On May 15, 2017, Amazon.com celebrated the 20th anniversary of its initial public offering (IPO). The company’s first twenty years was a period of remarkable growth but with very little to show in terms of accounting earnings. This reflected Amazon’s strategy of investing in expansion and research a...

In the June 7-8, 2014 weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal, an article entitled “Accounting Errors Hit Hertz Hard” caught auto industry analyst Abby Devins’s attention. Devins recalled that Hertz had hinted in March about the possibility of having to restate its 2011 financial statements, but ...

The explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20, 2010, resulted from a series of events and decisions involving employees of BP and its contractors. While there does not appear to be one clear culprit or reason that led to the disaster, the case explores issues of organization...

In June 2007, Mexico-based CEMEX became one of the world’s largest suppliers of building materials after attaining a majority stake in Australia’s Rinker Group. Just 24 months earlier, the company had acquired U.K.-based RMC. While CEMEX’s successful growth strategy could be attributed to its unique...

This case examines how Marsha Jackson, the Head of Internal Audit at RiseEngineer, deals with a whistleblower allegation of bribery in the company’s foreign subsidiary. Marsha’s compliance team conducts an investigation focused on the subsidiary’s bid on a major construction project. Students are as...

In a span of 11 months, FTX. a crypto exchange co-founded by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), went from being valued at $32 billion in January 2022 to filing for bankruptcy, wiping out billions in investor money by November. Those called in to clean up the mess soon discovered that up to $9 billion in custo...

Founded in 1998, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Akamai provided its customers including Apple, Netflix, and Amazon services to accelerate and improve the delivery of content and applications over the Internet. By 2011, the company's globalization strategy and structure was harming its ability to com...

In the early 2010s, ESPN was at the height of its powers. As the crown jewel of the then unassailable cable television bundle, ESPN was receiving upwards of $7 every month from more than 100 million subscribers whether they watched ESPN or not. This was in addition to the multitude of ESPN offspring...

Since 1917, American jobs have been classified by their skill level. “Unskilled work” was said to, “require no special training, judgment, or manual dexterity, but supply mainly muscular strength for the performance of coarse, heavy work dexterity.” It was the largest category of work and included m...

In late 2008, Vermont City Electric (VCE), a municipal electric utility company, needed to determine which investments in demand-side management (DSM) programs to undertake in the context of the budget restrictions it faced. Based on the information contained in the case, students must construct and...