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This case provides an historical description of the differences between the Apollo Space Program era and the Space Shuttle Program as a backdrop for the teleconference that occurred the night before the Challenger shuttle disaster. Roger Boisjoly (Morton Thiokol engineer and central character) tries to persuade NASA to postpone the Challenger launch that included Christa McAuliffe, the teacher participating in the Teacher in Space program. He is rebuffed by NASA management since the condition of gas blow-by existed on several successful launches. The priorities and constraints facing NASA led a culture of "fix and fly" that blinded them to the need for a major redesign of the solid rocket booster.

Thirteen years of research on more than 2,000 Japanese companies and their U.S. subsidiaries shows that the longer it takes to get from headquarters to that subsidiary, the less likely the subsidiary is to make a profit. Productivity, teamwork, trust, and staff retention can be eroded by long travel times.

The owner of Mundell & Associates is making plans to embark on a significant remake of the company culture. To that end, he is considering specific, concrete changes in company policies and practices in order to more fully embed his faith convictions and spiritual values in the culture of the company and the consciousness of employees. Those values have always been present and active in shaping the business; the company is one of the largest companies participating in the Economy of Communion (EOC) project, a worldwide, faith-based, effort to humanize economic activity through use of thoughtful business practices and profit redistribution. The owner is convinced that being an EOC company requires more than sharing profits or following particular practices. It means being an actual community, one marked by the involvement and engagement of all employees. The way forward is not at all clear and so the owner, and students, must consider several possible options, weigh the advantages and disadvantages of different organizational behavior approaches, and devise a concrete course of action.

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When Mindy Grossman was approached to head the parent company of Home Shopping Network, she had no television experience, no direct-to-consumer experience, and no experience in most of the product categories HSN sold. She'd never even watched a home shopping channel. But after a crash course consisting of channel surfing, she had an "aha" moment: she realized that HSN needed to become more of a lifestyle network that would inspire people through products. That pitch won her the job. Then she visited headquarters--where the staff appeared downtrodden and the organization seemed frozen in time. Grossman saw that she would need to dramatically alter the company culture, understand and reposition the brand, and devise a new product strategy. She began with white paint and new office chairs.

In many companies, the top management team is officially responsible for helping the CEO make a company's big decisions. But another, unofficial group usually does that job de facto. That's the way it should be, argues Frisch, of the Strategic Offsites Group, provided that the CEO is deliberate in devising the role of this informal and unnamed "kitchen cabinet." Problems can nevertheless arise when senior executives learn about important decisions after the fact, mistakenly assume that they have real power to protect their departments, and find themselves in a system where the way decisions are actually made goes unacknowledged. The key, according to Frisch, is to make better use of senior executives' time and talents by giving them specific responsibilities that complement--but do not overlap--the advisory duties of the kitchen cabinet. A CEO who explicitly acknowledges the role of her cabinet and strikes the right balance between it and her official advisory group of executives can get the best from both.

When terrorists attacked the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008, employees of the Taj Mumbai hotel displayed uncommon valor. They placed the safety of guests over their own well-being, thereby risking--and, in some cases, sacrificing--their lives. Deshpande, of Harvard Business School, and Raina, of the HBS India Research Center in Mumbai, demonstrate that this behavior was not merely a crisis response. It was instead a manifestation of the Taj Group's deeply rooted customer-centric culture that, the authors argue, other companies can emulate, both in extreme circumstances and during periods of normalcy. The key ingredients of this Taj-style customer centricity include: 1) a values-driven recruitment system that emphasizes integrity and duty over talent and skills; 2) training of customer ambassadors who serve the guest first and the company second; and 3) a recognition-as-reward system that values well-earned plaudits--from customers, colleagues, and immediate supervisors--over money and advancement. Each of the three elements has important features and nuances, which the authors explore in detail so that your company can take its cues.

