MBA 501 - Dynamic Strategy and Disruptive Innovation - Essendon Food Solutions (EFS) - Management Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

Essendon Food Solutions (EFS) 
Jonathan Jacob and Henry Shultz started Essendon Food Solutions (EFS) 40 years ago in Jonathan’s garage. At that time, both were working for a multinational food ingredient company and felt that the company’s systems and processes were inhibiting creativity and innovation. Jonathan was a microbiologist, and Jacob was a Food technologist.  
Today, EFS employs more than 800 people with combined revenue of $ 1.6 Billion. EFS is a holding company with two subsidiaries; EnzymeTech and Essendon Emulsifiers. Each subsidiary is headed by a General Manager (GM), and they report to the EFS CEO (Jonathan) and the Board of Directors.  The two GMs have significant autonomy and tightly control each business unit. The managerial structure is ‘top-down’ meaning that all decisions such as project appraisals and selections are made by the GM and senior executive team of each business unit and then filter down to the lower levels in the organizational hierarchy. Both companies compete for resources from the holding company EFS which is listed in the stock exchange. According to one insider, “each unit is trying to outdo the other, and I feel the Board of Directors likes it that way, competitive, secretive, divide and rule. Ironically, Jonathan and Henry created a company similar to what they left 40 years ago, bureaucratic and toxic.”   
 
The company culture is such they believe senior executives should come up through the ranks. Therefore, most of the top executives have worked at EFS for an extended period and in most cases worked at only one business unit. The average age of the senior management team (the executive committee – fifteen executives) is 59 years, and the next level of leadership is also not far behind. Junior executives call the executive committee, the senior citizens club. Experience at EFS is seen as one of the critical criteria for promotions irrespective of your experience elsewhere.  
 
Most of the senior staff (60%) have a Degree in Microbiology. Even those who head the marketing functions have been scientists first and then moved into marketing and sales. It is a standard practice that the Human Resources department when hiring staff, considers anyone coming from a microbiology background as having an advantage. According to an executive who joined recently “first few months at EFS is difficult, but after you learn to ask fewer questions and follow orders, life becomes easier, and honestly, you can stick around for a long time.” 
EFS is proud of its management trainee program. Close to 80% of the R&D staff and senior executives joined the company as management trainees or R&D trainees. They have been successful in attracting high achievers from leading universities at a very young age. Jonathan and Henry, both PhDs, believe in recruiting high performing graduates and see them staying in the company for an extended period as the best thing that can happen to EFS. According to a recently hired Senior Sales Manager, “this company is run by a bunch of academics, don’t take me wrong, they are really really smart, but they don’t have a broader experience in other industries. After all, we need to strike a balance between book-smart and street-smart.”  
 
EFS has consistently given dividends to shareholders since listing twenty years ago. Even during the low-profit years, EFS did not miss out on dividends. The new CFO is of the view that the company should build a better relationship with the shareholders so that some of the dividends can be directed towards high potential long-term R&D projects. However, the executive committee and the Board of Directors are nervous about upsetting the status quo thinking that it would send the wrong message and impact the share price. “last thing we want is the stock price to go down, it will take ages to pick up and by that time we will be retirees with stock options, so, why upset the apple cart?” was the response given by one senior executive.  
 
 
EnzymeTech  - MBA501
 
EnzymeTech supply Enzymes to different food industry clients around the world. The company pioneered many Enzyme applications in the food industry. The EnzymeTech R&D is known for its research and commercialization of customized Enzyme solutions. The R&D center is located in Adelaide; the staff at the center are older than most other R&D staff at EFS but world-renowned for different Enzyme applications they have developed over the years.  
 
The Board of Directors have observed a slowdown in R&D activities at EnzymeTech over the last five years with several multinational competitors making noticeable inroad into traditional EnzymeTech customers. “it is difficult to work with the R&D department. We want our R&D staff to meet our customers, visit them, and work with them but they are so bureaucratic “know-it-alls”, it is frustrating, they don’t want to leave Adelaide for a day. With all these issues we develop a new product, and then the CFO and his team will give a price that it is impossible to work with. They have no clue about what is happening in the market. Sad to say, EnzymeTech is living in a bubble, like Kodak and Nokia,” Glassdoor comment from an ex-employee from the marketing department.  
 
 
Essendon Emulsifiers  
 
In recent years, export markets have done well where Australian made products are received positively. The state-of-the-art R&D center is in Sydney.  
Export markets are handled through distributors, and only a few staff are familiar with the export operations. The marketing manager only visited two of the main export markets (China and Indonesia) last year, although 30% of the profits and 20% of the revenues are coming from export sales. According to a senior executive, “export markets are good, but we don’t have the expertise or the energy to run around Asia. We are an Australian company and our primary focus should be Australia. If we do well here, then the distributors will come to us.” 
 
The company can only supply standard emulsifiers through distributors. Expanding the international market further would require a team of technical sales executives similar to EnzymeTech that would visit and meet international customers regularly. 

This MBA501 - Management Assignment has been solved by our Management Experts at My Uni Paper. Our Assignment Writing Experts are efficient to provide a fresh solution to this question. We are serving more than 10000+ Students in Australia, UK & US by helping them to score HD in their academics. Our experts are well trained to follow all marking rubrics & referencing style.

Be it a used or new solution, the quality of the work submitted by our assignment experts remains unhampered. You may continue to expect the same or even better quality with the used and new assignment solution files respectively. There’s one thing to be noticed that you could choose one between the two and acquire an HD either way. You could choose a new assignment solution file to get yourself an exclusive, plagiarism (with free Turnitin file), expert quality assignment or order an old solution file that was considered worthy of the highest distinction.