Organization Behavior

Session 5 – Culture

CASE STUDY ‐ A CLASH OF CULTURES?Brunswick and Cavendish are rival companies in the highly competitive market for advertising. About Brunswick...Dynamic young businessman, Nick Brunswick, founded Brunswick in 1972. He now admits that he then knew little or nothing about management, but learnt on the job, as his business grew. Over time he developed a system of business units. These work groups that are very much customer focused, being responsible for one or more clients, depending upon the size of the account. Each is run by a Client Manager, who reports directly to Nick, and contains a group of staff including, copywriters, graphic designers and media professionals, all of whom have clearly defined roles.Brunswick has a fairly traditional central administration headed up by Nick, together with Finance, Operations, Marketing and Human resource managers, each of who has their team of support staff. The senior management team report directly to Nick and are responsible for maintenance of their specialist areas and for developing procedures for the company. The company has over the years been highly successful at attracting and retaining corporate customers, however as the company bureaucracy has grown, it has perhaps become more inflexible. Recently the chance to obtain some important contracts has been lost, due to the company not being able to put together a pitch in time, despite the company employing over five hundred staff.About Cavendish...Cavendish was formed by a group of five business school graduates in 1991. All had initially worked for other companies within the market sector but had kept in touch and also retained their dream of eventually setting up their own company. This day came somewhat sooner that any had expected, as with a cyclical decline in the economy and a general contraction of the industry, several were made redundant. When they decided to form their own company, they had realised that to survive they would have to...