North-South University

School of Business

Cases

Submitted by:Tihan Mahdeen

Tarannum Talha Choudhury
B M Javed
Shuvo Raj Bhatta
George Frank Nelson

Submitted to:Ms. Dilara Afroz Khan(DAK)

Date:-5th April ,2012

Case 1:Behavioral Science

083088030
093082130
0910829030
083435030
0910750030

Case 1
Case 2
Case 3
Case 4
Case 5

Name:-Tihan Mahdeen

ID-083088030
Mgt489.4
Submitted to - Ms. Dilara Afroz Khan

Summary:
Behavioral science offers new insights into better service management. For years, behavioral and
cognitive scientists have studied how people experience social interactions, from judgments, and
store memories. Their findings tell us how customers experience the passage of time and also
helps us to understand how customers interpret an event after its over.

In any service encounter perception is reality. That is how customer interprets the encounter.
Behavioral science can help us to overcome the complex processes involved in the formation of
those perceptions.

Three effects that illustrates how people behaves:

Sequence Effects: According to behavioral scientist, when people recall an experience, they
dont remember every bit of it. Rather they just remember the snapshots and carry on to give an
overall assessment of the experience based on three factors: the trend in the sequence of pain or
pleasure, the high and low points and the ending. Not surprisingly people prefer a sequence of
experience that improve over time. For example: when gambling people prefer to loose $10 first,
then win $5, instead of wins $5 first then lose $10.

Duration Effects: psychologist and cognitive scientist have spent enormous of time on revealing
the mysteries of how people process time. When do they pay attention to the passage of time, and
how do they estimate its duration? However many of the mystery remain unrevealed. One
finding has verified that when people are mentally engaged in to a task they dont notice how
long it takes. Another is that, when prompted to pay attention to the passage of time, people
overestimate the time elapsed. Third finding is that increasing the number of segments in an
encounter lengthens its perceived duration.

Since perceptions of times passage are so subjective, the obvious question is, when does
duration matter? Research indicates that unless an activity is much longer or much shorter than
expected, people pay little attention to its duration. There are two reasons for this. First, the
pleasurable content of the experience and how it is arranged rather than how long it takesseems to dominate peoples assessment. Second, aside from one-off transactions such as buying a
cup of coffee, service encounters are rarely identical in length, so people have only general
reference points for evaluating duration.

Rationalization Effects: People desperately want thing to make sense; if theres no explanation
for an unexpected event, they will create one. Which behavioral scientist call counterfactual
thinking or second-guessing.

People second-guess because they want one clear reason for why something has happened. In
their mental simulation they try to capture the specific what-ifs: if only X hadnt happened,
things would be different. Three characteristics stand out in this simulation. First, they view the
likely causes as a discrete thing, not a continuous, intertwined process. Second, people often
conclude that deviations from rituals and norms caused the unexpected outcome. Third, people
tend to ascribe credit or blame to individuals, not system.

Several operating principles for service encounter management emerge from behavioral
science findings.

Principle 1: Finish Strong

Most service providers believe that beginning and end of an encounter are equally weighted in
the eyes of the customer. Theyre dead wrong. The end is far more important because its what
remains in the customers recollections.

Peoples innate preference for improvement is another factor in this principle. We believe that the
desire for improvement applies not only to lengthy encounters but also to short, technologymediated encounters such as on a web site. Most companies spends heavily on their homepage to
make it attractive and user friendly so that people can enter and engage with the site easily. On
the other hand, websites that are complicated will go downhill fast as the messy final experience
far more clearly than the jazzy, supposedly sticky homepage. Therefore, if the end result is
satisfactory then it will have disproportionate effect on customers recollections.

Principle 2: Get the bad experiences out of the way Early.

Behavioral science tells us that, in a sequence of events involving good and bad outcomes,
people prefer to have undesirable events come first so they can avoid dread and have desirable
events come at the end of a sequence- so they can savor them. In professional services,
unpleasantness comes in the form of bad news. Most people want bad news brought to their
attention right away. Likewise service provider dread delivering bad news, so they delay it until
the last possible moment. This is exactly wrong thing to do. Get the bad news and other
unpleasant things out of the way as soon as possible so they dont dominate the customers
recollection of the entire experience.

