Question Paper
Organizational Behavior 20 marks for each Question:
Case: 1
Stress Takes Its Toll
Larry Field had a lot of fun in high school. He was a fairly good student, especially in math, he worked harder than most of his friends, and somehow he ended up going steady with Alice Shiflette, class valedictorian. He worked summers for a local surveyor, William Loude, and when he graduated Mr. Loude offered him a job as number-three man on one of his survey crews. The pay wasn’t very high, but Larry already was good at the work, and he believed all he needed was a steady job to boost his confidence to ask
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Helen Bowers was stumped. Sitting in her office at the plant, she pondered the same questions she had been facing for months: how to get her company’s employees to work harder and produce more. No matter what she did, it didn’t seem to help much.
Helen had inherited the business three years ago when her father, Jake Bowers, passed away unexpectedly. Bowers Machine Parts was founded four decades ago by Jake and had grown into a moderate-size corporation. Bowers makes replacement parts for large-scale manufacturing machines such as lathes and mills. The firm is headquartered in Kansas City and has three plants scattered throughout Missouri.
Although Helen grew up in the family business, she never understood her father’s approach. Jake had treated his employees like part of his family. In Helen’s view, however, he paid them more than he had to, asked their advice far more often than he should have, and spent too much time listening to their ideas and complaints. When Helen took over, she vowed to change how things were done. In particular, she resolved to stop handling employees with kid gloves and to treat them like what they were: the hired help.
In addition to changing the way employees were treated, Helen had another goal for Bowers. She wanted to meet the challenge of international competition. Japanese firms had moved aggressively into the market for heavy industrial equipment. She saw this as both a threat and an opportunity. On the one hand, if
Harvard Business Review case, The Nuclear Tube Assembly Room, is an excellent example of how managing and leading a team effectively can make a substantial difference in terms of results and goals achieved, all the while creating new ambitious expectations for workers. This particular case revolves around Ralph Langley, general foreman of the process department at American Radiotronics Corporation. Within the first 24 months of being promoted to general foreman, Langley has swiftly changed the mentality and efficiency of the workers in the nuclear tube assembly room. He has changed their terrible reputation into one of the most
She does not ask what the employees think before she implements anything. The employees therefore perceive Sally to be a poor manager who does not care about employees’ work condition and who buries herself ‘behind a high desk with her back to the door in an office two levels above’.
Rose begins his essay recounting his experiences as a child watching his mother work as a waitress in restaurants. He portrays his mother as a hard worker who possesses a great amount of physical and mental ability so as to satisfy customers. Whether it was memorizing orders, balancing plates along her arms, or arguing with the kitchen staff, her job required her to be dynamic in every aspect of the business. Similarly, Rose details one of his uncle’s jobs on the assembly line of General Motors where he too had to become a consummate multi-tasker who not only resolved issues, but identified issues to solve. After working on the line for an extended period, his uncle received numerous promotions. With every promotion came the need for more creative thinking, problem solving, and machinery and production processes. Furthermore, the necessity of knowing how to work budgets and the ability of managing groups of people became an increasingly crucial aspect of his job.
Developing work attitudes is by reducing imprudence that was between the hourly workers and their mangers and increasing job satisfaction and organizational commitment. It is clear that workers at this motor company have the lowest job satisfaction in order of various negative influences that impact their life. First, mangers at this company did not treat their employees as a human, they treat them as machines, that should rich the demand by the end of the day, and called them by numbers not their name. Second, workers have intrinsic value, extrinsic value, and ethical values that ford would not respect. Third, Stressful work without any reward and the work environment that was not save, clean, or regulated at the plant. Finally, week bonds between mangers and workers that create week work energy and losing trust between employees as results the work has turned down frequently. In addition, at Ford Motor Company the physical and psychological
Hinrichs’s active management of change within the factory and focus on worker satisfaction and buy-in resulted in a lot of small victories that he used to win over the workforce’s trust and respect. In the process, Hinrichs transformed the plant from one that was resistant to change to one that embraced and was excited for change.
