The company was unable to maintain and manage the bonus incentive plan that they had in place before the crisis. The employees started to complain about the company’s policies and its situation also by underperforming, which in turn leads to low productivity. The manager Ron Bent had to figure out a way to address these problems, and come up with solutions so that the company can continue operating and supplying its clients. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant was facing the problem of not being able to keep their employees motivated in both good and bad times. The bonuses were perceived as being part of their regular paycheck, not rewards for high performance, which in long-term lead to de-motivation.
PAD 515 Week 3 Discussion Carver is missing some very basic values and attitudes. He is missing being considerate, respectful, fair, cooperativeness. The changes that Carver needs to make are numerous. The changes will be difficult for him to sustain, as they are not his “style”, but change can be achieved, as with anything, if he works on his values and attitudes. It will more than likely take his subordinates and co-workers even longer to trust that he has changed and that he will adhere to his new found values and attitudes.
Contrary to what Simard assumed would happen, production began to diminish due to absenteeism. As a consequence, supervisors began issuing letters of reprimand which led to employees seeking help from their union and filing grievances. Simard attempted to rectify the problems by increasing the supervisor to employee ratio. Simard hoped this would help the supervisors keep track of the employees as well as keep up with their own duties. It became harder for the supervisors to keep track of their employees, therefore, making it difficult for the payroll department to deduct pay for the time the employees were late.
Other problems include the company having a lackadaisical business strategy, internal conflicts among upper management, an information technology department that has not been well run and is frequently criticized by peer executives, and a lack of integrated business objectives that do not align with information technology objectives, the inability to prioritize projects due to unclear business objectives. This has resulted in project failure, a bad company reputation, loss of market share, and stock price tumbling. Carlisle believes that IZL Corporation is salvageable, but needs to upper management to do this. In this paper, the problem, recommended and alternative solutions, as well as implementation strategies are discussed. Key Issues The key issues for Jack Carlisle, according to Robert Austin, are recorded in the informally published manuscript, Jack Carlisle, CIO.
The main problem with the evaluation tools and techniques when encountering the company issues was hard to determine. The group found many options could have been more urgent than others; it was necessary to really prioritize and stay focus on our main goal. When there is a short-term and long-term goal in mind, people can organize all options and determine which ones will get to the goal faster and easier. The stimulation was amazing because it allowed us to see how a decision could affect the company and what would be the best decision for the future. The review by Linda, the CEO was the final decision and though it wasn’t real, our decisions mattered and stimulated real company business in the management
1. How would you define “Frozen Preferences” and what is the impact of this concept on strategy formulation, alternative analysis and recommendation? • Managers don’t like to make major strategic changes once decisions have been made (except in the case of overwhelming evidence) as they will look unprepared and ineffective and their creditability is damaged • Frozen preferences o Management has made a decision and over time analysis shows that their decision may not be the best choice o However they feel compelled to maintain their current strategy even if it is not the best course of action. • As management preferences becomes a larger part of the organization (personnel changes, budgets etc), it becomes more and more difficult to change direction. o A tendency to avoid reversing changes even if it was not the best choice o In reality, past expenditures are sunk costs and the organization should use a clean slate to look at new choices, but to the manager, this will come at great personal loss.
A lack of recognition for good work can dramatically reduce motivation as staff feel undervalued and unappreciated, a person may work hard for an employer who does not appreciate them. Praise and recognition provides the incentive to work hard and achieve goals. Other incentives in a workplace can include the chance to learn and gain qualifications, promotions, and often increased salaries. However, it would be foolish to believe that money is always the
The veterans were taking the better clients giving themselves a better commission. This also left the territories under worked and not producing as many sales as possible. The final problem that Dave Thomas encountered was enforcing the strategy and policy with the older sales people. While the younger sales people are driven and respectful to new changes, the veteran sales reps are used to the old way and the enforcement of new changes is difficult. As far as strategy, there is consistently a discrepancy between selling high volume or selling only high margin items.
Secondly, the use of technology in the workplace leads to reduced chances to get promotion. In the past, workers focused on the manual experience to get promotion in their jobs. However, with modern technology the opportunities to get promotion for the basic or manual knowledge are too hard due to the competition with the highly technological employees. In addition to that, they will have difficulties to find jobs because their qualifications do not meet the requirements of the modern technology used in the workplace (Roberts, 2004). Thirdly, work relationships are another negative change in the workplace.
Any objectives agreed upon by a management coalition would inevitably be highly ambiguous goals, enfeebling the ability of a top manager or entrepreneur to truly control the direction of the firm. Cyert and March argued that while ‘individuals have goals; collectivities of people do not’ (1992, p.30), and thus the firm could not have well-defined objectives. Premised on this weak (or the absence of) leadership, The Behavioral Theory posits that the firm’s strategies and learning processes are short-term in focus with adaptations induced by crises. Management is unable to reconfigure internal resources because of the immutability of standard operating procedures and the ambiguity of coalition goals. In his discussion of firm strategy, Oliver Williamson notes that in Cyert and March ‘the firm resembles a fire department more than a strategic actor’ (1999, p. 14).