Alan Naiman was a frugal social worker who used duct tape to repair his shoes, looked for deals at the supermarket, and chose fast-food restaurants when it was his turn to treat friends to lunch. When he died in 2018, Naiman left $11 million to child-related charities. He was especially interested in helping children who are poor, sick, disabled, or abandoned. Some say that having had an older brother who was developmentally disabled led to his passion for helping kids. Naiman used to be a banker and often worked several jobs at once. He also was a successful investor—much more successful than seemingly anyone knew—and didn’t spend much money on himself.

Naiman chose to donate $2.5 million to Washingt on based Pediatric Interim Care Center, which was the first organization in the nation to provide medical care to infants born to mothers who abused drugs. The center provides around-the-clock monitoring and nursing care after an infant leaves the hospital (which, for these fragile infants, is before they are ready to go home). Providing caregiver training and following the infants after they leave the center are core components to their mission. They also work at increasing community awareness about the dangers of drug abuse during pregnancy.

Social service organizations often struggle financially to provide services—with needs exceeding resources. Naiman’s gift to Pediatric Interim Care Center will allow them to make a difference in the lives of babies and their families well into the future. The Center’s management team wants to use the gift wisely—a definite planning, strategy, and control challenge. They started by paying off their mortgage, but now they have to think about their next steps.

Pretend you're part of that management team. Using what you’ve learned in the chapters on planning and strategic management in Part 3, what five things would you suggest the team focus on? Think carefully about your suggestions to the team. Manufacturers have spent years building low-cost global supply chains. However, when those businesses are dependent on a global supply chain, any unplanned disruptions (political, economic, weather, natural disaster, etc.) can wreak havoc on plans, schedules, and budgets. The Indonesian earthquake/ tsunami and California “Camp Fire” fires in 2018 will be looked back on by logistics, transportation, and operations managers around the globe for years to come.

Although unexpected problems in the supply chain have always existed, now the far-reaching impact of something happening not in your own facility but thousands of miles away has created additional volatility and risk for managers and organizations. For instance, when a typhoon hit near Osaka, Japan, in 2018, the Kansai International Airport was closed for more than two weeks, which affected air traffic and supplies throughout Asia. Small businesses can be especially hard hit by unplanned disruptions – 40 percent of small businesses do not reopen after a disaster. The same month that Hurricane Florence’s floods in North Carolina cut freight activity by 60 percent in 2018, Coca-Cola and Mars became the first multinational companies to join the Climate-Resilient Value Chain Leaders Platform. This platform helps companies take a science-based approach to guard against climate shocks that wreck havoc with usual business activities.

Discuss the following questions in light of what you learned in Part 3:

• You see the challenges associated with a global supply chain; what are some of the benefits of it? What can managers do to minimize the impact of such disruptions?
• What types of plans would be best in these unplanned events?
• How can managers plan effectively in dynamic environments?
• Could SWOT analysis be useful in these instances?
Explain.
• How might managers use environmental scanning and virtual reality in preparing for such disasters?1..............

Discussion Questions

P3-1. Make a list of Starbucks’s plans. Describe what type of plan each is. Then, describe how that plan might affect how the following employees do their job:

(a) A part-time store employee—a barista—in Omaha.

(b) A quality assurance technician at the company’s roasting plant in Amsterdam.

(c) A regional sale manager.

(d) The executive vice president of global supply chain operations; and

(e) The CEO.
P3-2. Discuss the types of growth strategies that Starbucks has used. Be specific.
P3-3. In what specific ways do stability and/or renewal strategies apply to Starbucks’s in recent years?
P3-4. What is Starbucks doing to sustain its competitive advantage over competitors? What else might they do to continue to be competitive relative to others in their industry?
P3-5. Starbucks charges more for coffee than its Chinese competitor Luckin. Starbucks also has followed Luckin by offering coffee delivery. What kind of differentiation strategy is Starbucks currently using relative to its competitors like Luckin and McDonalds in China? What other differentiation strategies might Starbucks consider using in the future?

P3-6. How is the way that Kevin Johnson is leading Starbucks different from the way that Howard Schultz led the company as an entrepreneur founder?