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QUESTION
Case studies
Acme Manufacturing Company pp. 69-70
Page 69
Steve Arnold is a production manager at Acme Manufacturing Company in New Jersey. When he arrived at the plant on Tuesday morning at 8:45 a.m., he was already late for work. Arnold had overslept that morning because the night before he had stayed up late to finish the monthly production report for his department. Entering the office Arnold greeted his secretary, Ruth Sweeney, and asked whether anything urgent needed his immediate attention. Sweeney reminded him of the staff meeting at 9:30 a.m. with Arnold’s boss—Frank Jones, the Vice President for Production—and the other production managers. Arnold thanked Sweeney for reminding him (he had forgotten about the meeting) and continued on to his adjoining office to look for the email announcing the meeting. He vaguely remembered getting it a week earlier, but he did not read it carefully or look at the attached materials.
His phone rang, and it was Sue Bradley, the Sales Vice President, who was inquiring about the status of a rush order for one of the company’s important clients. Arnold promised to look into the matter and get back to her later in the day with an answer. Arnold had delegated the rush order last week to Lucy Adams, one of his production supervisors, and he had not thought about it since then. Stepping back into the outer office, Arnold asked Sweeney if she had seen Adams today. Sweeney reminded him that Adams was at a training workshop in California and would be difficult to reach until the session ended late in the afternoon, because the workshop facilitators regard cell phone calls and text messages as an unnecessary distraction.
Going back into his office, Arnold sent a text message to Adams asking her to call him as soon as possible. Then, he resumed his search for the email about the meeting with his boss and the other production managers. He found it in his large collection of unprocessed emails, and it said the purpose of the meeting was to discuss a proposal for changing the quality-control procedures. By now it was 9:25 a.m., and there was no time to read the proposal. He hurried out to get to the meeting on time. During the meeting, the other production managers participated in the discussion and made helpful comments or suggestions. Arnold was not prepared for the meeting and did not contribute much except to say that he did not anticipate any problems with the proposed changes.
The meeting ended at 10:30 a.m., and Arnold returned to his office, where he found Paul Chen, one of his production supervisors, waiting for him. Chen wanted to discuss a problem caused in the production schedules by a major equipment breakdown. Arnold called Glenda Brown, his assistant manager, and asked her to join them to help rearrange the production schedules for the next few days. Glenda came in shortly and the three of them worked on the production schedules. They finished around noon and went out for lunch.
Soon after returning from lunch, his boss (Frank Jones) stopped in to ask about the quality report for last week. Arnold explained that he had given top priority to finishing the monthly production report and would do the quality report next. Jones was irritated, because he needed the quality data to finalize his proposal for new procedures, and he thought Arnold understood this task was more urgent than the production report. He told Arnold to get the quality data to him as soon as possible and left. Arnold immediately called Glenda Brown and asked her to bring the quality data to his office. The task of reviewing the data and preparing a short summary was not difficult, but it took longer than he anticipated. It was 2:40 p.m. by the time Arnold completed the report and attached it to an email to his boss.
Page 70
Looking at his calendar, Arnold noticed that he was already late for a 2:30 meeting of the plant safety committee. The committee meets weekly to review safety problems, and each department sends a representative. Arnold rushed out to the meeting, which was held in another part of the plant. The meeting was dull this week, without any important issues or problems to discuss. The meeting ended at 3:30, and when Arnold unmuted his cell phone he discovered that Adams had tried to contact him before leaving to fly home from the conference. Arnold walked back through his section of the plant and stopped to talk to his assistant manager Glenda. She wanted some advice on how to resolve a problem in the production assignments for the next day, and they discussed the problem for about a half-hour. When Arnold returned to his office at 4:05, he was feeling tired and decided it was time to go home. As he drove out of the parking lot, Arnold reflected that he was getting further behind in his work and wondered what he could do to get better control over his job.
Questions
- What specific things did Arnold do wrong, and what should have been done in each instance?
- What should Arnold do to become more effective as a manager?
Alvis Corporation p. 104
Kathy McCarthy was the manager of a production department in Alvis Corporation, a firm that manufactures office equipment. The workers are not unionized. After reading an article that stressed the benefits of participative management, McCarthy believed that these benefits could be realized in her department if the workers were allowed to participate in making some decisions that affect them. McCarthy selected two decisions for an experiment in participative management.
The first decision involved vacation schedules. Each summer the workers are given two weeks of vacation, but no more than two workers can go on vacation at the same time. In prior years, McCarthy made this decision herself. She would first ask the workers to indicate their preferred dates, then she considered how the work would be affected if different people were out at the same time. It was important to plan a vacation schedule that would ensure adequate staffing for all of the essential operations performed by the department. When more than two workers wanted the same time period, and they had similar skills, she usually gave preference to the workers with the highest productivity.
The second decision involved production standards. Sales had been increasing steadily over the past few years, and the company recently installed some new equipment to increase productivity. The new equipment would make it possible to produce more with the same number of workers. The company had a pay incentive system in which workers received a piece rate for each unit produced above a standard amount. Separate standards existed for each type of product, based on an industrial engineering study conducted a few years earlier. Top management wanted to readjust the production standards to reflect the fact that the new equipment made it possible for the workers to earn more without working any harder. The savings from higher productivity were needed to help pay for the new equipment.
