個案總覽

Lines at airports, at the ticket counter, security screening or at the gate, make air travel a stressful experience. Queues are especially problematic during peak travel periods when space and processing capacity are constrained. These are the concerns on the mind of an Assistant Federal Security Director as she plans for the expansion of flights at one of Boston Logan Airport's terminals. Space limitations restrict the number of screening lanes. Moreover, adding staff on the existing lanes staff is costly and faces rapidly diminishing returns. Nevertheless the Director must meet screening throughput and wait time targets as well as keep the line from stretching from security out the door. The director applies queuing theory to determine the art of the possible and what is feasible at Logan. The reader is introduced to basic queuing modeling and challenged to determine the optimal number of lanes and staffing of those lanes at the Logan terminal. Case number 2049.0

The treasurer for Dominion Resources Inc. (Dominion), a major U.S. diversified producer and distributor of energy, was heading to meet with the company's investment bankers to discuss the impact of a large project upon Dominion's financing strategy for the next five years. The Cove Point liquefied natural gas (LNG) project would require $3.6 billion to build and represented one of the largest single capital investments in the company's 100-plus year history.

A principal objective of economic thinking is to inform key decisions made by firms and their managers. One of the most important topics for managers concerns the basic choices about labor: How many people should I hire, and what should I pay them? Using the context of football (soccer) in Brazil, this case can be used to explore players' current and future worth to a team. Analysis could include marginal product of labor, marginal revenue product, team profitability, and how managers might fund player acquisitions while still generating consistent profits.

The global convenience store brand 7-Eleven entered Indonesia in 2009, with local player PT Modern International as the master franchisor. To differentiate the stores from other convenience stores and to cater to emerging market customers in Indonesia, the CEO combined the idea of a restaurant and a convenience store in his new 7-Eleven outlets. The 7-Eleven stores provided an affordable and convenient location for youth to hang out and have a quick bite to eat. They also offered wireless Internet and a range of services and products like fresh food and beverages. The case requires students to outline the innovative elements that explain 7-Eleven's success in Indonesia, reflect on its scalability and sustainability, and also to advise the CEO on further strategies to strengthen 7-Eleven in Indonesia.

In 2013, London Water, the water system of the City of London, Ontario, has run deficits for eight of the past nine years, leading to significant pressure to pull the organization out of the red. The Water Engineering Division manager knows that something needs to change. Overhauling the rate structure is an attractive option; however, myriad political, economic and environmental issues are at play. Moreover, as steward of one of the city's most important utilities, the manager needs to determine the best course of action, ideally a solution that will work in both the short run and the long run.

Aaron Jonnerson, vice president of marketing at the automotive division of Avellin, must make marketing mix decisions for the launch of Eco7, a new environmentally-friendly motor oil. The company's performance has been mediocre, shareholder pressure is increasing, and expectations are high for Eco7. However, Jonnerson faces significant challenges in ensuring a successful launch. The market for passenger car motor oil (PCMO) is mature and consumers are price-sensitive. Furthermore, the independent oil change outlets that are Avellin's core customers have declined relative to other channels. Jonnerson must design the best pricing strategy to ensure a successful launch. The Eco7 case asks students to examine consumer behavior and channel conflict and factor them into a product launch. The launch comes at a time when the company may need to adapt to changes in a market that is increasingly commoditized and in which the relative importance of different distribution channels is changing. Students are asked to make recommendations on pricing and distribution and to consider which trade-offs the company should make.

In 2016, the United States and the European Union struggled to reach an agreement over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Started in June 2013, TTIP negotiations had gone on much longer than anyone had expected. With elections coming on both sides of the Atlantic and a rising opposition in the public opinion, what where the odds that such a comprehensive trade agreement would see the light? How would TTIP change the rules of world trade? Who would benefit and who instead lose if an agreement was finally reached?

In 2009, Lee O'Rourke was promoted to District Vice President in charge of Macy's newly created North Florida district. This district consisted of 11 stores located in the greater Orlando area and in the east coast towns of Daytona, Melbourne, Merritt Island, and Vero Beach. The performance of these stores had lagged in recent years, and O'Rourke was charged with building a cross-functional district team to support these stores and with improving their overall performance. O'Rourke and her team were able to drive almost immediate improvement in the district's sales growth and profitability and in other key areas such as customer service scores. How can O'Rourke ensure that these stores continue to perform well going forward?

ABB India, the Indian subsidiary of ABB Global, has been lagging behind the parent company's other subsidiaries in terms of its percentage of female employees. To rectify the gender imbalance, the parent company has assigned the head of Diversity and Inclusion for India, the Middle East and Africa with the task of introducing and rolling out diversity and inclusion initiatives at ABB India. In June 2014, the chairperson of ABB has scheduled a visit to India and is looking forward to reviewing the status and progress of the diversity and inclusion program.

A young analyst decides to collect Twitter data to better understand who is promoting the Net Promoter matrix on the social media site in late July 2015. How widely is the metric mentioned and how much of the dialogue involves conversations rather than tweets being sent as general broadcast messages? He considers the social network of these users, their relationships and the network as a whole to create a network graph and wonders what he can do to improve the way it can be viewed and understood.

