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It was May 19, 2004, and Ralf Thomas, analyst at SBU Investment Research, was reviewing the Form 40-F that one of the companies he was covering, Masonite International Corporation (Masonite), had filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Masonite was one of the world's largest manufacturers and merchandisers of doors, door components, and door entry systems, headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario. Its latest results were very good, with strong growth as well as high margins and cash flows. The company was on track to pay down debt and be well positioned to achieve the investment-grade credit rating it was coveting. But despite all this good news, Ralf had some concerns; he was wondering whether this strong performance was sustainable. He knew that earnings of building products companies were cyclical. They were generally sensitive to the state of the economy, demand for housing, consumer sentiment, sharp increases in interest rates, changes in buyers' credit terms, and rising prices of raw materials such as wood products and steel. Most economies around the world were recording full-employment and noninflationary growth rates, but real growth was so high that central banks were mooting the idea of raising interest rates. In addition, there were now concerns that there might be housing bubbles in several geographic areas. But even more worrying, the price of raw materials, like steel, had more than doubled over the last 12 months, and there were shortages, in particular in North America, Masonite's main market. If sales were to soften in an environment marked by high production costs and rising interest rates, Masonite's margins and cash flows could be under pressure. Ralf still had a "buy" rating on the stock. Was it time to change it to a "hold" or even a "sell"?

As part of an effort to radically transform the company, Wal-Mart's leaders undertake a number of sustainability initiatives, in particular the creation of a sustainable products index. If successful, the index will enable consumers to gauge the environmental impact of the products they decide to buy.

In September 2009, Troy Carter, manager of up-and-coming pop star Lady Gaga, has to decide on a new course of action now that his artist's planned co-headlining arena tour with hip-hop superstar Kanye West has been canceled. Carter knows that continuing the tour solo comes with huge risks, but scaling it back to smaller theaters or postponing the tour altogether has disadvantages as well. Making matters more complicated, Carter also has to consider the implications for Gaga's partners, including the concert promoter Live Nation and the William Morris Endeavor agency. What is the best strategy? This case is designed to help students understand the decisions that helped propel Lady Gaga into one of the entertainment world's biggest names. Written from the perspective of her manager, the case provides rich insights into the artist's touring, recorded-music, and socialmedia activities, as well as supporting economic data.

This case profiles the evolution of Teach Plus, a non-profit organization founded on the premise that in order for public schools to continuously improve urban student achievement, teaching must become a career that motivates and retains effective early career teachers. Teach Plus began as a pilot in fall 2007, launched by Celine Coggins, a former teacher and labor-management consultant, and incubated at the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In August 2009, Teach Plus became an independent 501 c3 with Coggins as CEO and Monique Burns Thompson, a social entrepreneur and former school district administrator as president. Since its inception, Teach Plus had demonstrated that its approach was effective in helping teachers to understand and directly influence policy. Through the T + Network, Teach Plus found evidence that reform-minded teachers existed in large numbers throughout urban school districts and that many were willing to share their perspectives with policymakers. Through the development of a public school turnaround initiative in Boston, Teach Plus showed that teacher-driven policy initiatives filled an important gap in the education reform landscape. By mid-2011, Teach Plus had grown to a network of more than 3,500 reform-minded teachers in five cities. While Teach Plus had reached significant scale in its first 18 months of operations, it also faced a significant strategic challenge. Moving forward, would Teach Plus best address its agenda as a "voice/advocacy" organization or as a "teacher turnaround" organization?

In 2003 Harry Pearson and James Daye established - along with three other equity partners - a boutique investment banking firm with an entrepreneurial, informal office culture that delivered high quality customer service. In so doing, they offered a streamlined compensation plan that, in their view, would directly and fairly reward their employees' performance. However, as the firm grew, some members of their staff sought a more transparent process by which to measure their progress and the associated financial benefits - as well as the possibility to acquire equity in the firm. What compensation scheme would allow Pearson and Daye to reward their valued employees without losing sight of their initial goals? And how much would the five original partners consider diluting their holdings?

