Informational Failures And Organizational Disasters

Q.1 – Briefly describe the dilemma presented in this case study. Who are the key players and what are some of the antecedents that have led to the present problem? Ans. When the best manager, takes certain actions which go against the core values of the company, it becomes really difficult for the management to make a fair judgement. They are stuck in a dilemma of what would be a better judgement. As a leader, it is very important to be fair and impartial to your team members. And so is the dilemma presented in the case, Bob’s Meltdown, Nicholas G. Carr. The key players in this case are1. Annette Innella 2. Robert Dunn 3. Jay Nguyen Annette Innella is the Vice President, Knowledge Management at Concord Machines. She was recently hired by

Dr. David Graham is the senior scientist within the FDA’s Office of Drug Safety. Graham became concerned when he started to see an increased number of patients having heart attacks and strokes after taking a large does of the drug Vioxx, back in 2002. He raised his concern to the FDA saying that the warning label needs to be changed due to his new findings. He had trouble getting this any attention from the FDA’s administration and decided it was time to ‘blow the whistle’ and go to the media.

3. (10 pts.) Enron will be an example of a dysfunctional company for many years to come. It was clearly a company riddled with fraud and excess and its conduct drove it into bankruptcy. The text argues that individual behavior was not at the core of Enron’s problems. What were the problems with this corporation from an organizational architecture point of view?

“Black people be like, ‘Gimme that fried chicken or Imma shoot’,” said the desperate comedian, who was dressed up as a “gangster” in a poor attempt to disguise his prejudice in the name of humor. Humor similar to the latter further endorses single stories, and because the comedian is popular, he has the power to promote an oversimplified generalization of an entire group of people regardless of their individual differences and make his racism appear tolerable, therefore laying the foundation of the cycle of oppression. The single story that young black men who grow up under the oppression of systematic failure will be violent and subvert authority is created by people with power and is the reason why the cycle of oppression happens as it does.

Last year, in September 2004, Merck withdrawed Vioxx, off the market. Studies of Vioxx showed that it doubled the risk of a heart attack or stroke for patients who have used it more than 18 months. After Merck, withdrawed Vioxx from the market, the FDA, issued a public health advisory for the users of Vioxx. Therefore, Vioxx was on the market for five years without

Latent failures in healthcare system level external to the hospital and its parent company. The hospital is under two contracts, and it had not updated its policies and procedures’ manual

Merck is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world today. Although encountered with success, it still faces many problems today while trying to be the market leader competing against its competition. While being research and development driven company, Merck now has to go beyond R&D to stay competitive in the pharmaceutical industry. The main issue that seems to come up is that how far it can progress with the dual challenge of hitting peak annual financial performance while keeping the research pipeline full continued to weigh on senior management. Through the late 80s to early 90s, Merck was able to boast

Merck is a drug manufacture giant who brings an annual revenue of nearly fifty billion. Prior the Vioxx recall Merck was a highly valued company when it came to its ethical standard. It had consistently toped list for companies to work for (Lawrence & Weber, 2014). In addition to this they were well recognized as a socially responsible company who placed an importance on testing to provide the best quality pharmaceuticals. The Vioxx recall caused a huge blow for the company resulting in lawsuits and drop in company value.

The principal motivation of corporate executives and decision makers for committing organizationally-based business crimes is pure greed, whether it be for the benefit of the company or individual. Two cases come to mind. The first is the Ford Pinto fiasco of the 1970s and 1980s. Ford has a gas tank design flaw in the pinto that caused many horrific burn deaths and injuries. Instead of fixing the problem, the leaders of Ford decided to take the cheaper way out and pay injury and death claims instead. Greed caused the company to spend $49.5 million instead of ethically spending $137 million to fix the flaw (Afflitto, 2015).

Fraud Risk: These weakness affects all levels of the internal control environment and other areas of the company. It shows that internal controls are not as important as meeting the company’s performance outlooks. If management does not openly display ethical conduct, the expectation of fraud and misappropriation

One of the myths of disaster that was surprising to me is the organizational level myth of role abandonment. The view that organizations suffer personnel shortages is opposite of what you see during a disaster. If we take Hurricane Matthew for example, multiple organizations actually did everything in their power to remain open and be able to aid in any type of response and recovery operations. Lowe’s in Jacksonville was open and running on back-up generators since the storm has passed. The manager, when I ask, told me that it was not mandatory for his workers to come in but had the option of attending work after the storm. Local pizza delivery restaurants were delivering free pizza to emergency workers around the county as well as shelters

After attention was paid to the prescription NSAIDs, such as Merck's Vioxx, and on a recommendation by the FDA, Pfizer withdrew Bextra from the U.S. market, refer to an increased risk of heart attack and stroke and also the risk of a serious, sometimes critical, skin reaction, in 2005.Other reported side-effects were angina and Stevens–Johnson syndrome.

Turnaround Strategy : Merck’s research and development has not always resulted in products that provide value to consumers. Vioxx was taken off the market in 2004 when people became sick and died after taking the drug. The company’s reputation suffered after allegations that Merck asked doctors to sign Merck-written research studies for Vioxx. Merck disputes the allegation, but more than 9,200 lawsuits were filed against the company. Vioxx had generated $2.5 billion in annual sales.

The case study I chose to analyze was the Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion by Ronald C. Kramer. Kramer discussed four main components that led to the catastrophic explosion. These components include the societal context, the final flaw, the persons behind the final decision to launch, and lastly the failure of social control mechanisms. There was not just one factor that led to the failure of the launch. As Kramer discusses the different concepts that led to the failure point to state-corporate crime as a private business and government agency interacted.

The aim of this essay is to determine the inevitability of organisational accidents. An organisational accident is defined as an undesired or potentially disastrous event that is caused by the decisions and actions of the company. This essay will argue that organisational accidents cannot be avoided. As a first step, this essay will detail Perrow’s Normal Accident Theory in which he asserts that the implementation of complex systems by organisations / companies has resulted in unpreventable organisational accidents. The 2011 Fukasmi nuclear accident will be explained to support this assertion. As a second step, human error by those in the organisation as a factor which causes accidents will be analysed through Reason’s