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BRAC is the world's largest NGO and has over the past 20 years experienced tremendous rates of growth. The case looks at diversity within the organization and the aspects of management that have made the organization so successful.

Unifine Richardson is a food manufacturer with 110 employees. The company's sole supplier of honey announced that effective immediately it was no longer able to supply Chinese honey. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency had rejected the importation of Chinese honey due to recently found traces of an antibiotic chemical. China had provided 20% of the world's honey supply. Faced with escalating prices, issues with customer preferences, and possible product recalls, the purchasing manager must determine the company's next step. Considerations include international sourcing, supply disruptions, supply chain management, and quality issues.

BRAC is the world's largest NGO and has recently initiated a number of successful profit-making commercial enterprises, ranging from dairy processing to vegetable exports, as well as a university. Explores the tensions and benefits of a major nonprofit entering the commercial arena and the consequences for the organization.

Formed in late 1996, Boeing Australia Ltd. (BAL) was a relatively new company and a global extension of the U.S. firm, the Boeing Co. BAL developed capabilities in the areas of space and communications, site management, and the upgrade and maintenance of military aircraft and equipment. As BAL grew, so did the legacy information system it used for both internal communications and external dealings with customers. BAL, however, faced difficult decisions as it sought to upgrade its procurement systems and processes to improve operations. In early 1999, BAL recruited a new national procurement manager, Russell Menere, whose immediate task was to look for gains in productivity by improving procurement processes, either through cost savings or by reduced processing time. To meet this objective, Menere initiated a number of short-term improvements. These included the rationalization of a large number of BAL's suppliers, improving BAL's relationships with its key suppliers; the introduction of a credit-card purchasing system for low-value, large-volume consumables; and the adoption of electronic ordering processes with BAL's larger suppliers. In 2002, with new opportunities available through e-business technology, Menere needed to decide what BAL's next step should be. Should BAL invest in a new system that would simplify the procurement process across different divisions and support complex interfaces with suppliers? Should BAL continue to sit on the fence and seek short-term improvement tools for integration with its existing legacy systems?

Mike Graves, the general manager of a U.S. apparel company's 50/50 joint venture with a Chinese manufacturer, has made the joint venture into a big success, at least in the eyes of its Chinese executives and local officials. Zhong-Lian Knitting has turned around three money-losing businesses and has increased its payroll from 400 to 2,300 employees. But Mike's boss, the CEO of the U.S. company, Heartland Spindle, doesn't share the rosy view. He's looking for a 20% ROI, which he says will require laying off 1,200 Chinese workers. He also wants to aim at the high end of the clothing market, meaning the JV will have to meet much tougher standards of quality than it has been able to do so far. To make matters worse, the Chinese executives now want to make a fourth acquisition, which they hope will position the venture to start its own brand of apparel--a move that could eat into profits for years. Can Mike keep the joint venture from unraveling? In R0308A and R0308Z, four commentators offer expert advice on this fictional case study: Eric Jugier, the chairman of Michelin (China) Investment in Shanghai; Dieter Turowski, a managing director in mergers & acquisitions at Morgan Stanley in London; David Xu, a principal at McKinsey in Shanghai; and Paul W. Beamish, the director of the Asian Management Institute at the University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business in Canada.

Mike Graves, the general manager of a U.S. apparel company's 50/50 joint venture with a Chinese manufacturer, has made the joint venture into a big success, at least in the eyes of its Chinese executives and local officials. Zhong-Lian Knitting has turned around three money-losing businesses and has increased its payroll from 400 to 2,300 employees. But Mike's boss, the CEO of the U.S. company, Heartland Spindle, doesn't share the rosy view. He's looking for a 20% ROI, which he says will require laying off 1,200 Chinese workers. He also wants to aim at the high end of the clothing market, meaning the JV will have to meet much tougher standards of quality than it has been able to do so far. To make matters worse, the Chinese executives now want to make a fourth acquisition, which they hope will position the venture to start its own brand of apparel--a move that could eat into profits for years. Can Mike keep the joint venture from unraveling? In R0308A and R0308Z, four commentators offer expert advice on this fictional case study: Eric Jugier, the chairman of Michelin (China) Investment in Shanghai; Dieter Turowski, a managing director in mergers & acquisitions at Morgan Stanley in London; David Xu, a principal at McKinsey in Shanghai; and Paul W. Beamish, the director of the Asian Management Institute at the University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business in Canada.

