Analysis Of Kodak, The Upper Management

The problem in this case is concerned with Eastman Kodak losing its market share in film products to lower-priced economy brands. Over the last five years, in addition to being brand-aware, customers have also become price-conscious. This has resulted in the fast paced growth of lower priced segments in which Kodak has no presence.

Dillard’s is an excellent example of what can go wrong when a management model from yesteryear is applied to modern day advancement and technologies. They are not growing with consumer desires or employee needs, and they are becoming an outdated brand. Instead of stressing satisfaction rates, they stress the bottom line profits. While this formula has made the company successful and allowed national growth at the turn of the century, it is also dropping employee morale, which is known to drive down customer attraction and satisfaction rates.

The Video Case Assignment: Chapter 5 talks about TREK, a company that makes bicycles that was founded in 1976. The mission statement of TREK is “We create products we love. We want everyone to love riding bikes. We foster environments of creativity and innovation where the industry’s greatest thinkers can grow ideas into world-changing products that make us proud—products we ourselves love to use. We build for good, among friends, with integrity. We take care of our customers. We want our relationships to last if our bikes, so you can count on us to take care of you and do what’s right. We stand behind our bikes, and the people who ride them.” (Trek Bikes, n.d) Three of the marketing concepts that TREK is using is the Organizational buying

The problem in this case is Kodak's steadily eroding market share and shareholder value in the film rolls market. This is especially undesirable given the fact that the market has been growing at a tepid 2% annual rate and the steadily increasing threat from competition. Kodak needs to come up with a strategy for corrective action so as to arrest this decline, regain market share and increase share holder value. Kodak's strategy is to reposition itself by targeting a new segment of price sensitive customers and re-segmenting the super premium customers’ space by including a wider segment of special occasion customers.

Today’s companies are challenged by frequent changes in market demands and consumers’ desires for new products and services. Companies which fail to adapt to these changing conditions often find themselves struggling to survive. This is the situation for the Texas Plant, as described in the case study by Pryor, Humphreys, and Taneja (2011). The Vice President, Human Resources Director, and Organizational Development Manager find themselves not only facing the struggles of transforming the Texas Plant, but also the difficulties of working together to achieve it. The following paper describes these difficulties and examines how the actions of the leaders impacted the change process. Recommendations to assist the plant’s leadership in moving forward will be offered.

1. The subject, Bagby Company, has a dilemma between a specialized task assignment or broad task assignment. A specialized task entails designating an employee to a specific group of tasks that has a concentration in one functional capacity. In regards to broad task assignment, the worker is given a broader set of task that has variety. Depending upon which set of tasks is chosen, Bagby would have to

Comcast brushed away its main competitor by purchasing a greater share of Time Warner. The major failures of Kodak were majorly because it failed to embrace and market new technologies for fear of hurting and damaging the company’s lucrative business in the film production at a time when new digital products were being reshaped. Management in the Kodak Company did not fully grasp how the world was gradually reshaping and therefore could not remain in the industry. They still hung on to old -fashioned technologies and assumptions how, where and who took the pictures. Large companies in the media industry should learn to embrace new trends that are appealing to the consumers’ tastes and preferences. The la carte approach is one example of such a new technology and program that should be embraced by all media companies (Einstein,

In the ever-evolving world of manufacturing and marketing, companies are required to adapt to maintain relevancy or remain competitive. Adaptation techniques in business includes inventing a completely new product, revolutionizing an already existing product, or merging with an existing powerhouse company to extend the reach of one’s services and/or products to a larger customer based globally or domestically. Kohl’s has stood the test of time for over 70 years and has maintained relevancy with its customers by consistently reinventing itself to keep up with the needs of the consumers.

When making changes to its organizational architecture, Kodak should have designed it with following characteristics in mind: 1) assignment of decision rights, 2) methods of rewarding individuals, and 3) structure of systems to evaluate the performance of both individuals and business units (Brickley, 2009, p. 341). When changing organizational architecture, it is very important to keep in mind that the three components of organizational architecture are interdependent and need to be coordinated (Brickley, 2009, p. 350-1). Simply stated, the company did not implement a rewards method and performance evaluation system (e.g., the MAPP) at the same time it began changing assignment of decision rights (e.g., restructuring into 17 new departments). When one component is changed, the other components should be changed too. Holding employees accountable while simultaneously implementing a decentralized decision making approach would have helped Kodak to improve the effectiveness of the change in architecture. The company had a stranglehold on the industry and was set it its own company

In my March 6 memo, I discussed the need for Kodak to revamp its core strategy and regain popularity. Eastman Kodak has been the leader of photography and printing products for nearly 130 years. Over the last few years Kodak has been in distress due to its poor fundamental shift into the digital age. Lack of strategic creativity led Kodak to misunderstand the industry in which it was operating. This lack of strategic creativity was costly for Kodak.

This study will examine Marks & Spencer, a retailer in the United Kingdom and will utilize the 8-Step approach of Kotter in addressing organizational change. Marks & Spencer has more than 375 stores and 11 million shoppers each week and employs 66,000 workers. The company is one of High Street's best known companies however, Marks & Spencer, for a long time unchallenged, has undergone a chain of management and corporate structure changes due a decline in their sales. (IBM Ltd. 2005)

The core constraint of virtually every organization The Goldratt Institute has worked with over the past 16+ years is that organizations are structured, measured and managed in parts, rather than as a whole. The results of this are lower than expected overall performance results, difficulties securing or maintaining a strategic advantage in the marketplace, financial hardships, seemingly constant fire-fighting, customer service expectations being rarely met, the constraint constantly shifting from one place to another and chronic conflicts between people representing different parts of the organization, to name a

The Eastman Kodak Company was established in the 1880’s as a film business, set on establishing its brand name in the marketplace through customer-focused advertising and growth through research and development and low cost mass production. The founder, George Eastman, described Kodak’s competitive philosophy by commenting that “nothing is more important than the value of our name and the quality it stands for. We must make quality our fighting argument” (Gavetti, Henderson & Giorgi, 2005).

Background Eastman Kodak Company, headquartered in Rochester New York, was founded in 1889. The corporation, now multinational and focusing on imaging and photographic equipment, posted revenues in excess of $6 billion in 2011. During most of the 20th century Kodak was dominant in the photographic film industry in 1976 it held 90% of the market but began a downward slide once the Internet, digital cameras and computer processing grew. By 2007, Kodak ceased making a profit and in January 2012 filed for bankruptcy protection and ceased making cameras, video cameras and began to focus on the corporate digital imaging market (De La Merced, 2012). In evaluating Kodak's corporate strategy from the mid-1980s onward, we find that there four major management paradigms in place during this transitional period:

Over the years 1994 – 2003, white goods producers Whirlpool Corporation initiated and implemented changes to their business model to enable them to move from a previously engineering focused organisation to a more customer focused entity. The structure and processes they put in places has since embedded itself in the company’s culture. This report analyses the 2005 Harvard business Review case study ‘Change at Whirlpool Corporation’ using the Hayes and Hyde model of change, Higgin’s 8-S model, Hayes Stakeholder management grid and Kotter’s Model of leadership to examine how senior