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PepsiCo faces criticism after releasing a series of online advertisements for Mountain Dew that featured an angry Mountain Dew-drinking goat, a battered white woman on crutches and the goat in a police lineup of all black men. Critics are offended by the advertisement's portrayal of violence toward women and racial stereotypes. As the public outcry spreads, Mountain Dew's senior brand manager needs to devise a course of action or risk damage to one of its billion-dollar brands.

Coca-Cola has announced the opening of its first bottling plant in Burma in almost 60 years. Since 1962, Burma has been a closed and isolated country and under military rule. As a result of the military's steady relinquishing of control over the government, Burma has begun opening its doors to international trade and investment. However, political instability is still very high and economic development is far from secure. Furthermore, although a framework agreement between the U.S. and Burmese governments has been signed, a bilateral investment treaty to provide protection for Coca-Cola's direct investment is not yet in place. How should Coca-Cola pursue its strategy in Burma?

An analyst is assessing Demand Media's accounting policies in the face of media scrutiny around its capitalization of media costs as well as some of its non-GAAP disclosures. She has to decide whether it is appropriate to capitalize these costs. In order to do so, she must evaluate whether the costs meet the definition of an asset. After analyzing the company, its business model and its strategy, she can compare its content costs to various other companies that create "content" (intellectual property); competing accounting policies are also examined. The analyst can then determine the appropriate accounting treatment and whether any adjustments are warranted. With respect to non-GAAP earnings, she can decide whether the metrics proposed by the company are appropriate in order to measure performance.

"During the five years Southpointe Corporation had used its custom Leadership Development Program (LDP), a significant number of existing and high-potential managers from all the company's functional areas and geographic regions had been through the LDP. Now in response to some ongoing leadership development concerns, Southpointe's CEO, wants to develop a "key experiences" program for a handful of managers viewed as viable executive team candidates. "

This case examines the development of AXA, from a small mutual insurance company to one of the top 3 companies in the world. The case focuses more particularly on the period 2000-2012 and the CEO's efforts to change the culture of the organization to make it more customer- and employee-focused.

SEMRI is the first not-for-profit public private partnership (PPP) arrangement in the healthcare sector in India. From its modest beginnings of providing emergency response services with 15 ambulances in a single city, EMRI grew its operations across 8 states to 1,550 ambulances serving 366 million people, free of cost. But the company now faces a major crisis as its chairman has resigned and been arrested for fraud. The CEO takes the reins of the organisation and adeptly manages the crisis. EMRI is then taken over by GVK Power and Infrastructure Limited. With a new sponsor, the CEO must decide whether to continue expanding EMRI's operations across India or offer other services in states where it already has a presence. Can the organisation obtain further funding and modify the PPP model whilst preserving the values that EMRI was built upon?

In 2005, CapitaLand announced the sale of the hotel business under its subsidiary Raffles Holdings Limited for US$1.45 billion. This included the sale of landmark Raffles Hotel as well as 40 other hotels, including the Swissôtel international hotel chain. The case focuses on the financial and the strategic aspects of the sale from the perspective of CapitaLand and includes the following: • What should be an appropriate valuation for Raffles Holdings? • How should the value of intangible assets such as brand name be incorporated? • Was there strategic justification for CapitaLand to pursue a divestiture that would translate into loss of the iconic Raffles Hotel - a national monument of Singapore?

Ockham Technologies' three founders are about to craft their founding agreement and split the equity among themselves. Uncertainty lingers over each member's future contributions, though - how is the team to devise a durable and effective split? Jim Triandiflou and Ken Burows worked resolutely to plan for the launch of their sales management software company. Soon they recruited a third member, Mike Meisenheimer, to lead product development. Each founder had contributed significantly to bringing the Ockham concept to life. The trio had provided the seed capital of $150,000, contracted a development team to build their product, garnered serious interest from a potential investor, and readily agreed on their roles within the company (Jim was CEO, Ken was COO, and Mike was Head of Product Management). But as Ockham entered its initial phase of product development, pressure began mounting for the team to discuss and finalize a founding agreement. What should they include in the agreement, and how should they structure their equity split?

