Case study in organizational behavior

Case study in organizational behavior

            The case study mentioned in the paper is about Leo Burnett Company that is an advertising agency and Ontann Beauty Care who are its client, and how they use the concepts of organizational behavior and its theories while their decision making process.

Leo Burnett Company

           Leo Burnett Company is a North American company that was founded in 1935 in Chicago and is one of North America’s premier advertising agencies and has made many famous brands. LB is an international company that has 93 offices in 84 markets and has 9000 employees working for the company. They have a multidisciplinary team that is specialized in various services. Their workforce mostly consists of young employees who work efficiently for around 60 hours weekly.

Ontann Beauty Care

            This company is an international manufacturer of health care products. By the end of 1990’s, the company centralized the global marketing of its brands and products. Moreover, an international team was also designated in order to develop communication that could also be followed by the local market.

            The relationship between Leo Burnett Company and Ontann Beauty Care is that both the companies were founded in Chicago and OBC was one of LB’s original clients and both did their business together. (Seijts, 2005).

             OBC launched a skin care product by the name of “Forever Young” and LB was the agency that was supposed to advertise for the product and the product was to be launched internationally. However, the pre-launch research conducted in Canada showed positive results but it was vice versa when the company actually launched the product on a national level. The sales of the product were very less as they were expected to be. Therefore, in order to create a competitive advantage for the brand “Forever Young,” in Canada, it was necessary that the team that was responsible for Canada was to have extensive knowledge about the demand and the reaction of the people towards the launch of the brand. Compared to other countries, Canada was the place where there was a high demand of such products. However, it did not prove to be right for OBC.

            While comparing Canada and London, more knowledge of the brand was found in London where there was a greater demand of the skin care products than their demand that existed in Canada, therefore the prospective consumers of skin care products and the target market should be made aware of the product in order to create market awareness that would further create attractiveness of the consumers towards the brand.

           The client’s responsibility was to do a proper pre-launch research that could have helped them at the time when they has planned the national launch. As the brand was launched in many different countries such as in Canada, UK and Taiwan, people in all three countries reacted differently towards the brand. It was more successful in Taiwan and the sales were pathetic in Canada.

           Furthermore, as the London based global vice president of skin care was retiring, the client considered to create a global virtual team so that the team could be managed, having their headquarters at the United States that consisted of the members of the original United Kingdom OBC team that was preparing for a launch in the United States. However, if the team had their headquarters in North America, it is not necessary for the Leo Burnett Company to totally base the structure of its team in this way. This is because if both parties exist in the United States, it would not be as much difficult for the team to interact and communicate with each other while working in the US as it would have been if the team would have been in the UK while having their headquarters in the US.  The importance of managing a team virtually is that it saves both time and money and interaction between people can be done easily and this would basically the most suitable option if the headquarters of Leo Burnett Company being in North American have their client in some other country.

             If Carmichael decentralized the brand giving the team of Toronto more autonomy, Tara Powell would lead the brand in Toronto after Davids leaves the agency because she was the one who used to report to Davids and is expected to have most of the know-how. (Neil, 2003). However, once he leaves the agency, a new leader will have to be appointed and a leader is basically there to guide the other people, therefore he must have certain knowledge so that he can manage things in an orderly way while taking care of efficiency and effectiveness. The new leader should have the knowledge of conducting a proper research before launching the product after which the results should be evaluated well and then the advertising campaign should be launched to make more and more consumers aware of the presence of the brand.

            In case if they remain centralized, the team would not be make it through before it self-destructured. This would surely risk the relationship with the client in a way that the sales of the client would not meet up their targets and this could strain the relationship between them. Furthermore, the budget that has been allocated could not be further increased so they have to manage somehow in the finance that is allocated for them.

            Carmichael is supposed to take a decision, however the decision that they will take should be preeminent for the brand, Leo Burnett Company and Ontann Beauty Care, therefore they must go for decentralizing. This should be done because it is an international company that is operating in many different locations and the needs and the requirements of the people in different countries vary. Therefore, the team responsible for a particular country should be given power so that they can work without being given orders that might not suit the country they are operating in. The team must not be given full power, they should always know that they are accountable but they should have at least enough power that can make them do their work well. (Judge & Robbins, 2007).

                                                                     References
Judge,T. & Robbins,S.P. (2007). Essentials of Organizational Behavior. 9th Edn.  Prentice Hall,

            Paperback.

Neil,O’Elizabeth. (2003). The Leo Burnett Company Ltd: Virtual Team Management. Pgs 161-
175.
Seijts,G.H.,(2005). Cases In Organizational Behavior (The Ivey Casebook Series). 1st Edn. Sage
Publications, Inc; Paperback.