Publications

21 Jun 2017
News

Meet the Oddball Entrepreneurs Who Invented Green Businesses

August 1999 (Revised May 2001)
Case

Catanese and Vulcan (A)

By: V.G. Narayanan and Sanjay Pothen

A small CPA firm puts in a new performance measurement system, and profits increase by 350% in less than a year. This case illustrates the reasons for improved profitability as well as the sustainability of levels of growth, the opportunities, and the threats that... View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Performance Evaluation; SWOT Analysis; Profit

August 1994
Case

Higashimaru Shoyu Company, Ltd. (A): Price Control System

Illustrates how Japanese firms use profit pressures to increase efficiency. In particular, explores how pseudo profit centers create pressure on workers to increase revenues and reduce costs, and the use of semiautonomous teams in a traditional Japanese workforce. View Details

Keywords: Cost Management; Groups and Teams; Organizational Structure; Performance Efficiency; Management Systems; Japan

2010
Simulation

Marketing Simulation: Managing Segments and Customers

By: Das Narayandas

In this single-player simulation, students assume the position of CEO of a medical motor manufacturer and are tasked with executing a successful business-to-business marketing strategy over a period of twelve fiscal quarters. Students determine all aspects of the... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Salesforce Management; Distribution Channels; Price; Product Positioning; Customer Relationship Management; Profit; Revenue; Cost vs Benefits; Policy; Manufacturing Industry

September 2000 (Revised February 2007)
Case

Freeport Studio

By: Rajiv Lal and James Weber

Describes the start-up and first-year difficulties of Freeport Studio, a unit of L.L. Bean, founded in 1998 to sell women's clothing by catalog. First-year sales were far below plan, and projected profits did not materialize. Fran Philip must identify the problems and... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Profit; Growth and Development Strategy; Marketing Strategy; Strategic Planning; Problems and Challenges; Creativity

May 2000 (Revised May 2001)
Case

Debt Policy at UST Inc.

UST, Inc. is a very profitable smokeless tobacco firm with low debt compared to other firms in the tobacco industry. The setting for the case is UST's recent decision to substantially alter its debt policy by borrowing $1 billion to finance its stock repurchase... View Details

Keywords: Capital Structure; Consumer Products Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

August 2024 (Revised February 2025)
Case

Novo Nordisk Foundation

By: Debora L. Spar and Julia M. Comeau

In 2024, Novo Nordisk A/S was one of the most profitable firms in the world, thanks largely to just two GLP-1-based drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy. Unusually, this incredibly profitable firm was controlled not by individual private shareholders, but by a non-profit... View Details

Keywords: Pharmaceutical Companies; Diabetes; Obesity; Foundation; Non-profit Management; Profit; Corporate Governance; Business or Company Management; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Expansion; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Nonprofit Organizations; Pharmaceutical Industry; Denmark; Europe

17 Jul 2012
News

Tax, offshoring, and the Washington gridlock

May 2017 (Revised June 2017)
Case

ATH Technologies (A): Making the Numbers

By: Robert Simons and Jennifer Packard

An exercise that takes students through five stages of growth in an entrepreneurial start-up in the medical devices industry: 1) founding, 2) growth, 3) push to profitability, 4) refocusing process, and 5) takeover by new management. At each stage, students must... View Details

Keywords: Strategy And Execution; Management Control Systems; Balancing Innovation And Control; Performance Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Business Startups; Profit; Geographic Location; Governance Controls; Innovation and Invention; Management Succession; Performance Evaluation; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

July 1989 (Revised April 2001)
Case

Kanthal (A)

By: Robert S. Kaplan

Multinational company needs an improved cost system to determine the profitability of individual customer orders. Its strategy is to have significant sales and profitability growth without adding additional administrative and support people. The new cost system... View Details

Keywords: Cost Accounting; Earnings Management; Cost Management; Financial Management; Multinational Firms and Management; Business or Company Management; Customer Relationship Management; Sales; Business Strategy; Profit; Electronics Industry

2024
Working Paper

What Do Bank Trading Desks Do?

By: Lina Lu and Jonathan Wallen

Bank trading desks earn profits from intermediating customer trading volume. Across a broad set of asset markets, we document that the trading desks of large U.S. dealer banks behave as financial intermediaries that profit from toll-taking as in Duffie et al. (2005).... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Profit; Financial Markets

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27 Sep 2019
News

WeWork Should Never Have Been a Unicorn

September 2007
Article

Do Vertical Mergers Facilitate Upstream Collusion?

By: Volker Nocke and Lucy White

We investigate the impact of vertical mergers on upstream firms' ability to collude when selling to downstream firms in a repeated game. We show that vertical mergers give rise to an outlets effect: the deviation profits of cheating unintegrated firms are reduced as... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Profit; Game Theory; Sales; Vertical Integration

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August 2017 (Revised September 2018)
Case

Accounting Turbulence at Boeing

By: Jonas Heese, Suraj Srinivasan, David Lane and James Barnett

Unlike its rival Airbus, Boeing had used a practice called program accounting to record its commercial aircraft expenses since the 1980s. Program accounting allowed Boeing to expense estimated average costs instead of the actual production costs of an aircraft. This... View Details

Keywords: Asset Recognition; Program Accounting; Airline Industry; Accounting; Production; Cost; Air Transportation Industry

Article

How Much Does Industry Matter, Really?

By: A. M. McGahan and M. E. Porter

In this paper, we examine the importance of year, industry, corporate-parent, and business-specific effects on the profitability of U.S. public corporations within specific 4-digit SIC categories. Our results indicate that year, industry, corporate-parent, and... View Details

Keywords: Supply and Industry; Strategy