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In 2003, PNC Financial focused its corporate citizenship and philanthropic resources on a ten-year, $100 million investment in early childhood education called PNC Grow Up Great. The case tracks the origination of Grow Up Great, how it was developed and implemented within PNC, and some of the key challenges and successes of the program during its first 5 years of operation. Key elements of the case are the process by which PNC decided to focus on Grow Up Great as its signature program, and how the program was designed to provide extensive volunteering opportunities for employees. The case also explores how PNC leadership has engaged in extensive advocacy on the issue of early childhood education. The branding and marketing issues associated with Grow Up Great and how it fits in PNC's organizational structure are also highlighted in the case. =

In 2006, amidst shareholder upset over CEO Robert Nardelli's compensation and Home Depot's declining stock price, Relational Investors decided to further investigate the situation. As experts in turning around underperforming and undervalued companies, Relational's principals saw opportunities for Home Depot to improve its stock price through changes in strategy, corporate governance and capital allocation. In particular, Relational felt Nardelli's growth plan for the company had caused the decline in the stock price. Relational decided to invest in Home Depot and intended to initiate a proxy fight if the board did not reassess the company's strategy. Shortly thereafter, Nardelli left Home Depot and the board offered Relational a board seat. This case describes Relational's analysis of the problems at Home Depot, why they decided to invest, and how they went about getting their recommendations implemented.

This case was written as the financial accounting portion of the final exam for a first-year MBA course at Harvard Business School. The goal was to test students' ability to apply major concepts taught during the course to an industry which they had not covered, but which shared similarities in terms of economics with issues addressed in the curriculum. The company, Tokyo Auto Fire & Marine (hereafter Tokyo AFM), is a fictitious insurance company based in Japan. The new CEO is revisiting the accounting choices of his predecessors in light of changes in the economic environment of the firm. The case can also be taught as a review session.

The chairman of Taiwan-based Polaris Securities Co. Ltd. (Polaris Securities), announced approval of Polaris' investment plans in Singapore, Vietnam and Abu Dhabi. The chairman's name was known in Taiwan as synonymous with innovation and entrepreneurship. He had experienced great success in launching an information technology strategy and related complementary assets for online stock trading and online transactions. With a prominent performance, the chairman had made Polaris Securities stand out conspicuously in Taiwan's securities market. He also copied Polaris Securities experiences, such as computational finance, trading platform and customer service, to Polaris Securities (Hong Kong) Ltd. (Polaris Securities HK) to expand his business scope. The chairman contemplated whether Polaris Securities and Polaris Securities HK experiences could be duplicated in Singapore, Vietnam and Abu Dhabi.

Lantian Stock was China's first state-owned agricultural enterprise to have gone through the corporatization reform in mid 90's. Since its listing in 1996, Lantian Stock had recorded a dazzling performance in its financial statements. However, in October 2001, its resplendent image was smashed by an academic researcher, Liu Shuwei with her powerful 600-word article that pointed out the liquidity crisis of Lantian Stock. Consequently, all banks in China refused to extend loans to the company. Meanwhile, Liu faced defamation prosecution brought up by the company who initially denied the allegation. The defamation charge was dropped eventually as the Chinese regulators began to unveil the hidden truth that Lantian Stock had indeed involved in misreporting and perpetrating accounting fraud. Chinese media also dug up the controversial background, mythical tales and the previous fraud record of Lantian Stock. Since Liu could uncover the misstatement based on some basic financial ratio analysis, she remained skeptical about why such wrongdoings had not been discovered by related parties earlier. Alternately, the auditing or CPA firm of Lantian Stock commented that the fraud was undetectable as it had gone far beyond what CPAs could discover from its required procedure, and blamed it on the Chinese environment that was conducive to accounting fraud. Was the circumstance of Lantian Stock scandal as what the CPA had claimed?

The chairman of Taiwan-based Polaris Securities Co. Ltd. (Polaris Securities), announced approval of Polaris' investment plans in Singapore, Vietnam and Abu Dhabi. The chairman's name was known in Taiwan as synonymous with innovation and entrepreneurship. He had experienced great success in launching an information technology strategy and related complementary assets for online stock trading and online transactions. With a prominent performance, the chairman had made Polaris Securities stand out conspicuously in Taiwan's securities market. He also copied Polaris Securities experiences, such as computational finance, trading platform and customer service, to Polaris Securities (Hong Kong) Ltd. (Polaris Securities HK) to expand his business scope. The chairman contemplated whether Polaris Securities and Polaris Securities HK experiences could be duplicated in Singapore, Vietnam and Abu Dhabi.

