Eric Peterson Wac
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ERIC PETERSON
WRITTEN ANALYSIS OF CASE (WAC)
BACKGROUND:
Cellular Communication Services Inc. (CelluCom) was a cellular based corporation founded by Ric Jenkins that had a number of subsidiaries. Originally founded as a small California based system, CelluCom with the promising leadership of Ric Jenkins had now grown up to a $200 million company that was amongst the top 20 companies of the Cellular Industry. Green Mountain Cellular Telephone Company (GMCT), one of its subsidiaries, was a cellular mobile telephone system situated in an area surrounded by a number of cities and towns in New Hampshire and Vermont and that was licensed for offering its service to an area of 2000 sq mile. The division established not long ago with Eric Peterson appointed as the General Manager of the Division. CelluCom was recently successful in achieving major metropolitan licenses from the Federal Communications Commission that led its services expand to Sacramento, California and Florida while losing all of the rural territories. The Company however, started an aggressive campaign to acquire these licenses from small Entrepreneurs and successfully acquired 12 rural licenses. The Case furthers outlines the problems faced by the GMCT Company in its preoperating /construction phase and its inability to meet its turn-on date as a result of collective issues of inability to plan and organize by its key position holders. Peterson, taking a deeper look into the matter as things get worse, determines what synergies could be utilized to overcome the existing issues by collectively providing a win-win solution to the company, its employees and its customers.
THE ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF CELLULAR COMMUNICATIONS:
THE ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF CELLULAR COMMUNICATIONS:
Before analyzing the challenges and issues faced by the company and its GM Eric Peterson, we first take a look at the Organizational structure of the Company which shows that the company adopts a Functional structure both for the CelluCom and GMCT. This kind of structure essentially helped the company in Specialization and Perfection as far as the technical issues were concerned. Sharing of ideas was another advantage that could have been obtained however, due to lack of confidence between some of the employees as well as the egoistic behavior of some of the higher level officials, this advantage couldnt be achieved to its fullest rather the structure was not appropriately formed
With a more specialized structure, the firm could have further benefitted from the economies of scale and cost minimization. However, due to lack of planning and organizing capabilities of the senior staff, the company often faced problems in inventory control and other administrative tasks. Another advantage that was achieved was due to a more specialized structure, the needs were interconnected or more or less same by the departments therefore a single vendor or contractor was responsible for the combined needs.
This structure potentially has its disadvantages as well when it comes to diversifying products and handling cross functional processes but in the context however, Peterson understood this issue and tried to call upon companywide meetings in which all the employees were invited and knowledge was shared, employees felt a sense of empowerment as issues were discussed which led to improvising possible solutions.
CHALLENGES FACED BY ERIC:
Eric Peterson, GM of Green Mountain Cellular Telephone was a young married man with two children. He obtained his BS and Masters Degree in Electrical engineering and later on added an MBA degree to his profile. He had a past experience of working in The U.S Army Signal Corps as an officer and as a design engineer for a maker of avionics equipment. He had no experience in the cellular Industry but he believed this sector would offer him potential growth and therefore decided to build his career in this sector. Throughout his academic career, Eric was known to be a bright and well-liked person with a mature mind.
Upon entering the GMCT Company as a General Manager, which was his first achievement in the company at a very early stage, the company was already faced by a number of startup issues. Some of these are:
Ambiguous reporting system
Difficulty in getting along with the Chief Engineer
Lack of Inventory Control
Delays by Subcontractors
Lack of Confidence and strained relationship between employees leading to conflicts
Employees Salary Issue
Delayed and contradicting decisions of the Head Quarters
Lack of experienced personnel in the upper hierarchy
Zoning Problems
Problems with the local utility telephone lines
Discussing the issues in detail:
1-Ambiguous reporting system:
The very first issue that Eric experienced directly upon entering the organization was the unclear reporting system or more of a misinterpreted reporting system. The President, at the time of appointment told Eric that he was supposed to report directly to him but on his first day on work, Eric came to find out that he was assigned to Jeff Hardy who in addition to being the Director Budgets and Plans was also made in charge of Operations. Due to an uninformed and unclear reporting system, the relationship between Eric and Jeff seemed to be quite awkward. Moreover, due to lack of experience in the operations, Eric often found it quite difficult to get along with him and Jeff was unable to guide and advice him in the required way during his orientation. This in future led to increasing issues in the administrative part of the company.
2- Difficulty in getting along with the Chief Engineer
Curt Andrews who was a technician by experience was promoted to the post of Chief Engineer and came out to be one of the most difficult persons in the company to get along with. Eric particularly found it difficult to get him to do the necessary planning