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Palmer Corporate Training is a privately owned software training company. The company was developing two new projects that would dramatically change its business. With industry consolidation and entry of a new competitor, Palmer's core business was becoming a tougher challenge daily. The president of the company must decide if it has the financial and human resources to effectively maintain its core business while developing the two new projects, and how to minimize the risk of failure and increase the probability of success if Palmer proceeds with the new projects.

Elise Smart must decide what performance assessment to give one of her employees who has, uncharacteristically, failed to meet one of her key objectives for the year. The situation is difficult for several reasons; the causes of the unacceptable performance are not clear; the employee has previously received excellent appraisals, including a recent one by the vice-president; and the employee was absent for a good part of the year on maternity leave. The various factors that influence sustained performance (ability, motivation, resources, role clarity, reinforcement) are examined, as well as steps leaders can take in improving performance of those for whom they are responsible.

Global Bubbles Incorporated is a worldwide manufacturer of chewing gum. The vice-president of manufacturing must evaluate various global capacity rationalization plans to determine the strategic direction the company should take. Her goal was to determine the optimal manufacturing strategy for the various markets supplied by Global Bubbles. She must analyse multi-currency net present value calculations, discount rates, exchange rates and the role of strategic options associated with multiple sourcing locations.

The accountant for Palmer Limited, a sheet metal sub-contractor, has been asked to provide a monthly cash budget along with the projected income statement and balance sheet for her client. The request came about because the banker is concerned about whether Palmer Limited can repay its loan.

The marketing manager for a hockey team has been told by senior management that revenues for the next season must increase or the franchise will be sold. The previous year's high-budget advertising campaign did not bring in the single-ticket sales results he expected. A database of past ticket holders is available and the question arises how to use this database. Using pivot tables, and recency, frequency and monetary value analyses, he must determine how to increase the return on the marketing investment. An Excel spreadsheet, product 7B02A022, is also available.

Two analysts have each been assigned to work on the conceptual and detail designs of two modules in a Web-based software solution. A week before the final design presentation, the analysts discover that their software designs are not integrated. The case focuses on the frustrations of one of the analysts and her concerns about the working relationship with the other analyst. They have had personal differences and are both prospects for early promotion. She considers how the project came to this point and how the situation might have been avoided. Supplement eProcure - Finishing the Project (B), product 9B02C021, discusses the analyst's strategies during the final week working on the design; supplement eProcure - Conversation with Claire (C), product 9B02C022 explores the analyst's decision to confront her co-worker and supplement eProcure - End of the Design Team (D), product 9B02C023, focuses on the outcomes for both analysts after the project is complete.

A learning team of five students must work together to complete a 48-hour team exam. One of the students has a reputation for being unreliable, disruptive and confrontational. When the team members convene to write their report, this student calls to say he will be late. He shows up eight hours later. The level of team tension and animosity reached a point of near-violence and the team member was expelled. The team wonders how to deal with this team member whose behaviour is dysfunctional to effective team performance, and what to do next given that there are several more team projects to come. Supplemental case Juan Pedro's Shrimp Farm: Or the 48-hour Exam Nightmare (B), product 9B02C058, discusses the first hour after the student arrives to work on the report. Supplement Juan Pedro's Shrimp Farm: Or the 48-hour Exam Nightmare (C), product 9B02C059, describes the student's attempt to contribute to the report and the subsequent confrontation. Supplement Juan Pedro's Shrimp Farm: Or the 48-hour Exam Nightmare (D), product 9B02C060, an interview, conducted several months later, provides the student's perspective on the events.

A senior manager in a U.S. manufacturing firm must make a recommendation about whether 57 labour intensive jobs should be moved from the existing California plant to a new facility in a Mexican maquiladora. If the Mexican opportunity is pursued, decisions are also required regarding the entry mode (subcontracting, shelter operator or wholly-owned subsidiary) and location (border or interior).

