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Question 1:
Which things have obviously been overlooked in the Jacobs-Suchard company in their attempt to re-organize the confectionary business?
Question 2:
Which consequences did the company have to bear because they overlooked these things?
Answers:
Answer 1:
In their attempt to re-organize the confectionery business, various things were overlooked by the Jacobs-Suchard Company. First, the task force selected to oversee various activities failed to specify the manner in which the global brand sponsors were to be measured, beyond their measurement as business unit general managers. The restricting, which took place in the organization, cut two management levels between the general managers and Jacobs without looking into various ways in which this could affect the company. The taskforces made various recommendations but there was no clear means on how they were to be implemented and for further reduction of the variability in product and packaging for the brand to be ideally global. Additionally, there lacked clear guidelines concerning whether the general manager level organization was to be further changed. Different people had different opinion on this issue. There were different centers of power a factor that contributed to misunderstanding at some point. The task force should have created a specific center of point, which would be overall to other centers, and this would solve the problem of conflict. This lack of clear guidelines on how they were to undertake their new assignment, the global sponsors started experimenting on how they were to work with the general managers on strategies of global brand. There was informal relationship between general managers and global brand sponsors, which should not have been the case. The interrelations between various entities at leadership position were overlooked.
Answer 2:
The overlooked factors made the company to bear some consequences. First, the informal working between general managers and global brand managers reduced the chances of success for these relationships. It was notable that the global sponsors who attempted to be tough never succeeded and those who acted softly succeeded. Business unit consumer marketing managers were unable to make decisions since the general managers who were their seniors mostly altered these decisions. Conflicts were inevitable in the management. There was a clash between what the global brand sponsors wanted as compared the likes of the local general manager. Conflicts were experienced in the sizes of packaging, the language to be used on packaging, means of advertising, the person responsible for paying international media, who to pay for investments, which company to source from among others. For instance, in some incidences, the general managers and the global brand sponsor would come into agreement on a strategy of European strategy, but then they would differ in sharing of the cost. When these scenarios were experienced, the global brand sponsor would be stuck with the cost in their own local budget, which would affect the profitability of their company. In some cases, the general managers would refuse to adhere to the global strategy of advertising due to cultural differences. All these issues could have been solved if clear guidelines had been set to show the interrelations between various groups. Many individuals utilized Zinser for conflict resolution; however, this was feared to affect profitability of the companies under these conditions.
