Marketel is a fast-growing (hypothetical) telemarketing company whose headquarters are in Colorado, but the majority of its business is in California. The company has eight divisions, including one in Chicago.

(The company has just started penetrating the Midwest market.) Recently the company was approached by two large telephone companies, one in Los Angeles and one in Denver, for discussions regarding a potential merger.

Nancy Miranda, the corporate CEO who was involved in the preliminary discussions, notified all division managers on the progress of the discussions. Both she and John Miner, the chief financial officer, felt that an immediate merger would be extremely beneficial.

However, the vice presidents for marketing and operations thought the company should continue to be independent for at least two to three years. “We can get a much better deal if we first increase our market share,”

commented Sharon Gonzales, the vice president for marketing.

Nancy called each of the division managers and found that five of them were for the merger proposal and three objected to it. Furthermore, she found that the division managers from the West Coast strongly opposed discussions with the Colorado company, and the other managers were strongly against discussions with the Los Angeles company. Memos, telephone calls, and meetings of two or three people at a time resulted in frustration. It became apparent that a meeting of all concerned individuals was needed. Nancy wanted to have the meeting as soon as possible in spite of the busy travel schedules of most division managers.

She also wanted the meeting to be as short as possible.

Nancy called Bob Kraut, the chief information officer, and asked for suggestions about how to conduct a conference electronically. The options he outlined are as follows.

(1) Use the corporate intranet. Collect opinions from all division managers and vice presidents, then disseminate them to all parties, get feedback, and repeat the process until a solution is achieved.

(2) Fly all division managers to corporate headquarters and have face-to-face meetings there until a solution is achieved.

(3) Use the Web for a meeting.

(4) Fly all division managers to corporate headquarters.

Rent a decision room (a facility designed for electronic meetings) and a facilitator from the local university for $2,000 per day and conduct the meetings there.

(5) Conduct a videoconference. Unfortunately, appropriate facilities exist only at the headquarters and in two divisions. The other division managers can be flown to the nearest division that has equipment.

Alternatively, videoconferencing facilities can be rented in all cities.

(6) Use a telephone conference call.

Answer the following questions:

a. Which of these options would you recommend to management and why?

b. Is there a technology not listed that might do a better job?

c. Is it possible to use more than one alternative in this case? If yes, which technologies would you combine, and how would you use them?