Case Study 2, BMGT 464
Going Global: What Does it Take to Make Cross-cultural
Teams Successful?
PetGourmand, a second generation,
family-owned Memphis-based company with about 200 employees, develops,
manufactures, and sells nutritious, gourmet food products for pets.
PetGourmand is a low-tech, hands-on, bricks and mortar company with solid brand
recognition, an impeccable reputation for high quality and ethical standards
and processes, older work force (average employee age is late 40s), low staff
turnover, impressive record of speedy state and federal new-product approvals,
and solid working relationships with their veterinary and pet-owner
customers. For the most part the company plays up the PetGourmand as a
close “family,” although the organization’s structure is hierarchical
with fairly rigid management divisions and reporting policies. Research,
manufacturing, and sales and marketing operate in traditional fashion, with
employees reporting to supervisors or mid-level managers. By the 1990s,
sales and distribution grew from Tennessee into a regional market, establishing
a competitive advantage throughout the US South. Then came the Great
Recession. As customers lost jobs, and small business profits, such as
veterinary practices dipped, the demand of “fancy cat food,” as one
PetGourmand lab technician said, seemed to disappear overnight. By the time Bon
Vivant Specialities contacted PetGourmand’s CEO about acquiring PetGourmand,
the writing was on the wall.
Bon Vivant Specialities (BVS) is a
large Chinese-owned manufacturer and distributor of gourmet food and beverages,
headquartered in Hong Kong. Manufacturing plants operate in main land
China, and the company has additional offices in Europe and Australia. By
acquiring the smaller, well-respected PetGourmand, BVS aims to diversify and
expand its consumer base by including products tailor-made to meet market
projections of a customer upsurge in healthy, gourmet pet foods and
treats. Given the availability of telecommunications technology (software
and hardware), and BVS’s current expertise and use of such technology,
geography and location should not be an insurmountable issue. PetGourmand
employees, on the other hand, are dispirited about the acquisition, and anxious
about “working for foreigners,” downsizing, less face-to-face
interaction, language differences, and more electronic systems put into place.
To make matters worse, recent news media have printed stories about
tainted pet food made by other companies in China. Employees fear loss of
product quality and damage to PetGourmand’s reputation.
BVS has told PetGourmand workers
that—for now—most employees will be retained. However, all employees will
be evaluated, and reassigned and integrated into BVS’s existing, and
to-be-formed-as-needed, work teams, a key component of BVS’s flat, smoothly
efficient organizational structure. BVS’s management staff, scientists,
and sales professionals tend to be tech-savvy, culturally diverse,
young-to-middle age (ages 25 to mid-forties), bi-lingual, ambitious,
self-directed, accustomed to working remotely, and clearly focused on the
company’s commercial success. BVS’s Harvard-educated CEO, Daniel Chinn,
supports increasing the company’s competitive edge by “discovering and
developing individual potential through group collaboration and team
synergy,” and is known to be an enthusiastic supporter of job training and
career growth beginning from his days as a brilliant, hard-driving MBA
student. He’s eager to move forward on the integration of
“PetGourmand’s greatest asset—it’s knowledge rich, experienced
workers.”
