Fontaine Corporation
Why was it so difficult for these managers to cooperate? What are the sources of this conflict and non-cooperation?
Fontaine Corporation has a highly matrixed organizational structure that allows employees of one division to evade responsibility for results corporate-wide by relying on allegiance to their own division. This is exemplified with how difficult it is for Tom Wilson to get Remy Gentile to take responsibility for agreed-on tasks of signing a distributor for the toilet paper line and increasing investments in technology. Tom Wilson flying to Paris will not make any difference in this scenario. While an international strategy matrix exists in the firm as the case illustrates, it lacks accountability and a level of authority to corporate-wide objectives. When international strategy matrices exist without a clear line of performance requirements to shared global objectives, balkanization of strategies and aversion to foreign goals happens (Naylor, 11). This is exactly what's happening at Fontaine in multiple product areas, with toilet paper being the most evident.
It is also evident that the core business processes and strategies of Fontaine Corporation are also fragmented and less than optimal in performance due to this conflicted set of goals, allegiances and loyalties. The orchestrated development of new product introduction processes and combined strategies to launch and sustain products into new markets and channels is the most profitable over the lifecycle of a given product (Kolodny, 29). For Fontaine, their lack of effectiveness with the toilet paper product management tasks globally is symptomatic of a much deeper problem. The two divisions have no shared objectives apart from being members of the same company; there is no shared series of analytics, benchmarks and measures of performance that unify them. Matrix organizational structures need to have a series of shared analytics, key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics of performance to ensure a high level of shared task ownership over time (McCollum, Sherman, 75). This is one of the primary factors in Fontaine not being able to attain shared objectives.
How have the systems and structure of Fontaine Corporation impacted what we have just seen go on?
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