Reference no: EM133088308

How can a firm's strategy and structure make the best use of the firm's resources?

A global company called AirDrive was a struggling airplane manufacturer located in Beijing and was losing money. To turn around the company, AirDrive hired a consultant named Arlette Martin, who wanted to uncover the strengths and weaknesses and based on this develop a new strategy for growth. The consultant discovered that the existing CEO was an honest, hard-working engineer with years of experience in the airline industry, but he was not customer-centric. Arlette also discovered that the organizational culture was inward-looking and the business language Chinese. She made the following suggestions: hire a new CEO, transform the organization with global culture and use Globish (mix of English) as the business language. The board of directors agreed to her proposals and immediately fired the existing CEO and hired a CEO named Chow Fun who had run a successful fashion company. Within six months, AirDrive saw its revenues increase by 50%. But when sales suddenly stopped, the board of directors held an emergency meeting to find out the cause. It turned out that Chow Fun had told customers that he could deliver airplanes within three months. In reality, the earliest delivery time in the business was 12 months. The board immediately fired Chow Fun and is now considering rehiring the former CEO.