Solved Case Study: 'That's not my job' - Learning delegation at Cin-made

When Robert Frey purchased Cin – Made in 1984, the company was near ruin.   The Cincinnati, Ohi-based manufacturer of paper packaging had not altered its product line in 20 years.  Labor costs had hit the ceiling, while profits were falling through the floor.   A solid quarter of the company's shipments were late and absenteeism was high.  Management and workers were at each other's throats. 

            Ten years later, Cin – Made is producing a new assortment of highly differentiated composite cans, and pre-tax profits have increased more than five times.   The Cin – Made

Solved Case Study of Disney's Design

The Walt Disney Company is heralded as the world's largest entertainment company.   It has earned this astounding reputation through tight control over the entire operation: control over the open – ended brainstorming that takes place 24 hours a day; control over the engineers who construct the fabulous theme – park rides; control over the animators who create and design beloved characters and adventurous scenarios; and control over the talent that brings the many concepts and characters to life. Although control pervades the company, it is not too strong a grip.   Employees in each department are well aware of their objectives and the parameters established to meet those objectives.  But in conjunction with the pre-determined responsibilities, managers at Disney encourage independent and innovative thinking.

Solved Case Study: Rise and Fall

Jagannath (Jaggu to his friends) is an over ambitious young man.  For him ends justify means.  

With a diploma in engineering. Jaggu joined, in 1977, a Bangalore-based company as a Technical Assistant.  He got himself enrolled as a student in an evening college and obtained his degree in engineering in 1982.  Recognizing as Engineer-Sales in 1984.

Jaggu excelled himself in the new role and became the blue-eyed boy of the management.  Promotions came to him in quick succession.  He was made Manager-Sales in 1986 and Senior Manager-Marketing in 1988.

Solved Case Study: 'Mechanist’s indiscipline behavior'

Dinesh, a machine operator, worked as a mechanist for Ganesh, the supervisor.  Ganesh told Dinesh to pick up some trash that had fallen from Dinesh’s work area, and Dinesh replied, “I won’t do the janitor’s work.”

Ganesh replied, “When you drop it, you pick it up”.  Dinesh became angry and abusive, calling Ganesh a number of names in a loud voice and refusing to pick up the trash.  All employees in the department heard Dinesh’s comments. 

Solved Case Study: Prejudices in workplaces: Real or Perceived?

Manjula Srivastav had been head of marketing for the last four years at Blue Chips, a computer products firm.  The company’s turnover had increased by two – and a half times during the period and its market share in a number of precuts had also moved up marginally.  What was creditable was that all this had happened in an environment in which computer prices had been crashing. 

Although she had a talent for striking an instant report with people – particularly with the company’s dealers – Srivastav often found herself battling against odds, as she perceived it, as far as her relationships with her subordinates and peers  in the company were concerned.  Srivastav had to fight male prejudice all the way.  She found it unfair that she had to prove herself regularly at work and she used to make her displeasure on that score quite obvious to everyone. 

Solved Case Study: Promoting the protege

The die was cast. Prem Nath Divan, executive chairman of Vertigo, the country’s largest engineering project organization, decided to switch tracks for a career in academics.  Divan was still six years short of the company’s retirement age of 65.  His premature exit was bound to create a flutter at the Vertigo board.  Having joined Vertigo as a management trainee soon after college, he had gradually risen through the hierarchy to take a board position as the marketing director of the firm at 32.  He had become the president five years later and the youngest chairman of the company at 45.  But, by the time he was 50, the whizkid had acquired a larger than life image of a role model for younger managers and a statesman who symbolized the best and brightest face of Indian management. 

Transforming Reuters: Question & Answers

Question and Answers for Transforming Reuters:

1. What technological paradigm shift did Reuters face in the 1990s? How did that paradigm shift change the competitive playing field?

2. Why Reuters was slow to adopt internet-based technology?

3. Why do you think Tom Glocer was picked as CEO? What assets did he bring to the leadership job?

4. What do you think of Glocer’s attempts to change the strategy and organizational culture at Reuters? Was he on the right track? Would you do things differently?

