Perdue Farm

Perdue Farms was founded by Arthur Perdue in 1920, when he purchased five dollars worth of laying hens and originally went into business selling eggs. Perdue Farms remains a family owned business, however has expanded to 20,000 employees and a multi-billion dollar international venture. The company remained extremely small because of Arthur’s unwillingness to finance any business expenses. He was unable to feel successful owing money, so Perdue’s expansion did not happen until much later. Perdue Farms grew exponentially after The Great Depression, which lead to a high demand of eggs. During the 1940’s, they began to expand their product base and began selling chicken. By 1952, they were putting out over 2.6 million birds each year.
He used a centralized management style that allowed him to keep control of the company’s decision making processes. He hired executives that had been with the company for most of their careers and have worked their way up from the bottom. They were able to keep complete control of their vision and mission statement during the crucial start-up years of his company. “Centralized management keeps all major decisions with one specific executive group, while decentralized management allows company employees to have more say in the decision-making process.” (chron.com) This type of management structure is especially effective in an organization that manufactures similar products. Perdue Farms, as they began to expand, had several different products with multiple divisions that needed a change in management style in order to be most effective. Centralized management is often times less time consuming and can be very efficient, however, with a company as large as Perdue, Frank realized the benefits of reaching out to his employees. Frank also realized that he was missing out on extremely high levels of creativity and problem solving skills that would help his company be more effective and
“It breeds and hatches its own eggs (19 hatcheries), selects its contract growers, builds Perdue-engineered chicken houses, formulates and manufactures its own feed (12 poultry feed mills, 1 specialty feed mill, 2 ingredient-blending operations), oversees the care and feeding of the chicks, operates its own processing plants, distributes via its own trucking fleet, and markets the products.” (ORG THEORY BOOK) Their company design had shifted from being the “middleman” to having total process control where they are able to be more successful in reaching to their targeted customers who are only looking for the freshest poultry available. In order to keep their product at the top of the market, Perdue Farms regularly compares their product with their