The Stitch It Group (Stitch It) is a mall-based clothing alteration service. Having previously sold Stitch It to its current owners in 1990 (retaining the chief executive officer (CEO) position), the founder and CEO was presented with an opportunity in 2003 to repurchase the company. Having originally sold the business because he was too cash-strapped to grow it himself, Stitch It had since grown from three store locations to 84 stores under three brand names spread throughout Canada and the United States. In determining whether to buy back the firm he founded, the founder and CEO also needed to consider his daughter Jennifer's expressed interest in becoming an executive in the firm. How would he provide Jennifer with the proper technical training to become familiar with all aspects of the firm's business, and improve her business acumen and leadership skills? The founder and CEO had one week to inform the owners of his intent to purchase and he felt it was a good deal, considering the opportunity for growth. Even if the founder and CEO resolved to buy back his company, he wondered how to train Jennifer to take over the business one day.

Kimberly-Clark in the Andean region had hit a performance plateau. Five years prior, Sergio Nacach had taken over as general manager for the region and had embarked on a cultural transformation to build a winning culture centered on the people who worked for the organization. This case explores what he did and the context within which he did it. Similar to other cases on high commitment work arrangements, but set in a non-U.S. context, the case discusses organizational cultural change, the extent to which high performance work practices generalize across settings, and what made the Andean region a particularly receptive place for this management approach. The case also raises the issues of how to keep the enthusiasm going and the extent to which this transformation depended on a particular individual and his personal style.

Kevin Reilly, at forty-six years old, had one of his first television executive experiences in the drama department at NBC, had―like many others―experienced his fair share of drama. What he described as the "three toughest years of my career" were at NBC when he served as entertainment president from 2003 to 2007. Reilly had re-joined NBC, after having originally worked his way up the executive ladder there from 1988 to 1994. He joined the second time around, just as NBC- which had a record ratings and profit run in the mid-90's to 2001-had begun a downward spiral brought about by a long development drought. In a little over a month, Reilly became the President of Entertainment at the top-rated Fox network. Fox Entertainment Chairman Peter Liguori, Reilly's former boss at the FX Network (a Fox-owned cable network), approached Reilly about the prospect of gaining a chance to "do over" his experience at NBC. Reilly had worked with Liguori at FX (from 2000 to 2003), where Liguori had been chairman and Reilly entertainment president. This time around, Liguori hired Reilly to oversee all programming responsibilities for FOX Broadcasting Company. Reilly started at Fox in July 2007 but nearly four months later, he faced a writers' strike, which hobbled the entertainment industry for most of the year, ending just as the nascent signs of the severe economic downturn had already begun to taken shape. Despite such challenges, Reilly pushed forward, doing what he had done throughout his career, which was to challenge the system, question convention, and find and develop hit shows that appealed to general audiences and critics alike.

This brief case narrative tells the story of how a few people managed to wring consensus from over 40 of their neighbors on repaving a shared driveway. While there was general agreement that the driveway, which ran behind their buildings, was in poor shape, there was little impetus to do something about it, in large part because of the daunting task of organizing a large and disparate group of residents, who had hitherto shown little interest in working together on common goals. The case describes the barriers to mobilization in the Maple Lane neighborhood, and the tactics used to maneuver around them. HKS Case Number 1902.0

Based on their use of a shared computer and the Internet ads that keep popping up, two co-workers suspect that another co-worker is HIV-positive or has AIDS. Using this story platform, the case explores Internet marketing, especially the powerhouse search engine Google and how it tracks its users' habits. The history of Google is chronicled, as well as the privacy issues that have mushroomed as the Internet and its technology have developed.

Washington Mutual issued 6 billion Euro of covered bonds in 2006. The objective of the case is to ask whether these bonds are mispriced in late 2008. The case is set in September 2008, and Washington Mutual is facing considerable distress due to mounting losses on its mortgage portfolio. Following investment bank Lehman Brother's Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing in mid September, the price of Washington Mutual's covered bonds has fallen to 75 per 100 of face value. As these bonds are overcollateralized, the case asks students to evaluate the underlying collateral portfolio in the event of liquidation, as well as assessing the likelihood of different outcomes. The case takes place during a period of considerable uncertainty in the global capital markets.

Barbara Norris struggles to address the many problems facing her as a recently promoted nurse manager in the General Surgery Unit (GSU) at Eastern Massachusetts University Hospital (EMU). She has inherited a unit with the lowest employee satisfaction scores and highest employee turnover rate among all of the departments at EMU. Furthermore, her new unit was infamous for its culture of confrontation, blaming and favoritism. The staff that has remained is dissatisfied, unmotivated and not functioning as a team to deliver patient care. In fact, GSU's patient satisfaction scores, although average, had been declining steadily over the past few years. Barbara has been asked by EMU'S Director of Nursing to turn the unit around in the midst of an economic crisis and deep cost-cutting measures throughout the hospital. Where and how should she begin?

