Babson Strategic Management Professor Jeff Ellis has been awarded the “Most Prestigious Award of the North American Case Research Association.” Ellis is a professor in the Strategic Management Team of the Management Division at Babson College in Wellesley, MA, the top-ranked business school in entrepreneurship education, prominent in global business (Glavin Center), and a leading school for developing business case studies (Babson Case Services).

The book length case study entitled Grupo Garantia: Globalization, Industry Rivalry, and Conglomerate Diversification in Brazil explored the key global entrepreneurial problem that the world’s most prevalent business strategy / structure of affiliated business groups earns the lowest returns on capital and makes indigenous corporations in emerging industries particularly vulnerable to global competition.

Jeff focused on Brazil as the first major nation to open suddenly to global competition and on perhaps the most heralded corporation in that country: Grupo Garantia and each of its amazingly successful four different businesses. Choosing the moment when globalization was first tested by an economic slowdown revealed clearly which businesses had succeeded, which had failed, and why.

The study leads to major implications for corporate and business managers of diversified firms in the emerging world:

• The prospects for a business within an affiliated groups challenged by globalization can be assessed reliably. Appropriate actions can be determined to maximize the potential or limit the losses. 
  
• Whether a conglomerate should be dissolved is not a simple question in emerging economies. Inspection of efficiencies and inefficiencies of national marketplaces for customers, human resources, capital, and government influence relative to the “corporation’s internal marketplaces” is necessary. Internal systems may need to unmingle assets and reveal the true financial and managerial situation for each individual business.
  
• If it is appropriate for a corporation to remain conglomerate, American concepts can increase returns on capital and competitiveness, but applying them without concentrated thought and care can cause more damage than the underlying pathology.