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Chinese companies have recently acquired or attempted to acquire famous firms such as IBM, Unocal, and Maytag in western markets, raising strong interest and sometimes resistance. What are the motivations behind these overseas investments? Will Chinese companies become dominant global players? What types of foreign investments will make sense and what modes of foreign entry should they use? What obstacles will they face?

Provides an overview of the Corporacion de Desarrollo Social del Sector Rural (Codesser), a nonprofit organization that was created in the 1970s to run vocational, agrarian schools in rural areas in Chile. In the years following, Codesser broadened its administrative scope by forming alliances with other nonprofits to run schools with other specializations in high school technical education, specifically industrial and cooking schools. In 2003, Codesser board members were evaluating an offer that would lead to a new business niche for their organization: buying a school (instead of just administering it) and offering elementary and college-track secondary education (instead of technical secondary education). Focuses on this decision and its implications. Requires evaluating mission coherency, organizational competencies, financial viability, and growth opportunities.

Brazil's secretary of trade and production for the Ministry of Agriculture, Pedro de Camargo Neto, has won a WTO sugar decision for Brazil against the EU sugar policies. Analyzes what this decision will mean to world food policies, especially those of the EU and the United States. The ruling strengthens the WTO as a decision maker with respect to fair trade policy. The issue is what actions will the various private and public decision makers now take to make this ruling work and not put too big a burden on any one segment of the economy.

Inventec Corp., with $4.5 billion in annual revenues, was one of Taiwan's leading original design manufacturers (ODMs). Inventec designed and manufactured electronic products such as computers, servers, MP3 players, PDAs, and cellular telephones for client companies that marketed the products globally. Inventec moved production to mainland China to lower costs in this highly competitive, low-margin business. But with its competitors also setting up shop in China, Inventec had to find another way to remain profitable. Could Inventec break its dependence on powerful clients by branding and marketing its products in China and other Asian markets? Was there a way for Inventec to separate and market the software that it designed for use with its hardware products.

Presents the corporate social responsibility initiatives of Pantaleon, a leading sugar company from Guatemala, and their relation to its competitive strategy. Since 1990, Pantaleon's management invested in projects aimed at the communities surrounding the mill, featuring educational, health-related, and environmental programs. These activities reinforced corporate strategy, which included infrastructure and agricultural practices updates, vertical integration, and internal and regional expansion of productive capacity and markets. In the second half of 2004, becoming a worldwide leading sugar mill entailed significant strategic challenges for Pantaleon's top executives. In turn, these challenges posed two problems: defining the company's position on social projects undertaken by Pantaleon Foundation and Fundazucar and analyzing the internal consistency of its competitive strategy.

Discusses the role of foreign direct investment in China as a major driver for the high growth observed in the country since 1978.

John Dooley, BioSol's vice-president of strategic research, has been making a name for himself at the biotechnology company's offices in Ireland. He's been doing so well, in fact, that the firm has offered him a promotion to director of strategy at headquarters--in California. He's lived abroad before. In the 1980s, making a living in Ireland was tough: Jobs were scarce and unemployment was high. So John and his wife, Fiona, moved to Massachusetts, where John attended MIT. They were not alone; many of their friends and family members also moved out of Ireland then. John and Fiona enjoyed their time in Boston; they became active in a large expatriate community and established reputations in their professional fields. By 1999, however, the Celtic Tiger was running at full speed. The Irish economy was booming and the whole country seemed to be bursting with possibility. When John was offered a job at BioSol's Dublin subsidiary, he and Fiona moved home and never looked back--until now. The new promotion would give his career a huge boost, but accepting it would mean uprooting his family and becoming an expat again. Ireland's economy is going strong now, but what if it doesn't last? Should John cast his lot with his country or his company? Commenting on this fictional case study in R0511A and R0511Z are Raj Kondur, the CEO of Nirvana Business Solutions in Bangalore, India; James Citrin, a senior director at Spencer Stuart in Stamford, Connecticut; Maurice Treacy, the director of biotechnology at Science Foundation Ireland in Dublin; Arno Haslberger, who teaches HR management at Webster University Vienna in Austria; and Sharman Esarey, also in Vienna, editor of the annual report of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe.

