Контрольная работа по "Иностранному языку"

1. What were the problems confronting Handy Snack before the change?

 

As presented in the case study, Handy Snack (Distributing) Co is a large food and drink distribution company with gross annual sales exceeding £52 million. It has nine regional centers, seven of them in the United Kingdom and two in Ireland. Each one has its own warehouse, sales staff, finance and purchasing departments. With all its subdivisions Handy Snack gave job to more than 1500 employees. The company purchases products (mostly snack food and alcoholic and nonalcoholic tinned and bottled beverage) and distributes them to its retailer departments throughout the UK and Ireland.

 

However, as we can judge from the case study, Handy Snack has several burning problems with managing its divisions, and some of them are more obvious than the others, and some promise to give themselves felt, an become a real challenge in the future.

 

Since the foundation, the headquarters of the Handy Snack, located in London, has always stimulated each region to be autonomous because of variations in local product demand, which it is probably more effective and cheap to examine and analyze on-site, than from the head office. It even created an inner non-bureaucratic ethos of the company, which was valued and preserved by the employees, as can see even from the way, in which cooperated Borden and Pedder. First it must have been a great benefit of the company, because as far as we know from the case study, all the regions were pronounced profitable. As time passed, the regions started handling their own business all by themselves, and got used to decentralized decision-making.

 

Moreover the managers of Handy Snack had even recruited all regional personnel, including senior managers from the locality, and so that stimulated even greater independence in the regions. As far as we know from the case study “some of them [senior managers] are proud of the fact that they have never visited London head office!”

 

From one point of view this was a great benefit, because, who can look into the preferences of the local customers, than the same local people. More than that, this way the regional offices could react to the market changes much quicker. 

 

However such policy has led to the situation, when regional offices of the company had become too independent from the center. By the time, described in the case study, lack of corporate centralization made itself sound. It created even more problems, of which I am going to talk below.

 

By the time, described in the case study, only senior managers in the regions were connected to head office by an electronic mail system, but not other employees or sales people. More that that, the headquarters experienced considerable difficulties making any top managers to use the E-mail system on a regular basis. They precisely had to face rejection and hostility from the regional offices, had even started to receive anonymous messages, unpleasant, though harmless.

 

Cut-throat competition in the industry, where the competitors continually have to update product lines and cut prices in the constant attempts to gain market share finally stirred things up. And than the lack of the communication and cooperation between regional offices and headquarters of Handy Snack inevitably created the reasons for mutual resentment and distrust.

 

When the centralized financial reporting system was installed, it appeared that profit margins varied markedly from region to region. The chairman of the company even suspected that some regions were using lower-quality products, increase regional profitability. Of course such practice could ruin the company's reputation for high-quality products. This was, actually, why Peter Borden was employed. So, the head office is displeased with the regional, and does not tryst them.

 

On the other hand, the regions also are dissatisfied with the headquarters’ policy. As we can see from the case study, one of the regional senior manages says, that ‘we have enough to worry about reaching difficult profit goals seemingly chosen at random by you lot at head office, without additional procedures and ‘red tape’”. This means, that because of poor communication between offices, regional offices do not understand the goals and strategies of the company and are concerned only about how to make their departments profitable, not worrying about the other things.

 

All these were the main problems confronting Handy Snack, and those, requiring immediate change in the inner management of the company, before the time Peter Borden joined the teem.

 

 

2. What went wrong in the change plan put forward by Peter Borden?

 

The chairman of the Handy Snack, Michael Rosen, decided that a degree of standardization in the company needs to be increased. In order to achieve this aim, he created a new managerial post to supervise the company’s regional pricing and purchasing policies.

 

To fill this post Peter Borden was hired. He previously was working as a senior finance manager in the National Distributing, a highly centralized organization and Handy Snack’s closest business rival. His experience at National Distributing made him appraise strong corporate administration and control. Borden has to report directly to Pauline Pedder, managing director of finance.

