Case Brief of Terracog Global Positioning Systems Essay

In this case, there is an Organizational Conflict between Sales Department and Design & Development Department in TerraCog. I regard the sources of this conflict as the Differences in Functional Orientation and the Task Interdependence. First of all, I believe that different functions of the departments’ develop different orientations or beliefs about the right way to increase organizational performance. Because Sales Department and Design & Development Department have different tasks, jobs, priorities and goals, their views of what need to be done to increase organizational performance differ. The VP of Sales (Ed) orients toward identifying and finding ways to satisfy customer needs, such as suggesting product innovations and requiring lower sale prices. Meanwhile, the Director of Design & Development (Allen) and his team orient toward innovative technical goals, such as achieving good product qualities to meet sales’ requirements. In addition, I suppose that the development or production of goods and services depends on the flow of work from one function to another. In TerraCog, Design & Development Department create a high product cost, leading to a higher sale price, so that they set a greater challenge for Sales Department. Without an agreement of the price, it is difficult to get Aerial to the market. As far as I am concerned, I suggest that Executive VP (Emma Richardson) act as a third-party negotiator positively and hold negotiations between with the two groups to make Aerial on shelves in time. A later entering to market would lead to losing more shares in the competition, as well as adding new cost to Aerial. To increase organizational performance of the Project Aerial, both of the two departments need to compromise to reach an acceptable solution. For Design & Development Team, I think they should try to make a better control of cost. And for Sales Team, I hope they create new sale styles to attract customers instead of decreasing product sale price.