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Publications
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(2,852)
- Faculty Publications (513)
- May 1997 (Revised July 1997)
- Case
Vermeer Technologies (D): Making Transitions
By: Ashish Nanda
Microsoft has acquired Vermeer, and Vermeer executives are both excited and concerned as they prepare to move to Redmond. Even though the acquisition has been financially rewarding, the Vermeer engineers worry how well they will adapt to their new home. Meanwhile,... View Details
- April 1997
- Case
Peoria Engine Plant (A): (Abridged)
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Amy P. Hutton
Describes the cost control system used at an automobile engine plant for labor and overhead costs. The finance staff prepares daily, weekly, and monthly variance reports against budgets. Department supervisors, finance staff, and the plant manager discuss the use and... View Details
- February 1997 (Revised April 1998)
- Case
first direct (A)
Describes the operations and strategy of the world's largest, fastest growing branchless bank. Using a person-to-person interface over conventional phone lines, First Direct provides standard banking and related financial products to nearly 700,000 customers throughout... View Details
- January 1997
- Background Note
Assigning Support Department Expenses to Production Cost Centers (B): Flexible Budgets
By: Robert S. Kaplan
Describes the use of flexible budgets to assign support/service department costs to production cost centers. View Details
- November 1996 (Revised September 1997)
- Case
BancZero New Product Development
By: Marco Iansiti and Alberto Moel
The Mexico City office of a large U.S. bank is asked by clients to develop currency swaps, a derivative financial product. This case deals with the new product development process in financial services, and the problems and issues that are raised in product development... View Details
- March 1996 (Revised April 1996)
- Case
State Street Bank and Trust Company: New Product Development
By: Gary P. Pisano and Maryam Golnaraghi
Portrays the dilemma faced by Marsh Carter, CEO and chairman of the board of State Street Bank, in May 1995. For the past decade, the bank earned continually expanding earnings through its rapidly growing custody business. Now, as that business matures and custodial... View Details
- February 1996
- Case
Chadwick, Inc.: The Balanced Scorecard (Abridged)
By: Robert S. Kaplan
The pharmaceutical division of a diversified company has been asked to develop a Balanced Scorecard. Research and development projects take about ten years to bring a new product to the marketplace and the division depends on good relations and active feedback from its... View Details
- December 1995 (Revised February 1997)
- Case
Student Educational Loan Fund, Inc.
By: Peter Tufano
Rick Melnick oversees the Student Educational Loan Fund (SELF), which provides loans to Harvard Business School students. SELF is changing the terms of student loans from variable-rate with semiannual payments to fixed-rate loans with equal monthly payments. Melnick... View Details
- August 1995 (Revised September 1995)
- Case
Hutton Branch Manager (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Jane Palley Katz
The manager of an E.F. Hutton branch office must decide how best to approach a colleague whose aggressive and ethically problematic cash management practices have cost the branch a major institutional client. These practices had been encouraged by top management at... View Details
- May 1995 (Revised April 1998)
- Case
AT&T Paradyne
By: Robert S. Kaplan
A company making data communication devices has adopted a Total Quality philosophy for working with suppliers, employees, and customers. The finance group finds its existing cost system has become obsolete because of a shift from manual to automatic production... View Details
- April 1995 (Revised January 2003)
- Case
Anasazi Exclusive Salon Products, Inc.
By: William A. Sahlman and Jason Green
Anasazi, a hair-care products start-up based in the Midwest, is having growing pains as it tries to develop a new distribution model for the professional hair salon industry. The company has completed several rounds of venture financing but, to continue, needs to raise... View Details
- March 1995 (Revised April 1997)
- Case
Co-operative Bank, The
By: Robert S. Kaplan and Srikant M. Datar
A British bank with strong roots in the cooperative movement encounters declining profitability in an increasingly competitive and deregulated financial services industry. It attempts to grow by broadening its customer base and increasing the range of products and... View Details
- February 1995 (Revised September 1995)
- Case
The Bourland Companies
By: William J. Poorvu and John H. Vogel Jr.
Michael Bourland, the president of the Bourland Companies, needs to refinance two properties, an office building in southern New Hampshire and a retail property in Massachusetts. He is considering three alternatives: a renewal of a bank mini-perm, a 15-year mortgage... View Details
- December 1994 (Revised March 1996)
- Case
Ciba Consumer Pharmaceuticals' Acutrim: Challenges and Opportunities in Today's Diet Industry
By: Nancy F. Koehn and Rebecca Voorheis
Since its introduction in 1983, Acutrim has been a major player in the U.S. appetite suppressant market and in the broader diet industry. This case focuses on the strategic, regulatory, marketing, and financial challenges this product and the rapidly changing diet... View Details
- November 1994 (Revised February 1996)
- Case
Toy World, Inc.
By: W. Carl Kester
A shift from seasonal to level production of toys will change the seasonal cycle of Toy World's working capital needs and necessitate new bank credit arrangements. A rewritten version of an earlier case. View Details
- November 1994 (Revised November 1994)
- Case
MW Petroleum Corporation (A)
By: Timothy A. Luehrman, Peter Tufano and Barbara Wall
Amoco Corp. is negotiating to sell a wholly-owned subsidiary, MW Petroleum, to Apache Corp. MW owns large reserves of oil and gas comprising many properties at different stages of engineering, development, and production. The proposed acquisition is a large one for... View Details
- October 1994 (Revised November 1994)
- Case
Alcoma: The Strategic Use of Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice Futures
By: Ray A. Goldberg, Phil Herndon and Katherine L. Morris
Increases in orange tree production led to an orange juice surplus. How does one manage price risk in the orange juice industry under these conditions? View Details
- August 1994
- Case
Intuit, Inc.
The merger of two computer software firms with very rapidly growing non-overlapping products makes great strategic sense, but presents difficult valuation and accounting problems. How can a firm pay $225 million to acquire another firm with negligible current earnings,... View Details
- June 1994 (Revised September 1995)
- Case
Leland O'Brien Rubinstein Associates, Inc.: SuperTrust
By: Peter Tufano
Leland O'Brien Rubinstein Associates, Inc. (LOR), which profited by selling portfolio insurance to institutional investors, attempts to rebuild itself after the 1987 stock market crash by creating new products to meet the unsatisfied needs of equity investors. LOR... View Details
- June 1994 (Revised September 1994)
- Background Note
Beating the Commodity Magnet
By: V. Kasturi Rangan and George T. Bowman
All markets follow a cycle of growth and maturity, then commoditization and decline. This note argues that while commoditization of an industry may seem inevitable, the better managed firms find a way to make money in the commodity cycle. These firms know how and when... View Details