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Describes the evolution of international trade and global competition in computers. Focuses on the role of country factors, government policies, and firm strategies in shifting competitive advantage among regions of the world. Pays special attention to international alliances in this context. Allows integrated analysis of country, government, and firm advantage in high technology competition.

Top officials at Pfizer are assessing their strategy for improving protection of Pfizer's patents around the world. The outcome of the Uruguay Round of the GATT negotiations is uncertain, and it is not clear whether an acceptable intellectual property protection agreement will emerge. The case describes how Pfizer helped transform intellectual property from a lawyer's specialty to an international trade issue of concern around the world through close cooperation with the U.S. government, leadership in forming a tripartite coalition among U.S., Japanese, and European industry, and mobilization of the Pfizer organization. Shows how far a company may go to protect its intellectual property in a world where the concept of intellectual property is not universally recognized or accepted. May also be used to discuss the effectiveness and legitimacy of Pfizer's strategy, the conflicts between industrialized country and developing country perspectives on international trade and national sovereignty, and the question of appropriate norms of intellectual property protection.

The case traces the evolution of the Tata group, one of the largest and highly respected Indian business houses, from its 19th century founding and early growth in diverse industries, to its response to changes in government regulation in independent India, up to its 1991 leadership transition from longtime chairman J.R.D. Tata to his successor, Ratan Tata. The case first describes how Tata group founder Jamsetji Tata and his sons entered into the steel, hotel, hydroelectric, cement, air travel, and insurance industries (among others). It then explores how the evolving role of government in business in post-Independence India impacted the Tata group. The case also outlines the acceleration in the Tata group's growth during the 1980s, following government liberalization. In addition to discussing how the group's leadership navigated through the external pressures of policy and economics, the case also examines how they managed internal pressures - reduced synergy between the diverse and legally-independent companies under Tata's umbrella, and, at times, reluctant adjustments in company culture that corresponded to Tata's generational leadership transitions. The case invites comparison between J.R.D. Tata's compassionate management style and his successor Ratan Tata's no-nonsense, analytical approach. The case closes by outlining some of the challenges facing the Tata group amidst the changing political and regulatory environment of the 1990s.

The Southern Co., an electric utility, is planning its compliance with the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act. The Act established a system of tradeable permits for sulfur dioxide emissions. The company must decide whether to install pollution control equipment and generate excess permits for sale to other firms, or to emit larger quantities of sulfur dioxide, save capital costs, and purchase pollution permits. Can be used to teach discounted cash flow analysis of a make versus buy decision. Also raises issues of expected cost minimization, questions of economic and political uncertainty, and the value of flexibility.

In its successful efforts to sell state-owned industries during the 1980s, the Thatcher government in the United Kingdom learned that privatization is not only an end in itself but can also transform public attitudes toward ownership. Privatization produces improved performance and, among politicians, a greater focus on government's role as a regulator, rather than owner, of industry. But in the course of privatizing, conflicts arise that governments must work hard to overcome.

A reform mayor of Bolivia's capital city is taken aback by a consultant's report showing a shocking level of corruption on the part of municipal police-a force whose many duties involve regulation of the city's sprawling open-air markets. Licenses, health inspections and many other forms of public permits are routinely exchanged for money, goods, even sex. What's more, the report concludes that the vast majority of the police could not do their job even if they set out to do so: most are illiterate. In this political management/ethics case, the Harvard-educated mayor must decide both whether and how to attempt to reform this system, at a time when he is facing re-election and is widely viewed as a "technocrat." HKS Case Number 1104.0

Whelan Pharmaceuticals, a U.S. company with $3 billion in sales, must decide where to manufacture its newest product. In considering possible sites, both foreign and U.S., the firm must identify and make trade-offs between tax, marketing, and manufacturing factors.

