Case Team Analysis of Jenson Shoes: Jane Kravitz’s Story

Basic Underlying Assumptions are the beliefs that employees have about the everyday operation of a company. Chrysler’s employees began to believe that sales, market shares, and the awards were the most important aspect of their company; simply because that was what management kept pushing on them, probably in sales meetings (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013). Their employees were so driven to get the quota to become sales person of the month and get a plaque with their name on it, and hung on the wall so everyone could see; that they got blind sided of what was really important (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013). By striving to get this behavior down right, it is hard to begin to change back into what it was supposed to be or something new altogether because it has become a part of these employees belief of how things are to operate (Kinicki, 2013, slide 14).

This report has been created with the intent to analyze the athletic apparel industry with a specific focus on Lululemon Athletica, Inc., further refered to as Lululemon. In this report you will find that the strengths and weaknesses of Lululemon’s current strategies and future goals are analyzed and compared to that of its closest competitors. In conclusion to the analysis, recommendations have been made to potentially guide Lululemon Athletica, Inc. in a positive direction in regards to its future endeavors. The following

Joshua should sympathize with her desire to go back to work for the positive effects it will have on the family’s welfare. He should analyze the

illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. The authors may have disguised certain names and other

In the case study involving Julie, the director at NCLS has management practices conducive to Likert’s System 2: Benevolent-Authoritative. This system is based on managers “occasionally using rewards but also punishment. Information flow is mostly downward. Most decisions are made at highest levels, but some decision making within a narrow set of guidelines is made at lower levels. Some teamwork is present” but the premise of the benevolent-authoritative is a master-servant relationship between management and employees, where rewards are the sole motivators and both teamwork and communication

“the systematic application of functional rationality to the self to attain certain individual ends”. Such a manager “dispassionately takes stock of himself, treating himself as an object, as a commodity. He analyses his strengths and weaknesses and decides what he needs to change in order to survive and flourish in his organization. And then he systematically undertakes a program to reconstruct his image ...” (p.59) “The continuous uncertainty and ambiguity of managerial hierarchies, exacerbated over time by masked conflict, causes managers to turn towards each other for cues for behaviour. They try to learn from each other and to master the shared assumptions, the complex rules, the normative codes, the underlying institutional logic that governs their world. ... Normally, of course, one learns to master the managerial code in the course of repeated, long-term social interaction with other managers” (p.37-8) “... one makes oneself alert to expediency by projecting outward the objectifying habit of mind learned in the course of self-rationalization. That is, the manager alert to expediency learns to appraise all situations and all other people as he comes to see himself - as an object, a commodity, something to be scrutinized, rearranged, tinkered with, packaged, advertised, promoted, and sold.” (p.119)

Managers make many decisions every day. Thankfully there are many tools available to a manager as they make these decisions. Tiffany is a General Manager of a franchise in the quick service restaurant industry. She is faced with decisions dozens of times in one day. A large portion of the decisions that she is faced with are made to solve structured problems, however, sometimes an unstructured problem does arise that she needs to address. As well as solving problems Tiffany must also make plans to in order to have structure and organization to achieve the goals set forth by herself and the company that she works for. Looking at some of the decisions that Tiffany has had to make recently it can been seen how she goes about solving

Though Fletcher has enjoyed long-term success as a portfolio manager, he stumbles as a team manager. One example is in his relationship with Stephanie Whitney. Though he described is as a “mentor-protégé” relationship, he admits to having little time to train her. While he provided her with general career guidance, he explains that it was her own resourcefulness and initiative that allowed her to ascend from an administrative assistant position to the role of analyst. This transition, as noted by one of her colleagues, was difficult for Whitney and she struggled with establishing her identity as an aspiring portfolio manager. Because of Fletcher’s hands-off approach to managing people, Whitney’s growth was stifled under his management, which was a contributing factor to her eventual resignation.

Brian Walter Jr. had a great vision of not turning into “bureaucratic, quantitatively, grey-suited manager ...”, yet the

"Management Time: Who 's got the Monkey" has been the second most popular management article ever published by the Harvard Business Review ("Management Time: Who 's got the Monkey", by William Oncken and Donald Wass, first published by Harvard Business Review, 1974) and has been reprinted several times. Thirty odd years later, the message Oncken and Wass sent us on management, still holds true today.

Chapter 2 Harvard Press Book (2006). Performance management: Measure and improve the effectiveness of your employees. (Chapter 2) Motivation: The Not-So-Secret Ingredient of High Performance. Harvard Business School Publishing. Cambridge, MA. Lynn, I., Hodge, Y. & Yemen G. (2007). Teamwork turmoil. University of Virginia Darden School Foundation. Beamish, P. & Jiang, R. & (2011). The Chinese fireworks industry. Richard Ivey School of Business Foundation. Kaplan, R.S. (2010). Leading change with strategy execution system. Harvard Business School Publishing. Cambridge, MA. Karkhardt, D. & Hanson, J. (1993). Informal networks: The company behind the charts. Harvard Business School Publishing. Cambridge, MA. Katzenbach, J. & Smith, D. (1993). The discipline of team. Harvard Business Review. President and Fellows of Harvard College. Kerr, S. (1995). On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B. Academy of Management Executive. 9 (1), 7-14 Download on class site Kramer, R.M. (2003). The harder they fall. Harvard Business School Publishing. Cambridge, MA. Montgomery, C.A. (2005). Newell Company: Corporate Strategy. Harvard Business School Press.

Owing to limited rationality of man, Herbert Simon contends that most decisions are based on limited rationality, that is, the organization is working like a brain. It would be impossible for organizations to attain perfection since their members have limited information-processing abilities (Morgan, G, 1997)

Along with this great burden of “pleasing everyone,” she must make decisions that will also satisfy her bosses as well as decisions that will progress the company and drive profit margins in the northern direction.

Although Mary Ann did not want to waste time with this open communication process, she would have realized that Mike and Jeanine work better together when each subordinate individually feels useful and important. Mary Ann got the results out of Jeanine that she expected because she made her feel useful and important. If Mike was properly motivated and given

4. How does this case illustrate how strategic intent needs to be matched by both organizational capability and managerial competence; and show how such