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SECTION 1 - All questions are compulsory - ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS

QUESTION 1

Verdadero Bebes Manufacturing (VBM) is one of the Caribbeans leading baby food manufacturers, with its headquarters located in Trinidad and Tobago, in the Eastern Caribbean. VBM is currently suffering from slow sales, particularly in its baby food division. The Company is encouraging sales staff to discover new baby food growth opportunities, but ideas across VBM have been limited.

Andrea Robinson, VBMs regional sales manager responsible for baby foods in the Southern Caribbean, is relatively new to the Company and is concerned that her sales teams wont meet its sales targets. She has observed that the Northern Caribbean sales team consistently exceeds its sales targets by 10 percent, yet when contacted for assistance, the Northern sales team refuses to provide any reasonable explanation for its success, instead simply saying that the sales team works hard.

Eureka Scott, a University Researcher studying VBMs operations and management practices visited the Northern Caribbean sales team to discover why they are so much more successful. During interviews with the sales team, the following comments were made by the Northern team members:-

David - I like my colleagues, we support each other. I like the freedom of my job, I am my own boss and I like talking to people, being out and about and making the sale.

Maria - My colleagues and I are friends outside of work, including the manager, they always provide assistance when needed, and they mentor the younger staff members and integrate them into the team.

Rafael We can be a bit hard on coworkers who dont go along with how we do things around here.

Ann Marie The Head Office is only interested in profits and having all sales people achieve or exceed the stated sales targets and is neither interested in the well being of their sales people, nor their professional development.

The consensus of the Northern Caribbean sales team was that they were also experiencing some challenges in achieving their targets and they constantly felt pressured by the Company to further increase baby food sales. Notwithstanding this, VBM did not sufficiently incentivize them to do so. In fact, the maximum reward to a salesperson, for any successful idea which was implemented across the organisation, was $3,000USD, even if the idea earned millions of US dollars for the company. The Northern team felt this reward was far too low and quite insulting.

These conditions created a toxic relationship between the Companys Head Office (the sales personnel in the East, West, and Southern locations) and the sales team in the Northern Caribbean. Requests for information by the Head Office or other regional offices, to the Northern sales team were often unanswered as were, requests for collaboration, which were snubbed by the Northern colleagues. Furthermore, so unhappy were the members of the sales team at the Northern division, they were likely to carefully consider and accept job offers, made by another competing companies.

During her visit, Eureka Scott, the University Researcher discovered the secret to the success of the Northern team as told to her by Learie Greaves, the leader of the Northern Caribbean sales team, as follows:-

About three years ago, one of our leading salepeople made a great discovery. While checking shelf space in one of the stores, he noticed that it wasnt just moms and dads buying our baby food products for their babies. Many customers were elderly people, in fact, a lot of old folks were buying VBM baby foods for themselves, particularly the chopped and partially strained varieties. We talked with some of them and they told us that they like our products and buy it mainly because they have problems with their teeth, so they cant chew food very well.

So now we have grown a very lucrative trade with a number of the seniors homes. But to keep it quiet from VBMs (Trinidad based) Head Office, weve arranged to sell our products to these senior citizens homes through local supermarkets, particularly in areas with a large elderly population. It has proven to be a great new market. Furthermore, it takes the pressure off the sales people in Northern Caribbean to continuously

achieve and exceed the sales targets. In fact, since our discovery, we havent had to push very hard to gain

The University of the West Indies Course Code: MGMT 2008 2020/12/15

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sales nor do we now need to keep making plans about how to achieve the 10% increase in district sales volume, as required by the Head Office.

Weve been very careful and so far quite successful at keeping the Head Office from finding out about our new market. It would be game over if they knew. They would increase our required sales targets, which would leave us no time to sell, to develop new customers, to develop new accounts, or to do anything necessary to keep our pay at a decent level. This elderly market is our cushion. It adds enough of an annual sales volume increase that we can focus our time on staying at the top of our territory.

Learie Greaves finished his revelation by saying to Eureka, that letter you showed us when you first arrived said that you would keep everything confidential, right?, so you will neither share this will the other areas nor with the Head Office, correct? I hope I am not making a mistake by telling you this!

Eureka Scott agreed to keep the revelation confidential.

Case study questions

1a) Critically evaluate the conflict and the effect of the conflict observed in this case, via and with reference to the conflict model. (Relevant references to the VBM case must be included)

(WORD COUNT REQUIRED:- Minimum 450 words Maximum 500 words). (15 MARKS)

1b) Comprehensively discuss effective corrective action which VBM could take to address the problems outlined in 1a above and their likelihood of success. (Relevant references to the VBM case must be included.) (Relevant discussion from theories of commitment, teams, organisational change and employee motivation must