A first year business student has recently received an award from her classmates, one that was intended as a joke, but that had left her feeling embarrassed and angry. Two of her male classmates had created a series of year-end awards to be handed out in fun. She was the recipient of the Most Likely to Sleep With Her Boss Award. When these awards were given out in a class setting, the student felt uncomfortable and embarrassed, but had gone along with it to be a good sport. When she heard that these same joke awards were to be given out at the year-end banquet in front of faculty members and the entire student body of the school, she asked one of the creator/presenters to leave her out of the fun this time around. To her horror, her classmate did not honor her request, and she was humiliated in front of her teachers and peers in a very public forum. Supplement cases, products 9B02C008, 9B02C009 and 9B02C010 provide detail of the events leading up to the award presentation and its aftermath. The fourth supplement, product 9B02C011, describes the perpetrators' viewpoint.

mGames is a manufacturer of game-based software for portable computers, PDAs and cell phones. The company's new chief executive officer has just been informed of a potential hostile takeover of the company by a major PDA manufacturer. At the same time he receives a phone call from a senior executive at a Scandinavian telecommunications company expressing interest in forming a partnership. With all of this happening, the chief executive officer faces growing pressure from the company's chairman to address ongoing performance problems. In a complex and changing environment he must make a strategic choice as to which group of customer groups (traditional handheld gaming device manufacturers, telecom manufacturers or PDA manufacturers) the company should focus on.

Beijing Biotech Corporation is a leader in biochip research and development in China. The president and chief executive officer must decide whether his company should go ahead with the Biochip Scanner project - a process that would read and analyse the information on biochips. He has some estimates of research and development costs and variable costs of the expected final product, however he doesn't have enough information about the market and customers. He must analyse the industry and competition, and fully evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of his company.

The president of a new hotel venture faces a financing decision. The choices include: mortgage debt, common stock, or preferred and common stock. The president has to balance the impact of the financing alternatives on the viability of the venture, her investment returns, the investment returns of prospective outside investors and the financial and business risks.

A village leader must reallocate farmland and decides to hold a competition among the three most capable farmers in the village. The contract to the farmland will be awarded to the farmer with the best performance in the growing season. The growing season is over and the village leader must review the farmers' capital structure, capacity, and leasing costs, and make his decision.

Terralumen is a family-owned agricultural company that has expanded into consumer products. A senior executive with the company has helped build a successful joint venture over a period of 16 years with Delta, an American fast food chain. After a directors meeting, he senses that the American joint venture partners want to end the partnership, but he is unsure why. The joint venture has been profitable, and he also believes his company contributed the most to its success and that prior to the joint venture Delta had limited success in foreign markets. With the break up of the joint venture pending, he must determine how to extract the largest return on Terralumen's investment.

Blue Ridge Spain was a joint venture established between a well-known American fast food chain and an old guard family-run agricultural company that was seeking to diversify in the wake of Spain's entry into the European Union. The European Regional director of the company has been dealt an unexpected professional blow. After several years of fostering a successful joint venture, the regional director is stunned to find out that the new owners of Blue Ridge want out of the arrangement. In spite of the fact that this particular joint venture has been profitable since its inception and the company has experienced brisk growth during that time, the new owners are determined to end the partnership. The regional director is left examining how he is to respond to a request that he feels is not only detrimental to his company, but also contrary to his principles. He questions the ethics of secretly undermining the joint venture in order to achieve the upper hand in buyout negotiations. As a Greek, the importance of personal relationships and social contracts only adds to his dilemma.

Tissage et Broderie is a consignment store selling handicrafts. The founders of the store have contacted a consulting firm for the development of a product and customer information system. After a preliminary interview, the consultant leading the project is ready to begin the requirements structuring process. She must create data, process and logic models.

The OHNo Swim Club is a small non-profit organization whose board of directors is swayed from its mission by one of its wealthy members. In the process the club loses control of its mission, makes a decision that comes close to financially bankrupting the organization and eventually loses several members before it rebuilds itself with a stronger dedication to its mission. Through the rebuilding process, it learns the importance of choosing board members with financial sophistication, the difficulties of a start-up enterprise and the importance of maintaining a mission and communicating that mission to members.

Livent Inc. is the only publicly traded theatrical production firm in North America. A member of the audit committee at Livent is preparing to address the company's board of directors regarding issues contained in a letter published by a leading business magazine. The letter, written by a securities analyst, suggests the company's accounting policies are very aggressive, in particular the approach taken to capitalize and amortize its pre-production costs. In order to address this issue, the audit committee member wants to review the company's current capitalization and amortization policies and to compare its approach with the accounting policies used by other industries which also incur significant development costs.

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 manufacturer of TotalMint mouthwash graded its television commercials internally to judge their potential effectiveness in the marketplace. New television commercials were shown to planned audiences and diagnostic data points were used to judge the commercial based on several criteria. TotalMint was able to assess the extent that a particular commercial was likely to drive sales by comparing the results of the test against a historical database of television commercials. The product manager for TotalMint received the raw data from the advertising effectiveness tests of the latest commercial and was ready to start the evaluation by categorizing the verbatim comments and the overall recall responses. Once tallied, she needed to compare the results to the two previous TotalMint commercials.