Office romance has challenged sexual norms at work. Under the prevailing norms 40 years ago, a workplace affair meant a semi-clandestine liaison between a male executive (married or unmarried) and a female secretary or low-level assistant. Over the past few decades, sexual norms have become more flexible, and office romances are more likely to be out in the open. This case provides six real-life examples of office romance. In each case, students have an opportunity to consider how well the parties to the romance have conducted the relationship in a business context and what leaders could have done to manage the situation.

Between 2001 and 2011, iSoftStone Holdings Ltd. grew from a small information technology services firm operating out of Beijing with 40 employees into a global IT consulting and services company with 11,000 employees, effectively competing with established Indian outsourcing IT providers such as Tata and InfoSys. The case discusses the particular go-to-market and growth strategies of iSoftStone and its evolution as a global player. The focus of the case is on addressing how iSoftStone approached the management of its human capital and intellectual property as both the vehicle for its rapid and successful expansion and as a differentiating factor between the enterprise and its competitors. The iSoftStone story also demonstrates the importance of enterprise-wide measurement of performance and the use of lessons learned in refining internal business processes and in developing project and service delivery teams.

Barrick Gold must change from Canadian - GAAP to IFRS. Case covers the transition.

Ethiopia lacks the institutional resources to adopt full IFRS so opts for IFRS for small & medium entities.

This is a fictitious case in which Universal Studios, a major US theme parks and resorts company, has to negotiate with China's central government to build its first theme park in the country. Students are divided into groups, and each student is assigned a role as one of the negotiators or as an observer. The topics covered in the negotiation include the new theme park's location, ownership structure, size, nature of theme zones, local employment and hospitality training programmes. The case allows students to experience the difficulties of conducting negotiations in a cross-cultural setting.

Ho Chi Minh Securities Corporation (HSC) was established in April of 2003. At the time, it was the 11th securities company to be founded in the Vietnam. From the outset, HSC provided a full range of securities trading and investment banking-related services. HSC was established to help restructure SOEs and to raise capital for development projects. That is, it was founded as a joint-stock company with the largest of the original investors being the Ho Chi Minh City Investment Fund for Urban Development (HIFU). In May of 2007, the Dragon Capital Group (Dragon Capital), a UK-based fund manager that had already established a foothold in Vietnam, took on just under 30% of HSC's shares. That change in ownership structure of HSC prompted a change in the composition of the board of directors and of the management team. The new team took a range of steps to strengthen the company and help distinguish it from rivals. They articulated a set of organisational values and took steps to shape an organisational culture. They shored up the financial foundation of the firm. They deepened and broadened the expertise embedded in different departments of the company. They introduced new products and services in order to penetrate new market segments. Despite a turbulent external environment, at the end of 2008, the team charted a strategy which called for HSC to increase market share.

"The case is set in mid-2009, about six months before the scheduled worldwide launch of Microsoft Azure. The group director of cloud computing for Microsoft India is mulling over the relative merits and demerits of launching Azure simultaneously in India with the rest of the world. Cloud computing is a paradigm shift in the information technology (IT) industry that fundamentally changes the way software and services are delivered to an end-user's desktop. Cloud computing enables shared resources - software, hardware and information - to be provided to consumers on demand, charging them based on usage. Azure is Microsoft's offering in this space, providing software and infrastructure as a service and also a platform to develop new applications on a pay-per-use model. Microsoft has always made its products available to users in the traditional license model, and Azure would be a paradigm shift not only in terms of technology but also in terms of the business model - from a one-time license fee and periodical maintenance contracts to a pay-as-you-use flexible model. The director had to decide whether the nascent Indian market was ready to adopt this new technology and business model. He also had to decide which segments of the Indian industry Microsoft Azure should target. There were a lot of reasons - presence of a strong IT development community, increasing IT adoption trends across Indian industries and presence of a very big potential customer base in terms of the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) - why the Indian market looked very lucrative. On the flip side, there were concerns such as poor current IT adoption, highly rampant piracy, low-to-average availability of infrastructure (essential to the success of Azure), such as electricity and broadband penetration in India, and the unique 'do-it-for-me' attitude of the Indian businessperson, which translated to significant initial costs in terms of time and effort required to increase awareness."