Principle 3: Segment the Pleasure, Combine the Pain

As we noted earlier, experiences seem longer when they are broken into segments. People have
uneven reaction to losses and gains. For example: compare winning $10 in one gamble with
winning $5 twice. Most of us would prefer to win twice. What about losing $10 in one game
compared with losing $5 in each of two gambles? Here, most people prefer only one loss. Thats
why companies should break pleasant experience into multiple stages and combine unpleasant
ones into a single stage.

Principle 4: Build Commitment Through Choice

People are happier and more comfortable when they have some control over a process,
particularly an uncomfortable one. Often the control handed over is largely symbolic. For
example: Customers were complaining to the Xerox machine servicing company that repairs
didnt happen quickly enough. At first, the company decided to hire more repair personnel, but
later it decided to give customers more choice over the schedule. It let them determine the
urgency of the problem service people would arrive faster for a critical failure than for a less
urgent one. As expected, this improved customer satisfaction, but what surprised the company
was that fewer repair people were needed. The change also reduced turnover of customer service.
Generally allowing customers to pick up their desirable schedule would require more personnel.
Here, however, customers actually wanted choice more than they wanted an instantaneous
response.

Principle: 5 Give People Rituals, and Stick to Them.

Most service provider doesnt realize how ritualistic people are. They find comfort, order, and
meaning in repetitive, familiar activities. Rituals are particularly important in longer-term.
Common rituals include glowing introductions of staff at the start of an engagement, kickoff
dinners, elegant PowerPoint presentations, final celebrations, and formal presentations to the

CEO (even if the CEO is not interested about the project). Behavioral researchers have observed
that these rituals provide an implicit standard for evaluating service standard. Ultimately only
one thing really matters in a service encounter the customers perceptions of what occurred.
Behavioral science, applied with equal doses of empathy and imagination, can improve service
delivery. More important, it can change the impressions that your customers remember, refer
back to, and pass on to future customers.

Strategic Implementation:
This case is very essential for people studying business or managing or running a business. This
case will provide invaluable information regarding the behavior of customers.

A business only survives when there is demand for its product or service it offers. And to create
demand it has to grab customer. Grabbing customers means understanding customers
perception. This case illustrates how customer behaves. The five principle explains what should
be done to gain customer loyalty. The principle gives clear idea that can be implemented by an
organization to increase its loyal customers.

Further more, the three effects also provides in depth knowledge about how people behaves and
teaches the skill to create customer retention.

Overall, this case is very essential for strategic implementation of the skills to understand
customer perception.

Case 2:-Common Sense and conflict

Name:-Tarannum Talha Choudhury

ID-0930821030
Mgt489.4
Submitted to - Ms. Dilara Afroz Khan

Summary:
Michael Eisner, CEO and chairman of Disney say, conflict and common sense yield creativity.
And in Business no matter what business creativity has a way of cleaning up the balance
sheet and making the income statement shine very brightly.
This case talks about how Disney has been successful by using creativity and common sense.

This case states that innovation happens when people have the freedom of speech. In an
organization if people have the freedom of speech they will speak their minds, say what they
thinks and eventually will come up with an innovative idea. If people can say whatever they
want they will challenge, cajole and provoke an idea to make it better.

Innovation comes out of environment where everybody can say whatever he or she wants and
usually by creating environment for supportive conflict. This environment has to be the culture
of the organization not an environment that is inherited. Eisner believe in freedom of speech and
thats why he has implemented three concepts for ideas to be generated. The gong show,
where once a week everybody is invited to the conference room and any one could offer an idea
or two and right on the spot everybody would react. Second concept he uses is the charettes,
these are meetings with the architects and the theme park designers. He thinks, everybody has
different taste regarding style, size and color. So these meetings can take on event stature. And
third, movie development meetings, where everybody stays in a room for ten to twelve hours.
Here basically everybody does anything they want i.e. the younger executives wants to impress

the older executives. The shy executives want to be shy. The loquacious executives dominate the
room and finally in the last hour ones come up with an idea and everybody cooperates.

