Introduction The case study on Samuel Adams, the Boston Beer Company, has been developed using information from the company’s annual reports, the website, and articles from mass media. The case presents a background of the company, and then shows the present problems faced by the company and how they are related to the centralized hierarchical structure. Further, the case study will attempt to understand if such a structure is affecting the company’s performance and strategy. Samuel Adams – the Boston Beer Company The company under consideration is one of the largest brewers of handcrafted beer in America . The founder of the company Jim Koch maintains the traditional method of brewing which makes the company distinct in style. It brews 30 different styles of beer and has won numerous prizes. The beer brewing industry has undergone considerable changes over the last several years. The Boston Beer Company is a leader in the better beer segment in the US and sells almost 18 percent of the beer in the country’s field . It also covers 1.3 percent of the overall sales in the American beer market . Since its inception in 1984 the Boston Beer Company has been micromanaged by the founder Jim Koch who went bar-to-bar to promote Samuel Adams beer as well as appear in TV ads for the product in order to convince customers to purchase it. Though many believe that Koch was a brilliant marketer, but the fear of an entrepreneur to micro-manage the company was evident in the operations and the strategy making of Samuel Adams. However, the Boston Beer Company went public in 1995, but the top-down approach of making strategy in the company remained with Koch leading the centralized decision-making process. The next section shows how the strategy has been affected by the structure and control system of the company. Further, an analysis of the income statement of the company over the last three years shows that the net income of the company has fallen from 2011 to 2012 from $66,059 to $59,467 . Structure and Control System of Samuel Adams The BBC breweries have around 900 employees in Boston, Pennsylvania, and Cincinnati. The risk the company faces presently is the expansion of the market both in domestic and international markets. This results in no assured growth of the company making its future uncertain. In addition, the company has increased its brands and products offering at the risk of eroding the sales of its already existing products. There is also a risk of the company owned breweries not to meet production target in future. Such problems that are impending on the company show that there are certain inherent challenges within the company that must be addressed immediately to remove the coming risks . The first factor that we will consider in analyzing the internal problem of the Boston Beer Company is its structure. The organization’s control system is unpredictable, which has affected its stock prices. The company endeavors to make substantial expenses in marketing and promotional activities to promote its brand. However, these expenditures have not resulted in higher sales in case of BBC. The increased expenditure in this sector has led to higher expendi