After U.S.-based Foote, Cone & Belding (FCB) and Publicis of France established an international advertising alliance in May 1988, alliance leaders set out to merge offices in Europe. They were confronted with a particularly tricky situation in Germany, which, if handled poorly, could have harmed BMZ, a highly regarded agency in Dusseldorf that FCB had acquired six months earlier. The case looks at how alliance managers resolved the dilemma by forming a second agency network in Europe; how that network, which was composed of advertising agencies from six European countries, was working; and how agencies from different cultural backgrounds were dealing with diversity. May be used with FCB and Publicis (A): Forming the Alliance and (B): Managing Client and Country Diversity.
The international procurement manager of an off-price office supply retail chain has to recommend which of several bids to accept for the right to supply computer diskettes to OfficePro's new French subsidiary.
Although modern urban recycling programs have successfully created a tremendous supply of recycled newspapers, glass bottles, and office paper, when it comes to consumer and business demand for products made from these materials, the economics of recycling falls apart. The present cost of collecting and processing recyclable materials far outweighs their value as a commodity that can be sold back to industry. Yet precisely because of this market uncertainty, companies can seize the competitive high ground. Rubbermaid, Moore Business Forms, and others have dramatically increased market share with appropriate offerings. In addition, top managers of companies like Bell Atlantic and Coca-Cola have made buying recycled products and investing in green R&D part of their business strategies. Through such efforts, business leaders help to challenge current recycling myths, including the supposed high price and low quality of recycled products.
Managers need a new way to think about managing change in today's knowledge organization. Instead of breaking change into small pieces--TQM, process reengineering, employee empowerment--and then managing these pieces, managers need to think in terms of overseeing a dynamic. Managing change is like balancing a mobile. Achieving this critical balance means managing the conversation between the people leading the change effort and those who are expected to implement the new strategies; creating an organizational context in which change can occur; and managing emotional connections, which have traditionally been banned from the workplace but are essential for a successful transformation. One tool that companies can use is the Transition Management Team, a group of company leaders that oversees the corporate change effort and ensures that leaders and followers work together to create their future.
Reinvention is not changing what is, but creating what isn't. When British Airways declared itself the world's favorite airline, it faced the challenge of becoming a different company, not just a better one. When Europcar decided to become the most efficient rental-car company in Europe and Haagen-Dazs chose to make a visit to its European shops an exciting event, they didn't just need to focus on doing things to improve their competitiveness. When a company sets out to reinvent itself, it must uncover and then alter the invisible assumptions and premises on which its decisions and actions are based. This organizational context is the sum of the past and dictates what is possible for the future. When managers reinvent themselves and their companies, they create a new context that leads everyone to embrace a seemingly impossible future. Reinvention includes assembling a critical mass of stakeholders to do an organizational audit, create urgency, harness contention, and engineer breakdowns that reveal weak spots.
In all too many companies, reengineering has been not only a great success but also a great failure. After months, even years, of careful redesign, these companies achieve dramatic improvements in individual processes only to watch overall results decline. By now, paradoxical outcomes of this kind have become almost commonplace. Too many companies are squandering management attention and other resources on projects that look like winners but fail to produce widespread bottom-line results. The authors' research into reengineering projects in over 100 companies reveals how difficult these projects actually are to plan and implement and, more important, how often they fail to achieve real business-unit impact. The study identified two factors--breadth and depth--that are critical in translating short-term, narrow-focus process improvements into long-term profits.
A new organization man has emerged, one who wants to be an involved father with no loss of income, prestige, and corporate support - and no diminished sense of manhood. But since many companies still deem dedication to career the sole marker of professional success, this new man may believe he has to hide his participation at home. Not surprisingly, the compromises made by the new organization man bear a striking resemblance to those of the new organization women. And just as many senior managers now recognize that they'll lose their most ambitious women if they don't develop strategies to accommodate family needs, corporations may also lose their best and brightest men if they don't address the needs of the 1990s man.
