PRINCIPLE & PRACTICE OF MANAGEMENT
International Case : Carrefour — Which Way to Go?

How should Mr. Durant assess the opportunities in various countries around the world?
Mr. Durant, the new CEO since 2005, embarked on the new strategy by offering 15percent new products in its hypermarkets and 10 percent in its supermarkets. Moreover, he wants to employ more staff, extend the operating hours in certain hypermarkets, cutting prices, trying small stores, and pushing down decision making. Mr. Durant aims to stay only in countries where Carrefour is among the top retailers.

2. Should Carrefour adopt Wal-Mart's strategy of "low prices everyday"? What would be the advantage or disadvantage of such a strategy? Yes certainly they have to …show more content…

The category managers had the authority to withdraw weak brands, thus avoiding conflict between similar brands. They were also held responsible for the profit of the product category they were managing. The switch to category management required not only new skills but also a new attitude.

3) As a consultant, would you have recommended a top-down or a bottom-up approach, or both, to process redesign and organizational change?

A top-down approach (also known as stepwise design) is essentially the breaking down of a system to gain insight into its compositional sub-systems. In a top-down approach an overview of the system is formulated, specifying but not detailing any first-level subsystems. Each subsystem is then refined in yet greater detail, sometimes in many additional subsystem levels, until the entire specification is reduced to base elements. A top-down model is often specified with the assistance of "black boxes", these make it easier to manipulate. However, black boxes may fail to elucidate elementary mechanisms or be de-tailed enough to realistically validate the model.

A bottom-up approach is the piecing together of systems to give rise to grander systems, thus making the original systems sub-systems of the emergent system. Bottom-up processing is a type of processing based on incoming data from the environment to form apperception.