Premium Essay

Allentown Materials Corporation

In:

Submitted By alejandra72
Words 1792
Pages 8
Running Head: ALLENTOWN MATERIALS CORPORATION

Allentown Materials Corporation:
The electronic products division
María Alejandra Ferrer
Southern States University

1

ALLENTOWN MATERIALS CORPORATION

2

Abstract
In July, 1992 Don Rogers, the Vice President and General Manager of the Electronics
Products Division (EPD) at Allentown Materials Corporation found himself on a very difficult position. Conflicts related to leadership and cultural organization were blocking his administration and the division`s objectives were not accomplished.
In this paper it is proposed a vision to analyze this case, it is described the problem, its causes and it is outlined an action plan to counteract the situations that are affecting the division productivity. The main inputs that this paper describes are: how a crossed functional team and the implementation of the Positive Organizational Behavior (POB) theory could make a considerable difference in the worn relationships between the departments of the EPD.

Keywords: Cultural organization, leadership, crossed, functional team, positive organizational behavior, informal communications.

ALLENTOWN MATERIALS CORPORATION

3

Allentown materials corporation: the electronic products division
In July, 1992 Don Rogers, the Vice President and General Manager of the Electronics
Products Division (EPD) at Allentown Materials Corporation, was experiencing many organizational problems related to leadership, lack of coordination among groups, the sales have declined and, he was receiving a lot of pressure from his superiors pushing him to turn in the expected 10% average annual growth in a very competitive market.
This analysis will be focused from the leadership and organizational point of view.
The problem
The EPD division has decreased its expected performance: the morale among employees is very low and

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Allentown Materials Corporation: the Electronic Products Division

...Allentown Materials Corporation: The Electronic Products Division A) Main organizational causes of EDP’s performance problems 1) Analyze the main changes occurred in EDP’s environment and explain how they impacted EDP’s strategic priorities. Allentown Materials Corp is a company with more tan a century with a steady growth and high reputation in the market by the end of the 80’s. A great deal of its success is based on a strong technological capability in the invention and manufacture of glass products supported by a strong Technical Staffs Division (R&D). It was competing through product differentiation and growing profitably (average of 10% per year) without substantial competitive pressures through premium prices of government military contracts and specialized products for OEMs. Most divisions maintained relatively small sales departments with few salespeople servicing the small number of important accounts. Many of the divisions had limited marketing efforts. The corporation operated like a relatively close-knit family; people interacted informally. Besides, Technical Staff Division (R&D) was regarded as very important by top management; growth was linked to technology. However, by the end of the 80’s, the demands of the industry began to change to a fast paced price sensitive computer, telecommunications and consumer electronics commercial market, therefore, pressures from the dynamic new market required Allentown to be a lower cost producer to be...

Words: 965 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Organizational Change

...Electronics Products Division (EPD) of Allentown Materials Corporation, requested a meeting with Allentown's Director of Organization Effectiveness. He began the discussion by reflecting on the state of his organization. I asked you to get together with me so that I could discuss a serious problem. We have had some difficult times in my division over the past two years. [See Exhibit 1 for EPD's operating data.] Our business is becoming fiercely competitive and this has led to a decrease in sales. To deal with the downturn in business we have reduced the number of people and expenses sharply. This has been painful, but I think these actions have stemmed the tide. We are in control again. But the business continues to be very competitive, morale is low, there is a lot of conflict between groups that we can't seem to resolve. There is a lack of mutual confidence and trust. The organization is just not pulling together and the lack of coordination is affecting our ability to develop new products. Most of my key people believe that we are having conflicts because business is bad. They say that if business would only get better we will stop crabbing at each other. Frankly, I am not sure if they are right. The conflicts might be due to the pressures we are under but more likely they indicate a more fundamental problem. Can you and your group determine if the conflict between groups is serious and if so what I might do about it? The Larger Corporation Allentown's Business ...

Words: 2395 - Pages: 10

Premium Essay

Allentown Material Corp.

