Humanized Robots Essay

909 Words4 Pages
Helen Bowers inherited Bowers Machine Parts from her Dad, who recently passed away and has requested a review of the plant’s productivity including employee motivation and production. According to Ms. Bowers, her employee’s seem to be less motivated and the level of production is not meeting her expectations. Although Ms. Bowers has experience working in the business, her management style is quite different from her Dad. Mr. Bowers was a “theory y” manager who placed a greater value on human relations. Employees were accustomed to being treated like family, being paid prevailing wages and were allowed to express their opinions, ideas and complaints. Interviewing plant employees revealed that once Ms. Bowers took control of the plant she immediately implemented new policies and practices. Her justification for the changes was to meet the challenges of the Bower Machine Parts international competitors. Present market trends posed a threat to existing production levels to compete with the Japanese who recently made aggressive moves into the machine parts business. Ms. Bowers’ approach to increase productivity was to immediately increase production quotas by 20 percent, she eliminated employee idle time, and she took away employee recreation. Additionally, Ms. Bowers changed the employee compensation packages by phasing out the profit-sharing plan as well as plans to cut pay increases. Although Ms. Bowers took an operations management approach through her focus on production levels and delivering products more effectively, she lacked in the area of behavioral management. Rather than taking a psychological approach to look at current positions, identify conditions that might improve productivity and ways to motivate employees, she chose a classical management style which implemented a closed management system that began alienating employees. No longer

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