Category: Enterprising Mind

Men's Wearhouse

Men’s Wearhouse Case Study

This article discusses a Case Study from the Stanford Graduate School of Business that is subtitled: Success in A Declining Industry. The founder, George Zimmer, opened his first store back in 1973, at a time when competitors were closing their doors. From opening to the time of the article (1997) the Men’s’ Wearhouse enjoyed 30% […]

Harvard Business Review

Harvard Business Review Case Study—The Layoff

This case study presents a fictitious scenario about a company facing the prospect of laying off 10% of its workforce then follows with recommendations from three experts. The 10% workforce reduction was presented as a requirement to “keep profits in line with Wall Street’s expectations”. Should early retirements be forced? Should a performance-based layoff of […]

Level 5 Leadership

From an article in the Harvard Business Review, January 2001 by Jim Collins The author conducted a five year research project aimed at answering the question: “What catapults a company form merely good to truly great?” The study started out not as a study of leaders, and even specifically tried to study the company not […]

Dean’s Disease

Comments on an article from the Academy of Management Learning and Education, 2002, vol. 1, No.2, 164-173 This article illustrates an example, from the world of academia, of how power changes us. Although the example is from the college campus, a version of “dean’s disease” (let us call it “boss’s disease”) certainly occurs in the […]

Harvard Business Review

HBS Case Studies: 1) Diamonds in the Data Mine and 2) Gary Loveman and Harrah’s

These two “Best Practice” Case Studies are good examples of “Evidence-Based Management”, as opposed to intuition-based management. Harrah’s was a company that seemed to be focused on the right things and some of the lessons that can be gleaned from these case studies are in the paragraphs that follow. Gary Loveman was a Harvard professor […]

Good to Great, or Just Good?

In this article Niendorf and Beck, of University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh content that due to two fatal errors, arguably one of the most influential business books ever written, Good to Great, provides no evidence that applying the five principles, of the book, to other firms or time periods will lead to anything other than average […]