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Contains a description of a situation confronting the co-founder of a company planning to produce software for microcomputers. The company has just completed raising money from some wealthy investors by forming an R&D Limited Partnership. Development of the program (an integrated business productivity tool) can now begin. The focus is on the structure of the deal and the process of venture formation. Among the issues to be discussed are: Should the company have raised money from these investors under these terms? What can go wrong? What can go right?

In mid-1985, the vice president of marketing for a large manufacturer of disk drives is considering how to deal with a growing "gray market" for his company's products. The case provides good background material on the evolution of gray markets throughout the disk drive industry, and raises related issues of pricing policies, distribution strategy, and sales force management. A condensed version of Note on the Disk Drive Industry, and Peripheral Products Co.

Describes a mine operated by Bougainville Copper Ltd. in Papua New Guinea and the pressures negotiating the mineral contract between PNG and Bougainville Copper. Condensed from Bougainville Copper Ltd. (B), (C), and (D) by J.S. Hammond and G.B. Allan.

Cantel Inc. had just been granted a license from the Canadian Department of Communications to provide a national air network for a new mass communications technology, cellular radio communications. In devising a marketing strategy, the management team questioned whether the company should be involved in the provision of a complete cellular package, including the promotion, sales, installation and maintenance of both cellular telephones and network subscriptions. In addition, they were considering alternative distribution channels for bringing cellular to potential end users, and pricing and promotional programs were not yet finalized.

The director of the international division of a software company has to mediate and resolve a major impasse between one of his project managers and a visiting Chinese programming expert. The Chinese computer expert, a woman of strong views, appears to feel an injustice has been done and is withholding a crucial program which she has completed. The project manager will suffer a significant delay if the computer expert does not relinquish the program and potential sales at a trade show are at stake. (Two sequels to this case are available titled Canada-China Computer Crisis Case, case 9A86C013 and 9A87C016.)

A hotel's personnel director wonders if he should attempt to get even greater employee involvement after setting up Work Excellence Committees. The committees are comprised of union and management representatives at sectional, departmental and top management levels and they provided the coordinating mechanism for the hotel's many productivity activities. The positive end result was progress in labour-management relations.

A nephew in an Indian family business has prepared a consulting report advocating changes in organizational structure and practices. His North American MBA training has influenced both the content of his recommendations and the process of suggesting them. Both the content and the process violate norms of the Indian culture as well as those of the African culture in which the family business has flourished for 40 years. The problem is what to do given that his actions and report have stirred up deep feelings and conflicts within the family business.

The case describes the startup circumstances for Three Buoys Houseboats. It is an example of several young individuals stumbling into an opportunity and deciding to run with it without much evaluation, assessment or planning. The Three Buoys Houseboat case 9A86F005 is a detailed description of what actually happened.

A small American cookware manufacturer must decide whether to try to penetrate the Japanese market. The risks were enormous because major commitments were needed and the sales potential in a new market was hard to pin down. (Two sequels to this case are available, Cambridge Products Inc. (B) and Cambridge Products Inc. (C).)

A small American cookware firm has been negotiating with the Japanese to sell in Japan. Major commitments had been made to develop the product. Just when everything seemed settled, the Japanese wholesaler announced that modifications were needed. Should the company modify its product for the Japanese market? (This is the second case in a series titled Cambridge Products Inc. (A), Cambridge Products Inc. (B) and Cambridge Products Inc. (C).)

A small American cookware manufacturer has been very successful in selling to Japan. Suddenly the market in Japan has collapsed. What should be done now? (This is the last case in a series titled Cambridge Products Inc. (A), Cambridge Products Inc. (B) and Cambridge Products Inc. (C).)

This case is an introductory exercise in financial analysis. A complete financial analysis, including ratios and a statement of changes in financial position, is required.

The president of Medtron Limited, a fast growing Canadian manufacturer of wheelchairs, was preparing for a strategic planning session with his management group. In recent years, Medtron had met its sales growth and dealer expansion objectives and earned healthy profits. The president saw tremendous potential for further growth. He was concerned nevertheless that growth might outpace the company's financial and manufacturing capabilities and that a larger scale operation would create inflexibility. Our planning job is to identify any constraints and develop a strategy that maintains our reputation for quality products and fast, personalized service. As competitive conditions became more difficult and the company's environment changed, the president had to decide how aggressively Medtron should grow. What are management's realistic choices and which of these decisions would you recommend?