The Guardian had been an early innovator in online newspapers and had not only become the leading U.K. newspaper web site, but was making strides with audiences outside of the U.K. However, The Guardian had been losing money since 2000, and, in spite of the relative success of the website, online revenue remained less than 20% of the newspaper's total revenue. What changes would The Guardian have to make to sustain its mission of being "the world's leading liberal voice in perpetuity?"

Dennis Kozlowski took over the helm of Tyco International, Ltd. (Tyco) in 1992. By the end of its 2001 fiscal year, Kozlowski's Tyco had made over 100 announced acquisitions with total revenues in excess of $30 billion (Exhibit 1). Kozlowski's strategy, called "growth on growth," fueled Tyco's aggressive approach toward acquisitions and took the company from just over $3 billion of sales in 1992 to $36 billion in 2001. Investors supported Tyco's strategy as evidenced by the tenfold increase in Tyco's stock price over the same period (Exhibit 2). Analysts also lauded Tyco, issuing reports with titles like, "The Proof Is in the Great Numbers! Buy." But was the proof really there? This case describes Tyco Corporation's mergers and acquisitions activity from its founding through the Kozlowski era. In particular, it focuses on accounting practices used in concert with M&A activity that served to manipulate Tyco's earnings. It goes into detail regarding the CIT acquisition.

This case takes an in-depth look at the events and causes leading to the U.S. government bailout of American International Group. Source material includes testimony before Congress, AIG's public disclosures and various news articles. The case tells the history of AIG, its Financial Products division and credit default swaps. The case then highlights several external and internal factors cited by management, experts and the press as having a role in AIG's failure. These factors include AIG's governance, compensation and risk management policies, as well as the roles played by the rating agencies, accounting standards (specifically mark-to-market accounting) and regulation.

In summer 2008, the Nashville Predators' management team was considering the strategy behind marketing the team. They thought it prudent to investigate the feasibility of opportunities in other hockey markets throughout North America, should a new owner want to move the team. Management had to consider both financial returns and on-ice success. They needed to create a comprehensive strategy, starting from a recommended location, and moving through specific recommendations on promotions, pricing and customer focus. To help create their strategy, the management team performed the following: developed a comprehensive tactical marketing plan, including income projections; identified the marketing challenges of operating in very different markets; recognized that the choice of a city location largely constrained the remaining decisions and tactics. Using this information, the management team could now identify their next steps, and what future plans should include.

The new outsider-dominated board of directors of China's state-owned Baosteel Group must decide whether to modify the Group's structure. With the completion of a pending acquisition, the Group will control four publicly listed steel-producing subsidiaries, and board members are concerned about competition among the subsidiaries and about the subsidiaries' public shareholders. Selected by the Chinese government as the first company to take part in a pilot project on corporate governance in state-owned enterprises, Baosteel and its board are under intense scrutiny by Chinese and overseas investors in the listed subsidiaries as well as by China's political leadership and the media. The case provides background on Baosteel, China's SOE reform, the Chinese government's pilot project on corporate governance, and the functioning of Baosteel's newly constituted board of directors.

Powerchip Semiconductor Corporation has a horizontal firm structure in an industry that is predominantly organized vertically. While it has been successful in up markets, in the current down market its strategic rationale was being tested. As a capital intensive manufacturer of DRAMs that had to license its designs from abroad, was it able to compete with large vertically integrated firms who controlled the whole value chain? How did its approach compare to that of its partner Elpida? Can Powerchip and Elpida together make up a "virtual integrated device manufacturer?" The case examines some of the unique characteristics of the DRAM industry, in which manufacturers employ large scale to compete on cost in the production of standardized commodities.

Describes the Spine Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, a multidisciplinary unit that offers patients suffering from spinal problems "one-stop" access to a range of providers including orthopedic surgeons, neurosurgeons, neurologists, medical specialists in physical medicine and pain management, mental health providers, and occupational and physical therapists. The Center was created to address what its founder, James Weinstein, M.D., saw as the uncoordinated and inefficient delivery of spinal care in the United States. The Center emphasized using non-surgical treatments (e.g., physical therapy and exercise, behavioral modification, pain-relieving drugs) as either a complement to, or substitute for, surgical procedures, and patients were actively engaged in the process of determining what type of care to pursue. In addition, Weinstein and his staff collected data from the Center's clinical practice to conduct academic research on the outcomes and cost-effectiveness of various approaches to treatment. The case allows for a critical analysis of the Spine Center's unique approach to care delivery and provides an opportunity to examine the applicability of this model in other clinical areas.