Publications

March 1993 (Revised July 2008)
Case

Liability Management at General Motors

By: Peter Tufano

An analyst at General Motors charged with managing the structure of the automaker's debt must decide whether and how to modify the interest rate exposure of the firm's most recent debt offering. The analyst must take into consideration GM's liability management policy... View Details

Keywords: Borrowing and Debt; Capital Structure; Financial Management; Interest Rates; Risk Management; Auto Industry; North America

November 1992 (Revised April 1995)
Case

Advertising Council Earth Share Campaign: Strategy, Execution, and Final Campaign

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Jayne D. Kramer

In the several years preceding 1992, there had been a dramatic rise in the public's concern for environmental issues. Yet the Roper Organization reported that fewer than one in ten Americans made personal efforts to help solve environmental problems on a regular basis.... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Campaigns; Social Marketing; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Research; Environmental Sustainability; Welfare

March 1990 (Revised October 1999)
Case

Mary Kay Cosmetics: Sales Force Incentives (A)

By: Robert L. Simons and Hilary Weston

Describes the incentive system by which Mary Kay Cosmetics motivates the sales force of 200,000 independent agents who comprise the firm's only distribution channel. Illustrates the powerful effect on sales-force behavior that results when creative types of employee... View Details

Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Cost Management; Salesforce Management; Distribution Channels; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; United States

winter 1988
Article

Management Buyouts and Managerial Efforts

By: Robert F. Bruner and Lynn S. Paine

Management buyouts, which have played an important role in the recent wave of corporate restructurings, have been criticized from several directions. This article addresses the problems created by management's conflict of interest. As members of the buyout team,... View Details

Keywords: Buyout; Ethical Decision Making; Management; Leveraged Buyouts; Ethics; Decision Making

December 1988
Article

Ordinal Independence in Non-Linear Utility Theory

By: Jerry R. Green and Bruno Jullien

Individual behavior under uncertainty is characterized using a new axiom, ordinal independence, which is a weakened form of the von Neumann-Morgcnslern independence axiom. It states that if two distributions share a tail in common, then this tail can be modified... View Details

Keywords: Preferences

Read Now

February 1987
Case

Modified Final Judgment

By: Richard H.K. Vietor

January 1983 (Revised September 1983)
Case

E.T. Phone Home, Inc.: Forecasting Business Demand

By: John F. Cady and Frank V. Cespedes

Describes a process for forecasting market demand for an emerging technology--cellular radio. The student must critically evaluate the demand model and the market estimates, and modify them as appropriate in order to develop a marketing plan and budget. View Details

Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Forecasting and Prediction; Marketing Strategy; Demand and Consumers; Business Processes; Technology

1982
Article

When Self-Descriptions Contradict Behavior: Actions do Speak Louder than Words

By: T. M. Amabile and L. Kabat

Subjects viewed two videotapes, one depicting a stimulus person's self-description and the other depicting that person's behavior in a conversation, according to a four-way factorial design personality descriptor used in the self-description ("introvert" or... View Details

Keywords: Behavior; Perception; Cognition and Thinking; Judgments