To be creative diversity is the main thing needed. Diversity does not only mean people of
different skin colors or ethnic group. The more diverse an organization is the more opinion gets
expressed. However, we also have to keep in mind the cost associated with the creative thought.
Being creative is being discipline and maintaining the time limits. Doing something for infinite
amount of time does not always make it creatively better.
Eisner believes the magic to success is to have common sense that is clear and hard-ended.
Having just an idea is not enough. We have to taste them and subject them to a reality check.
Common sense can help an organization without changing its strategic direction. Eisner thinks a
leader has four roles: youve to be an example, youve got to be there, youve got to be motivator
and youve to be an idea generator.

Michael Eisner believes there is no exact formula for leadership. Leadership style varies by
industry, by person, by the people you are leading. In a creative person, just as in a creative
company, you have to have creativity and as well as common sense side-by-side, inseparable.

Strategic implementation:
This case is very essential for people studying business or managing or running a business. This
case will provide invaluable information regarding the success of a company and also the tools
needed to be successful. Strategic management teaches the basics of management and strategic
formulation & implementation. Although all these are not the only things required for being
successful. However, being successful also involves being creative and being business acumen.
That is using common sense.

This case provides an in depth information on how the CEO of Disney, Michael Eisner, used
creativity and common sense to make Disney a successful company.

There are some real life example to illustrate the fact that how creativity helped Disney. For
example: a loose environment gave Eisner to create an environment where people are not afraid
to speak whatever they want. This freedom of speech gave birth to many innovative ideas. Also,
the three concept used by Eisner can be a good lesson for management students. Basically he
believes in cooperation learning.
Further more, to take management decision as termed by Eisner; he used common sense that is
clear and hard ended. Because when making a smart decision at work, it is very rare that the
decision is based solely on data and research reports. He also thinks common sense is inherited.
it comes from how you have been raised, your education, your talent, and your character.
Overall this case would be very beneficial for management students as they can learn these skills
and implement it in their decision making process. Also, they can adapt the character to improve
their common sense.

Case 3:-The strategic power of saying no

Name:-B M Javed Bin Gofram

ID-0910829030
Mgt489.4
Submitted to - Ms. Dilara Afroz Khan

Case Summary

Early Life of Susan Bishop

Susan Bishop started her career as an actor in the late 1960s while she was in New York. She
took this career for about five years. In 1973 she left New York for Alaska and stayed in the city
of Anchorage over seven years. There she worked as a host of a daily two-hour talk show on
Anchorages ABC affiliate. After two years of working there, she and her husband established a
microwave distributed live pay TV channel. Two years after that launching when the cable
companies came to look for operators they won the franchise for the city and then they
established the states first multiple-station cable television system.

In 1980 she came back to New York with the experience of running a cable TV station and got a
job at an executive search firm which had started a broadcasting and cable TV division. Within a
year she became a partner of that firm. She worked there for next six years and made great
contributions to the organizations media and entertainment search business.

As she thought the company was growing too fast and also became aware of the fact that they
were devaluing the employees, she left the job. And then with some of her old colleagues, she
founded a new search firm called Bishop Partners.

Bishop Partners - The Beginning

At the start, Bishop Partners primarily stated its future standing as to be the best boutique search
firm of the country in these sectors: television, radios and publishing industries. They wanted to

outcompete their market rivals through superb execution, therefore, decided to say YES to every
client.

Soon, Susans partners started to grab as much clients as they could regardless of types and
convenience which included some very difficult and lengthy searches. One of those jobs was
done more quickly than it should be, against all the inconvenience to the firm. Another client
wanted an American fresh MBA graduate to fill a position in Indonasia. The firm could not find
anyone interested in the job and failed to complete the search.

In 1992, Susan brought out all of her partners and her business suddenly went small in terms size
of the employees. But she continued to follow her old business model.

Three Wrong Assumptions

In her opinion, there were three wrong assumptions that she believed in that time.

Always delight the customers no matter what.

