Chattanooga Ice Cream Division Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

Chattanooga Ice Cream Division

Introduction

The Chattanooga Ice Cream Division is run by Charles Moore.Recently in the year 1993, he was promoted to one of the senior management roles in the organizations after the previous manager had left and the position had become vacant. The position which he now acquired is the position of the president and the general manager for the Chattanooga Ice Cream Division and his leadership style is different from his predecessor. As a result of the significant change in the leadership style, it has caused in his dysfunction in his team. The team dysfunction within the Chattanooga Ice Cream Division has also cost the company to lose one of the third largest customers of the company who was now more inclined to use the products offered by a close rival of the company.

There were many factors which had led to this situation and the team dysfunction but the premise of this was that each member of the team has always entirely focused upon making his or her own department successful and not caring about the mission and the long term goals of the organization. The team dysfunction was based upon a number of challenges such as ineffective leadership styles, ineffective conflict management and communication issues. However, now an emergency meeting has been called up by Charles to resolve all the issues and return the firm back to profitability.

Abstract

This paper attempts to analyze the situation being faced by the Chattanooga’s Ice Cream Division. The division has resulted in a loss of a customer recently and there seem to be the team dysfunction as the main reason behind this. The team dysfunction has occurred as a result of a number of the factors, including vulnerability based trust, misconceptions, persons interests, personal agendas, personal grudges, lack of communication, lack of commitment, lack of knowledge about one another, different goals, lack of clarify on organization mission and poor leadership. In order to recover from team dysfunction, the new president and senior manager, Charles Moore needs to adopt certain recommendations as highlighted in the case and also adapt his leadership style according to the current state of the organization by using certain leadership models such as the Vroom-Yetton model. This is the only way to return the company back to profitability and achieve the long term goals of the organization.

Team Dysfunction

The tram dysfunction for the team of Chattanooga Ice Cream Division has been caused by a number of reasons. The leader which was in the place of Charles place did not made any decision based upon the input given by his team members and the final decision was made by himself. However, this was not the case with Charles and he was always reluctant to make a decision by himself.

The team did not have collaboration within itself and there were always issues associated with the capabilities and the trustworthiness of one another.Each member of the team was very much defensive and worried just for the betterment of his/her own department. The team members had created different agendas against one another based upon their vulnerability based trust and cohesiveness. The distrust has become a norm for the team and the entire Chattanooga Ice Cream Division.

The trust factor was absent among the team members and there was lack of engagement with one another (Sloane, 2003). The team members held personal grudges against one and all was done for personal interest rather than for the interest of the organization. For instance, the VP of Sales, Les Holly has grudges against Stephanie Krane who is the controller and VP for the downsizing of her team (Sloane, 2003).

The team members were also afraid of the fear of conflict and the team members along with Charles never discussed the issues on which the team members had conflicts. Moore preferred that each team member discussed their issues in private and he used to avoid the group discussion as he was uncomfortable with them and he wanted to make all the team members realize that he wanted them to stop complaining (Sloane, 2003). Furthermore, Moore preferred to visit each of the individual departments to gather all the information and he never interacted with the department heads.............................

This is just a sample partial case solution. Please place the order on the website to order your own originally done case solution