Introduction
Top-down and Bottom-up are two primary approaches in dealing with management issues. Each of them has strengths and weaknesses. The top-down approach does not involve the bottom employees in making decision while the bottom-up approach involves such people in this process. Generally, the top-down approach often causes confusion of bottom-line people if they do not understand clearly the aims and objectives of the top managers. Therefore, in the case of important issues, it is critical for the managers to communicate well with their employees in order to make agreement within the organization. The case of Centurion Media is an example of the implementation of the top-down approach causing confusion of bottom-line people. Importantly, it is also a good example of business ethics that company should consider during their performances.
Problem identification
The broad landscape of this case is Centurion Media, a public company with operating divisions in several major media segments. This company owns 25% of common stocks of North Park Media, an immediate-company between the small and medium companies and advertising operators. North Park is examined as the new wage of the future with significant growth recently.
Within Centurion Media operation, Centurion Cable TV division, which brings significant revenues to this company, consists of six regions managed by six vice presidents, including Richard Bennett, vice president of the South East region. Since his
Dhruv Dar, Sanjay Kumar and Vijay Aggarwal wrote this case solely to provide material for class discussion. The authors do not intend to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. The authors may have disguised certain names and other identifying information to protect confidentiality. Richard Ivey School of Business Foundation prohibits any form of reproduction, storage or transmission without its written permission. Reproduction of this material is not covered under authorization by any reproduction rights organization. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, contact Ivey Publishing, Richard Ivey School of
The company has mission, vision as well as core values. Its mission focuses on creating a conducive environment where guest satisfaction is its highest priority. Its vision focuses striving hard in order to surpass its own accomplishment for the purpose of recognition in the industry as the leader. Lastly, its values are passion of excellence, integrity, respect and responsibility, people, service-Mindedness, Dynamic leadership and high performance (Kliman, 2006). The company's mission, vision and core values help in bringing together all the employees towards achieving a common goal. In addition, they help them to remain focus to certain objective (Gabriel, 2008). This has
This issue reflects a problem with Assignment of Authority and Responsibility factor of the internal environment. COSO suggest faster response times can enhance competitiveness and customer satisfaction. This upper management did not take any action means he did not comply with his duty.
As the structure of the media network division is not traditional in terms of applying the value chain to an organization’s functions, some of the most important components are intangible. When looking at the breakdown of industry costs found in Appendix E, one can see that procurement (33% of revenue), wages (7%), and marketing (4.1%) are key in understanding the industry’s profit structure (IBISWorld).
Management structure should be relooked and possibly restructured. The management structure that is currently in place is not conducive to the work function that it oversees. Before the problem can be fully understood it is important that the players and their positions be clarified.
Clear Directions – It’s evident, and mentioned multiple times in the videos, the company lacks clear vison and directions. The management may be aware of the directions they would like to take the company is (although it’s doubtful) however, it’s not clearly communicated to the employees. As it was mentioned in the videos, employees didn’t feel involved or having ownership.
“In order to be successful in that case Mr.Dees manages the conflict constructively. He generated the current solutions and searched fort he common acceptable solution. Also asking to the team members shows that he triedto figure out what they have learned. In addition to this, he gave importance on Rational Goal Model and to its analysis. He focused on providing a vision that inspires followers and justifies the organization. To achieve this vision, the steps needed to be taken were clarified fort he optimum effectiveness.”
Although what Ashley Hovey spoke about, the industry of technology and media, is not necessarily in line with my professional interests, it is definitely aligned with my recreational interests. Like many millennials, I am an avid watcher of on-demand streaming services like Netflix/Hulu, and an abandon-er of television. With the growing popularity of non-traditional media sources, there has been a mantra amongst millennial news sources that the medium of TV is dying Thus, it was incredibly interesting to hear Ashley’s perspective, as a person who works in TV, on the state of the industry. For one, it was surprising to hear how important advertising revenues are to big companies like Comcast. Although I knew that advertising revenues are high, I did not know that they are Comcast’s #2 source of revenue and in turn, a lot of its initiatives are aimed towards optimizing ad gains.
Communication strategy is a strategy that is mention more offend than any other one. This strategy support in putting together a sustainable ethical culture, which implicate communicating behavior expectations, training in compliance issues, and training expectations. Resulting in matters that have been reported already. When communication strategy is implemented, it ensures compliance which deters fraud and abuse, therefore increase the establishment value and effectiveness. Individuals within the organizations use this statement of values strategy you help in communication of the organization. The code of conduct, also ties into the ethical policy of communications strategy, commitment of the ethical behavior apply ways to defer the avaible values in a representative situation. Leadership strategies are really just monitoring and code enforcement strategies that are consider important, because they locate the responsibly for ethic programs and organizations to make sure the organization is serious and oversight is received (Leffler) .
Each division is operating independently with its own division manager. Also, each division’s performance had been judged on its profit and return on investment (ROI). The company policy of decentralizing responsibility and authority for all
According to Stafford and Heilprin, “American Cable Communications (ACC) was one of the largest cable operators in the United States (AirThread Case).” ACC serviced roughly 24.1 million video subscribers, 13.2 million high-speed internet subscribers, and 4.6 million landline telephony subscribers. In 2007, ACC saw revenues of $30.9 billion and had net income equaling $2.6 billion. In order to adapt to the changes in the industry, ACC started aggressively acquiring smaller companies, which resulted in huge customer growth and the development of, “a strong corporate finance team with significant acumen in identifying, valuing, structuring, and executing corporate control transaction (AirThread Case).” That being said, ACC has set its sights on yet another company--AirThread Connections--with the expectation of further revenue growth and customer acquisition and retention.
As already observed above, the leaders have the responsibility of making the decisions in the firm. They should consider the ethical as well as moral aspects as they make the decisions, and should be sure to make decisions that lead to the benefit of the parties involved. In order to make such decisions, there is need to observe some procedures as indicated in the essay below.
Management has experienced remarkable shifts in the way that organizations conduct business particularly in the last century, due to the evolving workplace as well as tremendous changes in the roles of leaders in organizations. Early managers often relied on authoritative tactics to get the job done, which we have learned from history does not work very well for many modern organizations. In this paper, I will be analyzing the management approach my organization takes and whether this is the best approach to meet organizational goals and whether or not my organization may benefit from adopting a different approach or combining multiple approaches.
This case was written by P. Indu, under the direction of Vivek Gupta, IBS Center for Management Research. It was compiled
When one asks himself/herself these questions, one’s inner conscience becomes active and then end up asking oneself the ultimate question: “Is it right or wrong”? If only management made all their business decisions by firstly considering other factors that would be affected by the decision issues such as bribery and fraud.