerman's: New Business Development and Zingerman's: Broad-Based Ownership, Governance, & Sustainability.

This case is about how the Boston Consulting Group has approached innovation from its founding to the present day. It discusses the role of the firm's talent market and client market in developing these innovations.

To optimize your forecast of the success of a product at launch, combine computer analysis with the judgment of several experts, in specific proportions depending on how uncertain the context is.

A new study by researchers at Steelcase, the office furniture company, uncovers six dimensions of workplace culture that shape an office's social dynamics.

One of the most complex challenges for a family business is when an in-law joins the firm. In-laws are part of the family through marriage; but they form a group of unique stakeholders in the family firm as marriage can be severed but blood cannot be changed. Consequently, in-laws are not always viewed as full-fledged family members. While the firm's founder and family members face challenges as they consider integrating in-laws into the family firm, the in-laws face many challenges in joining a family firm as well. This case illustrates these tensions by tracing John Malone's involvement working as an in-law for Aurum Furniture, a small family business located in a large Midwestern city in the U.S. Issues that would have been straightforward in a non-family firm were anything but that in the non-professionalized family firm. The case provides considerable flexibility with instructors having opportunity to discuss the dynamics among members of a small family business. While we emphasize the challenges faced by in-laws, the case is particularly well-suited to facilitate a more general discussion on the challenges that an individual encounters as he or she joins a non-professionalized family firm. As such, it can be used with family business owners as they reflect on their concept of family and the roles of individual members-especially, in-laws-and the firm's decisions to professionalize. The case can be used with graduate and undergraduate students and workshops in family business or small business management.

No organization can fulfill every hope and desire of its employees, so it helps to know which ones matter most to people. Goffee and Jones have identified the six most essential imperatives for creating an ideal work environment. Their insights come from surveys and interviews of hundreds of executives from all over the world. Few organizations embody all six attributes of the dream organization, many are difficult to achieve, and some even conflict with one another. But they nonetheless stand as an agenda for executives who wish to create the most productive, most rewarding workplace imaginable. Agenda: (1) Let people be themselves. (2) Unleash the flow of information. (3) Magnify people's strengths. (4) Stand for more than shareholder value. (5) Show how the daily work makes sense. (6) Have rules people can believe in. This list contains no surprises, but implementing the elements is no easy task. Almost all of them require leaders to carefully balance competing interests and to reallocate their time and attention. Companies like Arup, LVMH, Waitrose, and even McDonald's are doing it to varying degrees. Your challenge is to match--and then to exceed--what they have managed to accomplish.

Luca de Meo, chief marketing officer of Volkswagen Group, reflects on his time leading the marketing department at Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand. In particular, he thinks about the environmental sustainability initiative launched by marketing called "Think Blue." and its success throughout the company. During his time at Volkswagen, de Meo focused on transforming the marketing department into an engine of innovation. De Meo and his team in marketing worked together to build a strong global brand.

Landau Media provides media monitoring on a subscription basis to measure the impact of corporate communication. CEO and Founder Lothar Landau wonders whether his creation is prepared for the future. On the firm's 15th anniversary, Landau asks himself: Had he built the right organizational architecture? Had he been able to create the most effective organizational culture? What did the future of the media monitoring industry look like? What kind of company would lead the industry into this future? Was his company structured to do so? The case can be used for strategic analysis and the development of organizational cultures and behavior. It is suitable for MBA students as well as executives in courses on strategy, strategy implementation, entrepreneurship, innovation, leadership, and family business. The material works well to introduce principles for leading by design and for entrepreneurship and strategy development.

The founder and CEO of Veranda Brands, a designer and marketer of home furnishing products, is preparing to coach three department managers so that they are ready to work well in a growing organization. Through staff layoffs, the company (founded in 2002) survived the 2008 financial crisis and actually increased the founder's personal investment. The company has since grown to $8 million in sales and its staff has grown to 50 employees (2012). To continue this growth and progress to the next level, the company's top employees need to function at a higher level which can be reached through targeted coaching.