John Dooley, BioSol's vice-president of strategic research, has been making a name for himself at the biotechnology company's offices in Ireland. He's been doing so well, in fact, that the firm has offered him a promotion to director of strategy at headquarters--in California. He's lived abroad before. In the 1980s, making a living in Ireland was tough: Jobs were scarce and unemployment was high. So John and his wife, Fiona, moved to Massachusetts, where John attended MIT. They were not alone; many of their friends and family members also moved out of Ireland then. John and Fiona enjoyed their time in Boston; they became active in a large expatriate community and established reputations in their professional fields. By 1999, however, the Celtic Tiger was running at full speed. The Irish economy was booming and the whole country seemed to be bursting with possibility. When John was offered a job at BioSol's Dublin subsidiary, he and Fiona moved home and never looked back--until now. The new promotion would give his career a huge boost, but accepting it would mean uprooting his family and becoming an expat again. Ireland's economy is going strong now, but what if it doesn't last? Should John cast his lot with his country or his company? Commenting on this fictional case study in R0511A and R0511Z are Raj Kondur, the CEO of Nirvana Business Solutions in Bangalore, India; James Citrin, a senior director at Spencer Stuart in Stamford, Connecticut; Maurice Treacy, the director of biotechnology at Science Foundation Ireland in Dublin; Arno Haslberger, who teaches HR management at Webster University Vienna in Austria; and Sharman Esarey, also in Vienna, editor of the annual report of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe.

John Dooley, BioSol's vice-president of strategic research, has been making a name for himself at the biotechnology company's offices in Ireland. He's been doing so well, in fact, that the firm has offered him a promotion to director of strategy at headquarters--in California. He's lived abroad before. In the 1980s, making a living in Ireland was tough: Jobs were scarce and unemployment was high. So John and his wife, Fiona, moved to Massachusetts, where John attended MIT. They were not alone; many of their friends and family members also moved out of Ireland then. John and Fiona enjoyed their time in Boston; they became active in a large expatriate community and established reputations in their professional fields. By 1999, however, the Celtic Tiger was running at full speed. The Irish economy was booming and the whole country seemed to be bursting with possibility. When John was offered a job at BioSol's Dublin subsidiary, he and Fiona moved home and never looked back--until now. The new promotion would give his career a huge boost, but accepting it would mean uprooting his family and becoming an expat again. Ireland's economy is going strong now, but what if it doesn't last? Should John cast his lot with his country or his company? Commenting on this fictional case study in R0511A and R0511Z are Raj Kondur, the CEO of Nirvana Business Solutions in Bangalore, India; James Citrin, a senior director at Spencer Stuart in Stamford, Connecticut; Maurice Treacy, the director of biotechnology at Science Foundation Ireland in Dublin; Arno Haslberger, who teaches HR management at Webster University Vienna in Austria; and Sharman Esarey, also in Vienna, editor of the annual report of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe.

Hema Ravichandar, head of human resources, was given a new and aggressive milestone to reach: ensure Infosys is on the Top 10 lists of both Best Performing Companies and Best Employers by 2007. No large organization had ever been able to achieve this distinction because of the tension between the need to control costs for financial performance and the expenditure required for employee satisfaction. Ravichandar was aware of the humbling experiences of the past that made Infosys cognizant of the difficulties ahead as it transitioned from a small to a large company.

In October 2003, a confluence in southern California of low humidity, dead vegetation, and Santa Ana winds created the conditions for a firestorm-multiple fires that burned for some two weeks, scorched hundreds of thousands of acres, destroyed thousands of buildings, and took 24 lives. One conflagration, the Cedar Fire in San Diego County, became the largest in state history. While California boasts one of the best firefighting operations in the world, with exhaustive coordination across federal, state and local boundaries, this set of fires sent the system reeling. In the midst of operational chaos, highly placed elected officials in San Diego entered the fray with offers of military aircraft and helicopters to fight the fire-which the firefighters did not want. This case tells the story of what can happen when the operational imperative-to fight fires effectively but safely-collides with the political imperative to override established procedures as necessary to protect the public.

Explores the interactions between China and its neighbors, and considers how those interactions will change as China emerges on the world economic stage in the coming years.

