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Merit Corporation Questions and Answers
1. What was the style/approach of the CEO Kirschner? (please provide a few examples of behavior)
Culture changes:
The Merit’s was a family owned company and operated by family. From story it appears that Kirschner changed the company’s culture from conservative to avant-garde encouraging new innovation and application of new concepts and techniques in the core department on the company that is new product development. This indicates Krischner was very good at change management.
Motivation: Kirschner never expected any one to work more than 8 hrs, he was also sending his staff for Harvard’s Advanced Management Program. He had very good pension plan and generous fringe benefits to keep the employee’s moral high.
Lateral Communication: Kirschner first discussed the troubling problem of new product development and his team approach to resolve it.
Upward Communication: Kirschner appointed Christopher Kane as group lead and made him direct to report to him and requested to provide a bi-weekly progress report so that the Executive Committee could keep abreast of new developments, and a monthly financial report.
Team approach:
With his many years of industry experience and close eye on Market’s movement and consumer’s trend, he was determined that new product development team building is a key to company’s success in such a competitive market.
The Kirschner approach to team was no direct supervision rather he appointed Christopher Kane their lead and requested Kane to report him was to maximize the freedom and flexibility; this has a large impact on team’s productivity especially when the team was to ...