 

To perform in the best way, Peter Borden established several objectives to be achieved. According to the case study “Over the long term, Handy Snack should make better use of information technology”. “In the short term, Borden decided that fragmented pricing and purchasing decisions were a problem.” However he could not produce his change plan right, and did not succeed in his work. And this was because of several reasons.

 

First reason, which I mentioned above, is the lack of centralization in the Handy Snack. It is even better to say a balance between centralization and decentralization in the company, as though the problems already became obvious, they yet have not affected the business. This order became the habit among the staff and became part of corporate culture. Moreover, the majority of employees were satisfied with this situation. 

 

However Borden, a stranger in this company, attempted to introduce a strict system of monitoring and reporting, and in the shortest possible time, to implement the changes in order to beat the rush of Christmas orders, and that was why, of course, he met the full rejection. 

 

More than that, when getting the anonymous messages, symptomatic of the resentment, he did not take them into account, but just discarded it as caused by the seasonal high spirits

 

The second reason, that caused the failure, was the problem, I described, when answering the first question. Peter Borden used only formal channels to let the regions know about the proposed changes. Regional management was informed of Borden's assignment by an official memorandum and the company bi-monthly newsletter.

 

However, this contradicted the communication and organizational culture accepted in the Handy Snack. As we can see from the case study, only “Informal enquiries by Pauline Pedder revealed that the regions were busy as usual following conventional procedures”. So, even the top managers got used to informal ways of communicating with the regions.

 

Moreover, I have to bring up the issue of the capability of Peter Borden to manage such sort of problems. Might be, he was a good manager when working with the highly centralized organization, but he now seems totally helpless and desperate to solve the problem of Hand Snack.

 

Moreover, looks like he is trying, unsuccessfully, to become consolidated on his new job. He him self says, that he is to “make my presence felt as soon as possible”, as if he is not quit sure if, he can make proper decisions, worth following.

 

It seems like he was in a hurry all the time. He produced a plan almost at once, without proper investigation of the situation, and this way he raised hopes of the Boards. More likely in his plan he established unreal time for launching his plan, so by they were already waiting for the results by Christmas.  

 

Moreover he seems not to listen to anyone while making decisions, and he is trying to make the regional offices obey to the head office.

 

Though Pauline Pedder was trying to explain him the ways, the things in Handy Snack are done, he did not listen and more that that – was rude with his superior. He says - “I've got far too much to do here without wasting my time traveling” – rejecting the offer to visit regional offices and discuss procedural changes with regional management. More than that, he even did not bother to wait till the annual company meeting.

 

I strongly believe that Peter’s communication skills are to be considerably improved and moreover, he needs to learn the culture of the company, he has joined.

 

 

3. What could Peter Borden done to avoid the problems of putting into effect the change plan?

 

Getting started with his work for Handy Snack, Peter Borden has set two objectives, which I consider appropriate.

 

Though the first one was evaluated by Borden, as a sort term objective, in my opinion, it should be named as a long-term one. He decided that fragmented pricing and purchasing decisions should be eliminated as soon as possible. However he underestimated the significance of the independent decision-making in the regions, and failed.

 

The other one was the long term aim. It was obvious that, Handy Snack should make better use of information technology.

 

More than that, Michael Rosen, the company chairman, suggested, that standardization over the company should be produced.

 

However I might have suggested another objective. That is – to change the corporate culture to more formal one, but not at once, but step by step.

 

I believe, that Borden could have done much better, if he proposed longer timescales for organizational change, he intended to produce. I think so, because it is obvious, that he could not make the right steps and think out a proper strategy for the change, because he squeezed himself in too short time limits.

 

More than that, I think, that the regions should be involved in the decision making about the forthcoming changes. This will create at least a better understanding of the purposes and objectives of the head office in the regions, so the decisions would not be taken with hostility.

 

And what is more, I would have tried to encourage a tighter collaboration between the management teams of the head office and across the regions. This can be achieved by different common arrangements, like for example team-building and celebrations.

 

And the last – I would have tried to pick out employees more carefully. As far, as we know, great changes in corporate culture and atmosphere draw big changes in the relationships and behaviors of employees. So, it is essential to hire people, who are suitable not only for the job, but for the company it self.