Case For analysis: The Dilemma of Aliesha Aliesha State College 1.
Based on the alternatives being considered, how would you predict that decision
problem has been identified? Is that the best way to define the decision problem in this case? This case is concerns the of a harsh budget budget constraint by the state legislature. The President of the college must reach a decision on which one of two programs, to maintain and which one to cut. If they want to maintaining both both of the programs programs a speech therapy clinic and demonstration high school (teacher college-say), is only by cutting back on employee wage expenditure but it might amount to accepting widespread dissatisfaction and mediocrity throughout the college and community, a very undesirable outcome. In this case they should apply combination the incremental and Carnegie Model decision to their uncertainty uncertainty cases.
Incremental Decision Model Model is decision decision making that
describes the structures sequence of activities under taken from discovery of a problem to its solution meanwhile Carnegie Decision Model is organization decision making that involves many manager making a final choice based based on a coalition among those managers. From the case there are two options which is need to make decision by the college and this is uncertain options to them to make decision and there is involved various people intervention such as government, society, professional people and college staff. So in order to identify the decision problem, it might be to use combination of two model as of below exhibit. Problem Identification 1- When problem identification is uncertain, Carnegie model will be applies
Problem Solution 1- When problem solution is uncertain, incremental model will applies 2- Trial and error process id needed
2- Political and social process is needed
3- Solve big problems in little steps
3- Build coalition, seek agreement,
4- Recycle and try again when blocked
resolve conflict
In this case, the president should identify the decision problem to each alternative given. To identify the decision problem, the president need to identify essential details of the problem such as where, when, who was involved, who was affected and how current activities in state college are influenced. In identification stage there is steps involved such as to define and clarify the issue, does it warrant action? If so, now? Is the matter urgent, important or both. Second is to gather all the facts and understand their causes. Third is to think about or brainstorm possible options and solutions. Fourth is to consider and compare the pros and cons of each option. Fifth is to select the best option and lastly explain your decision to those involved and affected, and follow up to ensure proper and effective implementation.
2.
How could the decision problem be identified differently so that it would lead to
alternatives more broad than trying to decide which progra m to cut? Decision making is the process of selecting a logical choice from among the available options. When trying to make a good decision, a person must weight the positives and negatives of each option, and consider all the alternatives. For effective decision making, a person must be able to forecast the outcome of each option as well, and based on all these items, determine which option is the best for that particular situation. [James Reason 1990]. Human performance in decision making terms has been the subject of active research from several perspectives.
The essence of management is making decisions. Managers are required to evaluate alternatives and make decisions regarding a wide range of matters. Just as there are different managerial styles, there are different decision-making styles. Decision making involves uncertainty and risk, and decision makers have varying degrees of risk aversion. According to Ralph L. Keeney, professor at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business and co-author of Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions, managers commonly consider too few alternatives when making difficult decisions. They can devise new alternatives through brainstorming and imagining as many options as possible, keeping in mind objectives, but not necessarily being entirely practical at first. In practice, action-oriented decision makers tend to focus on solutions without considering whether they are working on the right problem. Instead of choosing from decisions selected by others, decision makers need to review what decisions they should be addressing.
Managers in a corporate setting tend to view decision making differently. To develop more alternatives, decision makers should release themselves from existing constraints, think
imaginatively, and brainstorm with others, all the while keeping objectives clearly in mind and being honest about what they really need or desire.
In this case there are two alternative different programs need to be analyse and choose the best one in one of activities programme implement by Aliesha State College. There are Speech-therapy programs and demonstration high school.
From the both alternative,
definitely the decision problem should be identify differently in order lead to more broad decision making. They should consider from various approach such as identify uncertainty and risk of the programs, principle and information system differently.
Many decisions must be made with complete information. Decision makers often to be act without knowing for certain all of the consequences of their decisions. Uncertainty simply increases the number of possible outcomes, and the consequences of these outcomes should be considered. That is, it is important for the decision maker to identify what the uncertainties are, what the possible outcomes are, and what the consequences would be. Decision makers can sometimes clarify the problem they are working on by listing what could happen and assigning probabilities to each possible outcome.
