Sunflower Incorporated

helianthus Incorporated is a large distribution play along with over 5,000 employees and gross gross sales over $700 million in 1991. The association purchases and distributes salty snack foods and liquor to independent retail stores throughout the get together States and Canada. Salty snack foods include corn chips, potato chips, cheese curls, tortilla chips, and peanuts. The linked States and Canada are divided into 22 components, severally with its own central wareho procedure, salespeople, finance department, and purchasing department.The organization distributes national as well as topical anaesthetic brands and packages some items under private labels. The head office set aheads distributively regions to be autonomous be font of local tastes and practices. The northeast United States, for example, consumes a dandyer persona of Canadian whisky and American bourbon, while the West consumes more unwarranted liquors, such as vodka, gin, and rum. Snack foods in the Sou thwest are a good deal seasoned to reflect Mexican tastes. Early in 1989, helianthus began use a financial reporting system that compared sales, costs, and profits across regions. circumspection was surprised to learn that profits varied widely. By 1990, the differences was so great that management decided some standardization was necessary. They believed that highly profitable regions were sometimes using lower-quality items, even seconds, to boost profit margins. The practice could hurt Sunflowers image. Other regions were facing intense value competition in order to hold market share. National distributors were pushing hard to growing their market share.Frito-Lay, Bordens, Nabisco, Procter & Gamble (Pringles), and Standard Brands (Planters peanuts) were pushing hard to add market share by cutting prices and launching upstart products. As these problems accumulated, Mr. steelman, president of Sunflower, decided to create a new position to manage set and purchasing practi ces. Agnes Albanese was hired from the finance department of a competing organization. Her new title was director of pricing and purchasing, and she reported to the vice president of finance, Mr. Mobley.Steelman and Mobley gave Albanese great freedom in organizing her job and encouraged her to establish whatsoever rules and procedures were necessary. She was also encouraged to gather information from distributively region. Each region was notified of her appoinment by an official memo sent to the regional managers. A assume of the memo was posted on each warehouse bulletin board. The annunciation was also made in the compevery newspaper. After 3 weeks on the job, Albanese decided that pricing and purchasing decisions should be standardized across regions.As a first step, she wanted the financial executive in each regions to notify her of any substitute in local prices of more than 3%. She also decided that all new contracts for local purchases of more than $5,000 should be clear ed through her office. Albanese believed that the only way to standardize operations was for each region to notify the home office in advance of any change in prices or purchases. Albanese disputeed the proposed policy with Mobley. He agreed, so they submitted a formal proposal to the president and board of directors, who approved the plan.Sunflower was moving into the peak holiday season, so Albanese wanted to implement the new procedures by rights away. She decided to send an telecommunicate to the financial and purchasing executives in each region notifying them of the new procedures. The change would be inserted in all policy and procedure manuals thorughout Sunflower within 4 months. Albanese showed a draft of the email to Mobley and invited his comments. Mobley said the Internet was an excellent idea but it was not sufficient. The regions embrace hundreds of items and were utilise to decentralized decision making.Mobley suggested that Albanese ought to visit the regions and discuss purchasing and pricing policies with the executives. Albanese refused, saying that the trips would be expensive and time-consuming. She had so many things to do at headquarters that a trip was impossible. Mobley also suggested waiting to implement the procedures until later the annual company meeting 3 months. Albanese said this would cultivate to a fault long be contract the procedures would not take effect until after the peak sales season. She believed the procedures were needed now. The email went out the next day.During the next few days, replies came in from most of the regions. The executives were in agreement with the email and said they would be laughing(prenominal) to cooperate. Eight weeks later, Albanese had not received notices from any regions close to local price or purchase change. Other executives who had visited regional warehouses indicated to her that the regions were busy as usual. regional executives seemed to be following usual procedures for that time of year. Albanese might analyze what the cause of the ineffective organizationl changes, and she might done variedly.Albanese should do something now. From the case above, we now that the cause of the ineffective organization changes are first, response to changes programs were less enthusiastic. The regional executives was not give their opinions, critics, and participation in developing the programs. Their enthusiastic have showed bonnie in the next few days from the email about the resolve the changes programs was sent. But, there was no enthusiastic in 2 months later. Seconds, the changes program may be agreed by regional executives but were perceived as not in top priority.The regional offices might face the different various problems because of local market characteristics and practices, and they made the priority rank of the problems and opposite implementations differently. Third, the changes programs seemed to be not well planned. Because the programs built on the Albanese perceptions of the expensiveness and time-consume. Fourth, entropy congregation was not conducted properly. So, Albanese was not capture the sure problems and how to solve it efficiently and instituzionalizing the interventions.Fifth, data analysis was done inappropriately, no follow-up actions were taken to confirm the real problems. The actions wasnt conducted by accurate data analysis. Sixth, no opportunity was tending(p) to regional executives to participate in the change programs. The email procedure was not give the regional executives to build a feedback, and report the implementation problems they faced. Seventh, bound time was avaible to implement the change. Eighth, socialization was done via email only indicated that lateralisation strategy was implemented, feeding back process was less effective.So, the organization should take change actions building on the cause of the ineffective organizational changes. The Sunflower could be done 1. Improving t he planning process. Sunflower can use the general model of planned change for the Organizational Change and Develoment theory. The quatern activites in the planning process (entering and contracting, diagnosing, planning and implementing, and evaluating and institutionalizing) can be used to describe how to take changes in Sunflower. 2. Visiting regions to gather (and confirm) the data, offer the changes program, encourage participation, and build commitment.The head office and regional office can discuss together how to plan the changes programs and how well implement it. The commitment for to implement the change continually should be increased. 3. Allocate reasonable time frame for socialization, novelty process (process in the organizational change and development when the performance diminish because of the implementation of the changes programs before it result the more effective and increase in the performance), feeding back to improve the changes programs, and provide op portunities to regions executives to speak up, 4.Implement the changes at the (more) appropriate time (not it busy season). It is important to diagnose the best bit for implementation of the changes programs. 5. Actively monitor the implementation and evaluate periodically and accurately. Feedback about interventions results provides information about whether the change should be continued, modified, or suspended.