It was an ongoing tradition in the business world and Susan also thought it as appropriate
to follow by not giving more importance in firms convenience.
In that time a trait for female persons was to take every request and solve no matter how
difficult it is. As most of the employees of Bishop Partners were female, this
characteristic also lied within them. The assumption was, by doing the most difficult
tasks; one would be the one of the bests.
As there were not many clients for them, they would not want to turn down whoever they
found or dissatisfy them.

Going with Wrong Assumptions

By following these three assumptions, they kept saying YES and got even larger in terms of
revenue and the size of the employees. They even got to be one of the major executive search
firms of CocaCola. Also clients like Dollywood, Nostalgia Network and Discovery Chanel
enhanced their experience and success rate. Even though, their profit margin was very low. It
rarely rose above 15% whereas 30%-40% would be a good sign.

But they kept taking clients randomly which also generated frustration and tiredness among the
employees because of lengthy and difficult search jobs. Other than the prestigious clients, the
most common ones actually damaged their profit margin. For example, one of those wanted
Bishop Partners to find a very highly capable person for CEO position with a problematic job
description. They also paid half the amount of current scale and it took eight long months to find
a suitable candidate.

The Turning Point

After coming back to New York from Susans first OPM (Owner/President Manager) program at
Harvard Business School, she decided to define her business that her firm was in as well as the
customers. The following definition was the one she came up with.

Bishop Partners is dedicated to excellence in providing executive search consulting to the

information, communication, and entertainment industries, including both product and service
companies in cable, broadcasting, publishing, new media and technology (1997)

When she learned the fact that none of her employees were aware of the distinct competence of
the firm, consulting, she realized the mistake she had made. The firm was more thinking of
satisfying customers rather than the profit. Saying YES to every client to everything had led her
company to this position, she realized. Hence after having weeks of intense conversations with
the employees she knew that she had to do some tough redefining work.

New Business Model

All the conversation came to one point. They needed to choose the right client instead of making
the clients happy. They realized that this would enhance expertise in certain fields which would
increase the reputation in the long run and also would lead to more business. The made the
following criteria which defined their desired clients.

1
2
3

4
5
6

Industries that they will work in: television, publishing, radio, new media and
entertainment. Other than these would not be considered.
They would work only with filling senior level executive positions. The range of fee was
restated from $30,000 - $40,000 with a commission of 33%.
Clients would be the ones which were large enough or fast growing enough to offer
similar search jobs in the near future.
a Economic Point of View: Searching for same organization is much cheaper.
b Strategic Point of View: If the organizations culture is already known, it will take
less time to search and also this would enhance the business relationship.
To analyze all the required information the firm and the client would need to collaborate.
Unless the job description of the open position and the offer itself is realistic the firm
would not take it.
Companies which received bad press for business or fiscal improprieties would not be
taken as clients.

Applying the New Business Model

One of the employees, Don Zinn, turned down Sprint - a telecommunication company because it
offered to search for four mid-level managers even though the payment met the range. After two
weeks they again offered a senior level search with less pay than the previous. Don took the offer
which then was conducted in a shorter time than would have required for the previous offer to
complete. It was the first experience of saying the right thing according to the new business
model. The next one was of CocaCola which fell out from the new criteria. They turned
CocaColas offer down as well but the decision was proven right when more good offers came
from other companies later, even from Coke.

On to Employees
For sake of the business and also for the new model to be effective, Susan needed to lay off four
employees as they did not meet the new required criteria even after working in the firm for many
years and hire new ones instead. As she laid them off few other valuable employees also
resigned. But she stuck to her plan. She also made strict employee rules which never had existed
since the birth of the firm. The chain of command also got longer which helped the employees to
be more effective.
Then she recruited new, experienced and knowledgeable people who could enhance the
workforce of the firm. Eventually she wanted and also had to raise the pay scale which silent the
disturbance among employees.

Training the employees by sending them in different programs was also a part of restructuring
process.

For all these activities, expectations from the employees got higher than ever. She also started
using information system which she never had, to monitor every single detail of company.

Within all these professionalism, Susan also tried to keep the employees emotionally and
financially happy.

