[SOLVED] Benjamin and William Farrington started a small

Benjamin and William Farrington started a small manufacturing business with their father, Samuel Farrington, who was a professor of biomedical science at a major university. They began the business by making a line of smaller and more precise non-reusable cardiac catheters, used to diagnose and treat heart conditions. They soon added a line of new style intra-aortic balloon pumps that the father designed to help a healing heart pump blood.
Three years after starting the business, just when sales started to grow rapidly, Samuel Farrington passed away. The family was devastated, but the brothers had graduate degrees in biology and engineering and felt confident about moving forward with the business on their own. Benjamin would take charge of catheters, which had a separate production line. William would be in charge of the balloon pump line. They would share the engineering, product development, purchasing, and sales and marketing functions. There was only one big problem. The brothers had almost opposite leadership styles. They were in frequent conflict about how to treat employees and create the type of culture that was best for Farrington.
William, the younger brother, was very people-oriented. He liked to work with people in teams. He encouraged people to work together. He emphasized the need for collaborative decision making. He would organize meetings to discuss departmental objectives and deadlines. He often asked people’s opinions and ideas about their work, both in meetings and with individuals during his daily activities. If someone had a piece of information useful for others, he would call a meeting to share this information with a broader group. William encouraged people to exchange information and help each other as the need arose.
Benjamin, the older brother, was concerned more about providing clear structure for employees and achieving efficiency, which did not include unnecessary meetings that, in his opinion, would waste people’s time. When Benjamin felt the need for a meeting, he would take charge and give instructions, so employee participation was limited. He took pride in assigning tasks and determining performance goals and deadlines. There was little opportunity for employees to suggest ideas, and they worked under pressure to reach their assigned performance goals. Benjamin preferred that people stay occupied with their respective tasks and saw no need for employees to help each other.
Employees were confused by the opposite management approaches at Farrington. As time passed the brothers seemed in constant conflict with one another. Their dissatisfaction with each other was high. Each believed his own approach was a superior way to run the business. Finally, after both brothers grew tired of the conflicts and neither would give in to the other’s style, the brothers reluctantly decided to split the business into two separate businesses, each with a new name. Benjamin took the more established cardiac catheters production to a new location and renamed his business Caresource Cardiac, Inc. William stayed in the current location and renamed his intra-aortic balloon pump business Quest Medical Devices. The brothers were now in competition and were using very different approaches to managing their businesses.
The broader industry competition in the medical devices business was intense, with large companies introducing new products and frequently trying to gain an edge by reducing prices. The Farrington brothers were initially ahead of their competition because of their father’s product innovations. However, over a few years, competitors caught up and both brothers’ businesses needed to keep innovating to stay ahead.
Benjamin created a management structure with three levels between himself and line employees. He liked this structure because managers could keep a close eye on direct reports. Benjamin took a top-down approach to any changes in how tasks were performed or for implementing product innovations and process improvements. He kept close tabs on costs and efficiency with a weekly meeting to assess production and sales efficiency. Caresource also had carefully drawn organization charts along with job descriptions and written procedures. Benjamin believed everyone should have clear responsibilities and narrowly defined jobs to ensure efficient performance and high profits.
William wanted to maintain a small-company culture that minimized status differences among executives, man- agers, and employees. His focus seemed more on employee happiness than on production efficiency. Everyone was on a first name basis. There were two layers of management between line employees and himself. He was not a fan of organization charts and job descriptions. He wanted everyone to feel a part of the organization. Ideas for process improvements or product changes could arise from anyone. William created a performance excellence committee made up of employees who met monthly to discuss and resolve issues that affected operational performance. This committee handled issues such as late deliveries from suppliers and quality issues or delays in production. Production employees were cross-trained in different jobs to produce and assemble the complex aortic balloon pumps.
Although the brothers started with separate businesses, each company gradually broadened its product line, including the manufacture of products produced by the other. After 12 years, the two businesses were in direct competition. As both businesses succeeded, the brothers became friendly again, but they still saw each other as running a competing business.
A huge competitor in the industry, Johnston Medical Care, decided to outsource the manufacture of a new ventricular assist device to a smaller company rather than manufacture the device at its own facility. Caresource and Quest would be competing for the profitable contract that could amount to as much as $100 million.
This was a rush order to produce a prototype to meet a three-month deadline. At Caresource, Benjamin told the engineering, product development, production, and purchasing departments to begin working on the ventricular device design from their own perspective. Benjamin communicated to all department heads about the critical time constraints and that he expected all employees to per- form efficiently as they had in the past. The departments had little contact with one another for several days as they developed their own requirements at their own speed. Problems arose. Purchasing learned that one likely needed material could not be acquired on time. Engineering had difficulty arranging an efficient production sequence. Prod- uct development was dealing with blueprint specs different from their expertise. Benjamin learned that both engineering and product development were falling behind schedule on their development work. He reacted angrily and decided to push ahead and assemble one prototype without a key part made from the scarce material that would have to be inserted at the last minute.
At Quest the prints from Johnston arrived and the department heads met together to discuss the project. Engineering, product development, and manufacturing worked together to design product features. As with Caresource, one needed material could not be delivered on time, so the assembly sequence was difficult to engineer. The departments exchanged ideas, and key employees held daily meetings to discuss progress and help each other. One employee knew of an Australian source for the missing material, so that problem would be resolved by the deadline. Moreover, while employees were building the prototype, a draftsperson in the engineering department discovered an error in the original print specifications from Johnston. All the engineers agreed after checking and rechecking the blueprints that a design error existed. They spent most of the night redesigning the original specifications and finalized the changes the next morning. William contacted the head designer at Johnston, who confirmed the error and said to proceed with the design changes. Johnston also notified Benjamin at Caresource about the blueprint error.
Both companies produced 50 prototype units of the ventricular assist device for inspection by Johnston. Caresource missed the deadline by nine days. Ten of the Caresource units were defective, and none of the Quest units failed inspection. Caresource’s bid for the production of the device was ten percent lower than Quest’s bid. John- ston Medical decided to split the order equally between the two companies to learn which would produce the new product more effectively.
Questions
1. How would you describe the management processes within Caresource versus Quest? Which seemed more effective? Why?
2. Which organizational design (Caresource or Quest) do you think was more appropriate for a competitive and changing technological environment? Why?
3. In your opinion, which firm should have won the complete contract—Caresource or Quest? Which do you think eventually will be chosen to produce the ventricular device? Explain.

Question: Benjamin and William Farrington started a small