Under Armour Paper - Assignment 2

Founded in 1996 by Mr. Kevin Plank, Under Armour is a sports apparel company that trades under the symbol UA on the New York Stock Exchange. The company is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, and has approximately 1,900 employees. According to Plank, the idea for the company came to him when he was playing football for the University of Maryland (Miloch, Lee, Kraft & Ratten, 2012). Plank decided to create a t-shirt with a similar fabric as his compression shorts, after noticing that the shorts stayed dry during practice, Plank went on to start the company at the age of 23 years old in a basement in Washington D.C. Under Armour mainly produces apparel for sports, physical activities and working out. The main concept of the products is their ability to stay comfortable and dry despite the athlete may be sweating as the products are made from a synthetic fiber which aids in ensuring that skin stay dry since it absorbs moisture. With the high ability of the clothing to absorb sweat, most athletes prefer them especially those playing in the sport of football.

One of the organization issues that adversely affected productivity at Under Armour is the management shake-up. While the company was set to overtake their biggest rival, Nike by 2015, it ended up going on a downward trajectory over the last few years as it was unable to hold on to several top executives. The company lost two senior-level executives in November 2017 including the Senior Vice President in the women’s and youth category Pamela Catlett and Marketing Chief Andrew Donkin (Lieber, 2018). Many managers have also been jumping ship in the last three years which is clearly a worrying trend, especially from an investor’s standpoint. These organization issues show that the company is not heading in the right direction thus begging the question of whether or not, the company’s overall strategic plans are stable enough.

Current Corporate Culture

The company has been accused of promoting a troubling workplace culture thus facilitating to the development of the current issue where senior managers have contemplated leaving the company. Furthermore, the company has claimed that it is working hard to provide a solution to the systematic inequality in its workplace culture (Lieber, 2018). Under Armour’s vision is to empower athletes across the globe while the company’s mission is to ensure that it all athletes get better through its design, passion, and relentless pursuit of innovation. However, with the current troubling workplace culture issues, there are threats resulting in departures of top management which makes it difficult for the company to stay strong towards achieving its mission (Lieber, 2018).

Areas of Weakness

One of the main weakness of Under Armour is its failure to hold on to its top management and senior leadership which makes it hard to maintain a constant growth to help it overcome the competition from other companies within the sports apparel industry. Despite the fact that the company has made heavy investment spending, the failure to maintain its best management has been a cause for concern as the company does not maintain its flow of activities (Lieber, 2018). Despite the fact that the company realized its failures in regards to maintaining its top leadership, Under Armour was not able to respond and recover the market needs which has continued to leave it behind as other companies prosper (Miloch, Lee, Kraft & Ratten, 2012). The top executive at the company has also overlooked the emotional climate during the turbulent period making it hard for the company to recover from the current situation, although the company’s CEO Kevin Plank has urged the current employees to fix the company’s culture and get back to the right track.

Propose Solutions

For Under Armour, I would modify the workplace culture to eliminate systematic inequality. It is clear that issues of systematic inequality have contributed highly to the departure of the top management which has left a huge void in the company. I would recommend that the company consult its employees and learn more about issues affecting them. Most of the employees feel under-motivated, and therefore the company should come up with ways of ensuring that the employees are more motivated (Lieber, 2018). It is important to recognize the great work and contributions made by the employees especially at the top-level so as to motivate them to work hard and remain loyal to the company. The company should also take time and determine the right areas to make a huge investment to avoid wastage of resources especially since it has been known to lose on markets by investing in the wrong areas. All in all, Under Armour’s biggest issue is to maintain their top executive employers and therefore, they should prioritize on this issue to provide quick solution thus enhancing stability.

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