...Allentown Material Corporation – Electronic Product Division Entity / Player Attribute Allentown Materials The holding company Corporation Other divisions enjoys protection in market due to high cost entry barriers. But electronics div is not doing well, as market condition changed. The group as integrated / overlapping functional groups no differentiation between departments. EPD needs different structure due to the nature of business. Allentown Electronic Product Electronic Product Division Division Interesting point They have several divisions such as Plastics, Food and electronics and EPD performs poorly due to decline market, due to reduce defence contracts. Most of Allentown Groups are directly controlled by management because of the proximity and presence. Culture is built differently in manufacturing driven company. There is poor relationship between divisions leading to problems in decision making, product development, and performance as a whole. Don Rogers – Vice Pres Allentown Electronic Products Division (EPD) Tom Noles – Director Organizational Effectiveness Allentown Materials Corpn. Don Rogers seeks help from Tom Noles Tom has come to study the company problems. Noles conducts study by having meetings and is ready with OE (Organizational Effectiveness Department) Poor relationships and communication is resulting in bad performance. But teams think it is because of bad market condition. - Decline in Defence markets - Need to enter consumer market where the...

Words: 1144 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

He 3r Framework: Improving Estrategy Across Reach, Richness, and Range

...Data and Information Author(s): Redman, Thomas C. Publication Date: 09/22/2008 Product Type: HBS Press Chapter Abstract: This chapter focuses on the current state of data and information quality in the typical organization. The author discusses seven common data quality issues, including poor data definition and organizational confusion. Real-life examples, such as the subprime mortgage meltdown, demonstrate the need for developing a keen eye for the roles that data play in your organization, including operations, delayed decisions, and misinformed strategies. Subjects: NO SUBJECTS(KEYWORDS) Length: 29p List Price: $6.95 BH087 Title: The 3R Framework: Improving eStrategy Across Reach, Richness, and Range Author(s): Wells, John D.; Gobeli, David H. Publication Date: 03/15/2003 Product Type: Business Horizons Article Publisher: Business Horizons/Indiana University Abstract: Identifying effective strategies for designing and implementing e-business initiatives has been a persistent challenge for both practitioners and academicians. A conceptual framework is needed for leveraging digital attributes based on three dimensions: reach, richness, and range. By defining and combining these three dimensions to create such an integrated e-business strategic framework, this article provides managers with a way to assess their current strategy, as well as a prescriptive direction for strengthening it. Subjects: Corporate strategy; Electronic commerce; Technology Length:...

Words: 4085 - Pages: 17

Premium Essay

Case

...transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu, or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163. The copyright on each case in this book unless otherwise noted is held by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and they are published herein by express permission. Permission requests to use individual Harvard copyrighted cases should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu, or mailed to the Permissions Editor, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, MA 02163. ON OT C Case material of the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration is made possible by the cooperation of business firms and other organizations which may wish to remain anonymous by having names, quantities, and other identifying details disguised while maintaining basic relationships. Cases are prepared as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ellet,William. The case study handbook: how to read, discuss, and write persuasively about cases / William Ellet. p. cm....

Words: 96750 - Pages: 387

Premium Essay

Case Study Handbook

...or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu, or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163. The copyright on each case in this book unless otherwise noted is held by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and they are published herein by express permission. Permission requests to use individual Harvard copyrighted cases should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu, or mailed to the Permissions Editor, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, MA 02163. OT C Case material of the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration is made possible by the cooperation of business firms and other organizations which may wish to remain anonymous by having names, quantities, and other identifying details disguised while maintaining basic relationships. Cases are prepared as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. DO N Library of Congress...

Words: 99835 - Pages: 400

Premium Essay

Don Rogers

...1. How effective is Don Rogers’ communication skills? He was never a good fit for the EPD. Rogers never anticipated the increase in competition (mistake 1) which shows he was not tied to the sales force. It was mentioned that he does not listen in meetings and not holding managers responsible for their goals (mistakes 2&3). He split up marketing, sales, and product development causing confusion and miscommunication (mistake 5). He replaced several top managers when the EPD was sucessful with rather inexperienced people. (mistake 6) Most of all he seems to have no sense of urgency with the dire situation the company faces. His division could implode at any time costing everyone their jobs. He is now just realizing changes need to be met? He needs to go. (Suesse, 2007) Rogers transferred Rogers needs to be physically present ot learn about and lead a fractious organization. Market conditions require marketing to be closely coordinated with sales and the plants and everyone to be in colose communication. 2. How well does he perform in planning and organizing? 3. Short term: 4. - Manufacturing and sales should be housed together to create a plan that would allow for continued growth and decreasing manufactures costs. This would also allow for better communication and foster an environment for collaborations and cooperation. 5. - Rogers should put into place a clear and focused vision that all departments understand, respect and perform to. In putting this vision of the...

