Black & Decker International: Evaluating the Plan for a Global Lock Business
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Evaluating the Plan for a Global Lock Business
Fred Grunewald’s plan for creating a single global lock business is ambitious yet achievable. Grunewald’s experience working with different countries makes his plan feasible, especially with the acquisition of Emhart Corporation. The two factors form a solid foundation for the planned technostructural and strategic changes (Cummings & Worley, 2009). The acquisition of Emhart Corporation brought to Black & Decker eight separate company brands and their individual experiences, both domestically and internationally. Grunewald’s plan to consolidate the eight companies to form a global lock business to improve efficiencies by horizontally linking the eight companies and leveraging knowledge and expertise of the companies has significant market share benefits (Mesquita & Lazzarini, 2006). With the enablers come the impediments; the issues that stand in the way of Grunewald’s global plan are the eight separate brands, their long-standing traditions and their fragmented thinking about market opportunities. Other impediments exist; the lack of integrated and common processes for staffing, training, pricing, and forecasting market demand creates inconsistency for the global lock business. Additionally, there is a lack of marketing documents such as catalogs, price lists, technical data, advertising, and sales support literature necessary to function efficiently. A significant challenge is the competition’s ability to innovate and capitalize on the same business model. Grunewald is relying on his experience and vision to implement all the structural and strategic changes in one year; Grunewald could be so single minded about what it takes to make the changes he could be overlooking the...
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