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Essay on Littleton Manufacturing

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Littleton Manufacturing facilitates poor upward and downward communication throughout all levels of the organization. As a result of the ineffective communication system, Littleton faces a number of issues which ultimately has affected the bottom line of the company. Key challenges to note are low employee morale, low level of unity within the organization, poorly designed organizational structure and confusion in interpreting procedures and rules. Improving the accuracy and speed of the flow of communication should be an important first step in the resolution of the presented issues, thus allowing the organization to function more effectively and efficiently. The importance of organizations and their reasons for existence are …show more content…

Also, too much conflict is evident. Organization structure has to specify a single set of goals for the entire organization (Daft, 120).
Littleton seems to have a lack of strategic direction. ¡°One of the primary purposes of a mission statement is to serve as a communication tool¡± (Daft, 55). A mission statement can clearly communicate what the goals of Littleton are and what it hopes to achieve in the long run. All employees should have a clear idea of Littleton¡¯s operative goals. All levels can benefit from both a mission statement and goals, as they will provide direction and motivation and give everyone a standard of performance to try to achieve. An organization should be designed to provide both vertical and horizontal information flow as necessary to accomplish the organization¡¯s overall goals (Daft, 88). A balance needs to be achieved. Littleton should focus more on vertical linkages because of the emphasis on efficiency in manufacturing firms, however horizontal linkages are also needed to communicate and coordinate across departments. Through these linkages, the lack of unity will be alleviated to a degree within Littleton. The lack of unity can also be attributed to organization differentiation. Differentiation is the differences in cognitive and emotional orientations among managers in different functional departments, and the difference in formal structure among these departments (Daft,

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