The Craven Book Case

In this case, there are few symptoms clearly stated that something has gone wrong for this company. These symptoms can be classified into two main areas; one is the negative feedback from the customers and another one if from its own employee’s job dissatisfaction.

1.  Identify areas that were not addressed by the IT staff’s response to the incident.

• In this case Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group was tasked to come in and consult with SKS Manufacturing, an auto supplier, in order to fix their inventory problems along with other issues the company was facing. Maria Chen would lead part of the team for her first time on this 12-week engagement, but would in occur some difficulties throughout the first 6 weeks of the project. The Deloitte team has a lot of work to do before the end of the engagement in order stabilize the company and prepare them for a more radical long term project that plans to “reengineer” their business process. Most of the responsibility for the slow start on the project is resting on Chen’s shoulders due to the choices she has made during the first half

Since the goals were not specific, employees in Datasil, lacked the determination to achieve the goals set by U.S top management. The main thing employees of the Canadian branch needed was top management’s support. Ms. Wood complained that "all decisions concerning critical situations had to be made by top management and that was often frustrating. Now, we are supposed to resolve our problems by collaboration”. Top management has the freedom to either provide or withhold support. U.S top management failed to realize that successful implementation consists of mutually reinforcing communication and collaboration between employees of different departments. According to Ms. Wood’s statement “we are going to lose the account, so do whatever it takes”. It clearly stateshighlights the fact that top management lacked credibility and their main interest lay in customer accounts rather than employee satisfaction. Top management should be capable of gathering requirements of their

Stephen King said, “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They’re inside us, and sometimes, they win.” This quote sums up the arguments made in the article “Why We Crave Horror” and what King believes. Stephen King makes three correct claims saying that humans crave horror to have a peculiar sort of fun, face our fears, and reestablish our feelings of normalcy.

In this company, the CEO, Harold Redd, was driven to implement some change because the organization consisted of workers who only had basic skills in computer assembling and troubleshooting. Given that the company had very few

Humans crave horror as a way to get out of facing our fears. There is a man in the story “Strawberry Spring” that is walking around killing college girls like it is a normal thing that people do. Did you know that people have been burying their dead for at least 200,000 years. Stephen King says in his article “Why We Crave Horror”, that we have certain feelings due to the “human condition”. Stephen King is correct because he states that we as humans crave horror; we watch and read horror to show that we can, to re-establish our feelings of normality, and for us to experience a peculiar sort of fun and experience and adrenaline rush.

When it comes to the failure of managers, chad believes that manager’s inability to listen, being self-centered, not a team player, and failing to take responsibility most often contributes to their failure. “I remember a time when a colleague of mine was leading a project on the development of a new customer interaction system. His biggest downfall was he did not listen to his frontline employees, when it came to some of the inadequacies of the new system. This ultimately led to him being removed from the project and he never really came back form that.” (C. D. Cerkoney, Personal Communication, February 27, 2012).

The old crew began to hate the new supervisors. The supervisor’s attitude towards the employees were close monitoring, giving orders, and yelling. This caused stress and frustrations among employees, reducing their job performance. The supervisors made changes from the previous year that resulted in job satisfaction. The supervisors decided when to eat, how they wanted to do the job, and always drove the truck. They didn’t allow employees to talk to each other or to the customers on the job. This negatively affected customer service and customer relations.

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.

Stephen King (alias, John Swithen alias Richard Bachman) is an American author with the title 'The King of Horror'. King's career has been, from the beginning, centered around the genre horror. He has published more than 65 books, not including stories that were published in magazines, some of which received movie adaptations.

Read the following case description of an IT crisis and answer the questions posed at the end of the description.

The role played by the IT in the company to the rest of the organization is reactive to business conditions rather than a proactive approach. IT has been busy establishing several IT processes, policies, and projects in order to catch up with current demand from customers, and has been relying on the “diving catch” approach of finishing things at the very last minute.

After reading the case, one continues to come up with new problems and issues along the way that are related to information technologies. The three main problems we encountered in this case are lack of IT knowledge, inappropriate planning, and ineffective and inefficient Resource Management. Each of these issues requires specific attention to fix the next problem and so forth. The solution to attack each individual problem or issue will be explained as follows.

Then, we cannot say that Philip Anderson is a bad manager. Indeed, by reading the text, despite the new failure of his team which has not reach the targets fixed for them, this man seems to have a strong character, he used to manage a team. In my opinion, his is just not to the right place. The description of this manager suggests that the man could have built and managed his own enterprise. Indeed, we can read that Philip is “individual”, “enjoys being a manager” and he has a lot of experience in the professional word. Moreover, the man thinks of himself that he is “hard-working and loyal employee”...