"William Stavropoulos": The Successful decision making styles of the CEO of Dow Chemical Corporation, William Stavropoulos.

Essay by trey682University, Bachelor'sA+, October 2005

download word file, 3 pages 0.0

Downloaded 56 times

Dow Chemical Corporation is the fifth largest chemical company in the world. In recent years the company has undergone massive restructuring in an effort to become even more productive and efficient than ever before. William Stavropoulos, president and CEO, is the singular individual most responsible. This essay will focus on what type of decision-making style that Mr. Stravropoulos embraced as he built his legacy in Dow's history. This essay will also describe how Mr. Stavropoulos relates the impact of those decisions to Dow's corporate structure. The information in this essay is from a collection of existing data and personal observation. Before examining his decision making style, it is important to look at a few of the bold choices that he and his team have made for Dow, and how those choices impacted the company.

In an article entitled Dow Chemical's CEO William Stavropoulos on structure and decision making, author Richard Hodgets quotes from his extensive interview with the Dow CEO.

When asked what types of decisions he has made in recent years, Mr. Stavropoulos answered: "we examined all of our products and our businesses and we asked: Where are our inherent strengths? Where can we be world leaders, either today or two or three years from now?" After gathering all the related data, they began to realize that other competitors already too heavily dominated certain areas of their current market. Because of this, they proceeded to divest over $10 billion of business assets and redirect the capitol into areas that would better compliment Dow's chances for success. The strategy behind the restructuring was designed to set standards for each business, increase productivity, change the corporate culture to better support the strategy, and promote overall growth. Over $2.7 billion in costs were cut during this transformation. Though these changes required many...