Mike Graves, the general manager of a U.S. apparel company's 50/50 joint venture with a Chinese manufacturer, has made the joint venture into a big success, at least in the eyes of its Chinese executives and local officials. Zhong-Lian Knitting has turned around three money-losing businesses and has increased its payroll from 400 to 2,300 employees. But Mike's boss, the CEO of the U.S. company, Heartland Spindle, doesn't share the rosy view. He's looking for a 20% ROI, which he says will require laying off 1,200 Chinese workers. He also wants to aim at the high end of the clothing market, meaning the JV will have to meet much tougher standards of quality than it has been able to do so far. To make matters worse, the Chinese executives now want to make a fourth acquisition, which they hope will position the venture to start its own brand of apparel--a move that could eat into profits for years. Can Mike keep the joint venture from unraveling? In R0308A and R0308Z four commentators offer expert advice in this fictional case study: Eric Jugier, the chairman of Michelin (China) Investment in Shanghai; Dieter Turowski, a managing director in mergers & acquisitions at Morgan Stanley in London; David Xu, a principal at McKinsey in Shanghai; and Paul W. Beamish, the director of the Asian Management Institute at the University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business in Canada.

Starbucks, the dominant specialty-coffee brand in North America, must respond to recent market research indicating that the company is not meeting customer expectations in terms of service. To increase customer satisfaction, the company is debating a plan that would increase the amount of labor in the stores and theoretically increase speed-of-service. However, the impact of the plan (which would cost $40 million annually) on the company's bottom line is unclear.

Following her husband's death in 1994, Carol Brewer took over the management of her family's investments. This case describes the decisions Brewer made during this process, including her choice to seek active account management, her selection of an investment firm, and her determination of asset allocation within her portfolio. In 2003, Brewer is reassessing her previous investment choices and considering changes she might need to make in the future in light of her plans to retire in six years and live on the income from her investments.

Fenix Group's business spans from general merchandise retailing to Italian fashion. The diversity stems from the management's multiniche marketing strategy. Looks at the journeys of two entrepreneurs who started out with a tiny garment trading company and, in the span of 30 years, expanded into a multinational network of manufacturing and retailing with $230 million annual turnover. How did Fenix identify and tap into niches in different markets? What does it take to be successful in niche markets? Also analyzes Fenix's strategy and discusses the critical success factors of its multiniche marketing strategy.

By 2000, Natura was a leader in the Brazilian cosmetics and personal care industry. The company had participated in social projects developed in communities surrounding its plants and offices. However, when it launched the Ekos product line, Natura drove social responsibility to the core of its business. Ekos' distinctive feature was its rooting in Brazilian biodiversity. The new product line incorporated several substances that had been used only by traditional indigenous communities in the hinterlands. Instead of simply buying the raw materials from them, Natura built a partnership with these communities to share with them the economic benefits resulting from responsible resource exploration. These communities had the key expertise needed to develop Ekos products and lived in extremely primitive conditions at remote locations. Thus, Ekos' success would potentially affect their living conditions dramatically. The civil society organization Imaflora also participated in the alliance to ensure that this natural resource exploration was socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable.

Corporacion Credito al Menor (CCM) was created to protect young girls at risk from abandonment, poverty, or abuse. The CCM was developed from within Banco BCI, a local bank. The early proponents were the managers of BCI and the bank controller, who provided funds out of their own pockets to finance the nascent institution. Later, the bank contributed with additional funding. Though there was no legal agreement that tied the CCM to Banco BCI, in time a de facto commitment and collaboration developed between the two organizations. The nonprofit grew and faced the challenge of expanding its facilities to other regions of the country. The decision to expand required finding new sources of funding for CCM and considering going beyond the bank's boundaries to seek new donors. However, this latter option might threaten the special relationship forged between CCM and BCI. Illuminates the process by which individual business leaders can become social entrepreneurs.

Describes the collaboration between Junior Achievement Argentina and Coca-Cola Argentina and the development and implementation process of a customized educational program focused on environmental issues implemented at schools by Junior Achievement Argentina. Junior Achievement Argentina is exploring the possibility of exporting the program to other countries to generate additional revenues, but there is an exclusivity agreement with Coca-Cola Argentina for program delivery. Allows for the analysis of collaborations between NGOs and private companies, where "customized" educational projects help to meet the companies' strategic needs. Also, describes the joint work process involved, while tackling the "ownership" issues that crop up in programs developed and financed by a single company, and explores how to balance the needs and interests of private companies and NGOs.

McKinsey is an international consulting company that operates in 43 countries. Fundacion Compromiso is an nonprofit entity that provides training, counseling, and technical assistance to improve the management and impact of other nonprofit entities of Argentina. A third organization, Ashoka Association, supports social entrepreneurs and has a global alliance with McKinsey. Ashoka's intermediation is responsible for a cooperation program through which McKinsey applies its central skills to provide technical assistance to Fundacion Compromiso. The objectives of this activity are to evaluate one of Fundacion Compromiso's most important programs and establish a long-term growth strategy for this nonprofit entity. However, following the technical assistance work developed by McKinsey is a dramatic change in Argentina's social, political, and economic situations, which limit the agreed-on strategic plan, forcing Fundacion Compromiso to reconsider its growth strategy.

