LAWRENCE MANUFACTURING CORPORATION

Lawrence Manufacturing Corporation

Lawrence Manufacturing Corporation

Introduction

The Lawrence Manufacturing Company, in Lowell, Massachusetts, was incorporated in 1831 and began operations in 1833. The company initially manufactured shirtings, sheetings and printing cloth, but added the manufacture of knitted goods such as hosiery and underwear in 1864.

The founding of the company followed the pattern of other mills that had been established in Lowell over the previous decade.

Strategic Business Planning

In planning new strategies for a business, Lawrence Corporation define its current (implicit or explicit) strategies for the business as a whole and its main functional areas - finance, marketing, sales, management, operations etc. Do this by setting out a series of short strategic statements. Some examples:

The business has been financed entirely from retained profits and without recourse to debt or external equity.

The implicit sales strategy has been to offer a very broad range of products at premium prices and to invest heavily in promotion.

The senior management team has been drawn exclusively from family members.

Instead of doing R&D, the business copies competing products and sells them at a discount.

To get at the root (fundamental) strategies, critically examine each statement. For example:

How has the company really been funded?

How has the company sought to increase sales and market share?

How have productivity/costs moved?

Role of SBU Managers & Functional Executives

As with SBU managers, functional manager substitutability is higher than for the CEO in Lawrence Corporation. In the multi-divisional firm, nearly all managers in the same function, even in different SBUs, may be suitable replacements. We would expect the impact of an SBU manager leaving the organization to be containable and that SBU functional-level managers would have the least ability, relative to the other positions in this typology, to use power to forestall succession.

Analysis of External & Internal Environment

Lawrence Corporation co-operates with other companies forming different types of alliance, ...