Exley Case

ECC uses a functional organizational structure where employees are grouped by the tasks they perform. Departmentalization divides the jobs into the departments of finance, engineering, research, production, and marketing, each of which comes under the management of a vice president. Exley also added a product development division to supplement the existing divisions and assist with the creation of new products. Within each division, mid-level and lower-level managers organize the work and the employees.

The president and directors oversee each division and provide guidance for the overall company and its four factories.

2. At Exley, the organizational culture favors individualism over collectivism, and the desires of one division are often placed above the well-being of the company as a whole. Little reliance and cooperation exists between the divisions, and this creates a culture of suspicious and distrust. The beliefs and values of the product development division and the marketing division do not align, and this creates a weak culture with unfavorable communication. In the case, the marketing vice-president states: “Judging from what I’ve seen, Product Development couldn’t care less about what we are doing in terms of integrating our markets.” Evidently, the Exley culture supports individualism over teamwork, and this causes negative perceptions to exist among the different groups.

A common set of company goals do not guide all of the divisions, and this weak culture allows disagreement and conflict to increase. The lack of cooperation between the divisions causes tensions to arise, and, consequently, collective distrust and frustration dominates the company culture.

3. The declining sales and profit figures indicate that changes are occurring at Exley, and these changes are harming the company. Since the introduction of the product development division, the managers focus more on advancing their own projects rather than activities that...