On the Monday following the weekend discovery of the White Prophet’s design flaw, Peter Metcaff called an emergency meeting with the department heads named above. The strategy was to develop a plan to handle the crisis and discover a long-term solution to preventing such crises in future. Metcaff was confused and angry. He was thankful no one using the axe was injured but admitted the flaw was a marketing and public relations disaster. He demanded an explanation, arguing that he felt the axe represented the “latest and greatest” technology. He was also confused because there had never been such a design flaw in White Diamond’s mountaineering axes in the history of the company.

Marketing manager Maria Kraner said fervently, “If customers see this as meaning our axes are of poor quality, the whole business may be jeopardized!” Stan Williams argued that his sales reps were throwing fits, with long lists of backorders for an axe that is now considered of poor quality! He

We have seen in the depiction of the two meetings how Metcaff is able to form a coherent whole among disparate aspects of management and diverse decision-making and management styles. Similar to the Silicon Forest management philosophy that “All of our organizations have a dream, a Utopia which they find persuasive and which directs their activities”, we see that Metcaff is handling this as a company-wide problem without finger-pointing only solution finding (Limerick et al 153).

Being a fierce competitor with the highest ethical standards

The management practices utilized by Peter Metcaff are in accordance with many of the modern day management theories offered by Limerick, Cunnington, and Crowther, particularly the ability to create a meta-strategic management cycle that creates a synergistic whole out of the disparate management elements of vision, identity, configuration, and systems of action. So, too, Metcaff was able to accomplish this on the individual management level as he was able to direct team dynamics in such a manner where different management and problem-solving styles were able to arrive at outcomes greater than the sum of their often disparate parts.