Pros
Gale Cengage is one of the few publishing houses in Michigan of worldwide import. Gale also has tremendous potential - it sits on a treasure trove of a backlist and invests 10's of millions in new product development. It's been heavily involved in moving online for the last 10 years: over 50% of its revenues comes from digital products. It's diversified, reaching K-12, public and academic research library markets. The majority of staff, while perhaps not inspired,are very dedicated. Salaries are mid-range...perhaps 15% lower than they should be, but still good within the MI economy: benefits are F500 corp standard.
Cons
Hierarchal, myopic management that can't make a real decision and are effectively out of touch with market: they are more concerned with both mainianing their own status and pleasing the 'bosses' back in Stanford (where Cengage HQ is based) then truely serving either their customers or their markets. Lack of any real accountability between product development and market. A bottlenecked product development process focused on migrating legacy product, perpetually delaying new content and features required for true competitive advantage. Despite having a strong international distribution capability, Gale has no real commitment to either growing international market share or thinking globally.