Please read the case study and answer the questions below:

You are the manager of a small enterprise with twenty employees. You have a product that has sold well for many years as it fills a particular market niche. You have felt there has been no need to change the product. It has been successful and people seem to like it. Consequently you have felt little need for a research and development section within your company. Your company has not expanded in staff for several years because roughly the same amount of product is sold each year and you have worked out the resources (including the number of individuals) that are required to deliver this product.

You have had a fairly efficient working structure within the organization and each employee knows what their task is according to the structure and the rules that you have laid down for them. They use these to respond to whatever needs or queries your organization encounters from its base of customers. Your employees have been operating in this way for several years. They are content, being familiar with their jobs and the rules they are expected to apply to meet the expected variations of the situations they encounter.

For the first time you discover requests for your product are declining. It is a little difficult to work out exactly what is happening but another company has developed a variation of what you do. Their product differs in some ways from your product and some of your customers seem to prefer it. You are starting to lose customers to this new product. Some of your customers, for the first time, are starting to complain to you about your product. Others simply stop contacting you. You notice that this new organization operates in a different manner. It seems to approach things from a totally different perspective than that of your enterprise.

If the decline in orders continues at its present rate you are going to have to start laying off employees, many of whom have been faithful to you for many years. You are reluctant to do this. The situation is not yet serious but it could become so if you don't work out a successful solution to this problem.

As the situation progresses and you attempt to find a solution, some of your employees become very uneasy. They do not like the changes that are starting to occur. The company's structure and rules have given them a sense of security and they are reluctant to change the way that they do things. Some have trouble thinking outside the box in order to assist in solving your company's problems. Some of them start to panic and become critical of the way you are managing the company. On the other hand, although concerned, other employees are interested in trying to find a solution. They have suggestions, several of which differ considerably in approach and content.

Questions related to the case:

Q1. Identify the steps you would take to handle this unexpected situation. What you would do to assess things? How would you stabilize things? What you would do to try to regain and maybe even increase your market share?

Q2. Describe the steps you would take to help your employees to deal with this situation.

Q3. Relate how you would handle the panic and criticism that you might encounter from some of your employees.

Q4. Propose how you would utilize your employees to help find a solution - if you would use the efforts of all (or just some) of your employees, and your reasons for doing this or not choosing to do this.

Q5. Suggest any changes you might put in place to help your enterprise be more responsive to unexpected events in the future. What are they? Why would you put them in place? Why may you not want to put your suggestions into place?

Q6. Appraise whether your enterprise will expand or stay the same size in the future and your reasons for your decision.