Challenges of Sunflower Incorporated - Case Study Example

Sunflower incorporated Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code: Date of Submission: Introduction Sunflower incorporated is a company that is a distributor of snack foods and liquor. The distributor distributes the liquor and snacks directly to retailers all over the US and Canada. The examples of products that the company distributes include potato chips and peanuts. Early before, the company used to perform well in the market regardless of the competition that existed but in the recent years the sunflower incorporated has not been performing well in the market due to stiff competition in the distribution industry (Thomas & Christopher 2009). This forced the president of the company to create a new position and selected Agnes Albanese to head the position. Her function was to design and implement strategies that will enable he company to be effective in the distribution of the snack foods and liquor so as to compete with other distributors of the same industry. Among the strategies she was likely to consider included the pricing strategy and monitoring and administration of the purchasing function. This paper aims to assess the viability of the changes that aims to improve the performance of the organization as well as the steps to consider while incorporating change. However the management change that was proposed by Agnes did not succeed because she did not consider some issues in the process of implementing the plan for change. Her change was to consider issues like quality of their services and products and the ways she can improve the revenues from the company through purchasing and pricing functions through gaining competitive advantage. In her first days in the office, Agnes Albanese found out that change was needed in the organization so that the performance of the organization can be improved. The biggest was how to start and from what the change towards what direction. This was her heavy task because failure to plan well she will end up not succeeding in change because the strategies she will choose will determine the implementation of the change. Managing change would start by diagnosis of the issues that affect the performance of the organization. From her experience she started the task by considering the strategies which are used by many organizations to develop and implement change in their organizations. She first conducted some research to understand the problems and issues that Sunflower incorporated is facing in the market. After conducting the research, she was able to recognize that the organization was not performing well because of the poor quality of services it offers and the pricing strategies as well as the strategies for purchasing function of the organization (Thomas & Christopher 2009). Further, she recognized that there were no standard strategies for pricing the products and the purchasing as well. Lack of standardized policies and procedures for the purchasing function led to poor performance in the market and thus fewer revenues from the company due to competition from other traders in the same industry. After recognizing the issues affecting the organization in terms of performance leading to lower revenues, the next stage was to develop strategies that aim at improving the issues that affect the organization. In this case study, the strategies that were proposed to handle the issues of poor performance and lack of competitive performance included setting the standard pricing of the products and designing strategies that will improve the purchasing function of the organization. Agnes Albanese managed to design the standards that were to guide the organization in pricing and purchasing function of the organization as she recognized that the prices of the products of Sunflower incorporated organization were higher than those of the competitors which discouraged the customers and ran away to the competitors products leaving the organization with less customers. This reduced the sale of the products of Sunflower incorporated thus reduced the profits that were made. However, the strategy did not work out as Agnes Albanese planned because she failed to consult all the parties which are involved in the decision making like the stakeholders (McLean 2005). This led to difficulty in the implementation of the strategy because some of the stakeholders like the employees did not cooperate as they were not consulted thus resisted the change. Agnes made a decision of her own as she did not involve the management of other branches in the regions where the distributor operates. Therefore, the strategy that Agnes proposed was good but it did not succeed because she failed to consider teamwork in the development of the strategy by involving other stakeholders in the decision making process so that they could also give their views on the most viable strategies that will handle the problems they face in their different regions (Cunning & Worley 2005). Implementation of the management changes Organizational development requires that change has to be implemented with care so that cooperation from all the stakeholders will be achieved (Cunning & Worley 2005). For instance, the regional managers should be included in establishing the implementation strategy so that they will influence other employees in the implementation process so that they will set goals and schedule for each activity during implementation. In this case study, Agnes Albanese did send the emails to all the regional managers requiring them to start implementing the new recommendations concerning the new pricing and purchasing function strategies. Among the many policies of Sunflower incorporated requires that for any change that needs to take place in the organization, the top management of the organization at its headquarters must be notified before the implementation takes place (Cunning & Worley 2005). Another factor to consider in the implementation of the strategy is the availability of experienced personnel to conduct the tasks. This will ensure that the