Big companies in crisis get there by doing the things that once made them big. The experience of troubled companies is a syndrome with four stages. First the founders articulate their vision. Then the company develops steering mechanisms to operationalize the vision and guide the company through change. Unfortunately, these steering mechanisms tend to become rigid over time, with much stronger ties to the founding vision than to the changing economic environment. So in the third stage, feedback deteriorates. And the useful signals that do get through run into organizational defensive routines--the fourth stage--that prevent information from being put to proper use. The key to getting out of this syndrome is to abandon blame and focus instead on what the company did right to get into the crisis it now faces. To answer that question, managers must examine the differences between the strategy the company espouses and the strategy it enacts.
In this fictional case study, Henry Carson had thought it was time for his company, Pacer Athletic Shoes, to upgrade its standard offerings for the serious runner and expand into walking shoes. But after investing considerable resources in the effort, he's having second thoughts: the returns so far aren't good; old customers seem confused or, worse, annoyed; Pacer doesn't seem to be attracting new customers, despite a flashy marketing campaign; and the company has had trouble getting its manufacturing up to speed. Industry statistics, along with a customer profile, seemed to indicate that Pacer was vulnerable to attacks from much larger competitors. As far as Henry could determine, the company had been left with no choice. It had to upgrade its offerings and build a following in the broader market so that if the industry giants did attack his niche, Pacer could survive. Henry thought he had taken steps to give Pacer staying power. Now he wonders what went wrong. Five experts offer their views on Pacer's current options.
It is difficult to overstate the extent to which most managers and the people who advise them believe in the redemptive power of rewards, argues Alfie Kohn in "Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work," reprint #93506. The assumption that people will do a better job if they are promised an incentive is pervasive, but a growing collection of evidence supports an opposing view. In fact, research suggests that, by and large, rewards succeed at securing one thing only: temporary compliance. According to Kohn, incentives (or bribes) simply can't work. Kohn's views elicited a lively debate on the role of incentives in the workplace. In this Perspectives column, nine experts consider Kohn's argument. Kohn then offers a general response.
Conventional thinking about Third-World development rejects the idea of state-of-the-art technology for villages that lack adequate water, power, food, and literacy. But the author argues that modern telecommunications and electronic information systems are completely appropriate technologies even for the poorest regions of the world. Why? First, telecom is indispensable in mobilizing the resources necessary to meet basic human needs. Second, information technology is the greatest democratizer the world has ever seen.
This note introduces students to some of the options that managers consider when financing is needed. Internal financing options such as improving operating cashflow, adjusting working capital and disposing fixed assets are examined. The advantages and disadvantages of external financing options (i.e., debt or equity) are also briefly covered.
Implicitly raises the question of what Peterson should do to extricate himself from his difficulties. Should he consider resignation, go directly to the company's president to seek relief, or clarify the situation within the company? A redisguised version of an earlier case.
Concerns the development, introduction, and first-year sales performance of Vision, a telecommunications service aimed at small- and medium-sized businesses. Introduced in 1990, Vision surpassed goals in that year, but was significantly below target in the first quarter of 1991. A divisional vice president must analyze the situation and recommend appropriate actions.
Connecticut Spring and Stamping Corp. (CSSC) is a small, privately owned metal working company with a reputation for providing quality products to its customers. CSSC's business is primarily the production of springs and stamped parts used in a variety of mechanical assemblies. While CSSC's customers are pleased with the level of quality, the company has in the past made frequent efforts to keep improving its quality, sometimes at considerable cost. The challenge to the new total quality manager, Andy Youmans, is to determine what direction CSSC should follow in improving its quality practices to assure customer satisfaction.
AT&T's Universal Card Services (UCS) has been extremely successful during its short lifetime. Dedicated to improving service quality and customer satisfaction, chief quality officer Rob Davis and his quality team have designed and put into place an unusual measurement and compensation system based on more than 100 performance measures monitored and communicated daily.