Dow Chemical Case Study: Question & Answers

Question and Answers for Dow Chemical case study:

1. Why did Dow Chemical first adopt a matrix structure? What benefits did it hope to derive from his structure?

2. What problems emerged with this structure? How did Dow try to deal with them? In retrospect, do you think those solutions were effective? 

3. Why did Dow change its structure again in the mid 1990s? What was Dow trying to achieve this time? Do you think the current structure makes sense given the industry in which Dow operates and the strategy of the firm? Why?

Boom and Bust in Telecommunications: Solved Answers

Question and Answers:

1. Why did the strategic plans adopted by companies like level 3, Global crossing, and 360 Network fail?

2. The managers who ran these companies were smart, successful individuals, as were many of the investors who put money into their businesses. How could so many smart people have been so wrong?

3. What specific decision-making biases do you think were at work in this industry during the late 1990s and early 2000s?

4. What could the managers running these companies done differently that might have led to a different outcome?

Solved Case Study of George David

Questions & Answers:

1. What makes George David such a highly regarded manager?

2. How does David get things done through people?

3. What evidence can you see of David’s planning and strategizing, organizing, controlling, leading and developing?

4. Which managerial competencies does David seem to posses? Does he seem to lack any?

Case Study: Transforming Reuters

London-based Reuters is a venerable company. Established in 1850 and devoted to delivering information around the world by the fastest means available—which in 1850 meant a fleet of 45 carrier pigeons—by the late 1990s the company had developed into one of the largest providers of information in the world. 

Although Reuters is known best to the public for its independent, unbiased news reporting, 90 percent of Reuters’ revenues are generated by providing information to traders in financial markets. In the 1990s the company used a proprietary computer system and a dedicated telecommunications network to deliver real-time quotes and financial information to Reuters terminals—devices that any self-respecting financial trader could not function without.

Case Study: Dow Chemical

A handful of major players, compete head-to-head around the world in the chemical industry. These companies are Dow Chemical and Du Pont of the United States, Great Britain’s ICI, and the German trio of BASF, Hoechst AG, and Bayer. The barriers to the free flow of chemical products between nations largely disappeared in the 1970s. This, along with the commodity nature of bulk chemicals and a severe recession in the early 1980s, ushered in a prolonged period of intense price competition. In such an environment, the company that wins the competitive race is the one with the lowest costs. Dow Chemical was long among the cost leaders.

Case Study: Boom and Bust in Telecommunications

In 1997 Michael O'Dell, the chief scientist at World-Com, which owned the largest network of “Internet backbone” fiber optic cable in the world, stated that data traffic over the Internet was doubling every hundred days. This implied a growth rate of over 1,000 percent a year. O'Dell went on to day that there was not enough fiber optic capacity to go around, and that “demand will far outstrip supply for the foreseeable future.”

Electrified by this potential opportunity, a number of companies rushed into the business. These firms included Level 3 Communications, 360 Networks, Global Crossing, Qwest Communications, World-Com, Williams Communications Group, Genuity Inc., and XO Communications. In all cases the strategic plans were remarkably similar: Raise lots of capital, build massive fiber optic networks that straddled the nation (or even the globe), cut prices, and get ready for the rush of business. Managers at these companies believed that surging demand would soon catch up with capacity, resulting in a profit bonanza for those that had the foresight to build out their networks. It was a gold rush, and the first into the field would stake the best claims.

However, there were dissenting voices. As early as October 1998 an Internet researcher at AT&T Labs named Andrew Odlyzko published a paper that de-bunked the assumption that demand for Internet traffic was growing at 1,000 percent a year. Odlyzko’s careful analysis concluded that growth was much slower—only 100 percent a year! Although still large, that growth rate was not nearly large enough to fill the massive flood of fiber optic capacity that was entering the market. Moreover, Odlyzko noted that new technologies were increasing the amount of data that could be sent down existing fibers, reducing the need for new fiber. But with investment money flooding into the market, few paid any attention to him. WorldCom was still using the 1,000 percent figure as late as September 2000.