implementation process is efficient. Next is to consider factors that will influence all the stakeholders to work as a team towards achieving the objective of the strategy for instance motivation. The next step is to explain to all stakeholders the importance of implementing the change in the management and how they will personally gain from the strategy. In this regard, they will be motivated and work hard towards achieving the goals and objectives of the strategy. One of the benefits that should be explained is that the organization will make more profits through improved performance and the employees and other stakeholders will benefit through bonuses and dividends and this will motivate them to cooperate in the implementation process. In this case study of Sunflower incorporated, Agnes Albanese despite her efforts to change the management of the organization, her strategies did not succeed because she did not consider all the factors before the implementation process began. To begin with she did not communicate with the headquarters or the top management to inform them on the changes that were likely to take place in the organization. This could help Agnes to get support from the top management which could either be financial or non financial resources (McLean 2005). The top management could have helped her encourage the stakeholders towards achieving the change in the management therefore she did not get support from the top management. Another factor why the implementation of the strategy failed is that she did not involve the regional management in setting the objectives and goals of the strategies as well as the implementation process. In this regard, the regional management did not cooperate in implementing the pricing and purchasing function of the organization. This made monitoring of the processes by Agnes be difficult and thus cannot achieve her goals. They did not work together to as a team towards a common goal or objective but Agnes just designed the implementation process by herself and not including other stakeholders. Furthermore, there was no motivation of the employees because Agnes did not strategize well to explain to the employees the benefits they could have enjoyed from the implementation of the new management strategies (Chip & John 2007). So they did not get bothered to implement the change as they did not know what the change will benefit them. Due to the above factors, the change in the management policy did not succeed as there were no clear guidelines for the implementation process as well as the system that will achieve the cooperation of all the stakeholders of the organization and therefore Sunflower incorporated remained incompetent in the distribution industry besides making little profits. Recommendation for Sunflower incorporated In order for Agnes to achieve her functions and improve the performance of the organization, she will have to include all the stakeholders in designing and implementation of the pricing and purchasing strategies. The stakeholders will give more details concerning the pricing and purchasing strategies that will be helpful in designing the management change. For instance, the regional management of different branches should be involved because they better understand the pricing and purchasing issues that affect them. Besides designing the management change, they will be motivated and will influence other employees during the implementation of the strategy (McLean 2005). Furthermore, communication of the strategies should be communicated to the headquarters and employees so that everyone will be made aware of the change that is likely to take place. The employees will also be motivated because they will understand the benefits they will achieve through the implementation of the pricing and purchasing functions in the organization. Through motivation, they will work together in teamwork spirit and improve the performance of the organization by reducing resistance to the change. Finally, the change should be implemented in stages after accomplishing the goal at stage one the implementation resumes to stage two so that it will be easy to monitor the operations (Cunning & Worley 2005). Conclusion The major issues that are affecting Sunflower Incorporated are the pricing and purchasing strategies which in turn influence the quality of products being distributed to be of poor quality leading to incompetency for the market share. In this regard the president of Sunflower Incorporated created new vacancy and appointed Agnes Albanese to head it with the aim of improving the purchasing and pricing of the organization’s products. However the management change did not succeed because Agnes did not consider the opinions of all stakeholders before coming up with the change strategies which led to the unsuccessful implementation of the pricing and purchasing strategies. Moreover, the implementation did not succeed because she did not motivate the stakeholders who were responsible for implementing the change thus there was no cooperation. In order to implement the management change effectively, she needs to involve regional management, all stakeholders and set clear procedures on how the implementation will take place for instance in stages. References Cumming, T. G & Worley, C. G 2005, Organization development and change. USA. Cengage Learning Chip, J & John, W 2007, Creating corporate cultures through Mythopoetric Leadership, Organizational dynamics, Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 288-302. McLean G 2005, What is Organizational Development. USA. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. May 22, 2013. http://www.bkconnection.com/static/mcleanexcerpt.pdf Thomas, G. C & Christopher, G. W 2009, Sunflower Incorporated, retrieved on 22 may 2013 at http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=rdjtPTfkWG8C&pg=PA239&lpg=PA239&dq=sunflower+incorporated&source=bl&ots=4iPjBJaZ_G&sig=NAOjszDTO1Q7RyJyAQyIG73Fi2I&hl=en&sa=X&ei=HVeUd3XL6WM4ATRsYGYBw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=sunflower%20incorporated&f=false Read More