Summary Organizational Development and Change - HRMD 650 Ben & Jerry’s

Ben & Jerry’s is an independent ice cream producer based out of Burlington, Vermont. Founded in 1978 by two childhood friends, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield had very little experience in the making of ice cream and started off their business by initially borrowing $4000.00 and putting in $8000.00 of their own savings. From its start as a simple ice cream scoop shop, Ben & Jerry’s has been steadily gaining market share to where today the little company from Burlington Vermont is considered one of the leaders in the super premium ice cream market in both Boston and New York City (Cummings & Worley, 2009). In addition to being involved in the super premium ice cream market competition against Häagen-Dazs - run by Pillsbury, Frusen Glädjé - run by Kraft and Steve's Ice Cream - based out of Boston, Ben & Jerry’s has over 80 ice cream scoop shop franchises and distributes their product throughout the United States. Ben & Jerry’s company headquarters and manufacturing facility located in Burlington have become synonymous with the state of Vermont and has become the second largest tourist attraction for the state, attracting over 600,000 visitors per year (Cummings & Worley, 2009). Ben & Jerry’s organizational culture was originally designed to be very different when compared to any other corporate culture found in the United States. One of the keys to the Ben & Jerry’s culture is the belief that a business draws from its local community. Because of this link the company has an obligation to give something back to the local community in appreciation of the received support. Ben & Jerry’s supports its local community by only using Vermont based dairies as its milk suppliers and it is heavily involved with local charities. Also, when it came time to expand the business, instead of going through venture capitalists for its funds, Ben and Jerry instead offered and sold stock options by going door to door to local Vermonters. Having fun while at work, the feeling of family and social responsibility are a few other components to the Ben & Jerry’s corporate culture (Cummings & Worley, 2009). Key Issues Beginning as two friend just having fun making ice cream, Ben & Jerry’s has now expanded to a business that directly employs over 350 people. In the five year period, from 1984 until 1988, Ben & Jerry’s net sales increased from a little over 4 million dollars to over 47 million dollars. This overall increase in sales also generated an almost 14 million dollars gross profit margin. It is with these increases in both sales and gross profits is the board’s actual business mind set has to adapt. Both Ben and Jerry have stated their desire to have an organization that is both a fun place to work and to feel like a family. In their zeal to ensure this feeling of family was implemented they forgot to add the mother or father authority figure to the family dynamic. A family dynamic does not effectively work in business if there is not someone overall in charge (Helena, et al, 2015). Another issue is that there was no clear message being communicated from the board to the rest of the company. For example, when asked for their opinion, each member of the board had their own separate organizational vision of what Ben & Jerry’s is and should be. The board also had serious issues in how they communicated with each other. The members of the seemingly did not have the ability to talk amongst themselves in an honest and open fashion about the problems that existed within the board itself. This resulted in the board believing that any issues that existed were found within the organization itself and not within their circle (Cummings & Worley, 2009). A majority of the employees had responsibilities that were beyond their work experiences. Managers and supervisors were experts in their actual technical positions,