Principled decision making can be a useful complement or alternative to analytical decision making. Principled decision making may or may not involve ethics. Ethical decision making uses ethical principles to make decisions. Principled decision making can be applied as an alternative to analytical decision making in such areas as organizational missions, goals and strategies. With more information, managers can make better decisions. Organizations can achieve more consistency between upper management and lower-level managers by providing more information throughout the organization.
So by determine the various alternatives differently, this State College can evaluate the alternative given broadly with good point of view. Making decision can be made easily with enough information and contradiction between two alternatives.
3.
If you were on t e Board of Trustees, in what quadrant of the contingency framework
would you place this decision? How would you suggest that this decision be approached? Under the Contingency framework decision model, there are two character istic of organi ations that determine the use of decision approaches which are problem consensus and technical knowledge about the means to sol e the problems. Problem consensus is the level of agreement among managers abou t the nature of the problem or oppor tunities and about which goals and outcomes to pursue.
Meanwhile technical knowledge is the degree of
understanding and agreement about how to solve problem and reach organi ational goals. Contigency Framework for using Decision Models
Certain
Certain
Problem Consensus
1
Uncertain
2
Solution Knowledge
Uncertain
3
4
From the case there is uncer tainty agreement between to select Speech- therapy program or demonstration high school because both of alternatives are costly and different impact
depending on its goals. These two alternatives have their strength and weaknesses. They also face with uncertain decision to solve the problem. So under Contingency Framework Decision Models, I believe that with choosing cell 4 giving me clear clarification in decision problems. This cell 4 approaches press on individual and learning organization. Characterized by high uncertainty about both problems and solutions is difficult for decision making. By using individual approaches, it can to build a coalition with all members in Aliesha State college to establish goals and priorities and use judgement, intuition or trial and error to solve the problems. Additional techniques such as inspiration and imitation also may be required. When an entire organization is characterized by high uncertainty regarding both problem and solutions, elements of the garbage can model will appear. Potential solutions will precede problems as often as problems precede solutions. In this situation as board of trustee I should encourage widespread discussion of problem and idea proposals to facilitate the opportunity to make choice. Eventually via trial and error the organization will solve some problem.
4-If only one programs needed to be cut in order to erase the budget deficit, which programs would you cut, and why? Are there other factors not given in the case which should be considered in making this decision-such as the college mission or the potential for additional fundraising? In this case, Aliesha State College should be deciding between two alternative program given in order them to implement the program. One major problem if they choose both alternatives is budget deficit suddenly cut by the state legislation. If they choose to select speech-therapy program, it is the great alternative because everyone agreed on that. It is also need or desired by the people and given high priority to the people but the weaknesses of the program is poor, sloppy, disorganized job that paediatricians, psychiatrists and psychologist hesitated to refer their patients to the clinic. If they choose demonstration high school, it is very excellence and the impact it made on the education students who listened in on its classes and on many young teachers in the area who came in as auditors. But it is plenty of perfectly adequate high schools in the area.
If only one program need to be choosing, it should be goes to demonstration high school program because of both teacher and students involve in the programmes. Beside that its teachers were the leading experts in teacher education. Goals of the Aliesha State college maybe related to the programs selected. This program can increase knowledge and expertise in education field in order to develop student¶s knowledge and skill and also to give a chance to teachers to show their capability.
