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Was the public or the private sector best positioned to provide security and baggage screening services? The suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the plane crash outside Pittsburgh, marked September 11, 2001, as the date of the most severe terrorist attack and the most dreadful aviation incident in U.S. history, and initiated a search for steps to prevent such a calamity in the future. The U.S. House and the U.S. Senate passed two competing bills to address aviation security. The principal difference between the bills was whether the screening function could continue to be provided by the private sector or would be federalized--in effect, a reverse privatization of the service. Members of Congress had to consider questions of links between ownership, cost, and quality, and, most importantly, support one of the two bills. Can be used to introduce issues of market and government failure and to develop a contracting framework where key issues are the availability of information, the ability to provide incentives, the importance of incentives and innovation, and the importance of attributes that can't be contracted (such as some dimensions of product quality).

When Borealis, a European producer of plastics, used a traditional, time-consuming budgeting process, the budget was quickly out of date in a competitive environment characterized by continually changing input and output prices and dynamic market conditions. This case describes the process that led Borealis to replace its budgets with four targeted management tools: rolling financial forecasts, Balanced Scorecard, activity based costing, and investment management. It also discusses the process of implementing the new measurement and control systems.

Amalgamates several cases concerning strategic decision making at Intel Corp. Discusses the company's decisions surrounding its entry and exit from several lines of businesses, most involving varieties of semiconductors that cost billions of dollars to develop and produce and profoundly influence the company and the marketplace.

This case describes issues facing the founder-CEO of a high-tech start-up in Boston, as he negotiates with multiple large potential partners and investors. The negotiations include a potential business partnership with FleetCenter and Madison Square Garden, and a potential investment from two large venture capital firms. The case focuses on the sequencing among the parties, how to resolve conflicting interests among the parties, and the issues facing small entrepreneurial firms trying to negotiate with very large and powerful investors and business partners.

Discusses the challenges facing a global food service supplier and the company's ability to partner with major customers, such as McDonald's.

Describes 37-year-old Ferit Sahenk's challenges in taking over his father's traditionally managed $14 billion Turkish conglomerate in a period of economic instability. Leading the large holding company into the 21st century will require the establishment of a more institutionalized structure as opposed to the highly personal style of Ferit's father as he grew the company over the past 50 years. Addresses issues of how to establish credibility as the company's new leader, how to motivate his board members to participate more in the company decisions, how to manage in a period of increasing international competition and Turkey's political and financial instability, and the complexities of succession in family-owned businesses.

In early June 1997, the CEO and vice chairman of Grupo Modelo were reviewing the performance of Corona beer in the U.S. market. Despite a much higher sales volume growth rate, Corona still trailed Heineken, the #1 imported beer brand in the U.S. market. Could Corona overtake Heineken and, if so, what marketing strategy changes needed to be made? Includes color exhibits.

AT&T once dominated virtually all U.S. telecommunications sectors. In 1984, AT&T was broken up into a new AT&T and seven operating companies, known as RBOCs (regional Bell operating companies) or Baby Bells. This case focuses on the period from 1984 to 2000, during which time AT&T went through a series of tumultuous changes. AT&T acquired, and then divested, the computer company NCR. AT&T bought McCaw Cellular Communications Inc. for almost $12 billion. AT&T spun off its equipment division into a new company called Lucent. AT&T invested more than $100 billion to acquire various cable television assets. Finally, in 2000, AT&T announced a sweeping restructuring plan that would break the company up into separates wireless, broadband, business long distance, and consumer long distance companies.

In January 2001, the senior management committee of this company has to decide which major projects should be funded for implementation by the company starting in 2001. The board of directors arbitrarily set a limit of (euros) EUR120 million to be spent on capital projects in 2001. Various managers, however, have proposed projects totaling EUR316 million. The task for the student is to evaluate the completed discounted cash flow (DCF) analyses presented along with qualitative factors (mainly strategic considerations and internal politics of the company), and to choose the projects to be approved.

As the financial services industry converges, how should Charles Schwab, widely known as a discount brokerage firm, position its brand? This case presents elements of the company's overall brand strategy--including brand assets, choice of target audience, and media message.

In 2001, International Management Group (IMG) is the dominant company in the sports management industry. Its founder and CEO, Mark McCormack, is credited with having created the industry of sports management in the early 1960s. Over the next 40 years, IMG's expansion from athlete representation into other arenas--including representing models and classical music artists, producing and broadcasting television shows, operating training academies, corporate consulting, and financial planning--has been both dramatic and successful. This case describes the company's logic behind each expansion decision, as well as several challenges that the company has had to confront, specifically, maintaining the loyalty of the agents and clients, avoiding conflicts of interest with clients by virtue of the company's broad reach, deciding where to expand next, and meeting the challenge of increased competition from other sports management conglomerates.

Provides a hotel context in which to explore the link between customer loyalty and financial performance, using four years of hotel data. Challenges students to find the extent of the relationship between loyalty and performance.

An unconventional manager within IBM leads the creation of a business unit with multibillion-dollar potential, winning over customers and nudging the organization to make the changes needed to achieve dramatic growth. This case provides an example of how organizational design and leadership behavior shape performance. Also an example of ambidextrous organization design.

Mr. Alok Kumar Gupta is required to decide his company's response to a proposal for becoming a sub-contractor to A - One Confectioneries Privte Limited (APL) a large national player in the biscuit industry with aspirations to be a leader in every region. The case describes the details of the proposal, history of KCPL, a biscuit manufacturing company, and the impact of competition on its performance. It also describes the experience of alliance with another company in the industry. It presents the aspirations of the founders in becoming a leading national player in the industry. The advantages to the company are in getting assured return on investment and access to APL's manufacturing expertise. The disadvantages are a possible loss of independence in decision making, dilution of company's own brand, and family prestige.

In March 1996, the ASIC division of Sub-Micron Devices received an inquiry from Western Digital: would ASIC be willing to supply 3 million chips annually for a period of 3 years at a price of $40/chip? ASIC's controller, Gary Ravenport, convened a meeting with Peter Parks, his assistant, to review the profitability of the Western Digital proposal.

One of the critical tasks in the marketing of new innovations is predicting demand and rates of diffusion for those products. Focuses on four innovative products from different domains. Although one can speculate on the scope and rate of diffusion for each of these products independently, it's helpful to compare and contrast diffusion across these products. Doing so allows one to focus on the "levers" or product characteristics that influence product diffusion, making one product a star and another a dog. Importantly, looking across products allows one to pick up on things that get lost in discussing a single product.

In 2001, Monster.com was an Internet site that, among other things, connected individuals seeking jobs with organizations wanting to hire. Its substitutes included help wanted classified advertising in newspapers. Monster was one of the few Internet companies that had weathered the bursting of the dot-com bubble and continued to grow both its revenues and profits at rates above 50% per year in 2001. This case examines why the company was able to prosper and discusses options for future growth. Also explores the question of how important focus is to an Internet company, asking how far from its core business Monster could diversify.

Describes the major phases of an initiative designed to transform the organization and enhance patient safety. Raises interesting questions about how to encourage candid discussion about failures while continuing to hold people accountable for their performance.

Explores the legal and ethical responsibilities of a manager who believes that he has heard of a serious instance of sexual harassment, but who has been implored by the victim not to report it. Discussion can focus on the immediate problem or be expanded to a broader analysis of the difficult choices involved in crafting organizational policies governing conduct, as well as effective procedures for reviewing apparent infractions.

This case presents a transcript of two professional negotiators of the Discount and Hawkins real estate negotiations. It highlights the challenges of creating value for both sides in the deal and provides a glimpse of how one set of professionals structured an agreement.