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• Case | HBS Case Collection | 2013 (Revised from original 2012 version)

  Olympus (A)

  Jay W. Lorsch, Suraj Srinivasan and Kathleen Durante

  As 2012 approached, the woes of the financial crisis seemed to be fading, companies were resuming business as usual, and some of the scrutiny on corporate governance practices began to recede as well. That is until another major financial scandal emerged in Japan in the fall of 2011. It was slowly revealed that the 92-year-old camera and medical photo-imaging company, Olympus, had been hiding its losses for more than a decade—to the tune of $1.7 billion—long before the current economic pressures, slow job growth, and poor investor confidence plagued the global economy. The fraud renewed the focus on corporate governance policies worldwide, but especially in Japan, where the lack of board independence and a deep-rooted corporate culture entrenched in personal loyalties fostered an environment that made it difficult for scandals such as this to be unveiled, let alone for whistleblowers to come forward about them.

  Keywords: accounting; corporate governance; Accounting; Corporate Governance; Electronics Industry; Health Industry; Japan;

  Citation:

  Lorsch, Jay W., Suraj Srinivasan, and Kathleen Durante. "Olympus (A)." Harvard Business School Case 413-040, March 2013. (Revised from original October 2012 version.)

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | 2012

  Delwarca Software Remote Support Unit

  Roy D. Shapiro and Paul E. Morrison

  Delwarca Software provides business software to large corporate clients around the world. The firm serves customers who prefer to assemble corporate solutions using a combination of software programs from various suppliers rather than implementing a single enterprise resource planning system. Consequently, Delwarca must provide telephone support services for complex software-hardware interaction and performance problems in addition to the typical software support issues around software installation and upgrades, malware attacks, and processing failures. The manager of the remote support unit implemented a new triage program for customer calls hoping to reduce customer wait time, improve customer satisfaction, and reduce costs. After one year, customer dissatisfaction is at an all-time high and he must perform a quantitative analysis of the current process, considering wait times for customers as well as cost per call, before making a final recommendation. This case can be used in a first-year MBA course in Service Management or Operations Management or a course in industrial engineering. It can also be used to introduce simple queuing theory.

  Keywords: Service Operations; Service Delivery; Mathematical Methods; Software; Problems and Challenges; Customer Satisfaction; Information Technology Industry;

  Citation:

  Shapiro, Roy D., and Paul E. Morrison. "Delwarca Software Remote Support Unit." Harvard Business School Brief Case 913-541, December 2012.

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• Teaching Note | HBS Case Collection | 2012

  Delwarca Software Remote Support Unit (Brief Case)

  Roy D. Shapiro and Paul E. Morrison

  Citation:

  Shapiro, Roy D., and Paul E. Morrison. "Delwarca Software Remote Support Unit (Brief Case)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 913-542, December 2012.

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