個案總覽

On November 30, 2007, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Goodwin Wealth Management (Goodwin), decided to hire a consultant to make an assessment of his current situation. Recently, several firms had expressed interest in acquiring Goodwin. The CEO knew he would have to decide whether to consider these offers or not very soon in order to avoid a hostile bidding situation. If the CEO did decide to consider an acquisition, he would have to act quickly in order to take advantage of the current stock's high price. Further complicating the decision was the fact that Goodwin had been built by the CEO's father, George, who would try to influence the decision-making process. The CEO wanted to do what was best for the company while protecting his family's reputation. He awaited the advice from the consultant.

Alex Sharpe's Portfolio provides an introduction to the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), portfolio diversification and risk management. Sharpe currently holds the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, but is considering a more active management strategy. Students must assess the risk of the two stocks she is considering adding to her portfolio. Students are provided with monthly stock returns and must calculate the standard deviations of the individual stocks and of the portfolios when one of the stocks is added to it. Students must calculate the stock's beta using regression and will learn that beta is the appropriate measure of risk to use in decision making since risk-averse investors do not hold stocks in isolation.

This case explores the transformation of Umbra Health Partners (Umbra), a privately owned Canadian healthcare organization, as it undergoes an extensive restructuring, through the perspective of the branch manager, who is a recent graduate of a master of business administration program in health services administration. The first part of the case examines the branch manager's role and the last part of the case examines his new role in the corporate office. When he is first hired at Umbra, he assesses the organizational problems inherent in the branch office and in the organization as a whole. As branch manager, he attempts to find solutions to those problems and improve the reliability of his branch. Later, he is promoted to a position in the corporate office, where he addresses the organizational problems at the corporate level (some of which mirror those at the branch office), such as a lack of interdependence and a vague sense of the direction in which the organization is headed. Taken together, the case offers a host of material to discuss the complexities of organizational change.

New metrics have been introduced to a software technical support call center operation. These metrics have revealed a wide range of performance between employees both for time taken to answer customers' questions and the customer's perceived quality of service. The call center manager is wondering how to make use of these metrics. He is inclined to go public with them, whereas the head of human resources believes that this could be damaging to employee morale and will also make it more difficult for the company to recruit in a market experiencing labor shortages.

The chief financial officer of Pixonix Inc. is trying to decide if she should hedge, given the current strength of the Canadian dollar. Her company licenses proprietary software through a U.S. company that will cost $7.5 million in three months time. The case provides the students with the opportunity to understand the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on her firm's cash flows and some of the instruments available to manage risk, including puts and calls and forward contracts.

After negotiations with a key supplier for lower prices and quicker turnaround go nowhere, two employees of Acme Medical Imaging realize there's no more low-hanging fruit to pick to keep their project on time and on budget -- no more concessions from external parties, no more superficial, short-term fixes. They have to convince their chief executive officer and the project team to take a hard look at internal processes. From the perspective of Operations, this case examines the challenges that can arise - and some steps that can be taken - when the greatest obstacles to a project are the people and procedures responsible for its success.

A sales representative for Monster Computer Corporation was working with the head of data processing of a major account to develop a financial justification for the company to purchase $9 million of computer and storage hardware and other peripherals, which would replace an existing data processing installation. The potential customer had estimated the savings to be achieved by the new equipment. Working with this estimate and financial information about the client company, the sales representative must undertake a rigorous capital budgeting analysis to help the potential customer sell the project to the financial people in the company. The case provides students with an opportunity to analyze a simple capital expenditure. They are required to develop a discount rate, based upon costs of funds, and to utilize that discount rate to value the cash flows expected. Information is provided about the likelihood of receiving the expected cash flows, so that expected NPV and IRR values may be determined. There is ample room for discussion about the costs of debt and equity to use the weights to be applied. Additionally, the affect of expected inflation must be factored into the analysis.

Victoria Heavy Equipment (Victoria) was a family owned and managed firm which had been led by an ambitious, entrepreneurial chief executive officer who now wanted to take a less active role in the business. Victoria had been through two reorganizations in recent years, which contributed to organizational and strategic issues which would need to be addressed by a new president.

