Introduction
The organizational culture of EZ-Pleeze has to do a lot with creativity and innovation. The firm takes pride in its ability to be in the front line as far as industry trends are concerned. In addition to this, they also do value their employees. At EZ-Pleeze, the employees are perceived to be the true heroes of the company’s ability to forge forward. Thus said, they are given the unlimited opportunities to initiate growth and development through creative ideas. Also, it is the culture of the organization to be supportive of their consumer needs and wants as demonstrated through the case study.
EZ-Pleeze current mission statement is to be an industry leader by providing the highest quality of meat products processing. This is appropriate at it shows the kind of objectives that the company is looking to achieve and thus the strategic plans should be well guided. For its vision statement, it reads, “To become recognized as one of the top three chickens and beef producers in the United States and the World”. This is appropriate because of the global perception it is trying to communicate. It communicates the message that not only is the organization looking to do well in the local market but the international markets as well. The latter is very important as it offers the competitive advantage that EZ-Pleeze is looking to achieve.
Strategic Decision-Making Structure
EZ-Pleeze’s strategic team is most made up of functional managers who report directly to the CEO of the organization. Dlabay, Burrow & Kleindl (2016) explains that this kind of structure allows for each function to have a specific mandate to cater for and therefore, the decisions to be made will be unique towards that department. For EZ-Pleeze, the division managers take care of business aspects such as marketing, research and design and production amongst other things. The CEO and the chief officials report to the board of directors and shareholders. Most strategic decisions are approved by the board of directors as per the advice was given to them.
Internal and External Influences
In order to make effective strategic decisions and plans, EZ-Pleeze has to take into consideration the influential factors around it. For the good part, it is in a position to control some of the internal factors that impact on the strategic decision-making process. These include influences such as its research and development and financial capabilities. Research and development allow for any organization to be in a position to implement some of the creative ideas that they develop in-house. This influences their strategic decision-making process as it helps them to understand current and future market trends and in light to this makes a decision that will positively impact their strategic objectives. Financial capabilities generally dictate how satisfactory the decisions made can be implemented. That is why even with the best strategic plan but limited resources to employ can mean desired results are not achieved.
As for its external influences, EZ-Pleeze will have to deal with factors such as the government, prevailing market trends and consumer demands and tastes. Since they have no control over this, their strategic decision-making process has to respect government regulations as applicable to the food industry as well as align to market trends and consumer desires. The external factors simply influence how EZ-Pleeze will base its decision making processes in respect to industrial alignments that every competitor has to adhere to.
Current Strategic Plan
The strategic plan that EZ-Pleeze is currently working with is not a complete fail because it has its benefits and negatives. Two of its advantages is that it takes into account value for the products it is selling to the market. Gagliardi (2015) explains that today’s consumers would rather pay more for quality than less for low quality. Especially so that the items are food related, frozen foods that EZ-Pleeze is not keen at selling do not always have the best value. That is why they choose to incur extra costs just to provide quality products. Another advantage of its current strategic plan is that it focuses on selling its product on the food market rather than the supermarkets. The latter is where the majority of its competition sells its products and it was a wise move to go for food service markets for less competition and to easily reach its target population.
For the disadvantages, its plan is to offer low prices for processed foods. The market trend shows that in the near future, the demand for this food items is going to increase and at the current market prices, EZ-Breeze will not be maximizing on the possible returns the opportunity can offer. Another disadvantage is that it dwells on a hierarchical structure to make most of its decisions. This can be limiting most especially where decisions need to be made in a timely manner for maximum benefits. Therefore, EZ-Pleeze needs to take into consideration how these disadvantages can be amended when the new strategic plan is to be implemented.
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