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Case Study

Creating effective structures and processes for sustainable and winning performance

By Corey A. Billington and Michèle Barnett Berg

15 pages

December 2007

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Reference: IMD-6-0287

After a decade of continuous success within IQ, a computer products, services and solutions company with revenues of $79.9 billion, an executive, Duncan Covington, was tasked with turning around an underperforming procurement organisation with a vacancy rate of 45% and a tarnished internal reputation. Additionally, there were rumours that the organisation was going to be disbanded and procurement decentralised. Just five years earlier this same organisation had been considered an outstanding contributor to the company and had received numerous awards and accolades. Covington needed to accomplish this turnaround without additional resources or budget. In order to do so, he created six leadership structures for the organization to reach sustainable success.

Learning Objective

To provide a framework for managers looking for structures and tangible methods to turn around an organization and gain higher productivity. This case gives the building blocks of these structures and prompts the discussion of how to best apply them for sustainable success and how leadership can best serve an organization. It provides participants with management tips that will make their leadership more effective through processes rather than behaviors.

Keywords

Knowledge Brokering, Production Management, Operations Management

Settings

United States of America
1999-2003

Type

Generalized Experience

Available Languages

English

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