Spotify is an on-demand music streaming service founded in Sweden in 2006, in a music industry in crisis. It offers online music consumers legal access to a repertoire of over 30 million pieces of music, which varies by country. Its mission is to let people listen to the music they want, when they want and where they want. To accomplish this, the company offers a legal alternative that is superior to piracy, via a simple, clear and rapid platform, making listening to and sharing music easier than ever. Its service falls within the freemium model: users can access it free in exchange for being exposed to ads a few minutes every hour or pay a small monthly fee to access it without ads, without interruptions and with a certain number of benefits in terms of the quality and accessibility of music. Spotify has seen meteoric growth since it was founded: it has a presence in 58 countries and has 75 million users, 20 million of whom are paying subscribers. Despite this, the company has not yet turned a profit. Plus the compensation it pays to rights holders for the use of their music has been criticized as being insufficient. However, this problem is not exclusive to Spotify; it affects most businesses that try to monetize music.

In a December 1, 2013, interview on American television program 60 Minutes, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced that Amazon would soon change the future of online shopping by enabling customers to receive items within thirty minutes of ordering. This delivery service, Bezos said, would be powered by unmanned autonomous drones and could be offered as soon as 2015. The market reaction was instantaneous and positive. Still, Amazon needed some answers before it could launch autonomous delivery services: Were customers ready to embrace and pay for this type of delivery service? Would regulators allow it? Should Amazon make or buy its drones? Would it be too risky for Amazon to wait to launch this service? If it decided to go ahead, how should it launch, and to whom?

Achal Industries was a 40-year-old proprietary family enterprise engaged in cashew processing and export. Giridhar Prabhu, 57, was Achal's second generation entrepreneur and managed its operations in the Indian states of Karnataka and Maharashtra. He had been in this labor intensive business for close to three decades. Family owned businesses and private partnership firms dominated this sector. The cashew processing industry was facing severe constraints due to high employee turnover and a labor shortage. Many enterprises had started exploring the option of automating cashew processing at their factories. Giridhar had also been studying and analyzing this option. He anticipated that, five years hence, automation would prove more economical than labor-intensive cashew processing. His own plan was to retire from the business in five years, but to his disappointment, he found that none of his three daughters was interested in running the business. Giridhar felt he would not have the ability to manage a new, profitable automated factory, which would demand quite an effort, as he got older. Lack of support from the family would add to that burden. In November 2014, he was contemplating future options that included selling his business, expanding the business and inducting professional non-family members to steer the enterprise's future. The dilemma before him was to choose the option that would be best for him, his enterprise and his family.

The patient affairs coordinator is concerned about the rising number of complaints regarding the level of services offered by the transportation teams in the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC). The center's management team is determined to create an exemplary patient transportation service at AUBMC and consequently launches an investigation supported by a full-scale study to determine better ways of re-engineering these processes. The coordinator must consider the factors that contribute to patient and staff complaints as well as the types of data and tests required to provide evidence-based solutions for patient transportation in the hospital.

In July 2014, the expatriate CEO of McDonald's Japan (MDJ) faced a crisis after a video was broadcast accusing one of the company's China-based food suppliers of serious health and sanitation violations. Although MDJ was the biggest brand in Japan's fast food industry, the company's sales had been falling since 2008, and its profitability had deteriorated dramatically since 2012. The CEO, who had recently taken over at MDJ, urgently needed to turn around the company's situation and deal with the crisis at hand. How could she reassure Japanese consumers and put the company back on the road to growth?

In 2014, clothing retailer Gap Inc. rolled out a new performance management process for headquarters staff that did away with a traditional rating and ranking system. The new process involved informal monthly meetings between managers and their reports, and it more closely tied bonuses to business performance. Would it serve to motivate employees? Could its framework be used in Gap Inc.'s thousands of stores?

No corporation and its board of directors is immune to a disruptive shareholder activist attack. The Novell (A) and (B) cases take students through a shareholder activist attack and its aftermath -- a saga that spanned 5 years. The cases outline the activist playbook in conducting an attack, the board's response, and key decisions that must be made.

In July 2007, after several failed attempts to acquire Huntsman Corporation, Hexion/Apollo prevailed in a bidding war for the company and signed a definitive merger agreement. Apollo had down bid Huntsman during previous attempts to acquire the company, and Huntsman was suspicious. That suspicion, coupled with Huntsman's leverage that resulted from a competitive bid situation, prompted and enabled Huntsman to negotiate seller friendly terms. For example, there was no financing contingency, and although the merger agreement contained both a material adverse effect (MAE) clause and a reverse termination fee, the potential damages if Hexion/Apollo breached the agreement were uncapped. As the credit markets deteriorated in late 2007 and into 2008 and Huntsman turned in disappointing financial results, the Huntsman deal no longer looked attractive to Hexion/Apollo. Hexion/Apollo wanted out. Would the material adverse change (MAC) clause in the merger agreement permit Hexion/Apollo to simply walk away? Even if the MAE clause were not applicable, could Hexion/Apollo walk away by paying the reverse termination fee? Or were potential damages uncapped?