By the late 2000s, the law firm Duane Morris had transformed itself from a growing U.S. law firm to a significant global player. The firm's uniquely collaborative organizational culture, which featured a transparent, data-driven compensation system, practice-group integration across multiple offices, and rewards for attorneys who shared responsibility, had contributed to the firm's success as it had expanded into new U.S. and international offices. Yet, amid a shaky world economy and an increasingly cutthroat legal profession, Duane Morris attorneys began to wonder-could collaboration survive as a firm value? Would the firm's culture help it continue to grow in the years ahead and bring in more sophisticated legal work, or would its lawyers inevitably start to keep work to themselves as the firm navigated an ever-more competitive environment?

A portfolio manager for Penhall Investment Funds was reviewing the financial data his team had prepared on Lenovo Group Limited (Lenovo), one of the major holdings in Penhall's Global fund. Lenovo wanted to become more than just the largest manufacturer of PCs by volume. It aimed to become a leader in other devices, such as smartphones and tablets, and it was focusing on innovation as a key capability. The portfolio manager was impressed by Lenovo's results so far; the stock was up 7.5 per cent in a year. However, given the decline in the traditional PC segment, the competitive nature of the industry and global economic conditions, he wondered if Lenovo should continue to be a key holding in the global fund.

Inspired by software development boot camps in New York and San Francisco, Bitmaker Labs has just launched a similar offering but without considering the operational constraints unique to doing business in Canada. The result is governmental scrutiny just as the business is taking off with 42 students enrolled, each having paid $7,000 for a nine-week web development boot camp. Government investigators raid Bitmaker Labs, confiscating financial documents and threatening penalties and possible jail time for running an unregistered career college.

WestJet Airlines grew from a startup regional carrier in 1996 serving five Western Canadian cities to an international airline with more than 80 destinations and 9,000 employees by 2011. In a strategic move to implement code sharing and several other strategic IT applications to enhance WestJet's competitiveness, the CEO and his executive team hired an experienced and highly successful CIO to bring WestJet up to par with other airlines. The new CIO was asked by WestJet to assess its IT competence as part of a corporate drive to gain competitive advantage by delivering innovative guest services. The executive saw IT as the key to WestJet achieving its ambitions and corporate growth so formulated an ambitious plan to restructure the IT organization. But certain senior IT staff members, some of whom had been with the company since the beginning and had played a major role in developing the existing systems, believed the plan was ill advised and unworkable. The executive had to convince both senior management and the IT group that implementing the new IT governance model was essential if WestJet hoped to achieve its strategic goals.

The case presents the ongoing geopolitical struggle between China and Japan. The essence of the China-Japan conflict lies in the struggle over natural resources - rare earth elements (REEs) and suspected oil deposits in Senkaku Islands - and related territorial disputes concerning the sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands which are resource rich and near key international shipping routes. Even though quite a few countries in the world possess REEs, China possesses over 95 percent of the industrial production capacity for these elements, thus creating a global monopoly (Humphries, 2010). Most of the global REE supply-chain is controlled by China through the production of REEs on its territory or through the purchase of mineral rights from other parts of the world, such as Africa. As shown in the case, this generates a situation of REE dependency for states such as Japan and the U.S., which are both very influential on the world arena, and which consequently leads to important geopolitical frictions. Moreover, China shows a tendency to constrain its exports of REEs as part of its foreign policy, or as argued by other scholars, as an attempt to meet its increasing domestic consumption geared towards the production of technological items such as cell phones, computers and military weapons. China needs REEs to sustain economic growth, stimulate job creation at home and reduce its vulnerability to fuel shortages or price shocks (Cáceres and Sophal, 2012). The shortage of REEs on the world market creates the problem of rare earth asymmetry, which affects the relationship among countries and firms at the international level. The case depicts the subtleties of the China-Japan politico-economic relations and discusses the involvement of other important actors, such as the US and the EU, in the struggle for resources.

Traces the economic development of New York City from its founding in the 17th century through 2012. Focuses on the decisions made by New York City officials, past and present, highlighting the challenges of economic development at the city level. Enables deep examination of the interdependence and interrelation of economic policies at the city, state and federal level, and explores the role of economic and cluster performance. Detailed historical economic and social data allows for an evaluation of policy results. The case finishes highlighting the main economic challenges the city was facing in 2012.