This case is intended to highlight entrepreneurial thought and action - a specific style of entrepreneurial leadership - inside the context of a large enterprise. Based on both primary and secondary research, the case protagonist is Mike Fisher, Sr., Director of Lean and Six Sigma at Best Buy. The protagonist as well as his direct reports were interviewed for the case, and articles were accessed to support the general environment around which the case was developed. The setting is the HQ of Best Buy, a large U.S. based electronics and appliance retailer. The case spans the years 2005 to 2011.

The case describes the introduction of a human resources (HR) system named "Project Vishwamitra" (PV) in 2000 in a large, technocratic public sector organization, TP Engineering Corporation (TPEC). PV was introduced with considerable leadership support and visibility. It was intended to provide every engineer trainee at TPEC a friend and guide to ease their entry and socialization into the organization. The senior managers assigned to guide the trainees were called "mentors." For the first four to five years, the project ran smoothly. The trainees distinctly felt supported whenever they needed some help. At the same time, the mentors were happy to guide trainees. After four to five years, certain important changes took place in the organization in staffing of leadership positions. With expansion and new projects, the growth trajectory of TPEC also showed a sharp increase. With earlier people moving out and a significant rise in the number of trainees being recruited, PV ran into difficult waters. Yet, no changes were made in the system or processes. PV started to get ritualized - meetings between trainees and mentors became more infrequent and in certain areas, there was total absence of any contact between the two. In the midst of degeneration, one of the leaders was able to revive the project in Unit Chelpur. With highly ambitious growth plans, the number of trainees was expected to increase from 450 in 2010 to 750 in 2011. The company faced a choice regarding the form in which PV should continue.

Most family businesses do not survive beyond two or three generations. One of the main reasons for the short life span of family businesses is due to the lack of governance mechanisms in the family. With better family governance, business development becomes a more enjoyable journey and ensures continuity of the business across generations. This case is about an Indian family business, GMR Group, which was established a quarter century ago, and by 2010 became one of the major diversified infrastructure organizations in the country with large-scale interests in infrastructure (energy, roads and airports) and manufacturing (agri-business, mainly sugar). Since its founding, the Group has come a long way, from an independent proprietary enterprise to a family-owned holding corporation with several companies under its control, along with external stakeholders. The growth of the group has been led by the entrepreneurial zeal and organizational capabilities of its founder G.M Rao. Having seen many family businesses breaking up for want of adequate governance mechanisms, Rao led the way for the writing of his family's constitution with the help of several experts. The entire family spent many hours, and after several rounds of iteration created and signed a constitution in 2007. The writing process of the constitution, and the policies and processes developed were optimal for maximizing GMR's performance and the family's well-being in current and future generations. The case captures the essential processes and output of writing a family constitution.

Scenario development is a time- and resource-intensive process, one that not all companies are positioned to undertake at any given point in time. As such, this article will propose an Abbreviated Scenario Thinking process that uses published scenarios from government and industry sources to allow companies to make strategic decisions based on the results. Scenarios are narratives that describe the possible futures in which one must compete 5, 10, or 20 years from now. They allow people to test possible actions by playing them out in three or four different ways. Scenarios are based on plausible consequences of events, environmental forces, and players as they occur in time, and create patterns of the future that can have substantively different effects on strategic decisions. Thus, scenarios are important to executives and managers in the 21st century as they develop competitive strategies. By employing Abbreviated Scenario Thinking, executives utilize published global scenarios to analyze the driving forces that affect their organizations, asking "What If?" as an entry point to scenario planning. This can produce benefits even before any formal scenarios are written.

In January 2005, China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (COSCO) announced it would join the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC). At that time, COSCO initiated sustainability reporting practices in line with the UNGC, and over the next six years these efforts evolved into an information technology platform integrating all the company's sustainability processes and indicators. In fall 2011, the company's leadership considered the following strategic questions: To what extent should COSCO refer to international and domestic sustainability standards in the platform framework? How far should COSCO go in promoting the sustainability system as a stand-alone product? What were the next steps in sustainability reporting, and should COSCO try to attain even higher reporting standards in the future? Moreover, related issues facing the company included: What would be the value in reaching higher sustainability and reporting standards, and how would internal and external stakeholders react? What challenges lay ahead for the consistent implementation of higher standards across COSCO's subsidiaries?

