Decentralization in Crisis: The Case of Everest Double Glazing Installation

Change and turn-around strategies in business need to draw upon more than a literature of corporate culture for analysis and understanding. The Everest Double Glazing Company experienced an organizational transformation which precipitated rapidly into a crisis situation. The history of this case study in decentralization shows how intended management strategies aimed at change can be frustrated by complexities in behaviour and volatility in business environments. This case study brings to the fore the role of self-inducement in the evolution of crises, questions the extent to which business organizations can prepare for crisis in their own strategic planning, and clarifies comment on the mobilizing, rather than demobilizing role of crisis in corporations. Crisis management theory contributes to the understanding of many ongoing issues that contemporary management literature seems unable to explain.