The case discusses the origins and development of the European Integration process from the post-war period up to 2007, focusing particularly on the efforts of the Lisbon-agenda under way since 2000 to enhance Europe's competitiveness. It discusses the different policy areas that have been approached at the European level over time, and provides background on the architecture of European institutions. The case enables students to understand how European integration has affected competitiveness across the continent. It provides a platform to discuss the impact of collaboration across countries in large geographies on competitiveness, and the lessons that the European integration experience might hold for other world regions.

In December 2012, Amir Peleg, founder and CEO of TaKaDu, reflected on how to position his young firm for the next fiscal year and beyond. The small Israeli startup had developed an innovative software system that used patented algorithms and statistical analysis to detect problems such as leaks, bursts, and faulty equipment within a water utility's infrastructure. Such problems caused significant water and energy loss at many utilities, led to service interruptions for consumers, and were only getting worse as the existing infrastructure aged. Since its founding in 2009, TaKaDu had attracted nine customers from around the world. However, as Peleg and his executive team debated how to allocate funding for the upcoming year, he needed to decide whether to focus on R&D to improve and add to TaKaDu's existing software and become the clear technology leader, or move ahead with its current offering and focus on getting new customers to penetrate the market as quickly as possible before competition intensified. Some in the company called for devoting the bulk of TaKaDu's resources to making the system more easily deployable, as deploying the TaKaDu service with a new customer could take up to two months. Peleg also wondered if the company should continue to pursue sales leads from anywhere in the world, or focus on one geographic market (and if so, what region should he choose)? An Australian water utility had made a public announcement it was accepting bids to implement a smart water network monitoring system and Peleg wanted to discuss if and how aggressively TaKaDu should bid on the contract with his management team. TaKaDu already had one Australian customer, was this the region to focus on?

In 1998, Mikel Lizarralde, anticipating the political changes lying in store for Venezuela when Chávez took over Venezuela, realized he needed to change his company's business model if it were to survive in the new domestic scenario. He managed Powerven, his family's business, which marketed the multinational General Dynamics' (GD) products in Venezuela. At that time, the company faced severe labor issues, including an ongoing conflict-riddled atmosphere, low productivity, a drain of qualified technical personnel, and workers' lacking commitment. With the support of a consultant, Lizarralde developed a change program that hinged on laying off workers to build cooperatives that would later provide their services to Powerven on an outsourcing scheme. Lizarralde secured the approval of both GD and his father. He also managed to get the reluctant support of his siblings and to persuade Powerven's top executives in order to finally convince the workers. Taking a significant risk, Lizarralde chose Powerven's best-selling branch office to run a pilot test. This experiment proved successful, and Valencia's branch office quickly increased its sales while lowering its fixed costs. In addition, the members of the cooperative in charge also saw their income rise. The results had an immediate effect, and all of Powerven's 13 branch offices had adopted the new business scheme. However, by 2008, Lizarralde started to notice with concern a few clouds building up in Powerven's horizon. Cooperatives were not as cohesive as they should have. Additionally, some signs revealed that Chávez's administration no longer supported cooperatives as staunchly as in the past. In 2008, Lizarralde was tired and rather skeptical about his company's future. He knew he had to change gears once again, but he was unsure as to the best course to take. He wondered whether he should try to solve the problems plaguing cooperatives, revamp the company's business model or simply walk away.

Huawei has attempted to enter and acquire assets in the United States, but there are issues involved in understanding foreign market risk and the political challenges of internationalization. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) twice denied Huawei's acquisition of a U.S. computer company. Huawei had to transform its company image and reputation, changing from a Chinese company with Chinese characteristics into a global corporation equivalent to Cisco Systems or Ericsson. This case encourages students to address the issues of internationalization in an incompletely open global market, the government intervention in markets and the broader issues that arise with the geo-political and geo-economic shifts of 21st century.

Case (A) of this two-part case study describes the trials and tribulations of the protagonist Eva Cheng, Chairman of Amway (China), in her attempts to establish and to develop her company's direct sales operations in the burgeoning China market in the 1990s. Along the way, she is stymied by the passage of a State Council ban against direct selling, which affected the whole industry.