Case for Analysis: Implementing Change at National Industrial Products 1. Describe the culture set by the former CEO Jim Carpenter. Would you describe it as an adaptive corporate culture or unadaptive?why? Adaptive corporate culture can be define as strategic focus on the external environment through flexibility and change to meet customer needs. This culture encourages value, norms and beliefs that support the capacity of the organization to detect, interpret and translate signals from environment into new behaviour responses. It also actively creates change such as innovation and creativity. Kotter and Heskett¶s (1992) seminal study of corporate culture and performance, adaptive cultures are more appropriate not only for dealing with uncertain environments but, by extension, also for implementing the prospector or differentiation strategies that tend to be adopted in uncertain environments. Unadaptive cultures with behavioural norms supporting control and consistency, are more likely to be accepted in organizations facing relatively simple and stable environments and adopting low-cost or defender strategies.
Differences between Adaptive Corporate Cultures an Unadaptive Corporate Cultures Adaptive Corporate Culture
Visible Behavior
Unadaptive Corporate Culture
Managers pay close attention Managers to
all
their
especially
constituencies,
customers,
and
tend
to
behave
somewhat insularly, politically and bureaucratically. As a result they
initiative change when needed do not change their strategies to
serve
their
legitimate quickly
interests, even if it entails
to
adjust
to
or
take
advantage of changes in their
Expressed Values
taking some risks.
business environment
Managers care deeply about
Managers
customers,
themselves, their immediate work
stockholder
employees.
and
care
mainly
about
group. They value the orderly and risk-reducing
(Source:John P.Kotter and James L.Hesket Jim Carpenter who had been CEO for almost three decades was very well liked by employees. He always treated his employee like family. For example recognized them by name, family day, social events and so on. He believe that if you treat your employees well, they will loyal to you an in your organization. When his organization¶s business seem slow he never lay off his employees but he will transfer his employee to other job even the task of the job is not related to the employees skills. This is show that Jim Carpenter has been using unadaptive corporate culture.
Jim Carpenter is ever set performance objectives and standards for the all department but he believes that manager of each department have full authorize to set her or his employees fit with the task.
Jim Carpenter provide training programs in communications and Human
Resource(HR) for manager for every year and this approached quite advantages to the managers.
Under Jim Carpenter leadership, there is lack of turnover, higher profit,
employees¶ productivity and friendly atmosphere until merging of large competitors in the National Industrial Products which is changed the era of Jim Carpenter.
2. Why did new management see the need to bring change to the organization?
Was it
necessary to change the culture in order to bring the desired change? Organizational culture is an idea in the field of organizational studies and management which describes the psychology, attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values (personal and cultural values) of an organization. It has been defined as "the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization. Ravisi and Schultz (2006) state that organizational culture is a set of shared mental assumptions that guide interpretation and action in organizations by defining appropriate behavior for various situations. Although it¶s difficult to get consensus about the definition of organizational culture, several constructs are commonly agreed upon ± that organizational culture is holistic, historically determined, related to anthropological concepts, socially constructed, soft, and difficult to change
Because of National¶s major rivals had merged into two large companies and better able to meet customer needs which one of the factor why new management see it needed to bring change to the organization. The impact from merging of competitor, Simpson Industries going down. Their sales and profit had continued declined and the cost still keeps going up. Beside that there is low in productivity and production output.
When an organization requires some kind of organizational culture change, the change process can be daunting. Culture change may be necessary to reduce employee turnover, influence employee behavior, make improvements to the company, refocus the company objectives and rescale the organization, provide better customer service, and achieve specific company goals and results. Culture change is impacted by a number of elements, including
the external environment and industry competitors, change in industry standards, technology changes, the size and nature of the workforce, and the organization¶s history and management.
Burman and Evans (2008) argue that it is ' leadership' that affects culture rather than 'management', and describe the difference. When one wants to change an aspect of t he culture of an organization one has to keep in consideration that this is a long term project. Corporate culture is something that is very hard to change and employees need time to get used to the new way of organizing. For companies with a very strong and specific culture it will be even harder to change.
Prior to a cultural change initiative, a needs assessment is needed to identify and understand the current organizational culture. This can be done through employee surveys, interviews, focus groups, observation, customer surveys where appropriate, and other internal research, to further identify areas that require change. The company must then assess and clearly identify the new, desired culture, and then design a cha nge process.
