Best Foods Case Analysis

Best Food Case Analysis Best Foods Company is a multinational worldwide food company whose vision is “To be the Best International Food Company in the World.” (p.713) Best Foods set out to make some serious strides in diversifying their organization. However, there were three key diversity challenges facing them. First is that the company has very few women who have been on the career path that leads them to executive level position. This unfortunately was due to past practices. Best Foods top 150 senior managers were mostly made up of older males predominately white. At the time that Best Foods sought to change there was only one women and she was a general manager. With the lack of skill level and job experience one of the first steps will be to educate so the company will be able to increase their number of women in executive positions. The second challenge they faced is that Best Foods is a global company that has operations in 60 countries and sells in 110 countries. It has chosen to use a decentralized management structure which itself presents its own issues. The managers at Best Foods live and work in countries with very distinctive cultural beliefs and what role women play in their society. This forces the need for headquarters to learn and understand that each manager will have different attitudes about women in the workplace. If they take the necessary steps and acknowledge these differences, then the company can move forward and realistically expect acceptance of the diversity program. This will enable management to keep focus on what can change now, and what will take more time. The third challenge is with the main headquarters located in the United States, the team working on the diversity program will need to maintain a global outlook as they proceed. More than half of their employees reside outside the United States, and with sixty percent of the company’s revenues comes from its global markets. It is forecasted that future

References: Osland, J. S., Kolb, D. A., Rubin, I. M. & Turner, M. E. (2007). Organizational Behavior. An Experimental Approach. (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.