Israel faces an imperative to grow in the 1990s. This year, Israel welcomed 200,000 Russian immigrants (a number that will double in the coming year). How can this small country cope with its surging population? Israel has one big advantage: brainpower. It boasts the world's highest literacy rate, math skills, and number of scientists and technicians per capita. With market exposure and foreign partners, Israel could do well in world markets. The most important first step, however, is for the government to pursue peace.

War stories about failed alliances make executives wary of forging new joint ventures. However, the strategic benefits of cross-border alliances are compelling. A study of 49 cross-border alliances found several patterns that have managerial implications. For example, alliances must be free to evolve as the environment changes and opportunities arise. Contrary to conventional wisdom, fifty-fifty ownership of joint ventures improves decision making, and most alliances end with one parent acquiring the venture.

Burlington Northern (BN) hauls low-sulfur coal from the northern Great Plains to electric utilities in the Midwest. Acid rain legislation may affect the geographic scope of BN's markets. Railroad managers need to assess the economic effects of acid rain controls and their chances of influencing the controls' structure.

Burroughs Wellcome Co., developer of AZT, the first drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), finds itself under siege in September 1989 by AIDS activists and various segments of the U.S. government. In spite of repeated demands over the previous two years to lower the price of AZT (trademarked Retrovie), Burroughs Wellcome and its parent company, London-based Wellcome PLC, have refused, claiming that the $6,300 annual (wholesale) cost of the drug per person is justified, based on high research, development, production, and other costs associated with the drug. The firm's opponents accuse it of using an existing chemical compound, ample government research assistance, and a cooperative regulatory system to gain a monopoly on the only approved treatment available for people with AIDS. The case gives students the opportunity to explore the economics and regulation of the pharmaceutical industry, wrestle with the ethics of drug pricing, and analyze the formulation of public relations strategies on the part of both private companies and activist groups in the age of AIDS.

Poverty is a business issue because the American poor are part of the American work force. Most poor adults and 90% of poor children live in families where work is the norm, not the exception. Companies cannot create the work force of the future with the poverty policies of the past. There are some simple policy mechanisms, however, that can help the working poor without putting an undue burden on business. Enacting them requires managers to see poverty policy as part of a national human-resource strategy that links corporate strategy to a broad social agenda.

Describes the Bush administration clean air bill of 1989 and other legislative proposals.

Champion's forest products division owns timberlands, sawmills, and plywood mills in the Pacific Northwest. The listing of the northern spotted owl as an endangered species, and restrictions on exports of logs from state-owned lands, have disrupted the stumpage, log and product markets in which Champion competes. Tag Edwards, executive V.P. for forest products, needs to decide how to respond to these regulatory changes, using economic data and political information.

Deals with the coming of the mechanized textile industry to the United States, and with it, the nation's first factories. Considers the introduction of small spinning mills in Rhode Island, and the appearance of large integrated spinning and weaving mills in Massachusetts. These basic business and technological innovations are best presented by comparing ways in which each set of enterprises were financed, carried out processes of production, marketed goods, trained labor, and managed their enterprises. Based partly on cases by N.S.B. Gras and T.R. Navin.

Explores the general history of slavery in the United States. Through detailed exhibits and a text consisting of excerpts from six first-hand observations of slavery, this note is designed to present the ethics, economics (especially the perverse incentive systems), and sociology of slavery, the worst single stain on the nation's history.

A vehicle for a discussion of the growth of organized labor between the World Wars.

Why has Britain declined? The case provides three interpretations: from a neoclassical economist, two institutional economic historians, and a sociologist. Their explanations partly overlap and partly conflict over such areas as technology, national culture, and social class.

Provides a vehicle for discussing the problems caused by the Great Depression.

Although they account for 20% of the world's population and a major share of its natural resources, Latin America and Africa have been left out of the move to globalize trade and markets. Now, because of declining protectionism, these countries are ready to take an active role in world trade. By using the emerging Pacific Rim economies as a model, many of the less-developed countries ar e liberalizing their trade policies and privatizing their industries to create wealth.