Case Study CorningCorning is a decentralized enterprise currently plagued by external and internal threats, such as market uncertainty and poor communication and planning systems. The company has only just begun to recover from a major layoff in 1975, which damaged workers' confidence in their jobs. The Houghton family prefers an informal workplace with an ambiguous leadership style that contradicts the formal and strict system of resource allocation designed for their international strategy. The actual strategy used differs from the owner's philosophy, which is important, since the president must buy into the plan to understand and communicate it effectively. This poor communication creates goal incongruity, exemplified by the confusion among company divisions over whether they should focus on cost reduction or be innovative. Additionally, each agent was described as having overlapping tasks, demonstrating a lack of focus and inefficiency. The fact that each of the more than 150 business groups must write a resource allocation request and business strategy creates the problem of finding the time to read each report. Corning shifted its focus from a domestic, exporting company to a multinational manufacturing company. The lack of specialization and ambiguous leadership imposed by the Houghton family ran into the problem of a necessary change in organizational structure. However, the change in corporate structure, while mandated by these requirements, has led to an inefficient hybrid structure that refuses to give MacAvoy specialized responsibilities as COO because he must not only oversees operations globally, but is only in charge of the North American market, creating inefficiency with the international director. Corning's resource allocation process shows another unfortunate effort toward an organized and objective budgeting and planning process. The resulting inefficiencies and disorganized implementation of the plan hurt business performance. The underlying problem of inadequate distribution of Corning's communication led managers, workers, and committees to focus on different goals. The Resources Committee and the Business Committee by splitting a previously larger group, which was thought to slow innovation due to conflicts of interest between two subgroups (cost reduction and innovation). However, by simply dividing the two groups, nothing was effectively put in place to arbitrate the issue, and once again the resources committee (known to consist only of accountants) focused primarily on reducing costs while the business plan focused on projects with innovative ideas..