The application - Term Paper Example

Initially, extremely excited and optimistic, Jason was momentarily awfully despondent. He could not remember the last time he had encountered such a communication crisis in a company, and was at a loss on how to even initiate solving this mess of a situation. Equipped with more than fifteen years of experience as an international crisis communications consultant, and having a doctorate of philosophy in communication, he always prided himself on dealing with the intra-company issues swiftly and proficiently.

Maybe it was the semantic noise (2) in the form of confusing vocabulary and mixed phrases used by the lower staff, or the inflexibility of the thought process (3) of the higher managements in the form of tunnel vision, Jason was hitting hard walls wherever he goes. When Jason’s company was approached by the Targeta Inc., a retail giant in States, they thought that it will be just like any other acquisition case. Targeta had recently acquired a small Quebec based clothing company Simmona Inc.

, and was having problems with synergizing cultures, and internal and external communications. Jason further deduced that Targeta was probably going through an information management crisis (4) in the new market, and needed an advisor to figure out ways to ingratiate in the local market. Simmona, an almost two hundred years old company, operated seven big stores in the province of Quebec, Canada. Their main suppliers were local emerging and already established French designers; not even a single product in the stores was imported from outside of the Quebec.

Their biggest location was within the Montreal downtown, with a huge store on the ground floor, and headquarters on the upper levels. The local French Quebecois community had a huge symbolic interaction (5) with these stores, and considered them as a part of their heritage. The firm’s logo was a maple leaf, which is also the national Canadian symbol. At each store, Simmona employed a manager, an assistant manager, and twenty other staff people. Along with these 154 people, forty five more people worked at the head office, which included the CEO John Simmona, and ten other senior officials.

Post acquisition, all of the senior management at the head office was changed, most of them appointed from within States. However, Targeta decided to keep all the store officials, including the store managers, and assistant managers. Ever since the new management took over, the profits have sharply declined, thus resulting in James arrival to sort out the problems and present a plan of action (6). To begin with, Jason immediately went on to conduct written surveys, and verbal interviews of the store employees.

His surveys mostly consisted of binary questions (7), with yes/no answers, and were regarding interactions with previous owners, views about the new management, and other related issues. Along with this, he also questioned local friends and other acquaintances, to get to know what general population thought about this acquisition. He also went to the neighborhood library and read all the available six month old newspapers, focusing mostly on the business sections. He wanted to get as much information as possible regarding events surrounding this acquirement.

He did realize that before this acquisition, there was a mystification (8) attached to these stores. Simmona family,