Cushy Armchair

Cushy Armchair Case Analysis Cushy Armchair, based in Hong Kong, a leader in the global armchair business has been successfully using its model of centralization for over 50 years. It operates fully autonomous business facilities in 17 countries. Cabletronica has recently acquired the company and has sent one of their own senior personnel to restructure operations and integrate the company with another of their furniture divisions outside of the country. Acting as a consultant, the founder of Cushy Armchairs Frances Wong is consulted regarding a communication on a change in policy, but the new head of the company Alison Sampson decides to use the parent company’s standard method of announcing changes email, and soon realizes that the method she used to announce the changes was not effective, and the restructuring may not go as smooth as she originally anticipated. In her first two weeks of her new posting she has attempted to make some drastic changes. So far her directions have been ignored and she has failed to make an impression as a change leader. In this analysis I will explore the concerns, root causes and constraints, and propose methods and strategies to use in the situations. I will apply the class work and text reading from the MBA program to offer practical solutions to address the issues.

Communication Concerns
The key concern is the fact that Cushy Armchair purchasing, Marketing and design managers ignored the proposed policy changes that Alison Sampson proposed through her email communications. The first question arises that the email communication channel was not effective to convey important messages and directives. Email communication is an impersonal way of sending a message it can be perceived in different way that the sender intended, especially in a multicultural situation. There are no non-verbal cues transmitted to the receiver and feedback is not always given back to the sender. Problems with email: (Mchane, Von Glinow). Pg. 316)