Final Words
Even after redefining and all, it was still hard for them to turn down offers that promised high fee
but not meeting the all criteria. They still took jobs that eventually ended as failures because of
overlooking few variables in their desperation hours.

To Susan Bishop, the market was so competitive that the firm might need to change the business
model again in a year or two. It is just because of the change that would eventually occur in the
market and the firm would have to adapt to that situation.

Case 4:-Cultural Intelligence

Name:-Shuvo Raj Bhatta
ID-083435030

Mgt489.4
Submitted to - Ms. Dilara Afroz Khan

Summary:Cultural intelligence is an outsiders seemingly natural ability to interpret someones unfamiliar

and ambiguous gestures the way that persons compatriots would. In todays world cultural
intelligence is very factor to be possessed by managers. This case discusses the cultural issues
involved in managing business people from different culture. The case starts with an interesting
example- it tells what grasshopper means to people of three different culture- USA-pests, ChinaPet, Northern Thailand-Appetizer. Then it narrates the importance of Cultural intelligence and
how it is assessed with many examples.
Like shifting to a new nation, managers might face a new culture just by going to a new
company. When anyone joins a new company he/she spends some time deciphering the pattern
of the new culture. The more CQ a person has the more quick and accurately he/she can
understand the new culture and behaves accordingly. Although a person high in EQ may not be
same as in the case of CQ.A person who is socially fit in his own culture (having high EQ) may
not be in a good position with people from different culture and vice versa.
The three components of cultural intelligence mentioned are: - Cognitive, Physical and
motivational. Cultural intelligence exists in the head, body & heart. Head:-Learning ability of a
new culture vary from person to person. It depends on how people are able to learn from
different culture quickly. Body:-Besides showing that one has learned someones culture. He/she
is also necessary to show necessary actions that prove that he/she has really understood their
culture. Heart:-Confidence is the key to learn new culture.
Most managers fit into at least one of the following category The Provincial(works good with
similar background people),the analyst(observe and learn),The natural(by born good at fitting
into any culture),The ambassador(dont know much about the culture but try communicating

fine),the mimic(better at controlling his actions and behavior),the chameleon(possess all three
CQ features).
Finally, the case informs about anyone can develop his/her cultural intelligence. Its a 2.5 day
program which involves six steps-1.Finding CQ weakness and strengths 2.Selecting the
appropriate program,3.Trained is applied 4.The individual organizes her resources to support the
training 5.The individual goes to the required cultural setting 6.Evaluation is done once again by
collecting feedback from colleagues.
Therefore, high CQ is very important to act appropriately and effectively in different cultures.
High CQ can be gained by learning or someone may be good at it by born.

Strategic implementation:
This case is very essential for any business students/corporate executives. People studying
business or managing or running a business can get invaluable information from this case. Lets
discuss how this case is a good resource of knowledge for strategic management students. Well, a
strategic management student learns about the basics of management and strategic formulation&
implementation. Although all these are not the only things required for being a successful
manager in future. Maintaining good relationships with people is very important in business
world. A person having the capability to fix in a different culture perfectly and quickly depends
on his/her Cultural Intelligence. This case discusses cultural intelligence from various aspects.
From this case, a strategic management student can know the difference between cultural
intelligence and emotional intelligence. He/she will know how inefficiency of adapting to a new
culture can result in failure of management. Theoretically, he/she will know about the
components of cultural intelligence.
There are some real life examples in this case which narrates how misinterpretations of culture
results in to an embarrassing situation. Like and African-American female Brenda felt insulting
to be greeted with some rap music words by a group of young men. The young mens intentions
were good, but she took it negatively due to cultural difference. But later she realized it, and
spent some good time with the men. Then they were friends. This let the reader know that

misunderstanding culture can be bad but if he/she understands the new culture and behaves in the
appropriate way, everything will be fine.
There is also a section which let the reader know about his own cultural intelligence on the basis
of the three features Cognitive CQ, Physical CQ, and Emotional CQ. By calculating, he can
find where his weakness lies and cultivate his intelligence. There are 6 steps involved in this1.Finding CQ weakness and strengths 2.Selecting the appropriate program,3.Trained is applied
4.The individual organizes her resources to support the training 5.The individual goes to the
required cultural setting 6.Evaluation is done once again by collecting feedback from colleagues.
Overall, this case is an invaluable resource for a strategic management student. She can about the
importance of cultural intelligence in business world, analysis his/her CQ/ know what it takes to
gain High CQ(learning and implementing other cultures),brief knowledge about developing high
CQ and various real life examples. All this will give help him/her a lot in real life situations.

