Rob Parson Management Case Study Essay

In March of 2012 Steve Parkland was hired as the new president at Charles Chocolates. He was immediately faced with numerous decisions about the future of the company. The board of directors had tasked Parkland with doubling or tripling the size of the company over the next decade, but the board and the senior management team had different opinions about the strategy that would accomplish this goal. The main issues that Parkland faced were how to increase the company’s operations while maintaining the traditional culture and support of the board.

Culture is an observable, powerful force in any organization. “Made up of its members’ shared values, beliefs, symbols, and behaviors, culture guides individual decisions and actions at the unconscious level. As a result, it can have a potent effect on a company’s well-being and success” (One Page, n.d.).

“Culture consists of the symbols, rituals, language, and social dramas that highlight organizational life, including myths, stories, and jargon. It includes the shared meanings associated with the symbols, rituals, and language. Culture combines the philosophy of the firm with beliefs, expectations, and values shared by members. It contains the stories and myths about the company's founder and its current leading figures. Organizational culture consists of a set of shared meanings and values held by a set of members in an organization that distinguish the organization from other organizations. An organization's culture determines how it perceives and reacts to the larger environment (Becker, 1982; Schein, 1996). Culture determines the nature

All Organisations posses a distinct form of culture with some having more than a single culture. This culture is usually very difficult to measure, change and most especially change.

Also contributing to the outcome of the power struggle were structural features that existed across the financial industry. The whole industry is governed and motivated by profits generated through individual contribution irrespective of the firm’s net performance. This particular industry structure results in the classic inter departmental tensions to maximize the individual department’s profits. To a certain extent, Lehman had to comply with rest of the companies by creating the isolated departmental structure to maintain its top performers. As a result, when a department creates 60-80% of the firm’s profit, the power shifts to the department making the most money. Lehman could have created an alternate compensation strategy to reduce the potential for power struggle between the departments. For example, rather

These were changes of the process that had occurred in the recruitment business and they needed to also change and concentrate on the new and improved future of the company. His new role was to seek out and discover the answer to the many questions that were unanswered. There was another United States company that had been on the fortune 500 top list for five years and that was “Spencer Stuart” their market share was larger than Heidrick & Struggles. Mr. Kelly knew that before the next year a change needed to happen. Mr. Kelly began making his voice heard in regards to produce low risk investments, and financial assets in order for the organization and its employees to move to the next level. He knew that the organization was underdeveloped and the culture of the company needed to change for advancement. Now, Mr. Kelly started to get concern because of all of the senior staff as well as the other senior CEO’s they were not in agreement for change.

Morgan Stanley chooses this kind of organizational structure to divide its business for its own special work in order to serve its customs well. The company emphasizes on program teams that can operate cross departments to allow employees performing the program under the best conditions. And this makes the company can respond quickly to customers’ needs.

At the beginning he was told to report to Jenkins, however, once he got to the site he was assigned to Jeff Hardy.  After the company reorganization, he found himself wondering whether he should report to Knight or Hardy. However, despite the confusion, he never brought up this question to Hardy, Jenkins or Knight. He perhaps then fell into the trap of a “boss­subordinate relationship” and went with the structure he felt was assigned without truly understanding its reasoning. ii. He didn’t take enough time to understand HQ’s perspective on various issues a. Replacing the chief engineer, rejecting frequency reuse patterns, or failing to get sign off on agreements for GMCT cell sites indicate failures in managing upward management relationships. Problem #2: Employee Dynamics Strengths 1. Peterson was committed to building an empowering environment for employees. i. Peterson called weekly construction meetings, which invited all to report on the company’s weekly progress and issues. Shortcomings 2. He failed to consider alterations in team dynamics when making hiring and salary decisions. i. He hired Trevor at a higher salary rate to the resentment of other employees, causing significant damage to the trust and respect between employee and manager.

assessment as to whether the corporate culture is aligned with the business strategy of the

Although Dick had some success and the company’s senior management were happy to see a profit, Dick continued to face major challenges as a manager. The main sources of conflict stemmed from: 1) his lack of balance between his professional and personal life; 2) his ineffective communication skills with staff; 3) and finally, his micromanagement style and lack of trust in his staff.

Mr. Mack was not content with his role at the Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, due to this, an alleged private promise by Mr. Purcell was made to effectively hand over the CEO position to Mr. Mack no later than 2002 (Heberling & Houghton, 2002). This is what is called a gentlemen’s agreement, which is defined as an arrangement or understanding which is based upon the trust of both or all parties, rather than being legally binding. In January 2001, Mack resigns as president after the Morgan Stanley board and Purcell makes it clear that Purcell isn’t going anywhere, despite a reputed “handshake” agreement to allow Mack to take over as CEO eventually. Later, Morgan Stanley denies there was any agreement to hand over control to Mack (Benoit, 2012).

Hofstede (2003) defined culture as "the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another". Corporate culture refers to the intangible aspects of companies, including the interactions at an interpersonal level, and values, morals and ethics which permeate the way that decisions are made and polices are implemented (Buchanan & Huczynski, 2011). Just as when one undertakes international travel, and sees different cultures where there are different attitudes and traditions, one can also observe different

1. Jamie Turner and Pat Cardullo have very different assumptions and expectations for Turner’s new position and MLI as a company. This hinders their relationship and prevents effective communication. This may be contributed to a poor psychological contract, the contract was weakly established and has not been maintained throughout Turner’s time at MLI. Also, when Jamie was in the process of signing on, Cardullo implied and even made many commitments; since then he has

Can managers influence the culture of their organisations? Discuss with reference to at least one example. It is only since the 1970s that the emphasis has shifted from a management-by-numbers to a more people-focused way of managing, in response to various problems that could not be overcome using the prior method (e.g. limitations to the Theory X way of managing, new production methods etc.). Pop-management theorists have since made direct links between an organisation’s culture and its performance, though this is not the entire story. As Kilmann et al (1985) put it: ‘a culture has a positive impact on an organisation when it points behaviour in the right direction... alternatively, a culture has a negative impact when it points

The classic Phrase by Mckinsey organisation, “the culture is how we do things around here” is taken as reference by many great people. It’s true that culture exist in an organisation which influences the work being done and also affects the success or failure of the project.