Bonus cases

In 2025 the Los Angeles Dodgers carried a 40-player payroll of roughly $331 million and a luxury-tax payroll near $400 million, with a tax bill in the neighborhood of $154 million (CBS Sports, 2025). A good share of that is deferred: Shohei Ohtani's contract pays him $2 million a year now and $68 million a year later, which lowers his tax figure to about $46 million (CBS Sports, 2025). The club has also kept drafting and developing players through its farm system, and it mixes homegrown starters with free agents on the same roster.

The DART model's two-period view says a firm can buy talent (pay market price now, performance now) or develop it (pay less now, performance later, with retention risk). The Dodgers do both at scale, and deferred money is a way to buy now while paying later.

1. Map the Dodgers' approach onto the two-period model. Which players are "buy" and which are "develop"? What does deferral do to the timing of cost?
2. What does the employee owe back in each case? Does a developed player "owe" the club more loyalty than a bought one? What would a retention risk look like in each?
3. Pick a small organization you know (a campus club, a restaurant). Which quadrant of DART is their equivalent of the farm system, and are they under-investing in it?

CBS Sports. (2025, October). 2025 World Series: What to know about Dodgers' payroll, including Shohei Ohtani's deferrals. https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/dodgers-payroll-spending-shohei-ohtani-contract-2025-world-series

CNBC. (2025, March 1). Dodgers deferred salaries spark MLB salary cap questions. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/01/dodgers-deferred-salaries-spark-mlb-salary-cap-questions.html

Large e-commerce warehouses use handheld scanners and software to set a target rate for each task, measure "time off task" to the second, and flag workers who fall behind. Supporters say the systems are fair because they are the same for everyone and that they lift productivity. Critics say they recreate Taylor's scientific management, with the stopwatch replaced by software, and push managers toward Theory X assumptions. Several students raised this angle on their own in Exit Tickets.

1. Which school of thought is this? Make the case that it is scientific management, then make the case that it is management science. What is the unit of analysis in each?
2. Using the Hawthorne studies and the human relations school, predict two side effects of rate-based monitoring that the dashboard will not show.
3. Is the worker or the system responsible when a flagged worker misses rate? Run the five-question diagnostic from the DART hub.

Walgreens built its strategy on being everywhere: a store within a few miles of most Americans, anchored by the pharmacy. By 2024 that model was under pressure from lower pharmacy reimbursements, online competition, and store-level theft, and the company announced plans to close about 1,200 underperforming stores. In 2025 shareholders approved a roughly $10 billion sale to the private-equity firm Sycamore Partners (NPR, 2025), which closed in August 2025. Under new ownership the chain cut the planned closures sharply, expecting fewer than 100 U.S. closures in 2026 after earlier projections of as many as 700 more, with the store count down from about 8,500 to roughly 8,000 (Chain Drug Review, 2026).

1. Run a SWOT for Walgreens as of 2024. Keep internal and external straight. Which single external force mattered most, and which generic strategy was Walgreens pursuing?
2. Use the three "strategy is expiring" signals (engine, customer, competitor). Which were present? Was closing 1,200 stores a strategy change or a channel change?
3. Sycamore reversed most of the closures. Generate three real alternatives the new owners could be weighing, and for each write one line on the economic engine.

Chain Drug Review. (2026). Walgreens sharply scales back store closure plans under Sycamore ownership. https://chaindrugreview.com/walgreens-sharply-scales-back-store-closure-plans-under-sycamore-ownership/

NPR. (2025, March 7). Walgreens agrees to be acquired by private equity firm for almost $10 billion. https://www.npr.org/2025/03/07/nx-s1-5320798/walgreens-private-equity-acquisition

Two 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 killed 346 people. Investigations traced the accidents to a flight-control system (MCAS) that pilots had not been fully told about, and to decisions made under schedule and cost pressure while competing with Airbus. In 2021 Boeing reached a $2.5 billion deferred-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice. In May 2025 the Department agreed to drop the criminal charge in exchange for Boeing paying about $1.1 billion in fines, compensation, and safety investment (CNN, 2025); a federal judge dismissed the criminal case in November 2025 over the objections of many victims' families (Claims Journal, 2025).

1. Apply all four lenses to the 2025 settlement decision from the Department's point of view. Where do utility and justice disagree? Which tie-breaker (publicity or reversibility) is hardest for this decision to pass?
2. Name two biases from the bias spotter that plausibly shaped the original MCAS decisions, and the counter that would have caught each.
3. You are a mid-level Boeing engineer in 2017 who believes pilots should be told about MCAS. Using the chapter's "ethics vs. orders" material, write the three steps you would take, in order, before going outside the company.

Claims Journal. (2025, November 6). Boeing avoids US criminal charge in 737 Max jet crash case. https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2025/11/06/333951.htm

CNN. (2025, May 23). Boeing to pay $1.1 billion as part of deal to settle 737 Max crash cases with DOJ. https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/23/politics/boeing-settlement-737-max-crashes-doj

Two container terminals in the San Pedro Bay complex, TraPac at the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach Container Terminal, run automated cranes and vehicles. A 2022 report commissioned by the employers' association found that paid work hours at the two automated terminals grew 31.5% from 2015 to 2021, against 13.9% at conventional terminals, and that the automated yards moved about 510 TEUs per acre versus 350 (AJOT, 2022). The longshore union disputed the findings and argued the study hid job losses; automation was a central issue in the 2022–2023 West Coast contract talks, and new automation proposals at Long Beach's Pier T drew union opposition again (JOC, 2025).

1. Describe the terminal's structure before and after automation using span of control, centralization, and line vs. staff. Which jobs disappear, which appear, and which get redesigned?
2. Is an automated terminal more mechanistic or more organic? Use three of the chapter's contingency factors (environment, technology, size, strategy) to argue it.
3. Redesign one job that survives automation (for example, a crane operator who now supervises remote equipment) using the job characteristics model. Which of the five characteristics went up, and which went down?

American Journal of Transportation. (2022). Do automated LA and Long Beach container terminals generate more work and higher pay for ILWU? https://www.ajot.com/insights/full/ai-do-automated-la-and-long-beach-container-terminals-generate-more-work-and-higher-pay-for-ilwu

Journal of Commerce. (2025). Latest Long Beach terminal automation draws ILWU backlash. https://www.joc.com/article/latest-long-beach-terminal-automation-draws-ilwu-backlash-5249876