Stone Water Products, Inc. was founded in 1975 for the purpose of manufacturing products for the water and wastewater industry. For 25 years, the company had a solid reputation for producing quality products, strong sales and service agreements. The company was known for their ability to copy new products at a lower price point than the competition. The CEO and senior management were not advocates for change. The company had the same centralized chain of command that they had when they were originally founded. In 2000, CEO Richard Stone, surprised everyone by acquiring Goldfinch Technologies, a young bio-chemical firm in the water/wastewater processing market. The purpose in acquiring Goldfinch was to promote growth for Stone Water Products. The new company was named Stone Finch, Inc. and Stone hired Jim Billings to run the new Solutions Division. Stone hired Billings …show more content…
The Solutions Division represents a horizontal organizational structure that provides room for advancement within the company. This shows how Stone Finch values innovative and creative thinking from Its staff members. This type of organizational model is essential in order to retain skilled employees. The Water Production division, however, has a hierarchal organizational structure tailored toward a traditional business model. This system does not provide much opportunity for the innovative creativeness on which Stone Finch, Inc. thrives. The creation of incentives for the existing employees who are not in the subsidiary program would make them feel more valued. Another step for Billings would be to rebuild his relationship with Saunders. They need to communicate and agree on a plan to move forward. The “company jam” was a step in the right direction in allowing employees to provide feedback. Now that there is some insight to employees’ feelings on the situation, as described by (Gomez-Mejia, et. al., 2012, p. 440)