3. Describe the culture set by the new CEO Tom Lawrence. What are its advantages and disadvantages? Lawrence has a big reputation as a young, dynamic and more focus on productivity and company profit.
After changing CEO from Carpenter to Lawrence, there are a lot
changing in leadership style. For example Lawrence has been cut costs in organization by discontinuing social events activities. Beside that he also totally stops impromptu birthday celebrations among staff in National. He believes that by cut training programs in communication and Human Resource can avoid from wasting time and money expenses. By implementing adaptive corporate culture, he only focus on company profit and productivity and external factors effected to the National without having proper relationship with the workers. Lawrence introduced strict performance standards to all department and worker who are nor achieved in performance standard will be given first warning to develop their performance if not they will be terminate from the National. Under Lawrence leadership, there is weekly meeting regarding department performance among each of managers. Employees who are able to achieved performance will be rewarded. For example large bonuses, perk, first class Air travel and so on. After a year being president of National, production cost had been reduced by 20 percent and output has been increase 10 percent wherever sales increase 10 percent. The impact of of his leadership style, three experienced and well-respected Nationnal manager has been left the company for jobs with competitors.
Beside that, the turnover is highly increase among
production worker and its quite difficult to find skill worker to replace the vacancy. Because of that Simpson was pleased that Lawrence has brought National¶s profit and productivity
due to performance standard but the impact to employees is low morale and high turnover. Simpson query it can be bad impact in long run business activities in National.
4. With the culture established by Tom Lawrence, is it possible to return to high morale and lower turnover?
Culture is importance in Organization because it can give various benefit to the company. To get the benefits, there should be a strong culture value. Strong culture is where staff is more motivation because of their alignment to organizational values. The various benefit from strong culture value are consistent and efficient employee performance, team cohesiveness, high employee morale and strong company alignment towards goal achievement
For change to be successful there needs t o be a compelling reason to c hange, a clear vision of what the change will be, and a sensible first step. (Tribus, 2001). (Giles, 2000) Culture change requires consistency of message, goal, direction, and leadership to succeed.
It is possible to Lawrence to get return to high morale and lower turnover by implementing adaptive culture. The result on turnover and low morale occurred in National is just only a year under Lawrence leadership. According to Kotter and Heskett (1992), organizations with adaptive cultures perform much better than organizations with unadaptive cultures. An adaptive culture translates into organizational success, it is characterized by managers paying close attention to all of their constituencies, especially customers, initiating change when needed, and taking risks. An unadaptive culture can significantly reduce a firm's effectiveness, disabling the firm from pursuing all its competitive/operational options.
Tom Lawrence should strive for what is considered a good culture time to time in order to increase productivity, growth, efficiency and reduce employee turnover and other.
For
example fair treatment of each employee as well as respect for each employee¶s contribution
to the company, strong communication with all employees regarding policies and company issues and investment in learning, training, and employee knowledge. O¶Rielly, Chatman & Caldwell (1991) developed a model based on the belief that cultures can be distinguished by values that are reinforced within organizations such as innovation, stability, respect for people, outcome orientation, attention to detail, team orientation, and aggressiveness. According to Schein (1992), the two main reasons why cultures develop in organizations is due to external adaptation and internal integration. External adaptation reflects an evolutionary approach to organizational culture and suggests that cultures develop and persist because they help an organization to survive and flourish.
So by monitoring, develop relationship and clear communication time to time and this adaptive culture will be success in National Industries.
This has been proven by past
researcher which is employees more focused on their performance to achieve performance standard toward external environment impaction. This will give more responsibilities to each employee to keep their performance record well and to face with others competitor in the same industries.
5.
Making necessary assumptions about the corporate environment and corporate strategy,
where would you place the company¶s culture under Tom Lawrence¶s leadership in a quadrant of the grid in Exhibit 9.8? In your opinion, is that an appropriate culture for the situation?