Case 5: The King of Beers

Name:-George Frank Nelson

ID:-0910750030
Mgt489.4

Submitted to - Ms. Dilara Afroz Khan

Summary
InBev is one of the best global brands of beer which started its journey back in 1366 and now it
has become a leading supplier of beer. John Brock, who is the current CEO of the brand, is
famous for his informal management style and is far more different for other beer moguls like
Busch or Freddy Heineken. In February 2003 the InBev, a Belgian company, and AmBev the
Brazilian company merged together and formed a strategic alliance to counter other beer giants.
This strategic decision was successful up till now because the company now produces more than
161 million barrels of beer a year compared to its competitor Anheuser Busch which produces
130 million barrels per year. Even though InBev still lags behind Anheuser Busch in the US
market, but InBev has its presence felt in the Latin American, Belgium, Germany and Britain.
The main target of John Brock is the company to become the best rather than the biggest and to
reach this target Brock is counting a large part on AmBev. This Brazilian company has a
monopoly position in Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia; it also captured 80% market share of
Argentina and 65% in Brazil. The future of the company is looking good because the youthful
demographics of Latin America guarantee future growth. This Belgo- Brazilian alliance company
proved to be a threat of other beer producing companies like Anheuser Busch, SAB Miller,
Heineken, Carlsberg etc. But it should also be noted that the battle in the beer market is not
fought with a single strategy or at a single stage. InBev being a very big company can rival other
companies in the international market; it has a lot of opportunities in the world stage. To realize
this opportunities, the group has to be more than the sum of its diverse parts. It is seen that most
of the competitors of InBev has a dominant corporate culture based on values and ambitions of
the traditional founder, whereas InBev has a hard time describing what it represents. Officially it
is neither a merger nor an acquisition between AmBev and InBev but a series of complex share
swap in which Interbrew took majority share control. It was a strategic corporate balancing act
where AmBev sold 53% of its stake and in return got 25% of InBevs stake. It looks to be a very
intelligent if the two sides continue to agree on strategy because if they dont then the company
will have a huge fall out. It is seen that most of the beer producing companies are obsessed with

globalization because global brands sell at a significantly higher prices and the margins are better
than with local beers.

Relevance of strategy
InBev Company became one of the leading brands in beer production globally because of its
decision to form a strategic alliance with AmBev company. Due to this the companies formed a
wide area of network in Western Europe and Latin America. Its seer size and company growth
helped the company to compete with its rivals in international level. It shows that company can
perform in the international markets if they can take the right opportunities at the right time. As
a matter of fact not only InBev but other beer producing companies like SABMiller, Budweiser
etc are trying to reach out to foreign markets instead of competing locally. Another strategy of
InBev was the competition in the US. The company decided not to go head to head with other
US beer producing giants like Busch, SABMiller and Coors. Instead the company put its faith in
the US premium import markets where the margins were higher. The company also produced a
beer brand named Brahma just to provide competition to Corona, which was leading in the US
import department. If Brahma can lure away customers from them then the drop in its market
share will definitely reflect in the US import department and InBev can gain a strategic edge over
them. The InBev company is also seen doing strategic promotion In Britain promoting their
Beer brand named Stella Artois. In Britain Stella has capitalized on its cachet as a premium and
people seemed to find it worth the extra price. They invest heavily make Stella drinkers feel that
they are above average people. For this reason the company saw a 4.4% growth in sales of the
Britain market. So we see that the strategies that InBev took have paved the way for future
control over the beer industry in international level. And it is rightly said that they are the king of
beers.