TerraCog Assessment

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Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville *

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MBA-522

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Business

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Jun 1, 2024

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docx

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TerraCog Assessment Jenise D’Cruz Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville

1. How have departmental objectives led to the current situation at TerraCog? The current situation at TerraCog is that nobody can agree on a price for the new Aerial device. Each department at TerraCog has different objectives when it comes to launching the new device. The production team did not greet the decision to launch Aerial with enthusiasm (Beer & Yong, 2008, p. 4). They felt that a redesign was only feasible if “management could extend time to market by six more months” (Beer & Yong, p. 4). The production department also had many other ideas for new products and Project Aerial was forcing them to put these exciting projects aside. The design department was trying to deliver they product with the needed features and functionality, while staying within cost constraints provided by the sales department, which seemed almost impossible to them. The design team was also against the short time period. As said by Allen Roth in the voicemail to Emma Richardson, the design department had given “the features and functionality they [Sales] wanted in Aerial, so I’m not going back now to ask my team to do the impossible” (Beer & Yong, 2008, p. 1). The design department had already cut all that they could and ended up “with only a 7% or 8% reduction to cost” (Beer & Yong, 2008, p. 1). The sales department was trying to compete with other products that were already on the market by pushing for an early launch date and lower costs. TerraCog had not seen the GPS system launched by Posthaste, BirdsI, as a threat at first, but after TerraCog’s sales reps noticed an “increasing customer demand for a GPS with satellite imagery like BirdsI”, the vice-president of sales, Ed Pryor, “began pressing for a reversal of the decision not to develop the product” (Beer & Yong, 2008, p.3). Retailers were asking for a similar product from TerraCog. All of these different objects led to the

current situation where no decision was made in any of their meetings about the retail price for the new device. 2. How have individual objectives led to the current situation? Each person involved in the case and decision has an individual objective that they’re trying to meet. Emma Richardson, the new executive vice president, is just trying to get Project Aerial moving since she has been tasked with “moving TerraCog toward greater operational alignment and increasing cross-departmental cooperation” with her new role and overseeing the product launch (Beer & Yong, 2008, p. 2). Richard Fiero, TerraCog’s president, is trying to satisfy the appeal of an innovation of this kind, after requests from the vice-president of sales, Ed Pryor. Pryor is hoping to reach sales targets by launching Project Aerial. Each individual is trying to stand up for their department and what their teams are capable of. This has led to the current situation where they are trying to decide on a price, but each department is in a short time frame and can only make so many cuts. 3. How has the group structure impacted the current situation? This organization uses a functional design, where departments are “grouped by common function” (Sweida, 2023, p. 4). Because of this functional design, each department is only concerned with their own part of Project Aerial and refuses to make adjustments to their processes. For example, the design department can only make so many adjustments to cut costs but still meet the requirements provided by the sales department. Since everyone is worried about what their own departments can and cannot

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