Case Study Critique: Welcome Aboard?

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Harvard Business Review Case Study Critique: Welcome Aboard (But Don’t Change a Thing) = Harvard Business Review Case Study Critique: Welcome Aboard (But Don’t Change a Thing) Cheryl Hailstrom was recruited to be the new CEO of a formerly family- run company, succeeding retiring family member, Walter Swensen IV, who hired her for the position. Swensen wanted the company, Lakeland Wonders, to grow and continue its rate of profit volume. He sold 30% of his holdings in Lakeland Wonders to Hastings, Curtis (a venture firm) when he retired. Cheryl, CEO of Lakeland Wonders for six months, has had difficulty getting others at Lakeland to share her expansive vision for the company and embrace her plans for achieving its growth goals.…show more content…
One of the greatest seems to be fear of the unknown – future, vision, and direction of the company, uncertainty of future employment with the company, resistance to changing the production dynamics that have been utilized previously, and changing corporate goals. Some of the Lakeland Wonders employees have parents and grandparents that previously worked there. The corporate culture surrounding the company is perceived to be in jeopardy of being altered and the employees are reacting to functioning outside of their comfort zones. Several of Cheryl’s management team, and their direct reports, have begun practicing passive resistance to keep changes from taking place as…show more content…
Currently, the company produces high end, high quality wooden toys that are manufactured exclusively in Minnesota by union labor, which makes them more expensive to produce. The packaging for the toys, and every delivery vehicle used, identifies the toys as made in the U.S.A. Cheryl’s plan is to contract for offshore manufacturing of some of the toys. This shift in practice will cause several issues. One of the most obvious is that some toy packaging and delivery vehicles would not be truthful if emblazoned with ‘Handcrafted with pride in the USA’. A second issue is the perception of Minnesota plant workers that their livelihoods are being outsourced to an offshore facility. A third issue, related to the other two, is that the union contract is up for renegotiation in the very near future and the outsourcing is likely to be a contentious point in the
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