Product details

Qian set up Qingfeng, a textile design and trading company, in Shanghai in 2003. Over the next four years, he successfully led Qingfeng past the survival phase by developing two innovative products, which were very well received by the market. These two products brought Qingfeng fast growth in sales revenues and a good reputation in the industry. However, the inability of the company to build a stable team of sales representatives prevented it from fully exploiting this advantage and realising its true sales and profit potential. Although Qian kept recruiting and training new staff, he could not make serious progress. In 2007, a group of salespeople left Qingfeng and set up two competitor companies. By the end of the year, the majority of new recruits had left the company. Qian realised by now that there was a major flaw in his approach to recruiting, training and retaining staff and that this would be a major obstacle to the company''s growth. The case describes the typical human resource management (HR) problems faced by small and medium enterprises, and seeks to provoke discussion on the different HR strategies and leadership styles that are appropriate at the different phases of their growth.