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Mayor Stephen Goldsmith of Indianapolis introduces competition to provide city services and implementation of new bidding procedures and work practices in the Department of Transportation. Exhibits show how work methods changed and work control procedures control work and costs.

Traces the growth of Wainwright, a small automotive supply company, focusing on its commitment to quality in 1981 and the evolution of its quality culture. Breakthrough programs that stress "trust and belief" in the workforce and commitment to customers result in Wainwright winning the Malcolm Baldrige Award in 1994.

Eastman Chemical Co. spun off from Kodak in 1993. The CEO of Eastman, Earnest Deavenport did not want the new company's board any members of the Kodak board to include, so he initiated a deliberate and thorough process to build an entirely new board that he hoped would be on the cutting edge. This case describes the selection process and documents the backgrounds of the chosen directors. Discusses the board's first year at work, and it records the reflections "one year in" of Deavenport and some of the board members.

America Online's (AOL) stock price has soared nearly 2,000% since its IPO. However, there is considerable disagreement among analysts regarding the future prospects of AOL. Although many analysts are bullish on the stock, short sellers have sold around 7 million shares.

Looks at a change effort initiated by a human resources manager within a division of TRW. The effort utilizes a change process to try to deal with some of the division's issues around organizational effectiveness, especially that of a long-term strategy. In so doing, the situation portrays some of the fundamental hurdles in creating change.

Martin Sorrell has used WPP to acquire a large portfolio of marketing service firms including J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather. How did he make this minnow-swallows-many-whales trick work, and can he make the whole into something bigger than the parts?

Summarizes Eli Lilly's history of innovation in its business, describing how the dimensions along which innovations have been made in the industry have changed. Lilly's innovation strategy has been to pursue ever higher performance products, while others in the industry have pursued more convenient products. At the time of the case, Lilly is contemplating offering services, not just products, to diabetic patients.

The pharmaceutical division of a diversified company has been asked to develop a Balanced Scorecard. Research and development projects take about ten years to bring a new product to the marketplace and the division depends on good relations and active feedback from its customers for continued success. But currently, the division is evaluated by meeting monthly financial objectives. This case describes an early and less-than-successful attempt to develop a Balanced Scorecard encompassing financial, customer, internal process, and innovation perspectives.

A new administration in the City of Indianapolis is initially determined to privatize many municipal services. Before taking this action, however, the city managers want to know the current cost of performing these services with the municipal workers. Existing financial systems record how much the city has been spending by functional categories and departments, but contain no information about the cost of providing services. The city establishes a task force to develop activity-based (ABC) estimates of the cost of filling potholes. It shows the information to the municipal workers and allows them to institute new cost-saving procedures so they can submit their own bid in competition with private contractors. This case describes the development of the ABC model and the reaction of the city workers to the newly revealed information.

In 1995, Toshiba was the market leader in portable computer sales worldwide. This case describes the assembly of portable notebook computers in Toshiba's Ome factory in Ome, Japan, providing insights into some of the reasons for Toshiba's success. In addition to describing production techniques such as dynamic line balancing, this case probes the nature of the Japanese workforce and the unique problems faced by Japanese businesses.

On April 12, 1995, Kirk Kerkorian made an unsolicited offer to buy the outstanding shares of Chrysler Corp. This case analyzes the proposed deal and addresses the key contextual elements contributing to the takeover attempt.

E. Rachel Hubka, general manager of a Chicago school bus company, has the opportunity to start her own bus business. The industry she will be entering is highly competitive, heavily regulated, and faces chronic labor shortages. Hubka hopes to tap a new labor pool and help her community by locating her business in an inner-city neighborhood that most business has abandoned. But this approach invites a new risk: relying on workers with marginal work experience.

Executive Vice President Durk Jager was convinced that the huge sums being spent on trade and consumer promotion could be put to better use, and that P&G should overhaul its pricing strategy to one of consistent list prices with little, if any, promotional spending. Two category managers (for hand-dishwashing liquids Dawn, Ivory, and Joy, and for Folgers coffee) were considering the potential consequences of putting their products on the "value pricing" bandwagon. Should they implement value pricing? And if so, how much should they reduce list prices for these national brands? Major changes to the original budget and marketing plan would be required, and these changes would have to be accomplished without compromising the profitability of the category.

The director of Corporate Research faces the problem of setting the annual budget for the various areas of research. See also UV0530 and UV0531.

Describes a manager's role in developing a staff group responsible for enhancing the efficiency of Xerox's worldwide logistics and inventory management systems. Illustrates a range of management strategies for upward and lateral influence in a complex organizational context, as well as the use of a number of innovative human resource management techniques. If used with John A. Clendenin it allows for the discussion of career development issues.

A professional turnaround manager attempts to implement a massive global downsizing program at the world's largest producer of consumer tissue products. The plan involves laying off almost one third of the company's 34,000 hourly and salaried employees and dramatically changing the company's business focus through massive asset sales-all in less than a year.

Materials Technology Corp. (MTC), a high-tech materials company, is struggling in its development portfolio and to achieve a better record of delivering new products on time.

Biogen, Inc., a Cambridge, MA-based biotechnology company, is wrapping up a project to develop a new manufacturing process for a new drug product that will reposition the company from a purely research-oriented company to a fully integrated pharmaceutical manufacturing organization. Morris Rosenburg, a senior scientist at Biogen, has been asked to perform a major evaluation of the project in order to report on lessons learned as well as to make recommendations on how to improve project management moving forward.

Describes the application of statistical process control in a service industry. In this case, Annette Kluck must decide how to adopt manufacturing-based principles to a service process ranging from customer account setup to legal services.

CompuServe, an online services vendor, informs its software developers that they must enter into a licensing agreement to use the popular GIF compression. CompuServe claims that it is forced to do so because Unisys is enforcing its patent rights in this area. Others argue that CompuServe's move is a response to the growing competitive challenge posed by the Internet.