Essay on IBM Case Study Group 3 2 draft

The objective of this report was to analyze Vivint-Smart Home Solutions’ performance in terms of organisational culture, management and leadership styles and motivation and how organizations have been affected by them. In this report, we identified that Vivint has an association of Hierarchy and Market organisational culture, relationship-oriented and task-oriented leadership styles and servant leadership style. Moreover, it demonstrated that Vivint has intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. These resulted in successful and unsuccessful practices of Vivint based on the Undercover Boss TV series based on three aspects which have been mentioned above. In addition, this report critiqued the Undercover Boss method for discovering the problems within an organisation and recommended other processes for uncovering issues. The results showed that organisational culture, management and leadership styles as well as motivation played significant roles in Vivint’s performance. Recommendations have been made to improve the unsuccessful practices of Vivint such as training managers to be empathic problem solver, examining and updating the working condition regularly, bonus for employees who give feedback voluntarily on management processes and offering fund to employees who are in need of support.

The source of these problems seems to be coming from two areas in Interwest Healthcare. The first area is the miscommunication that the hospital administrators are having with upper management. The hospital administrators and upper management are not only having miscommunication issues but they also do not share the same role expectations with each other which is creating tension. “The hospital people accused Singh of being a bureaucrat who did not care about patient services. Singh accused the hospital staffs of not understanding the importance of accurate reporting” (Brickley, Smith & Zimmerman 2009 p. 38). The

Competitive profile matrix is an important management tool to compare the Bank or any organization with the other strong competitors.

Factors and trends that made a significant contribution to Big Blue’s profitability can include revenues, cash flow, gross margins and earnings per share (EPS). When discussing the company’s revenue growth, we can see that the company’s lowest point in their first fiscal quarter in 1997 was at $17,308,000.00. Afterwards, the firm’s

The case study focuses on an employee, Paul Keller, who is being affected by a number of factors. His job performance is hindered by constraints such as his work environment, his home environment, stressors, mood, and the management style of his superior. The case study demonstrates how his job performance is affected and what the consequences could be as a result of his poor job performance and lack of concentration.

Companies often use a (CPM) – Competitive Profile Matrix to better understand their external environment as well as their competition within the industry they operate. The matrix identifies a company’s key competitors and draws a comparison using the industry’s critical success factors. The analysis also reveals a company’s strengths and weaknesses against its competition, making them aware of problematic areas needing improvement and also areas that are doing well and need to be protected (See Appendix F).

To answer the many external environmental factors affecting IBM’s personal computer business they must raise structural complexity and decentralize decision making through increasing the number of departments and personnel which individually address such boundary spanning environmental points as pricing, customer representation, and new technologies. Human resources must be effectively utilized as key personnel must be recruited both quickly in the transformation and in the future.

Question 1. What competences has IBM had to invest in arising from its transformation from a ‘product-centric’ to a ‘service-centric’ organization?

IBM was founded in 1911. It had a strong market in computing business that focused on the Main Frame Computing. IBM reached its great success when IBM PC came out in the 1980s, but it failed in the 1990s, mainly because it did not keep up with clients’ needs. Lou Gerstner, IBM CEO, in 1993 came on board and fixed the problem. He focused on effective marketing and product lines. Under his leadership, IBM experienced its success once more and was profiting from the growing Internet business. Gerstner passed his baton of IBM leadership to a young, 31 year old, Sam Palmisano as an IBM CEO in March 2002. Before his position as a CEO, Palmisano had run IBM’s integrated global services group from 1996-1999. Under his leadership and the legacy of Gerstner, IBM was on solid footing and had acquired PWC Consulting from the Price Waterhouse Cooper organization. IBM became global innovator in services: integrated, available on demand, locally innovative, and globally synergistic.

Prior to their cultural change that took place in the early 1990’s, many would have said that IBM was on a fatal downhill slide. At this point they were beginning to become obsolete. IBM at one point was among the leaders within the world for hardware/software development and information technology services, but all divisions within the organization were run independently from one another. They were not a unified enterprise. To solidify this even further, “rather than working together as a team, divisions competed against each other both internally and in the field” (DiCarlo, L., 2002).

IBM has weaknesses in the transformation of its business model. It is lack of flexibility in the transition because of its large company

Over the past five years, IBM has quietly transformed itself into a "software, solution and services" company. With the transformation from a hardware vendor to a solution provider, it has entered the area of consulting services.

Surprisingly, the enterprise did not recognize innovations much. That can be justified with the fact that the firm’s financial potential is evidently limited owing to the corporate size and revenues. The company was addressing its target audience, which could not be described as unexpectedly big. Recent changes in a sphere of information technologies have caused the firm to reconsider its entrepreneurial orientation. Cloud Computing technologies have entered the market of the United States. Therefore, the organization has decided to make an adequate response on thea trend and gain a new competitive advantage. The chief executive

In 1995, IBM reengineer and redesign its logistics and procurement and outsourced its activities if it could be done faster and cheaper. Within one year of reengineering, costs were down 20% and time needed to complete and confirm supply orders had decreased from average of 48 hours to 2.5 hours. By 2000, $370 Million were saved annually by procuring goods & services online (94%). Also, year-to-year growth in procurement volume increased by 60% between

Data Centre Operation over multiple sites, with complete flexibility. This will involve IBM and more. Combined Help Desk in order to offer business application assistance along with technical assistance.