Sunflower Inc. is a distribution company that operates in twenty-two regions with in United States and Canada. The company distributes national as well as local brands and packages some items under private labels. The organization promotes autonomous management style because local tastes and practices vary. The company identifies a problem in the form of high profit variation across the regions as well as the use of lesser quality products. Loretta Williams is hired from the finance department into a position newly created, as Director of Purchasing and Pricing to work toward the standardization of process and tries to implement change but ultimately encounters bitter resistance. This is because the proposal involved major changes to the organization’s purchasing and pricing processes and she did not use the right strategies for managing or communicating the change process. The change Williams wanted to install at Sunflower was a good one and necessary but she chose the wrong medium of email, which is comparatively a less rich means of communication for these kinds of issues with major consequences. The managers could have misunderstood why such policy was needed when they were all making profit and they did not know who was implementing these changes.
Prior to William’s arrival the organization was running on a decentralized organizational structure where regional executives had freedom to make their own decisions but with the new change, their autonomy was decreased and decisions regarding pricing and purchasing were centralized. It is very difficult to uproot such a culture without a planned change management effort. The regional managers at Sunflower were used to the culture of autonomy and independence for a long time. They were comfortable with this way of doing business and managing their centers, hence it created an inertia that resisted change. Autonomy and