Allentown Materials Corporation: the Electronic Products Division

1. Explain why change happens in a business environment. You should include at least three reasons in your answer.

In the area of weaknesses, the biggest challenge was employee turnover. Even with the recession and the current job market good talent could and can be found, but it is hard to retain with the current compensation and benefit plans offered

This communication process had a rocky start. Built originally on a time-expense model, partnerships between divisions were strained due to conflicts over time and resource allocations. The company ultimately placed the head of P&C as the new leader of IS. This helped create a user orientation within IS and established good relationships with other divisions.

In this case, there are few symptoms clearly stated that something has gone wrong for this company. These symptoms can be classified into two main areas; one is the negative feedback from the customers and another one if from its own employee’s job dissatisfaction.

Due to the recent economy situation and ever challenging business environment, for the whole of last year, the company recorded cost hike and sales decline. This has impacted the bottom line (profitability) of the company. The top management sees that urgent action plans need to be put in place for continuous survival of the company.

1. Explain why change happens in a business environment. You should include at least three reasons in your answer.

Suggest key actions that management should take in order to confront these circumstances. Provide a rationale for your response. (Hint: Your firm’s price must cover average variable costs in the short run and average total costs in the long run to continue operations.)

Recommended Organizational Response ……………………………………… . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Return on assets has declined from 19 % to 14 % in six years. The decreasing efficiency is mainly attributed to international operations. High employee satisfaction scores, both domestically and internationally, indicates a highly motivated work force. Turnover rate of 25 % is pointing in a different direction. Training and internal recruitment provides good environment for learning, innovation and growth.

33 8. What strategic issues need to be addressed? 34 9. External environmental analysis 35 10. Internal environment analysis 60 11.

To fully understand why the organization wasn’t heading down the path to success many different tools were used to help analyze the situations. Models such as the service profit

The first problem to be identified is the cross functional teams’ inability to communicate effectively. The purpose of a cross functional team is to put people with different

The main problems of the organization were that the company set strategies to achieve objectives that weren’t focused in the core business and set without considering how many resources and skills does the company would need to reach them, focusing their efforts in processes or products that didn’t add value to the company and decreasing the profits of the

Now the organisation is looking at taxes and fuel costs rising a problem mentioned in the case study. This problem is related to two other problems which is lack of staff communication as well as transportation as they are the key aspects in making profit in an organisation. The work flow of the staff and whether the products are delivered on

Although there are signs that the company has a matrix structure in place, they do not follow a programme management approach and numerous failures within the structure exist. Their approach to management is still that of a traditional organisational approach, which tends management to lack both strategic purpose and customer focus.