Wolfgang Keller at Königsbräu-Hellas A.E.

Assignment: Wolfgang Keller at Königsbräu-Hellas A.E.

Case Situation

Königsbräu-Hellas A.E., the Greek subsidiary of the Munich-based brewer of premium beer, which has the reputation as being "one of the best-managed and most profitable brewers of premium beer in the world", was facing the problem of declining sales until Wolfgang Keller joined the company as managing director. It only took Keller three years in succeeding to turn around the company from a loss of $2million per year to increasing earnings of $5 million by, "changing the marketing strategy, hiring a new top-management group, restructuring the sales force, and acquiring a fourth brewery in Salonika (2)."

Despite this success, there were some discrepancies that occurred intra-company between Wolfgang Keller and Dimitri Petrou, the director of the commercial department, attributable to various management styles. Wolfgang Keller is 34 years old, fluent in Greek, graduate of the Harvard Business School and well experienced for his young age. He worked as strategic planner for a large German food company and was shortly afterwards made general manager of a small subsidiary in Greece that was in trouble. Two years later he joined a $20 million subsidiary in Germany to help out of the crisis. Thus, he can register two successful turnarounds of struggling companies in his career, which contributed him a reputation as an excellent hands-on manager. Dimitri Petrou , 10 years older than Keller, highly cultivated and intellectual, has worked for consumer-orientated multinationals in the United States, Greece and France and joined the firm 2 years earlier. In contradistinction to Keller, Petrou practices a more delegate management style. Different opinions about the assignments and scopes led the relationship between Petrou and Keller to become more and more tense which threatened the interests and wellbeing of the company.

Analysis of the Problem

The keystone of Keller's new marketing strategy existed on focusing on the distributors by strengthening them with offers such as "heavy various support including information systems and logistic support." This service-oriented commercial strategy acquired to build and maintain personal relationships with the distributors, therefore the company's sales force was called to handle the development and cultivation of personal contacts as an important part of doing business, especially in the Greek business where consumers have to be converted from drinking wine and liquor to beer.

Related to the Greek people and culture known as being open minded, cordial and companionable, Petrou's desire to keep his personal life strictly separated from his professional life, was surprising. Dimitri Petrou's formal and distant management style did not concur with the new strategy,