Words: 1164 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Test

...Southern States University BU-502 Applied Business Research and Communications Skills Online Spring Quarter, 2016 Updated: April 4, 2016 CREDIT HOURS: 4.0 CONTACT HOURS: 40 (40 Theory, 0 Lab) (40 Online) Instructor: Dr. Peggy Bilbruck Email: pbilbruck@ssu.edu (inquiries will be responded within 24-36 hours). For any urgent technical problems with Moodle, contact the SSU-Moodle Administrator: ssumoodle@ssu.edu Office Hours: Wednesdays on Moodle from 11 – 12 pm ONLINE TIME ESTIMATE: This course requires four (4) hours of online activities every week on Moodle plus an additional 8 hours (minimum) of homework per week. COURSE DESCRIPTION This course provides an introduction to graduate business studies focusing on the applied business research and communication skills necessary to be successful in both an academic MBA program and the current economic environment and workplace. It covers information literacy, research and research methodologies, oral and written communication skills as well as critical thinking, problem solving and decision-making paradigms. As designed, the course will familiarize students with the tools necessary for the successful presentation of theories and concepts as they apply to real world managerial scenarios including business decision-making. Prerequisite: None Prerequisite(s): None Co-requisite(s): None What is an Online Course? This is an online course so we will not be meeting...

Words: 3521 - Pages: 15

Premium Essay

Jeff Bezos Leadership

...2/21/2016 F11­MANA3001 ­ Jeff Bezos 104  Get your Wikispaces Classroom now: (https://www.wikispaces.com/t/y/classroom­switch/banner/1/) the easiest way to manage your class. Jeff Bezos 104 (/Jeff+Bezos+104)   Edit   35 (/Jeff+Bezos+104#discussion)   25 (/page/history/Jeff+Bezos+104) … (/page/menu/Jeff+Bezos+104) Jeff Bezos It takes a lot of guts to leave the comforts of your stable job on Wall Street, then move your family halfway across the country and invest all of your parents’ life savings to start up a new business with merely a 10% chance of success. However, Jeffrey Preston Bezos, later well­known as “Jeff” Bezos, decided to make the gamble. “I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew one thing I would regret is not trying.” With this philosophy in mind, Bezos created Amazon.com in 1995. Initially, Amazon was just an online bookstore. Over the years though, Amazon diversified its merchandizes and began to sell DVDs, videos, MP3 players, video games and electronics, etc. The humble business, which kicked off in Bezos’s garage, has become a giant online retailer today, shipping a vast range of products to customers around the world. The inspiration for Amazon sparked off when Bezos discovered an amazing phenomenon: internet usage was increasing by 2300% a year. This statistic set off an alarm in his head. He began to brainstorm ideas on how to build a business plan around this growing industry. After doing some research...

Words: 3474 - Pages: 14

Premium Essay

Amazon

...the UK, while in the US the company has attracted criticism for only collecting sales tax from customers in five states. Compounding these problems, there have been reports of poor treatment of workers, with allegations of summary dismissals for health problems and anti-unionization tactics including mass layoffs. Some controversies have centered around content. The bookstore has carried titles such as The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure and cock-fighting magazine The Game Cock, which has attracted condemnation and even legal action from various organisations. Amazon and others have cited freedom of speech as justification for stocking controversial work. In contrast however, there have been reports of potential censorship, where material in fields such as feminism and sexual identity has been flagged as "adult content" and...

Words: 4216 - Pages: 17

Premium Essay

Customer Relationship Management and Ebusiness

...CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT AND EBUSINESS John Muiga Wanjiku School of Human Resource Development, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Nairobi, Kenya Email: mjwanjiku@gmail.com, Abstract — These paper looks into customer relationship management which is a company-wide business strategy designed to reduce costs and increase profitability by solidifying customer loyalty and explores it in context to e- business. It goes ahead to relate social networking revolution and its implication to business both positively and negatively and its impact on electronic Customer Relationship Management. Index Terms - Customer Relationship Management, Electronic-business, Electronic Customer Relationship Management INTRODUCTION The effective management of the customer has become the dominant objective for firms seeking to sustain leadership in their markets and industries. With their expectations set by world class companies and interactive technologies, today’s customers are demanding to be treated as unique individuals and requiring their supply chains to consistently provide high-quality, configurable combinations of products, services, and information that are capable of evolving as their needs change. Companies know that unless they can structure agile infrastructures and supply chains that can guarantee personalization, quick-response delivery, and the ability to provide unique sources of marketplace value their customers will quickly...

