Take Home Exam Spring Essay Example

Take Home Exam Spring Essay Example Take Home Exam Spring Essay Take Home Exam Spring Essay The Case of Chris Cunningham Elizabeth Stoves was the president of Stoves Industries, an amalgamation of several small companies in the electrical parts industry. She and her husband had inherited part of the group from her father-in-law, and Stoves, an engineer, elected to run the company while her husband pursued a separate career as a dental surgeon. In addition to the inheritance, Stoves had purchased three other companies to create the present Stoves Industries. Only 31 years old, Stoves was a dynamic individual, full of ideas and drive. In he period of one year, she made Stoves Industries into a profitable organization known for its aggressiveness. Stoves integrated the four companies into a unified organization by merging the individual management groups into one unit. Some individuals in each organization lost their jobs at the time of purchase, and, in other instances, executives of the newly purchased companies resigned because of difficulties in working for such a young and driving boss. The four plants continued as individual man picturing units of the company, and together employed approximately 475 production workers. Problems arose in integrating the sales staffs, because the original companies had competed with each other, and, the sales clerks had overlapping territories. This was gradually being worked out; but the salespeople were permitted to keep their own pre-existing customers, which made it difficult TTT assign exclusive territories to each salesperson. The sales staff included 17 sales representatives and the director, who had been with the original Stoves company as sales manager. He knew Elizabeth Stoves well and was a trusted lieutenant, but served as little more than formal head of the sales force. He voted most of his time and energy to routine direction and coordination o the sales team. Stoves herself provided the active leadership. Stoves herself hired the 18th and newest sales representative, Chris Cunningham, who had been one of Stoves college classmates. Cunningham shared some of Stoves drive and enthusiasm to succeed and soon justified Stoves choice with a sensational sales record. Despite this sales success, Cunningham represented a thorny problem for Stoves. She described the problem in the following fashion: l hired Chris because we knew and admired each other in our college days. Chris was always a leader on campus, and we had worked well together in campus affairs. Chris was just the kind of person I wanted in this organizationa lot of drive and originality, combined with tremendous Loyola The way I operate, I need a loyal organization of people who will pitch right IR on the projects we develop. Chris has already been proven a top-notch performer and will probably be our best salesperson in a year or two. Could one ask for anything better than that? Here is where the problem comes in. Chris is the sort of person who has absolutely no respect for organization. A hot order will come in, for example, and Chris will go straight to the plant with it and raise hell until that order is delivered. It does not make any difference that our production schedule has been knocked to pieces. The order is out, and Chris has a satisfied customer. Of course, that sort of thing gets repeat business and does show well on Chris sales record. However, it has made running our plants a constant headache. Production staff are not the only people who felt Cunningham impact on operations. Chris gets mixed up with our engineering department on new designs and as even made the purchasing department furious by pressuring them to hurry supplies on special orders. You can just imagine how the rest of the organization feels about all this. The other salespeople are pretty upset that their orders get pushed aside-?and are probably a bit jealous, too. The production people, the engineers, the purchasing agent, and most of the rest of the staff have constantly complained to me about how Chris irritates them. On a personal level, the staff say they like Chris a lot but that they just cannot work with such a troublemaker in the organization. Eave talked with Chris many times about this. I have tried raising hell over the issue, pleading for change, and patient and rational discussion. For maybe a week after one of these sessions, Chris seems like a reformed character, everyone relaxes a bit, and then bangfew go again in the same old pattern. Suppose that in many ways Chris is just like mel must admit I would probably be inclined to act in much the same way. You see, have a lot of sympathy for Chris point of view. Hank you can see now what my problem is. Should I fire Chris and lose a star salesperson? That does not make too much sense. In fact, Chris is probably the person who should be our sales director, if not immediately at least in a few years. But without the ability to get along with the organization, to understand the meaning of channels and procedures, Chris is not only a valuable and talented addition to the company, but a liability as well. Should I take a chance on things eventually working out and Chris getting educated to the organization? Should put on a lot of pressure and force a change?