As it turned out, Odlyzko was right. Capacity rapidly outstripped demand, and by late 2002 less than 3 percent of the fiber that had been laid in the ground was actually being used! While prices slumped, the surge in volume that managers had bet on did not materialize. Unable to service the debt they had taken on to build out their networks, company after company tumbled into bankruptcy—including WorldCom, 360 Networks, XO Communications, Global Crossing. Level 3 and Qwest survived, but their stock price had fallen by 90 percent, and both companies were saddled with massive debts.

Questions

1. Why did the strategic plans adopted by companies like Level 3, Global Crossing, and 360 Networks fail?

2. The managers who ran these companies were smart, successful individuals, as were many of the investors who put money into these businesses. How could so many smart people have been so wrong?

3. What specific decision-making biases do you think were at work in this industry during the late 1990s and early 2000s?

4. What could the managers running these companies done differently that might have led to a different outcome?

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Case Study of George David

George David has been CEO of United Technologies Corporation (UTC) for more than a decade. During that time he has received numerous accolades and awards for his performance as a CEO. Under his leadership UTC, a $343 billion conglomerate whose operating units include manufacturers of elevators (Otis Elevator), aerospace products (including Pratt & Whitney jet engines and Sikorsky helicopters), air conditioning systems, and fire and security systems, has seen earnings grow at 10–14 percent annually—impressive numbers for any company but particularly for a manufacturing enterprise.

According to David, a key to United Technologies’ success has been sustained improvements in productivity and product quality. The story goes back to the 1980s when David was running the international operations of Otis Elevator. There he encountered a Japanese engineer, Yuzuru Ito, who had been brought in to determine why a new elevator product was performing poorly. David was impressed with Ito’s methods for identifying quality problems and improving performance. When he was promoted to CEO, David realized that he had to lower the costs and improve the quality of UTC’s products. One of the first things he did was persuade Ito to work for him at UTC. Under David, Ito developed a program for improving product quality and productivity, known as Achieving Competitive Excellence (ACE), which was subsequently rolled out across UTC. The ACE program has been one of drivers of productivity improvements at UTC ever since.

Early in his tenure as CEO, David also radically reorganized UTC. He dramatically cut the size of the head office and decentralized decision making to business divisions. He also directed his accounting staff to develop a new financial reporting system that would give him good information about how well each division was doing and make it easier to hold divisional general managers accountable for the performance of the units under them. He then gave them demanding goals for earnings and sales growth and pushed them to improve processes within their units by implementing the ACE program.

At the same time David has always stressed that management is about more than goal setting and holding people accountable. Values are also important. David has insisted that UTC employees adhere to the highest ethical standards, that the company produce that have minimal environmental impact, and that employee safety remain the top consideration in the work-place.

When asked what his greatest achievement as a manager has been, David refers to UTC’s worldwide employee scholarship program. Implemented in 1996 and considered the hall-mark of UTC’s commitment to employee development, the program pays the entire cost of an employee’s college or graduate school education, allows employees to pursue any subject at an accredited school, provides paid study time, and awards UTC stock (up to $10,000 worth in the United States) for completing degrees. Explaining the program, David states, “One of the obligations that an employer has is to give employees opportunities to better themselves. And we feel it’s also very good business for us because it generates a better workforce that stays longer.”

David states that one of his central tasks has been to build a management team that functions smoothly over the long term. “People come to rely upon each other,” he says. “You have the same trusting relationships. You know people; they know you. You can predict them; they can predict you. All of that kind of begins to work, and it accelerates over the tenure of a CEO. If you have people bouncing in and out every two to three years, that’s not good.”

According to Sandy Weill, former chairman of Citicorp and a UTC board member, David has the right mix of toughness and sensitivity. “When somebody can't do the job he’ll try to help; but if that person is not going to make it work, that person won't be on the job forever.” At the same time Weill says, “He does a lot of things that employees respect him for, I think he is a very good manager. Even though David is demanding, he can also listen—he has a receive mode as well as a send mode.”

Questions of George David Case Studies:

1. What makes George David such a highly regarded manager?

2. How does David get things done through people?

3. What evidence can you see of David’s planning and strategizing, organizing, controlling, leading, and developing?

4. Which managerial competencies does David seem to posses? Does he seem to lack any?

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