Case Study: Cascade Designs
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. “ Peter Drucker
Introduction
Organisational culture represents the values and beliefs held by the members of a firm which strongly influence they interact at all levels (Hill and Jones 2009, p16), which is also seen in its people’s attitudes, the style of management the behaviour with relation to problem solving (Schwartz and Davis 1981). Whilst Kumar (2012) highlights the distinct tie between the organizational strategies, the culture and the people involved, Johnson, Scholes and Whittington (2008) warn us that strategic drift can occur in firms as they face ever changing environmental forces.
Detecting changes in their environment, by way of monitoring of their
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Jim Lea and Neil Anderson were two engineers who were made redundant and formed a company, Cascade Designs Inc., in 1972, joined by John Burroughs. Since their first small beginnings, they have grown their product range through innovating new products such as stoves, cookware, sleeping bags, hydration, water purification, and snowshoes. Cascade Designs currently have 400 employees in the USA, and over 100 in Ireland. With an annual turnover of €120m, Cascade Designs is still a privately owned company whose original motto was and remains committed to producing high quality, safe innovative products for the outdoor industry, which are “made in …show more content…
Innovations such as the Neo Air mattress was highly invested in but not producing the intended yield due to equipment design and production fallout, therefore backorders were high. Moreover, product lines suffered shop recalls, which demonstrated high impact operational issues.
Johnson, Scholes and Whittington (2008) depict strategic drift as incremental development based on both cultural and historical influences. An element of strategic drift could be seen in cascade Designs. The external forces of change were impacting the company’s business model of bricks and mortar retail. This model has become difficult to maintain as shops have their own online stores, alternatively, selling through high turnover resellers such as Amazon, which has been met with increased pressure from the larger customers for higher volume with lower margins.
Transitioning to outsourced business models, competitors costs are lower, moreover, reverse engineering has become an issue, where lower value imitations are flooding the market consequently the high cost of R&D is not recuperated. Recent legislation saw Seattle’s minimum wage increased to €15 per hour , consequently, Cascade Designs decided to move 25 percent of their business out of Seattle to Reno,
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