Additionally, the OD was assigned both professional and unionized to assist in transformational strategies the OD established. Even though the OD and the HRD failed to see equal results of the plans in place, the OD continued with positive steps and the HRD began a subversive revolt against the OD. While the OD established agreeable mission, vision, strategies, tactics, and result measurement goals with the Texas Plant employees, the RHD believed this effort was out position scope for the OD. The HRD allied with the Plant Manager (PM) to derail the OD for their cause to reinstall previous behavior of the Texas Plant prior to the arrival of the OD (Pryor, Humphreys, & Taneja, 2011). Although the HRD and the PM attempted to ruin productivity, the OD established industrious teams.
The Vigo County Tax & Municipal Services Office has been suffering from a decrease in workplace coherence, because job descriptions have not changed with advances in technology and added responsibilities. Janie, the receptionist feels overworked because she feels like she is doing most of the clerk’s job, while the clerk’s have free time. The clerks, Myra and Johnny, acknowledge they have free time. However, they feel they take care of database admin duties without being compensated for the extra responsibility. Alistair, the database admin, is content with his position, and sees nothing wrong with his present situation.
Just as a tractor is composed of thousands of iron parts, working smoothly and without knowledge or passion about the results of their labor, the company is made of men who work rigidly and disinterestedly at the tasks assigned to them. The machines sever the people from the
Throughout this case study, Gary, an employee at Brewster-Seaview Landscaping, goes into depth in explaining this business’ work dynamic. In the process of analyzing Gary’s description, we are able to extract various leadership styles which are exhibited by management. As we will see, Joe and the new supervisors’ leadership styles differ and definitely impact work outcomes.
One of the valued but demanding customer, who had considered Engstrom as a certified supplier, was requesting a large order but Engstrom was unable to deliver on time due to the low productivity problem. The plant manager along with his assistant were already dealing with the troubling numbers when this happened. While the task was a tough bone and not easy to tackle, and there were a lot of factors needed to be taken in to consideration. The leadership started to analyze and break down the main causations other than the overall economic trend that dragged the company into the turmoil, as it turned out, it was the low, frustrated employee morale and diminished work satisfaction.
Ellen Zane had her work cut out for her at Tufts-NEMC. The Tufts University affiliated teaching and research hospital had long been on the decline. It was mired in financial difficulty, was falling behind other teaching and research AMCs, and was not effectively serving its local community. Beginning on the day she accepted her position as CEO, Ellen Zane started on a path of reform. Upon learning that the hospital only had 10 months of cash on hand, she began brainstorming on how to make the hospital financially viable, starting by meeting payroll needs first. She discovered that Tufts-NEMC was being drastically underpaid and began looking for solutions to the problem of reimbursements. One of the more
Vicky must also take into account the duty to her boss, Wendy. First, Vicky must suggest that quick temper of Wendy’s be abolished because animosity between Wendy and her staff members may lead to a broader conflict. Also such behavior could lead the company as a whole to be less productive, because with Wendy’s quick temper it will be hard for staff members to share ideas. Sharing ideas between members of staff makes a company more successful.
Spokane Industries has contracted Franklin Electronics for an 18 month product development contract. Franklin Electronics is new to using project management methodologies and have not been exposed to earned value management methodologies. Even though Franklin and Spokane have worked together in the past, they have mainly used fixed price contracts with little to no stipulations. For this project Spokane Industries is requiring Franklin Electronics to use formalized project management methodologies, earned value cost schedules, and schedules for reports and meetings. Since Franklin Electronics had had no experience with earned value management, the cost accounting group was trained in the methodology in order to bid for the
To be an affective sales manager at Phoenix, Mrs. Richardson needed to be able to bring together this group of insubordinate employees who seemingly did not work well as a team. Of these employees, only a few had been meeting or exceeding expectations of the organization. More so the attitudes of the employees were so far from acceptable that there is question as to why they held the positions that they did. Alex Hoffman, top sales representative, showed little respect for Mrs. Richardson, however as he consistently brought in sales he was not a candidate to let go. Although, Mrs. Richardson still should have had a discussion with Mr. Hoffman about his actions and the fact that when other employees perceive his disrespect then they may in turn do the same. On top of that, Sarah Vega continuously showed up for work late and even missed one day per week on average. These actions are unacceptable in the workplace and worthy of termination. A third employee, Chelsea Peterson, showed absolutely no respect for her new sales manager. These sorts of actions do not deserve to go unnoticed or unpunished. Melissa Richardson should have scheduled a mandatory meeting for all employees in order to lay down the law. She needed to tell them all together as a team exactly what her expectations for
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