Kent Chemical

Organising for inetrantioanl growth

 1. Why did the GBD concept not work?
Was it not implemented well?
   

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GDBs lacked of Their roles were not
awareness of defined clearly and there GBDs failed to build
international were no set thin lines good rapport with
subsidiaries between the roles of international
international subsidiares subsidiaries which led
managers and GBDs to clashes in interests

04 05
Flow of
The GBD who were hired commumication.
had experience only in th employees in
U.S region. Ideally international
Business heads should live subsidiaries were not
in the country to well updated with the
understand the market and company’s plan to go
to make effective decisions global.
   1A. What would you do differently if given
an opportunity?

Appoint
Associate GBD
I would hire a Associate
to GBD in the local to
subsidiaries. This will
help in getting local
sentiments of customers
and employees.
Clear
communication. Incentivice Employee
contribution and ideas
Get all employees on the They should welcome
same page. Company’s ideas from the
goals should be clear to employees. This will
Traning and
each employee enable employees to
Development
think out of the box and
Training of the staff is
get incentivized
very important on the
business accepts which
will help them contribute
to the overall business
Redefine role and objective. Leverage
expectation of all the technology to
employees across streamline
subsidiaries. Also, business at global
draw a line between level.
the toles of GBD and
local Associate GBD
 Did the creation of the World Board
not address some of the problems with
GBD?

Fire protection board There were too many

started off really well competing priorities,
and met the stated so big pictures were
objective. never discussed.

A world board was formed

for each of the company’s Other two board did
three major worldwide
business
not fare as well.
 Why did it still fail in two divisions but
succeeded in the Fire Protection Division?

World board was Medical board rarely As per Peter Fisher,

successful in fire reach conclusion. some of the world
protection division Consumer product board had more than
because the business has board met only twice 20 members. They
opportunities and and quietly were just large and
problems with the world disbanded. No unwiedly. More
wide implication. Before agreement on the divisional managers
board meeting they used issue that were were blocking
through all the issues so prevailing globally. progress.
that the issues are not
politicized.
 Key problem Before 2006 Introduction and failure Failure
of GBD

• Lack of cooperation between 2006 – The Global Business Directors

subsidiaries System (GBDS) was introduced, with a
• Consolidation failure due to lack of Global Business Director allocated to each
experience division. However, they brought their own
• Capital allocation problem leading to set of issues: a few of them are:
Why do you think delay • Lack of clearly defined role
• Problems with technology transfer • GBDs did not have power
KCP decided to bring • Global implications on local pricing • Could not achieve organizational goals

in Sterling Partners as decision

consultant? Introduction and failure of World

Board
To solve the prevailing problem, World board was
introduced to assist GBD. But it failed due to below
reasons:
World boards were conceived as threat by regional Thus
managers creating a
• Lack of clear JD
• Lack of motivation among employees need to
• Kent could not capitalize on its strength and key consult
competency i.e scientific expertise for product Sterling
development
• All the above factors coupled with past problems partners
which was not solved by GBD and World Board
led to downfall of World board
 Yes, it is right time for
KCP to hire a consultant
amid global recession.
This will help Kent to
With poor performance sail through in the
Although, strategy
of KCP and impending difficult times.
implementation take
global recession, is it time, it is urgent for
Kent to go ahead as per
the right time to bring
what consultants are
in the consultants? If recommending.
yes why? If no why?
Moreover, company’s
profit was has fallen
down by 30% and the
coming years look even To be competitive in the market in it is
more worse. important for the company to utilize its
core competence at the earliest. i.e
scientific knowledge for product
development
 • One of the Kotter’s logic is
“Not creating a powerful
enough coalition” which was
Where, according to
very much evident from the
Kotter's logic, did the
transformation effort
World board formation of
at Kent Chemicals Consumer product and
fail? medical product.
• Second Kotter’s logic is “Not
removing obstacle to the new
vision”. We believe that this
logic aptly fits the failure
because there were many
divisional managers who were
blocking the progress.
 Resolve the present set
of firms, as well as the
cultural issues that exist
inside each of them. Or
Exit ownership of some
regions and return to
What should other methods of
functioning in those
Chairman Ben markets, such as
exports, licencing
Fisher decide? agreements, and joint
ventures. Or
The firms that aren't
functioning can be sold.
It might be a single sub-
company or the full
Division. Or