Product Overview

This case introduces the genre of "wicked problems" in strategy. InspirOn Engineering is a third-generation textile machinery family business. The patriarch, in his 72nd year, has announced his retirement without a succession plan. Chinese acquisitions in Germany have transformed the competitive landscape into two business divisions. The leadership has to decide between (1) scaling up the capacity through a strategic alliance or a merger, (2) hiving off a separate cost-and-profit centre destined to be positioned as an acquisition target or for closure and (3) outright sale of a part of the business including proprietary intellectual property rights (IPRs).

Learning Objectives

To explore a wicked problem through onion-peelings: the layers of problems presenting a complex bundle of predicaments when a trine of challenges involves trade-offs between the shareholder value and sustainable growth involving international merger/de-merger or acquisition of its stenter division as an alternative to closure; To explore the nature of risks and investments in dynamic capabilities required for reviving a loss-making business or organising for an international merger/acquisition with competing entities abroad; To examine what leadership succession processes could facilitate continuity and needed transformations with or without international merger/demerger or acquisition; To consider future trajectories and arrangements by which the nexus of stakeholders may ensure task effectiveness and stakeholder satisfaction after partial closure or its alternative, an international merger/demerger or acquisition; To consider what organisational capabilities need developing for harmony between systems, structures and processes when the critical strategic decisions are implemented.