The newly appointed project manager of a highway project in Southeast Asia has a variety of issues to contend with all at once. The project is fully described in Hazelton International. The Hazelton case can serve as a briefing and must be done before this one. This case provides the company schedule and infrastructure information. Decisions need to be made regarding the items in his in-basket. These items are described in An International Project Manager's Day (B) and An International Project Manager's Day (C).

A nephew in an Indian family business has prepared a consulting report advocating changes in organizational structure and practices. His North American MBA training has influenced both the content of his recommendations and the process of suggesting them. Both the content and the process violate norms of the Indian culture as well as those of the African culture in which the family business has flourished for 40 years. The problem is what to do given that his actions and report have stirred up deep feelings and conflicts within the family business.

Two-party intra-organization negotiation between a company's financial and human resources officers regarding the amount of a budget increase. T. Boyd, a Vice President of Budget and Finance at Multimode, Inc., (a manufacturing firm) is about to meet J. Arnold, a Vice President of the Human Resource Development Office at Multimode. T. Boyd has formally met with other departments to discuss the upcoming year's budget as well as expected productivity increases.

On December 19, 1985, Secretary of State George Shultz, stung the administration when he publically threatened to resign. This action was not based on a substantive disagreement over foreign policy. Instead, Shultz was demonstrating his strong opposition to an administration plan to require polygraph tests for all government officials with access to "highly classified information." Roughly 182,000 government employees were to be affected by this plan, including some 4,500 members of the State Department. From the outset, the Reagan administration had been strongly interested in crushing espionage activities within the U.S. Government due to several recent instances during which breeches in U.S. security occurred. This case provides several examples of times when security was breached and chronicles the Reagan Administration's plan to squash espionage. It then details the series of actions that followed as Congress debated the issue. HKS Case Number 681.0.

In 1986, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), a private utility company serving most of northern and central California, was facing the loss of many of its biggest and best customers. The threat came not from conservation, general economic depression, or competing utilities; rather, customers were beginning to self-generate, or operate their own, small-scale power plants. PG&E estimated that industrial and commercial customers, responsible for 28 percent of sales, would soon find it cheaper to generate power on-site than to pay PG&E rates. The situation perplexed PG&E's regulators, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which perceived that industrial and commercial rates could be lowered only at the expense of residential customers or the utility's financial health. Moreover, the region's surplus of generating capacity suggested that new power plants would only make a bad situation worse. Indeed, the CPUC was also struggling with an excess supply of third-party generation, which utilities were required to buy under standard contracts set forth by the CPUC. The case is intended to illustrate issues concerning the regulation of a potential natural monopoly, with an emphasis on the understanding of marginal cost. While the case was designed to highlight the dilemmas of regulators, it can also be taught from the utility's perspective. HKS Case Number 713.0.

In many parts of California, water districts set prices so that agricultural users pay far less than residential users and far less than the true cost of water. While the adoption of a marginal cost pricing system would bring enormous efficiency gains, it would inevitably create losers as well as winners. To anticipate the problems of implementing such a pricing system in California, reformers need to anticipate which regions and which crops in California would be most affected.The case provides the information necessary to do a partial equilibrium incidence analysis, including data on the average factor share of water by crop, the average value created for each crop by marginal applications of water, the degree of interregion variation in the ratio of non-water inputs, and the role of each crop in the California and worldwide market. HKS Case Number 710.0

This case is designed to support a discussion of how to apply an economic evaluation of the appropriate level of control of an externality to a real problem with incomplete information of uncertain quality and high political stakes. It sketches the Reagan administration's stance on the issue, explains how regional interests have divided Congress on the desirability of acid rain control legislation, and presents the essential details of a House bill widely felt to have some credibility and political potential. Congressional estimates of the costs of attaining the several different levels of acid rain control possible under the House bill, by several different control methods, are presented and compared to administration estimates of the cost of acid rain damage to agriculture, forests, materials, and lakes. HKS Case Number 699.0