Dashman Case

Dashman Case-Study

Summary of the Case Study: The Dashman Company is large concern having 20 plants located in the central part of US, which makes many type of equipment for the armed forces. All 20 plants were working as a separate independent unit.

In an effort to avoid the anticipated shortfall of certain essential raw materials required by the plants, Mr. Post was appointed as VP-Purchase to coordinate the purchasing activity by the President, Mr. Manson. Mr. Larson who was very experienced with this respect to this organization was appointed as assistant to Mr. Post.

Post decides to centralize a part of the system by announcing through letters to the purchase executives that all the purchases above $10000 should be cleared with the head office and that he is notified about contracts that are being negotiated at least 1 week in advance.

The plant managers express support and co-ordination but the head office doesn’t receive any notice from any plant in this period.

Characters in Organization:

The Company President: Mr. Manson
Newly Appointed Vice President – Purchase: Mr. Post
Assistant to Vice President-Purchase: Mr. Larson
Plant Managers
Purchase Executives

Question 1: What are the human behaviors and organizational issues highlighted by the case?

Human Behaviors:

Resistance to Change: Long standing organizational structure disrupted with purchase centralization; hence strong resistance for the same by the plant purchase executives.

Superiority: Mr. Post who was newly appointed wanted to make his presence felt eagerly, by just changing the existing process without evaluating and involving purchase executives (subordinate) & respective plant heads (peers).

Mr. Post found to be interested in taking only authority by virtue of implementing new policies. Mr. Post didn’t visit plant despite of his experienced assistant advice and went ahead to sends letters directly to purchase executives without intimating plant managers.

Self-Fulfillment: In response to Mr. Post letter & new policy, the purchase executives and plant heads shown the behavior wherein they refused to believe that they were less capable than Mr. Post who joined recently.

Organizational Issues:
Anticipated Scarcity of raw materials
Lack of Coordination between plants and head office
No notice sent to the head office; no approvals asked
Every plant was working as an autonomy
The centralization was adopted 3 weeks before the peak season
No follow up was done till 6 weeks

Q2. How would you respond to the situation?

a) If you were in Mr. Post Place:

If we were at Mr. Post Place, we would have anticipated the resistance which would have been generated because of new Centralization policy and instead of issuing policy straight away, We would have called for a meeting with Purchase executives and plant managers to discuss and streamline the problem.

b) If you were in Mr. Manson’s Place:

If we would have been in place of Mr Manson’s Place, First thing post appointment of Mr Post, we would have arranged an induction/orientation program with respect to current organization and personnel.

Since the sole objective of Mr Post was to coordinate between plant and the head office, we would have arranged a separate meeting for clarifying the objective of Mr. Post appointment to the plant and head office executives.

Also we would have advised Mr. Post, to route the policy through the president’s office keeping all concerned in copy. In the review proposal made in board meeting, we would have suggested Mr. Post to pilot this proposal with 2 or 3 plant at max.