Running Head: SUNFLOWER INCORPORATED (Head)
Sunflower Incorporated
Abstract
Sunflower Incorporated, upon establishment of a new financial reporting system, decided to standardized pricing and purchasing procedures across the company. The reporting system pointed to the fact that highly profitable regions were boosting profits by pawning less than optimal quality goods on unsuspecting customers. Other issues were plaguing the company such as intense competition from national distributors to maintain their market share by cutting prices and launching new products. The president of the company created a solution by developing a new position, Director of Pricing and Purchasing, to repair and monitor this situation. This paper discusses how the director addressed and handled this situation and compares it to Organizational Development theory (OD).
Sunflower Incorporated
The easiest method for standardizing pricing and purchasing policy in an organization under market control is to quickly convert its procedures to a bureaucratic control and communicate these changes through the company’s e-mail system. This is exactly the approach taken by Agnes Albanese, the new Director of Pricing and Purchasing for Sunflower Incorporated. Of course, this is not a recommended approach.
Albanese’ approach may be typical for many organizations but unfortunately it doesn’t return anticipated results for numerous reasons. Organizational development theory tells us that change, in order to be effective, must be led and managed. Albanese only provided a quick solution to what she regarded as a simple problem while making no efforts to establish a change plan that would have included such elements as providing the leadership and vision to promote the change, cultural assessment to align behavioral norms, communication and stakeholder management, performance management, training and development, and the impact of the change on the organizational structure.
This...