McCarthy called a meeting of her 15 workers an hour before the end of the workday and explained that she wanted them to discuss the two issues and make recommendations. McCarthy figured that the workers might be inhibited about participating in the discussion if she were present, so she left them alone to discuss the issues. Besides, McCarthy had an appointment to meet with the quality control manager. Quality problems had increased after the new equipment was installed, and the industrial engineers were studying the problem in an attempt to determine why quality had gotten worse rather than better.
When McCarthy returned to her department just at quitting time, she was surprised to learn that the workers recommended keeping the standards the same. She had assumed they knew the pay incentives were no longer fair and would set a higher standard. The worker speaking for the group explained that their base pay had not kept up with inflation, and the higher incentive pay restored their real income to its prior level.
On the vacation issue, the group was deadlocked. Several of the workers wanted to take their vacations during the same two-week period and could not agree on who should go. Some workers argued that they should have priority because they had more seniority, while others argued that priority should be based on productivity, as in the past. Because it was quitting time, the group concluded that McCarthy would have to resolve the dispute herself. After all, was not that what she was being paid for?
Questions
- Were the two decisions appropriate for a group decision procedure according to the Vroom–Yetton model?
- What mistakes were made in using participation, and what could have been done to avoid the difficulties the manager encountered?
- Where these two decisions appropriate ones for introducing participation into the department?
| Subject | Business | Pages | 6 | Style | APA |
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Answer
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Management
Acme Manufacturing Company
Question One
Steve Arnold, the production manager, did the following wrong things; first, having a lot of unprocessed mails. Arnold fails to read his mails and therefore is not up to speed with tasks at hand. For instance, Arnold fails to read mails sent from Frank Jones, the vice president of production. The failure to read emails has made Arnold attend an important meeting unprepared. The mistake can be changed through proper organization and prioritization of tasks. Imran et al. (2016), asserts that an organization is a strength manager need to possess to keep them ahead of tasks in their docket. The second mistake is Arnold’s poor delegation skills. Mathebula and Barnard (2020) assert that managers should leverage delegation to help improve the skills of their subordinates. However, even though Arnold practices delegation, he does not follow up on the execution of the delegated tasks. The mistake can be corrected by supervising delegated tasks. The third mistake was being unaware of crucial meetings he was supposed to attend. Arnold was not aware of the meeting he was supposed to attend to discuss proposed changes to the company's quality control procedures. The mistake should be corrected through having an up to date itinerary.
Question Two
Arnold should do the following to be an effective manager; first, have a proper work-life balance. Sirgy and Lee (2018) postulate that employees who have a proper work-life balance are more productive and prepared for their workday. The manger should reduce taking work home and working late into the night as it interferes with the next working day. Secondly, Arnold should adopt proper time management skills. Proper time management will enable him to show up to work early and have adequate time to work on tasks on his desk. Additionally, the manager should practice proper delegation, coupled with proper itinerary management to be on top of his tasks.
Alvis Corporation
Question One
The Vroom -Yetton Model offers managers the framework that guides their decision-making methods to increase the quality of decisions made (Zia & Burni,2019). According to the Vroom-Yetton model, only the decision on incentive reduction was appropriate for a group decision. McCarthy was supposed to subject one decision which is about the payment reduction to group decision making since team members opinion on the matter is essential but concerning vacations. However, she was supposed to make an autocratic decision concerning the issue on employee vacation. Khalid and Nawab (2018) opine that employee participation is integral in matters involving their remuneration as it reduces their chances of rejecting or resisting changes made.
Question Two
The mistakes made in using participation was the short timeline given to the employees to discuss the issues at hand. The manager ambushed the employees with the need to discuss the two issues and arrive at a consensus. The limited-time was not sufficient since 15 employees need adequate time and repeated meeting to discuss their options and arrive at a decision. Therefore, the mistake can be corrected by allowing the employees ample time to objectively discuss the issues presented by the manager.
Question Three
Only one decision was appropriate for introducing participative leadership. Employees should be consulted in cases where their remuneration is concerned, and it is. Therefore, a decision that was appropriate for introducing participative leadership since consulting employees in such matters reduces their chances of resisting the changes implemented on remuneration. However, the decision on vacation days was not appropriate to introduce participative leadership since it's a decision that involves a lot of self-interests.
References
Imran, M. K., Rehman, C. A., Aslam, U., & Bilal, A. R. (2016). What’s organization knowledge management strategy for successful change implementation?. Journal of Organizational Change Management.
Khalid, K., & Nawab, S. (2018). Employee participation and employee retention in view of compensation. SAGE Open, 8(4), 2158244018810067.
Mathebula, B., & Barnard, B. (2020). The Factors of Delegation Success: Accountability, Compliance and Work Quality. Expert Journal of Business and Management, 8(1).
Sirgy, M. J., & Lee, D. J. (2018). Work-life balance: An integrative review. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 13(1), 229-254.
Zia, S. M., & Burni, A. I. (2019). Leadership and their Preferred Decision Model in Public Sector Institution of Higher Education in Sind. Journal of Managerial Sciences, 13(2).