Words: 5496 - Pages: 22

Free Essay

Fatty Acid

...Eur. J. Lipid Sci. Technol. 104 (2002) 785–791 William E. Neff, Fred Eller, Kathleen Warner 785 Composition of oils extracted from potato chips by supercritical fluid extraction* To determine effects of two extraction procedures on oil compositions, tocopherols, monoacylglycerol, diacylglycerol, triacylglycerol, free fatty acids, polymers and polar components were determined in oils after extraction from potato chips by either supercritical carbon dioxide or hexane. Potato chips were fried in cottonseed oil or low linolenic acid soybean oil and sampled after 1, 10 and 20 h of oil use. Both extraction methods recovered comparable amounts of oil from the potato chips. Compositions of triacylglycerol and non-triacylglycerol components including tocopherols, monomer, polymer, monoacylglycerol, diacylglycerol were similar for samples of chips fried in either oil except for the δ-tocopherol data for potato chips fried in the low linolenic acid soybean oil used for 10 h of frying. There were some differences between the composition of low linolenic acid soybean oil extracted from the potato chips compared to the fryer oil at the 20 h sampling time. These results showed that the supercritical carbon dioxide extraction gave similar results to hexane extraction in yield and composition of oils from potato chips. Keywords: Supercritical fluid extraction, oil composition, tocopherols, cottonseed oil, low linolenic soybean oil, frying, fried food. National Center for Agricultural...

Words: 5477 - Pages: 22

Premium Essay

Corporate Social Responsibility

...Corporate Social Responsibility S by-Labij kumar Boro DFT-VI ROLL-1O 12/4/12 INTRODUCTION The United Nations Global Compact, also known as Compact or UNGC, is a United Nations initiative to encourage businesses worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies, and to report on their implementation. The Global Compact is a principle-based framework for businesses, stating ten principles in the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption. Under the Global Compact, companies are brought together with UN agencies, labour groups and civil society. The Global Compact is the world's largest corporate citizenship initiative and as voluntary initiative has two objectives: "Mainstream the ten principles in business activities around the world" and "Catalyse actions in support of broader UN goals, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)."[1] The Global Compact was first announced by the then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in an address to The World Economic Forum on January 31, 1999[2], and was officially...

Words: 5634 - Pages: 23

Premium Essay

Amazon

...Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is an American-based multinational electronic commerce company. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, it is America's largest online retailer, with nearly three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up, Staples, Inc., as of January 2010.[3] Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, Inc. in 1994 and launched it online in 1995. It started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified to product lines of VHS, DVD, music CDs and MP3s, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and so on. Amazon has established separate websites in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, and China. It also provides international shipping to certain countries for some of its products. On January 15, 2009, a survey published by Verdict Research found that Amazon was the UK's favorite music and video retailer, and came third in overall retail rankings.[4] History Amazon was founded in 1995,[5] spurred by what Bezos called "regret minimization framework", his effort to fend off regret for not staking a claim in the Internet gold rush.[6] While company lore says Bezos wrote the business plan while he and his wife drove from New York to Seattle,[7] that account appears to be apocryphal.[8] The company began as an online bookstore;[8] while the largest brick-and-mortar bookstores and mail-order catalogs for books might offer 200,000 titles, an online bookstore could offer more. Bezos named the company "Amazon" after the world's...

Words: 6080 - Pages: 25

Premium Essay

Mythology

...planets and constellations - that take their name or borrow | |their theme from myths. Because of your many requests, I've provided a couple of thousand | |excellent examples to help you get started in your research. Remember, you're surrounded | |by mythology in today's society, whether you realize it or not!  | Mythological Influence on Modern... |[pic]Companies & Groups |[pic]Planets & Constellations | |[pic]  Words & Expressions |[pic]Literary & Pop Culture | [pic]American Cities Named From Mythology [pic] COMPANIES & GROUPS |Mythology is everywhere! There are hundreds of companies, groups and corporations that take their name, logo or theme from ancient mythology. | |I've provided a variety of examples to help you in starting your research. Some are well-known international companies, others are of a more | |local nature. | |Aegis - Zeus and Athena's protective shield; modern group of insurance companies (The Aegis Group). | |Ajax - Greek warrior in the Trojan War, who "cleaned up" in battle; popular household cleanser. | |Amazon - Race of warrior women; amazon.com - huge on-line bookstore. ...

Words: 5942 - Pages: 24