Sunflower Incorporated

sunflower Incorporated is a adult distribution company with over 5,000 employees and coarse sales over $700 million in 1991. The company purchases and distributes salty snack foods and pot liquor to independent retail stores throughout the united States and Canada. Salty snack foods include give chips, potato chips, cheese curls, tortilla chips, and peanuts. The unify States and Canada ar divided into 22 personas, apiece with its accept central wargonho handling, salespeople, finance department, and get department.The administration distributes national as well as local anesthetic brands and packages some items under esoteric labels. The head component encourages each component parts to be autonomous because of local tastes and practices. The northeast United States, for ex antiophthalmic factorle, consumes a greater percentage of Canadian whisky and Ameri displace bourbon, while the westward consumes more light liquors, such as vodka, gin, and rum. Snack foods in th e Southwest atomic number 18 often seasoned to reflect Mexican tastes. Early in 1989, helianthus began apply a fiscal reporting outline that compared sales, costs, and profits across regions.Management was affect to learn that profits varied widely. By 1990, the differences was so great that management heady some standardization was necessary. They believed that highly paid regions were some condemnations using lower-quality items, even seconds, to gain profit margins. The practice could hurt sunflowers image. Other regions were facing unrelenting price competition in put to hold market appoint. National distributors were force hard to increase their market share.Frito-Lay, Bordens, Nabisco, Procter & Gamble (Pringles), and Standard Brands (Planters peanuts) were push hard to increase market share by cutting prices and launching pertly products. As these problems accumulated, Mr. Steelman, president of Sunflower, decided to urinate a new position to oversee pric ing and purchasing practices. Agnes Albanese was hired from the finance department of a competing organization. Her new championship was director of pricing and purchasing, and she reported to the sin president of finance, Mr. Mobley.Steelman and Mobley gave Albanese great immunity in organizing her job and encouraged her to solution whatever rules and physical processs were necessary. She was also encouraged to conform to development from each region. Each region was nonified of her appoinment by an official memorandum direct to the regional managers. A copy of the memo was posted on each storage warehouse bulletin board. The announcement was also do in the company 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 pecuniary executive in each regions to advertise her of any transplant in local prices of more than 3%. She also decided that all new contracts for local purchases of more than $5,000 should be cleared through her state of affairs. Albanese believed that the totally way to standardize operations was for each region to notify the home office in advance of any transport in prices or purchases. Albanese controverted the proposed policy with Mobley. He agreed, so they submitted a formal proposal of marriage to the president and board of directors, who approved the plan.Sunflower was moving into the peak holiday season, so Albanese wanted to accomplish the new procedures in effect(p) away. She decided to send an electronic mail 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 clarified idea but it was not sufficient. The regions address hundreds of items and were used to decentralized decision making.Mobley suggested that Albanese ought to meet the regions and discuss purchasing and pricing policies with the executives. Albanese refused, maxim 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 put through the procedures until after the annual company brush 3 months. Albanese said this would pull away as well long because the procedures would not take effect until after the peak sales season. She believed the procedures were compulsory at one time. The email went out the side by side(p) 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 happy to cooperate. Eight weeks later, Albanese had not original notices from any regions about local price or purchase change. Other executives who had visited regional warehouses indicated to her that the re gions were busy as usual. Regional executives seemed to be following usual procedures for that time of year. Albanese world power analyze what the cause of the ineffective organizationl changes, and she faculty make differently.Albanese should do something now. From the case above, we now that the cause of the ineffective organization changes are first, response to changes computer programmes were slight enthusiastic. The regional executives was not give their opinions, critics, and participation in exploitation the programs. Their enthusiastic have showed just in the next few days from the email about the announcement 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 antecedence.The regional offices might face the different discordant problems because of local market characteristics and practices, and they made the priority rank of the problems a nd other 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 gathering was not conducted properly. So, Albanese was not detain the real problems and how to solve it efficiently and instituzionalizing the interventions.Fifth, selective information analysis was done in steally, no pass actions were taken to confirm the real problems. The actions wasnt conducted by accurate data analysis. Sixth, no opportunity was given to regional executives to go in in the change programs. The email procedure was not give the regional executives to ready a feedback, and report the implementation problems they faced. Seventh, trammel time was avaible to implement the change. Eighth, socialization was done via email only indicated that dominance outline was implemented, feeding back process was less effective.So, the organization should take change act ions create on the cause of the ineffective organizational changes. The Sunflower could be done 1. meliorate the planning process. Sunflower can use the general model of planned change for the Organizational Change and Develoment theory. The four 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, twisting 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, transition process (process in the organizational change and development when the writ of execution decrease because of the implementation of the changes programs before i t go away the more effective and increase in the performance), feeding back to improve the changes programs, and take into account opportunities to regions executives to speak up, 4.Implement the changes at the (more) appropriate time (not it busy season). It is important to make the best moment for implementation of the changes programs. 5. actively monitor the implementation and evaluate sporadically and accurately. Feedback about interventions results provides information about whether the change should be continued, modified, or suspended.