Shifting Deck Chairs But Is It Titanic

There was a time when investors truly believed that there was money to be made in educational publishing materials.

Barry O'Callaghan bought into the dream, all in. His minnow-sized educational materials publishing concern, Riverdeep, swallowed up some publishing whales in an attempt to create the biggest such entity in the publishing seas.

Like Captain Ahab, alas, he went down, a victim of the white whale he fashioned from an ocean of debt and an inability to predict an economic collapse.

Recently, Penguin and Random House merged, with Penguin leaving behind its Pearson educational publishing unit to find its way in the rough waters of print versus digital and declining textbook sales.

Now Pearson has rearranged its corporate leaders, but have they only rearranged the deck chairs on some Titanic-like industry, or will this strategy work? Have they found the best and the brightest, people bubbling with new ideas and strategies?

There is a flow chart of executives who are charged with boosting sales within their little fiefdoms, either by inventing cutting edge technologies or devising irresistible sales pitches. Naturally Pearson wants to become the company that educators think of first when they think about what textbooks or digital content they will purchase. It will be up to the new team to make that happen, but is a new organizational chart the way to do it?

Or is there still too much competition and too many other companies out there doing the same thing in the teeth of continued budget cuts and declining demand?

Past performance is not always a good indicator of future success, so it is impossible to determine if the changes Pearson has made at the top will prove effective. If, by some miracle, the global economy sails out of the doldrums, there will be an uptick in sales as those who did without find the means to do with and try to catch up. In that case, the new board will be rewarded and proclaimed brilliant. On the other hand, if things continue as they have, there will be no major improvements in the bottom line at Pearson and someone will order a rearrangement once again, after a few more employees are given the sack in an effort to reduce costs.