The Exley Chemical Company Case Analysis

Alexander Becerra

BUS 431

Chapter 10 Case Study

The Exley Chemical Company Case Analysis

I. Problems

A. Macro

1. A leading indicator of a problem within an organization is when sales and profits begin to drop off steadily over a substantial period of time. This is the case with Exley Chemical who previously had experience a positive ratio of net profits to sales but since the inception of the Product Development three years ago.

2. Conflicts between departments because product development started using a specialty sales force to conduct pilot marketing programs but this wasn’t well received by the marketing department. A major part of the problem was responsibilities were split between product development and marketing departments but there was no coordination or structure set up to ensure communication.

B. Micro

1. Each separate group of products a product manager was appointed who was responsible for all company activities for that product. This caused problems because there was no coordination and in essence you had a lot of mini companies within the company with no clear direction, alignment or communication.

2. Each project manager is working on what will make the most for them and their area however, since no one is working together new products are still not getting to the market and Exley is falling behind the rest of the market.

II. Causes

1. Creation of the new division to handle product development disrupted the previous cohesive interaction that had existed between divisions.

2. Product development division has tried to become independent of other departments however they are failing because they still need other departments and instead of working together they have created a lot of friction.

3. Too many levels of the organizational chart developed too many department heads and not enough communication/coordination efforts between departments (i.e. Marketing,...