Peter Browning and Continental White Cap

Peter Browning and Continental White Cap

Alison Wilson

MTG 510

Dr. Chris Wright

February 7, 2016

Brookline College

Peter Browning and Continental White Cap.

        Peter Browning got a new position with Continental White Cap, a division of Continental Group, Inc, in Chicago as the vice president and operating officer.  Recently, White Cap has had some financial problems due to their competitor using price cuts to build markets.  They have had a very family orientated culture with traditional management for ages under the White family.   These traditions were passed down to Art Lawson, a long-time employee of the company.  Browning was also successful in acquiring another division of Continentals group, Bondware.  This division was in trouble until browning turned it around which led them to recommend for the new position at White Cap.  White Cap has many people who are influential in implementing change, which has recently lost it financial stability.  Along with Lawson, there was Jim Stark, director of marketing, Tom Green, HR manager, at the company (Jick & Peiperl, 2011).  All of these people have significant impact in  how Browning can plan and implement strategies that will boost White Cap’s finances and make a change for the better in the company.  

                Problems

                Browning had a few predicaments to try and deal with.  First, there are one a few people at White Cap that would be willing to acknowledge the need for a change in White Cap.  This is because over the past 50 years business results have been impressive and the times of slumps were looked at as cyclical and transient.  Second, there is a family style culture at White Cap.  They had long term employees, long-standing traditions with job security, great benefits, and paternalistic management.  Due to these two problems Browning felt that attempts to change the traditions would not be welcomed.  He was assigned to revitalize and reposition the division and continue to make them the market leader.  In this market, there are five manufacturers in the national market and 70 worldwide.  White Cap maintained in the market but found it difficult to stay competitive when price cutting was being done by their main competitor, National Can Company.  White Cap would continue to lose customers if they did not produce a plastic cap closure.  The management of White Cap was hesitant to have plastic developments because there were plastic threats in the past, none of which materialized.  

Change Objectives

     At White Cap, there should be three main change objectives.  First, is to rejuvenate the company.  This will be accomplished by implementing a new strategy that would open communication with the employees to respond to the changed market conditions of the need for plastic cap closure.  This could be done in a very short period.  Second, is to attempt to change the culture of the division.  This will be very difficult at first and to change a corporate culture may take years, however with something new changing it can have a positive effect on the performance of the company.  Third is to change the companies performance.  With the long time success along with the paternalism management of the White, family led the company to an inflated administrative staff.  Browning needed to communicate to them a sense of crisis and reducing the administrative staff all while not threatening the image of White Cap.  

        Browning quickly realized that there was going to be some obstacles to overcome to be successful with the implementation.  First, is dealing with Bob White.  He is the retired head owner of White Cap, and because he is still alive in the hearts and minds of the employees, Browning felt a gesture needed to be done there.  A large number of the management were accustomed to Whites management style, which was an inhibited cross communication and lacked confrontation.  He did represent many of the values and styles that Browning wanted to change, but also was the key to pride and morale that Browning wanted to maintain.  Second was the problem with the marketing department.  Browning realized that sales and marketing departments were administering existing problems.  They did not speak to the customers that had built the business.  They were also not aggressively looking at new competitive issues.  Lastly, the issue with human resources.  This department was inflexible and maintained all the traditional benefits policies which led to a lack of motivation from the employees.  Many of the managers had been with White Cap for well over 25 years, and the majority of them did not want things to change or advance in their jobs.  

                Recommendations

         Continental needs a training program to create a foundation for the company’s culture.  Now culture cannot be taught, but rules and operating procedures that are put in place can act as a guideline to define culture boundaries.  This type of program can be taught in all divisions so that everyone is on the same page.  Another Recommendation would be to create a performance accountability measure for each division.  This would make managers accountable for their division's performance.  It would also make them accountable for their divisions administration costs, which would force them to cut numbers or increase sales.  If the administration costs were too low, they might need to hire more people to even out the workload.  This would also help to standardize how each division is graded on performance.