大联大：越联越大（A）

At the beginning of the 21st century, Taiwan's electronic distribution industry was filled with vicious competition, which led to unprofitable companies and a deteriorating industry. The series cases (A), (B) and (C) describe how the industry dealt with organizational challenges through corporate integration and organizational reforms for nearly a decade. Case (A) introduces how the industry leaders WPI and SAC were determined to revitalize the industry through horizontal integration. The two companies announced their "marriage" and established WGP, a holding company. That was a strong way to create a precedent for Taiwan's electronic distribution industry. However, the innovative model posed a great challenge to how to effectively manage the newly established company, because it was unprecedented in the industry, with no experience to draw on. In the following decade after the merger, WPG continued to undergo organizational changes and cultural integration, and was constantly facing new and enormous challenges. For Simon Huang who was about to be Chairman of WPG at the end of 2018, how to manage the newly born company became his biggest career challenge. Case (B) describes how WPI and SAC put aside their previous hostility and held hands with each other to start the difficult integration process. For the purpose of integration, WPG adopted an operating model of “separated front-end and combined back-end”. It then launched a series of horizontal integration initiatives, through which it acquired a number of competitors. However, the operating performance of WPG went through a significant decline since 2011 due to deep changes in the industry. In 2013, an unprecedented predicament in industrial M&A had the management by the throat. Case (C) introduces in detail how WPG suspended the M&A, launched an organizational reform by reducing seven subsidiaries to four, and adopted standardization measures to address the predicament. As the industry reshuffled itself to a new competitive situation, WPG speeded up globalization in 2016. It needed to decide whether it should further its organizational reform to compete with its biggest global rivals – Avnet and Arrow Electronics.