Blue Ridge Spain Summary

Blue Ridge Spain is a very interesting case. The characters involved are from different cultural backgrounds and have very different styles of conducting business. For Ten years Costas had spent building a profitable business relationship between Blue Ridge Restaurants Corporation and Terralumen S.A., a mid sized family owned company in Spain. The business partnership has been a very profitable endeavor allowing for growth over a number of years.

Trough out the years Blue Ridge and Terralumen had both had a fair share of successes and of failures. Both companies had grown and gained in expertise of international business. By the same token Managers involved in these joint business ventures had gained invaluable personal understanding and developed skills required for entering a foreign market. Now Delta Foods Corporation, the new owner of Blue Ridge is engaged in wanting to grow that aspect of the business at a much quicker pace.

By contrast Delta is an organization that has not experienced much success in the international arena. It is an aggressive company that has gained success through acquisitions and through minimal competition from competitors due to restrictions. Delta is an organization not very fond of joint ventures because they considered it a very poor way of developing new markets.

The stage is now set. We have two organizations with very different approaches to business. One organization has the international know how and has acquired success through time and through the development of partners and relationships. The other organization has grown through acquisitions; limited competition and trough very limited joint ventures if any at all.

Some of the concerns that come to mind right away are the very different styles both companies have when it comes to conducting business. From our article we can see negotiations have obviously broken down.

Delta Foods and Terralumen are locked in negotiations that are not progressing. On one front you have Sodergran and Dryden who both have very aggressive business styles. There intentions as there company’s philosophy is to be able to produce growth at a quick pace while producing quick returns. Developing any kind of personal relationships or cultivating any type of friendships is not of any concern for them. The main objective is to realize gains and nothing else really matters. They expect everyone to be on board and are not willing to consider any different options. For example at one point during negotiations as stated in our article “Terrlumen committed to half the growth rate originally proposed by Delta and agreed to make revisions if market conditions proved favorable.” This concededing gesture by Delta foods manager is not very well received.

Terralumen is a family based business, and has a very different style of doing business. They don’t expect a contract to dictate to them how to resolve business disagreements.