Living Social started with one “daily deal,”

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Question Preview: Living Social started with one “daily deal,” a $25 voucher for $50 worth of food at a Washington, D.C., area restaurant. Since then, the company has grown at breakneck speed, has 46 million members in 25 countries, and has acquired a dozen companies that offer related deals and services. Why and how might […]

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Discuss the potential value of crisis planning

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Question Preview: Some people say an organization could never be “prepared” for a disaster such as the shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater, the Japan nuclear disaster, or the huge BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Discuss the potential value of crisis planning in situations like these, even if the situations are […]

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Goals that are overly ambitious can discourage employees

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Question Preview: Goals that are overly ambitious can discourage employees and decrease motivation, yet the idea of stretch goals is proposed as a way to get people fired up and motivated. As a manager, how might you decide where to draw the line between a “good” stretch goal and a “bad” one that is unrealistic? […]

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a growing regional marketing and corporate communications firm

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The Spitzer Group76 Irving Silberstein, marketing director for the Spitzer Group, a growing regional marketing and corporate communications firm, was hard at work on an exciting project. He was designing Spitzer’s first word-of-mouth campaign for an important client, a manufacturer of beauty products. In a matter of just a few years, word-of-mouth advertising campaigns morphed […]

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Strategic thinking involves a mental blueprint that includes a desired future

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Strategic Thinking Blueprints74 Strategic thinking involves a mental blueprint that includes a desired future, ways to achieve that future, and specific actions needed to arrive at that future. The strategic thinking blueprint can apply to a company, a department, or an individual. Strategic thinking can be developed through work experiences in addition to formal study. […]

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rock-bottom pricing and razor-thin profit margins helped the company maintain its position

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Costco: A Different Path77 In 2010, Costco’s reputation for rock-bottom pricing and razor-thin profit margins helped the company maintain its position as the nation’s fourth-largest retailer and the number one membership warehouse retailer, with 572 stores (425 in the United States), 142,000 employees, and 55 million members. Sales reached $76 billion, up 9.1 percent, reflecting, […]

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International Consulting designs, installs, and implements complex back-office software systems for companies all over the world

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The No-Show Consultant Jeffrey Moses was facing one of the toughest decisions of his short career as a manager with International Consulting. Andrew Carpenter, one of his best consultants, was clearly in trouble, and his problems were affecting his work. International Consulting designs, installs, and implements complex back-office software systems for companies all over the […]

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a written exam should be given to all candidates for promotion to supervisor

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The New test67 The Civil Service Board in a midsize city in Indiana decided that a written exam should be given to all candidates for promotion to supervisor. A written test would assess mental skills and would open access to all personnel who wanted to apply for the position. The board believed a written exam […]

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a sea change in green energy.

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Part One: an introduction to Management The Clean-Energy Future Is Now As Green Car Journal prepared to publish its much-anticipated “Green Car of the Year” edition for 2012, audiences might have expected a tribute to the Toyota Prius, Nissan Leaf, or another innovation in electric motoring. Instead, the panel of environmental and automotive experts assembled […]

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policies and models and all of that touchy-feely people stuff is the lifeblood of HR

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More hassle from hR? In their three years at Vreeland Pharmaceuticals, Vitorio Nuños and Gary Shaw had rarely crossed paths, and they had exchanged no more than a dozen sentences. But here they were, seatmates on a plane headed to company headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri. And suddenly, they had a lot to say to […]

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