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General Mills and Nestle were meeting to discuss the possibility of cooperation between the two companies in the breakfast cereal business. Executives from General Mills were arriving in a week's time and an executive vice-president at Nestle was charged with preparing a briefing on General Mills before their arrival. The executive vice-president had recently decided that Nestle should consider taking a partner in the breakfast cereal business and had collected some information on General Mills. The joint venture was of interest to Nestle because its European breakfast cereal business had been performing poorly. General Mills was interested because it has no significant breakfast cereal business outside of the United States. However, the fundamental issue was why Nestle had not made a success of the business in Europe, and what changes the company would need to make for the business to be a success. The balance between global strategy and local operations is central to this case.

A private company is considering an introduction of a long-run incentive compensation system in which payoffs to managers are determined by the economic value added for shareholders by their individual business units. The proposed new system is compared to a number of earlier incentive schemes utilized by the firm.

Top management of Univisa, the North American subsidiary of the Mexican media conglomerate Televisa, meet to determine how to pursue opportunities to serve the Spanish-speaking population in North America. They must determine how to relate Univisa's market penetration strategy in North America to the broader global expansion strategy of Televisa.

Management is debating a proposal to capitalize R&D. While Swedish GAAP permits capitalization, the general practice is to expense R&D as incurred.

Bajaj Auto Ltd., the world's second-largest manufacturer of two- and three-wheeler vehicles, is facing increasing competition in its domestic Indian market. The case evaluates appropriate marketing responses both in the Indian market and export markets.

David Melcher contemplates changing his career at midlife.

This case describes Pepsico's program to restructure its Mexican bottling network. It wants to work with existing bottlers and find an organizational arrangement that will allow the bottlers to grow and change with the Mexican soft drink industry.

Cummins Engine Co. is starting up production of diesel engine crankshafts in its plant in central Mexico. This operation requires much tighter tolerances than any product previously produced at the plant, and the young (recent MBA) manager who is in charge of the start-up is faced with several difficult decisions regarding the equipment to be used for crankshaft machining in Mexico. On the one hand, some of the equipment used for this purpose in Cummins' U.S. plant is inappropriate in the Mexican context. On the other, he has to operate under severe budgetary and supplier constraints. A subsidiary issue has to do with the long-term strategy for the Mexican plant, which has developed into one of the best in Cummins' worldwide network but risks being fragmented by the many opportunities for adding products that are available to it.

A management team at Kaufmann is studying the latest year's operations and sales, which seem to have led to very confusing financial results. Sales exceeded forecast and production for the first six months, however Kaufmann reported a loss. Yet, when sales were below forecast and production above in the second six months, healthy income was reported.

The vice president of the Lab and Clinical Services at Central Blood Bank is faced with the challenge of convincing a hospital to use economical shared patient transfusion testing services.

Three situations are described. A branch manager for a retail brokerage firm must decide whether to change the branch's cash management techniques to increase interest earnings. An auto mechanic must decide whether to oversell parts and repairs to meet sales and service quotas set by management. A research director must decide what to do about suspicions of product adulteration. The vignettes illustrate the impact of organizational context on individual decision-making and the importance of management of management systems and behavior for organizational integrity.

Executone has posted low returns in 1992 in the face of intense competition from AT&T and Northern Telecom, its principal rivals. Alan Kessman, president and CEO, is considering whether mid-course adjustments in strategy are necessary in the firm's telecommunications hardware and software businesses. Diagnosis of strategic issues in both the internal and external environment is a prerequisite to establishing a plan of action. Designed to illustrate concepts in strategy identification, evaluation, and formulation.

When BellSouth Enterprises decided to aggressively pursue the international cellular market, it needed new software in order to cope with the complexities of cellular billing and the country-specific variations in the international cellular market. BellSouth made the decision to enter into a strategic alliance with TeleSciences. This case explores why it made this decision and what the ramifications of this decision were for BellSouth and TeleSciences.

On November 9, 1987, the Government of India's Project Approval Board approved PepsiCo's second proposal to enter the country. The package that had been approved differed substantially, however, from the one that Pepsi and its local partners had proposed more than a year earlier. Pepsi estimated that the implied changes in project scope would increase the joint venture's initial investment requirements from about Rs. 200 million to Rs. 800 million, once start-up costs were taken into account.

Connor Formed Metal Products was a small, privately owned manufacturer of custom metal springs and stampings. Since becoming president in 1984, Bob Sloss had implemented many changes to the company's organizational structure, management control systems, and information systems. In particular, he introduced a computer system in one plant to track product jobs through the manufacturing process. Employees at every function and level of the company could access information about a particular customer or job. In 1990, Sloss wondered whether to roll out this system in the company's four other plants.

Involves analysis of a major capital investment proposal, an acquisition of another company, an estimate of the funds required for these two possible outlays, and a recommended course of management action.

MathSoft's VP of sales has doubled the size of the company's direct field sales force to support the launch of a new, high-end workstation software product priced at almost $9,000. However, sales of the new product are far below plan. At the same time, the VP of marketing is calling for increased magazine advertising to support sales of the company's $349 personal computer software product, which has been marketed through a combination of distributors, retailers, telephone sales, and direct mail. The president of this entrepreneurial company must determine the appropriate channel structure and communications programs for MathSoft's current product line and future growth. Illustrates the close linkages and trade-offs between industrial marketing channels and communications methods and traces the evolution of one company's hybrid marketing channels. Also introduces students to the use of advertising and direct marketing in selling complex, industrial products. For students who have had a quantitative modeling course, the case includes the output of a market response model developed from MathSoft's advertising and sales data.

Colgate-Palmolive Co. is considering how to position its new technological toothbrush, Precision. The case explores issues concerned with new product launches and requires students to do profitability analyses of different positioning alternatives.

Describes the life and career of the first Japanese female investment banker at Nomura Securities, Sumiko Ito, who later became a partner at Alex Brown, a U.S. investment bank. Organized around the major life events and career transitions Ms. Ito experienced. Set in three distinct cultural milieus: Japan, England, and the United States. Eventually, Ms. Ito resigns from Alex Brown and starts her own investment company.

In early 1992, Lehman Brothers had received a mandate from its affiliate, American Express Travel Related Services (TRS) Co., to securitize a portion of its consumer charge-card receivables portfolio. It is now July 22, and Lehman and TRS have just returned from a "road show" that was undertaken to convince prospective investors of the merits of these new securities. Lehman must now price the securities. Because this is the first-ever securitization of charge-card receivables, there are no directly comparable benchmarks that can help in pricing. However, the securities share common features with credit-card receivables backed securities, which by now are well accepted. Another comparable is non-callable finance company debt. This deal is being watched closely by competing underwriters, investors, and senior management at TRS and Lehman. "Success" could catapult Lehman into becoming a major player in the asset-backed market whereas "failure" would be a major setback.