The popularity of hedge funds grew in the volatile markets surrounding the technology bubble. Hedge funds take both long and short investment positions in the market, attempting to achieve reliable gains while insulating the fund's assets from market fluctuations. The challenge facing hedge fund managers is to demonstrate that investing in a combination of long positions, short positions and cash matching the strategy of the fund can, at an agreed level of risk, provide a higher return than that of traditional mutual funds.

In the fall of 2006, the president of Conroy's Acura was examining reports of the company's quarterly sales. He was concerned that despite a healthy economy, sales at his dealership were stagnant. The vice-president of sales of Conroy's Acura was constantly coming up with new marketing schemes to boost sales. But the president had difficulty determining how successful past marketing efforts had been in increasing profitability. He needed a way to put the numbers into context.

Mapleleaf Corporation is a mid-size player in the paper products industry. The firm has recently become aware that growing demand will soon outstrip its present production capacity. The primary objective of this case is to introduce students to the world of capacity planning and optimization.

The owner of Mountainarious Sporting Co. has requested a long-term loan to cover construction costs for major alterations to his store's layout. He has also requested an increase in the business's line of credit to fund additional inventory purchases for the increased store space. The loan manager has received the company's financial statements and must decide whether to grant the loan in a short time in order that the renovations may proceed.

The chief executive officer of Modern Appliances wants to change the culture in the company towards one of engagement of people at all levels of the organization. The (A) case describes the ModernIzation initiative and provides a basis for analyzing the reason for the initiative and identifying some of the issues that may arise from it. The (B) case looks at specific problems that arise and the (C) case discusses the process used by the company.

This case looks at an in-house experiment conducted by a plant manager to determine whether his quality control machines are functioning properly. The case can be used to help students understand the concept of variation and sources of variation. It is also useful for illustrating the effective use of descriptive statistics, single sample tests, paired tests and their non-parametric equivalents.

This case examines the interpretation of political polls. It discusses margin of error, confidence intervals and the relationship between sample size and margin of error. An Excel spreadsheet is included, Ivey product # 7B07E016, to help students understand the concepts.

Cushy Armchair, based in Hong Kong, is a leader in the global armchair business, controlling fully autonomous business groups in 17 countries. Cabletronica has recently acquired the company and has sent one of their own senior personnel to restructure operations and integrate the company with another of their furniture divisions outside of the country. Acting as a consultant, the founder of Cushy is approached regarding a communication on a change in policy, but the new head of the company decides to use the parent company's standard method and now must manage with the results change can have on a cross cultural, multinational business.

The recently hired human resources (HR) director had to come up with a program that would meet the needs of transferring knowledge from older, more experienced project consultants to the junior and newly hired inexperienced associates. The HR director designed a program called the Mentoring Management Project for Professionals (MP^2). The program met with great resistance from all levels of the organization, which made the development and the implementation process more difficult. The MP^2 program was implemented on a trial basis and after four months, due to mixed results, the HR director was more confused than ever. He had three days left to prove to the executive board that the program is worth the cost, the time and the resources to implement.

In early 2006, it was apparent that PFM Devices was experiencing a significant downturn in consolidated earning among its three international divisions. To address this issue, the newly hired chief information officer was asked by the executive team to evaluate the two options of implementing a customer relationship management solution to improve revenue or a corporate data warehouse to cut costs. This case illustrates the importance of aligning information technology (IT) and business strategy and of the complex issues IT executives face in prioritizing IT investment alternatives.

Trans Global Corporation is a multinational company facing a complex set of inter-related problems including: international financial reporting standards, impact of a country's EU status, functional currency decisions, currency translation methods, exchange rates and impact of using derivatives to hedge currency changes.

A manager at a public accounting firm was contracted to perform a second financial performance review and issue recommendations for improving the performance of California Choppers, a manufacturer of high-end motorcycles. She needed to analyze several financial indicators including liquidity, asset management, long-term debt payment ability, and profitability. Poor performance results and interpersonal difficulties between the owner and chief executive officer were making her job very difficult.