Google's Project Oxygen started with a fundamental question raised by executives in the early 2000s: do managers matter? The topic generated a multi-year research project that ultimately led to a comprehensive program, built around eight key management attributes, designed to help Google employees become better managers. By November 2012, the program had been in place for several years, and the company could point to statistically significant improvements in managerial effectiveness and performance. Now executives were wondering: how could Google build on the success of this project, extending it to senior leaders, teams, and other constituencies while striving to create truly amazing managers?

The director of an interim executive search firm, Chee Lung Tham, faced a clash of culture and management styles when his mainland Chinese client threatened to fire the American interim manager that Tham had assigned. The client, Wong Lung, ran a family-owned garment manufacturing business along with his younger brother, as well as his two overseas-educated children. While Wong needed the American manager's technology expertise, his own brother and his team of middle managers were showing resistance to the new changes. Meanwhile, the American manager found himself caught in the web of family and company politics, and completing his assignment without the cooperation of the middle management was impossible. How should Tham approach the conflict and bring all sides into a productive working relationship?

Employees make decisions every day about whether to contribute to others--and their willingness to help is crucial to group and organizational effectiveness. But in a competitive, often zero-sum, world of work, generosity can be a dangerous path. How can leaders foster it without cutting into productivity, undermining fairness, and allowing employees to become doormats? The key, explains Wharton's Adam Grant, is to help givers reach a more nuanced understanding of what generosity is and is not. They'll be better positioned for sustainable giving when they can distinguish generosity from three attributes that often travel with it: timidity, availability, and empathy. Givers can overcome timidity, Grant says, by learning to act as agents--using "relational accounts" to advocate for others while negotiating for themselves. They can set boundaries on when, how, and whom to help. And they can strive to be perspective takers, not just empathizers, gathering knowledge about others that can lead to more-productive allocations of time that will benefit the organization as a whole.

In the wake of the corporate missteps of recent years, we've heard plenty about how boards of directors should act as more responsible stewards. But one voice has been notably missing from the chorus of advice--the voice of the CEO. The authors, who include the founder of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, have tapped their networks to ask dozens of well-regarded chief executives: What keeps boards from being as effective as they could be? Are they really the cartooned millstone around the CEO's neck, or do they help shape the enterprise in positive ways? What can they do to become a greater strategic asset? The answers--surprisingly candid and highly revelatory--can be distilled into five prescriptions. Boards should be careful not to rein in boldness too tightly. They should do their homework on the company and the industry at large. They should recognize that character and credentials, not celebrity, are what's needed for a high-functioning board. Directors should also overcome any conflict aversion and bring energetic, constructive debate to the boardroom--contrary to conventional wisdom, CEOs don't want rubber-stamp approval of their plans. And they should work to make the inherently fraught succession process less awkward, taking care not to overlook talent in the internal pipeline. As the debates over governance continue, those seeking to improve board performance should listen to every informed perspective, including the constituency that knows boards and their failings best.

Why doesn't a woman who continues to have unwanted pregnancies avail herself of the free contraception at a nearby clinic? What keeps people from using free chlorine tablets to purify their drinking water? Behavioral economics has shown us that we don't always act in our own best interests. This is as true of health decisions as it is of economic ones. An array of biases, limits on cognition, and motivations leads people all over the world to make suboptimal health choices. The good news is that human nature can also be a source of solutions. Through her studies in Zambia exploring the reasons for unwanted pregnancies and the incentives that would motivate hairdressers to sell condoms to their clients, the author has found that designing effective health programs requires more than providing accessible, affordable care; it requires understanding what makes both end users and providers tick. By understanding the cognitive processes underlying our choices and applying the tools of behavioral economics--such as commitment devices, material incentives, defaults, and tools that tap our desire to help others--it's possible to design simple, inexpensive programs that encourage good health decisions and long-term behavior change.

Are the experts who successfully predict unusual events geniuses, or did they just get lucky? A new study indicates that their correct guesses were most likely flukes. It looked at the track records of forecasters who had one or two big wins and found that in the long run they were wrong more often than not.

The former chairman and CEO of Mattel shares one of his secrets to leading effectively: Say "thank you" often--and mean it when you do.