In 1999, Richard Townsend, M.D. was the newly appointed executive director (CEO) of the Liberty Medical Foundation (LMF). Townsend was responsible for both the Liberty Medical Group (LMG), a large, 3,000 physician multispecialty medical group that provided health care to two million subscribers, and the Liberty Medical Plan (LMP), a nonprofit insurance company. This was his first official meeting as CEO with the board of directors and a critical one. In it, he would formally present to the board his strategy for the struggling LMF. Townsend believed that Liberty faced a stark strategic choice: either dramatically lower its rates through cost cutting to become a cost leader once again or to differentiate itself by building a reputation for both quality and service. The first option would require them to re-establish a price advantage by reducing the cost structure by 10% to 15%. This tact would almost certainly entail layoffs and salary reductions. The second option would be to raise rates and rely on a service, access, and quality strategy.

The CFO of General Motors' joint venture in Shanghai, Shanghai General Motors (SGM), wants to refinance almost $900 million of project finance it raised to begin operations. The highest priority is improving the terms of the financing with regard to costs and specific covenants. Several factors complicate the CFO's objective, including the presence of capital controls, the impending entry of China into the World Trade Organization, the joint venture partner's captive finance subsidiary, and the conflicting goals of the joint venture partners. The case illustrates how subsidiary financial decisions must trade off entity-level and parent-level concerns. It also illustrates how multinational financial decision making--including transfer pricing, repatriation, and funding decisions--must be designed to accommodate governance concerns, financial objectives, and the potentially divergent interests of joint venture partners. The framework of the on-going operational and investment decisions that Shanghai General Motors undertakes in its early growth demonstrates the "life cycle" of subsidiary finance. The case also touches on elements of foreign governments' attempts to regulate capital markets, the dynamic between domestic and international banks in competing for lending opportunities to multinational subsidiaries, and how subsidiary management can achieve the most desirable funding terms.

Sustainable Conservation (SusCon) is an environmental nonprofit in San Francisco that works collaboratively with the private and public sectors to achieve positive environmental change. The organization forms partnerships with industry and government agencies to devise solutions to environmental problems that are both economically viable and environmentally beneficial. After 10 years of work focusing exclusively on California, the organization is considering expanding its reach outside the state as a step toward national expansion. The case explores SusCon's approach to environmental improvement and juxtaposes it to the most common strategies used by other conservation organizations. It also uses one of the organization's most successful projects, the dairy initiative, as an example of how the organization operates. The case touches on the issues and challenges that nonprofit organizations need to consider when determining whether and how to [go to scale.]

Autopistas del Sol (AUSOL) was a company that had originated in a partnership constituted in 1994, when it was selected, through a public bidding process, to build and manage two of the main highways in the city of Buenos Aires. The SES Foundation was a nonprofit organization informally founded in 1998 and created by a group of professionals focused on developing informal educational programs for the social integration of poor youngsters. One of its outstanding programs was Community Study Groups (CSG), an initiative it carried out with AUSOL to boost schooling in two of the neighborhoods surrounding one AUSOL-managed highway. The case takes place in late 2001, a few months before the onset of the crisis that impacted Argentina. Focuses on the potential changes and risks entailed for the CSG program by AUSOL's decision to try to look for other sponsoring companies for the program. Although this strategy aimed to ensure program continuity, it also brought about a series of dilemmas for both organizations.

Natura is a company in the personal care, health, and make-up industry in Brazil. In the early 1990s, as part of its "good corporate neighbor" policy, the company made sporadic contributions to the communities surrounding its manufacturing plants and office premises. Natura's collaboration with the Matilde Maria Cremm public school, located near its Itapecerica da Serra plant, followed that pattern as well. By 1992, this association had all the characteristics of a traditional philanthropic collaboration, consisting of cash and in-kind donations made by the company to respond to specific school needs. However, Natura's management was not satisfied and regarded company contributions as patronizing. They approached their school counterparts to propose a new kind of relationship that would yield deeper and sustainable results. Both partners wanted the school to become a transformation agent in its community. They sought the assistance of CENPEC, a civil society organization devoted to strengthening public education. Matilde, a school located in an outer section of a county surrounding the state capital, managed to turn into one of the top five schools in that region of the Sao Paulo state.

Banco Itau was founded in 1945 and is the second largest private bank in Brazil. As part of its social responsibility strategy, it has created a Community Assistance Program aimed at projects in education and health. To carry out this program, the bank has established cross-sector alliances with partners selected for their technical expertise to operate these programs and to establish relations with the communities. One of the two programs--Education & Participation--has helped civil society organizations that assist needy students with supplementary schooling programs. Itau's primary nonprofit partner, CENPEC, is dedicated to research and strengthening public education. CENPEC provides technical direction and establishes contact with community organizations. The program includes the Itau Education & Participation Prize and constitutes one of the most competitive selection processes in Brazil's Third Sector.