Managing competitiveness: 5 - Hasbro plays a team game - When the LTK operation of the world's second-largest toy company, Hasbro, was given responsibility for managing the firm's activities in the Nordic countries in 1996, and in the Netherlands two years later, a key issue for the new senior management team was to develop a fully networked business region. In the fifth feature in our series on managing competitiveness, we examine how the company has progressed steadily towards meeting several key people management objectives: creating a cross-border culture of involvement and dialogue with employees at every level - to increase employee knowledge and understanding of business objectives and to maxirnise their creative contribution; establishing open and disciplined HR processes across the region - with a clear philosophy guiding the approach to employee reward, and a single objective- and competency-linked appraisal scheme encouraging employees to focus on how they can work with others to contribute towards the success of the firm; and promoting cross-functional and cross-border teamworking - both to generalise best practice and to share those services, including HR services, that can sensibly be shared.