On August 5, 2010, 700,000 tons of some of the hardest rock in the world caved in Chile's century-old San José mine. The collapse buried 33 miners at a depth almost twice the height of the Empire State Building-over 600 meters (2000 feet) below ground. Never had a recovery been attempted at such depths, let alone in the face of challenges like those posed by the San José mine: unstable terrain, rock so hard it defied ordinary drill bits, severely limited time, and the potentially immobilizing fear that plagued the buried miners. Could the trapped miners and rescue workers mobilize before air and resources were depleted? The case describes the ensuing efforts that draw the resources of countless people and multiple organizations in Chile and around the world.

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Employers and employees alike benefit from choices that promote good health. But too often, companies refresh the cafeteria menu, offer discounted gym memberships, and leave it up to the individual to go from there. Research shows, however, that management's decisions contribute to morbidity and mortality at least as much as employees' own actions. Layoffs, long hours, failure to provide health insurance, lack of autonomy on the job, and general financial insecurity all promote ill health as a result of stress and its correlates. Furthermore, businesses don't always see the direct economic consequences of their actions. Companies must scrutinize their decisions carefully to encourage a healthier workforce.

The Old Boys' Club simply will not be dismantled. So, to rise up in the ranks, high-potential women must secure sponsors in the C-suite, where most executives are men. Smart companies are already facilitating this path to sponsorship so that their future leadership ranks reflect the full range of available talent.

Data from the executive search firm Spencer Stuart reveals trends in the makeup of boards of directors, comparing the years 1987 and 2011. Most directors are still white men, but they're older and more independent. As the role of boards has professionalized over the years, they have evolved from larger groups to leaner decision-making bodies composed of directors with specific skill sets.

Steve Jackson, a project professional at Western Construction (an international construction conglomerate), is attempting to introduce BSO, a new software package. Engineers at Western who would be using BSO seem to support the change, and BSO has already been adopted successfully by Western's competitor. However, Mike Barnett, a long-term Western employee of undisclosed hierarchical status and strong personal ties to the top, is leveraging every opportunity to kill the BSO project. Knowing that he must find a way to win Barnett over, Jackson attempts a variety of approaches to overcoming resistance to change, including turning to his own boss for assistance.

A.P. Nichols, a distributor of parts in the maintenance, overhaul, and repair (MRO) industry is facing the need to realign its strategy to cope to a consolidating competitive environment. A key component of their realignment involves changes the culture and compensation of their sales force while simultaneously building sufficient sales capacity to take advantage of opportunities in their key markets. The case focuses on the newly hired vice-president (VP) of sales, who is tasked with leading the change initiative. Immediate issue facing the VP include: 1) alignment of the client service representative (CSR) team to the strategy and the new model; 2) infrastructure and the need to make a commitment to invest in bringing this up to a best in class level; and 3) building a critical mass in the CSR group.

The year 2006 marked the beginning of 2b Design, a social business, established in Lebanon, and specialized in creating handmade furniture and decorative pieces. Raja Moubarak and his wife, Benedicte de Blavous, crafted their business venture around a focused social mission namely, preserving disappearing art, architecture and heritage through artistic creations and employing marginalized people particularly the handicapped and the unemployable. By collecting and using wrought iron and wooden pieces, found in scrap yards, from old Lebanese homes dating back to the Ottoman Empire, 2b Design managed to preserve a heritage that was increasingly at risk of extinction while touching and improving troubled lives and maximizing positive environmental impact and externalities through recycling and reusing scrap material. 2b Design's mission was eloquently articulated as to "restore the unseen beauty of the broken." By the broken, it referred to the Middle East's disappearing traditional heritage and to those people whose socioeconomic status or disabilities hindered them from leading a decent life. 2b Design's vision was to replicate the same concept in different countries beyond the borders of Lebanon. The founders were keen on exploring various channels that would gradually scale the impact of their business while meeting the dual challenge of long-term sustainability and transforming lives.