The case describes the challenges that Ultimate Fighting Championship faced as a result of regulatory opposition and loss of the license to operate. The genesis of the business idea, the subsequent growth, and the fall of the UFC are described. The case concludes with Lorenzo Fertitta deciding whether to invest in the company.

In July 2007, Scripps Networks acquired Recipezaar, a user-generated recipe and cooking Website with a captive community of 2.3 million visitors. By September, Deanna Brown, president of Scripps Networks Digital, grappled with how to best integrate the recent acquisition into Scripps Networks Digital and its affiliated Website, FoodNetwork.com. Should monetization efforts trump the interests and aesthetic tastes of Recipezaar's members? Would restructuring the Recipezaar team dampen the enthusiasm of its five crucial employees and adversely affect the community they had built? What effect would a rebranding have on the community at large?

Professor Gupta faces three major problems in teaching cases: 1) his students, accustomed to lectures, don't know how to conduct a case discussion; 2) the students are using the Internet to discover the outcome of managerial dilemmas posed in the case; 3) he wants to share the theory he learned as a doctoral student, but can't figure out the appropriate way to integrate theory into the case-based discussion. He seeks advice, particularly about the students' use of the Internet.

The Nokia case provides an opportunity to explore financial policy in a situation of broad strategic change. In recent years, Nokia, the world's leading producer of mobile phones, had seen its market share and profits eroded by rival products such as Apple's iPhone and phones featuring Google's Android operating system. In February 2011, Stephen Elop, the recently appointed president and CEO of Nokia, announced a broad strategic plan and partnership with Microsoft to correct the company's course and improve its competitive position. Analysts regard the next two years as a period of great uncertainty for the company. The CFO of Nokia must reassess the firm's financial policy in light of the plan and consider its effects on the potential need for external funds, and the appropriate mix and cost of the debt or equity financing that might be used to raise those funds. Nokia, like many technology companies, often carried high cash balances to preserve financial flexibility, but in 2008 and 2009 in response to the global financial crisis it had drawn down cash to historically low levels and experienced several downgrades of its debt by major credit rating agencies. Students must evaluate the tradeoffs between maintaining cash reserves and the need for external funds and work through the implications of financing the projected need for external funds with debt or equity.

Pfeifer's Fine Olive Oil was formulated and positioned to serve as a heart-healthy, but slightly more expensive substitute for butter and margarine in cooking. With a narrow target market and growing product offerings and market potential, it was particularly important for Pfeifer's Fine Olive Oil to get the most for its limited advertising budget. The range of possible media for advertising its line of products was daunting. Would a media planning model (optimizer) that required executive judgments on several key inputs be helpful?

Volatility can emerge in any working group, particularly in a flat hierarchy with no established leader; add diversity and exhaustion to the mix, and a group is vulnerable to buckling under the pressure of its own goals. This fictional account of a contentious learning team at a business school dramatizes both the words and thoughts of the participants as frictions lead them to consider disbanding. It provides a means of discussing the nature of leadership among peers and in particular the critical but easily overlooked role of personal energy management--mental, physical, and emotional; even when the strengths of diversity are leveraged proactively, interpersonal interaction still requires a significant reservoir of positive energy, whereas its depletion can sabotage even the best of intentions.

This note explains the concept of work values, organizational culture and person-organization fit. Readers complete a personal values profile and an organizational culture profile to allow assessment of person-organization fit.

When ISS, a large shareholder advisory group, recommended a "no" vote on Jeff Immelt's award of 2 million stock options in April 2011, GE's compensation committee had to decide whether to rescind or amend the award or ignore the ISS recommendation. Was Immelt's 2010 pay in line with his performance? How would shareholders vote on the advisory "say on pay" ballot question at GE's annual meeting in April?