Perelson Weiner LLP, a successful accounting firm in New York City, is re-evaluating its incentive strategy as it makes plans to grow its business.

In the spring of 2004, an engineering inspection revealed that a 100-year-old historic bridge had serious maintenance problems. Several options were considered including repair, removal and replacement. The director of public works for the region must present a summary of the options and his recommendations to the public works committee, which would then submit his recommendation to the council for approval.

General Motors (GM) had a history of bold strategies in a wide variety of areas, including the creation of Saturn, the development of global operations, and the formation of strategic alliances with Fiat, SAIC, and Daewoo. Nonmarket strategies included pursuing government financial assistance, coping with new environmental regulations, and agreeing to very expensive health care and pension schemes. Meanwhile, GM had failed to create strategies to compete effectively with foreign automakers. By 2005, many of GM's strategic decisions seemed to have been inappropriate. Some that were undertaken for short-term gain had disastrous long-term consequences, and GM performed poorly compared with other global automakers. Many strategies had seemed disconnected, lacking an overall vision or purpose: GM was facing a serious crisis. In 2005-2006, GM introduced several new strategies. Whether these strategies could achieve sustainable profitability, or whether they would also bring undesirable consequences, was a subject of importance to employees, shareholders, and governments throughout the world.

The entire pharmaceutical industry faced uncertain times in 2005. Many of the industry's most pressing issues-patent expirations, new drug pipeline development, price pressures, regulatory issues, and political pressures-were long standing. Fundamentally new technologies were changing the way drugs were discovered, developed, and tested, allowing smaller, specialized competitors to enter the industry, compete in new ways, and grow to challenge the majors. Some observers were even questioning whether the blockbuster model on which the industry was based could continue. Blockbuster drugs, with sales of more than $1 billion a year, were becoming increasingly difficult and costly to develop. In this context, and with stock prices depressed, the industry majors were reflecting on their strategies.

It was late on Thursday, April 22, 2004, and Jean-Francois Dehecq, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Sanofi-Synthelabo (Sanofi), France's second largest pharmaceutical company, was sitting in his office thinking about what had happened over the last three months. On January 26, 2004, he had launched a hostile tender offer to acquire Aventis, France's largest pharmaceutical company. The merger between Sanofi and Aventis would have created the world's third largest pharmaceutical company, closing the gap with U.S.-based Pfizer and U.K.-based GlaxoSmith-Kline (GSK). Jean-Francois Dehecq had offered €48.6 billion, but his offer had been rejected by Aventis's Supervisory Board. Since the end of January, Aventis had been fighting back, launching a poison pill and inviting Novartis, Switzerland's largest pharmaceutical company, to act as a white knight.

In 2005, just five years after its formal launch, Beijing-based Red Flag Software was the world's second-largest distributor of the Linux operating system and was expecting its first annual profit. On a unit basis, Red Flag led the world in desktops (PCs) shipped with Linux and was No. 4 in installed servers. On a revenue basis, Red Flag was fourth overall. Within China, Red Flag held just over half of the Linux market and ran key applications for the postal system, large state-owned enterprises, and more than a million PCs. The Chinese government supported Linux as an alternative to Microsoft's Windows operating system to avoid royalty payments to foreign firms and dependence on foreign technology. Even so, Red Flag President Chris Zhao felt the same pressure many start-ups faced: How could Red Flag compete against a giant like Microsoft? And what competitive advantages could Zhao bring to bear against an experienced Linux veteran like Red Hat, a U.S.-based software company that had just announced its plan to invest to capture market share in China? Zhao worried that government support would evaporate if Red Flag performed poorly.

Stoned fruit has quality variations, reducing consumption. Five independent growers formed a cooperative to provide quality control and a brand name--Ripe 'N Ready--that enabled retailers to differentiate their stores and producers to differentiate the products they supplied. Consumer acceptance has been high. The issue is how to expand the concept without adversely affecting the original users of the product. Also, what new kinds of competition are they creating?

The New Business Development unit is part of DSM, a Dutch globally operated chemical company. The unit looks for promising new ideas to develop into start-up businesses. Stamypor is a new project that the New Business Development unit is working on and the team leader of the project must decide whether it should be developed into a start-up company.