Case Analysis: Peter Browning and Continental White Cap

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Midterm Case Analysis: Peter Browning and Continental White Cap.

1. The Case: What are the critical issues facing Peter Browning and Continental White Cap? His goals? The organization’s goals?

2. The Analysis: What are White Cap’s strengths and weaknesses in light of its goals and the objectives for the proposed change? What type of change strategy is indicated?

3. The Action Plan: What steps do you recommend in implementing the planned change? Be specific with regards to processes for gaining support, implementing new practices and procedures and institutionalizing the change. What contingency plans might be needed to manage change effectively?

Dick Hoffman couldn’t have been more right when he declared that Peter Browning was ‘smack dab between a rock and a hard place.’ Under the management umbrella, Peter Browning was faced with several issues. The majority of White Cap’s employees were resistant to change. Many of the employees were older and had been with the firm for quite some time.  They had become accustomed to a culture not only of little change but one groomed over the years by the White family. Employees came to expect unquestioned job security, liberal benefits, and a management structure built on personal relationships rather than job performance. The strength of these expectations was employee loyalty.  Many of the White Cap employees have been with the company for over thirty years, bringing both their friends and family aboard.  This also was the reasoning behind there never being a push for the employees to unionize.  They felt they were always treated fairly by the White family where installing unions would simply create a disconnect between the employees and management.  Rapid change by Peter Browning could run the risk of an employee uproar.

Browning was asked by Continental to reduce salary and administrative costs which  management believed to be over-inflated from being padded for so many years. These high operational costs were seen as a weakness in the eyes of Continental’s management. He was asked to do this while instilling a sense of urgency portraying the absolute collapse of White Cap if things did not change quickly. All the while he was not to disrupt the marketplace image of White Cap and not to weaken its employee loyalty.  These changes needed to be accomplished from beneath the ranks of Art Lawson, the successor of Bob White.  Bob White was the founder’s son whose beliefs were still very much a part of the employee moral that Browning was forced to preserve despite making the necessary changes.  This was one difficult task.

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Browning was also being forced to deal with White Cap’s marketing team which was not spending time listening to the customers about their needs nor were they addressing what was going on in the competitive marketplace. Browning saw the entire department and its management team to be a huge weakness for White Cap along with weaknesses he uncovered in other departments. This lead to Browning’s issues with members of the management team that reported to him such as Jim Stark, Director of Marketing and Tom Green, Manager of Human Resources.

        Peter Browning had a much greater need for accomplishment ...

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