Dick Spencer Case

Case Overview

With 22,000 employees in a total of five separate United States locations and additional foreign affiliates in fifteen different countries, Tri-American Corporation handled aluminum from the mining of the bauxite to the production of final products. The company had a leadership structure that included a board of directors which included a chairman, vice-chairman, president, and twelve vice-presidents. As a decentralized organizational structured company, each plant functioned as an independent unit with the plant manager having the authority and freedom to interpret and implement the general policy in their facility. Dick Spencer was the plant manager of Modrow, a Canadian branch of the Tri-American Corporation and was primarily a fabrication unit with products such as foil and building products.

During his previous 14 years with Tri-American, Dick Spencer had become a very successful salesman. Most of his success had been achieved based on his looks, charisma, and golfing ability. During which one such golfing game he met and befriended the President of the Tri-American which would later give him the opportunity to change career paths within the company. After three years of achieving top sales, Dick realized that his personal life had suffered and he began to feel as though a role in production might be a better career path for him. Conversations with the President developed into the opportunity for him to become transferred to become the Special Assistant to the Senior Vice President of Production with a focus on Troubleshooting. It was within this role that he gained the reputation of a ruthless headhunter. The Senior Vice President allowed his actions to continue despite the reputation because of the end results in the departments that Mr. Spencer had worked with.

His success in this role led him to be transferred to an Assistant Plant Manager in England. This position was a challenge for Dick as the business philosophy and performance was different than what he was used to in the United States offices. Another struggle in this office had been that his authority was less than those of his superiors so he began to hold back his suggestions or thoughts on changes in the facility which was extremely frustrating for the year and a half he was there. He was transferred to a newly acquired British facility as Plant Manager and he operated it in the beginning using his ruthless headhunting style skills he had previously implemented in the Troubleshooting position. The resulted in a complete change of the facility into a profitable business within three years. Once this was accomplished Mr. Spencer requested to be transferred back to the United States. The request was partially fulfilled when Tri-American made him the Plant Manager in the Canadian Modrow plant. It was in this role that his aggressive cost cutting, staff reductions and adoption of micromanaging began to reduce staff