Standard International (SI) is the subsidiary of a large manufacturing firm; it is responsible for marketing, sales, and distribution outside the United States
Standard International (SI) is the subsidiary of a large manufacturing firm; it is responsible for marketing, sales, and distribution outside the United States
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General
Management
MANAGEMENT
PROBLEMS 1
Marsha Jackson is a recent MBA graduate
with a degree in marketing. She has accepted a position with General America, a
large firm selling a number of consumer products. Her first assignment is to
conduct research on the sales of one of her company’s products versus sales of
competing products.
This
division is responsible for sales of over-the-counter drugs such as headache
remedies, indigestion cures, and similar products. In business school, Marsha
had worked with a personal computer in her MBA program and was happy to see
that General America had a local area network (LAN) for the marketing
department subscribed to several different services that provided sales results
for over-the-counter drugs. Some of her fellow workers had private databases,
and a few even keyed data into their PCs from lengthy printouts they had
purchased.
Marsha feels that there must be a better
way to conduct market research, particularly given the fact that the department
has a LAN with a lot of capacity. What solutions to this problem can you
recommend?
MANAGEMENT
PROBLEMS 2
Assume you have just been appointed to
chair the board of a medium sized manufacturing firm that makes small consumer
appliances. The company has experienced stagnant growth over the past five
years, and a new board of directors was recently elected by dissident
stockholders.
One
of your first tasks is to help top management discover why sales are constant
and profits have been declining. Currently, the firm is faced with excessive
inventory and problems in acquiring raw materials. Prices for these materials
have been fluctuating widely in recent months; the previous management seems to
have been unable to cope with this problem.
How will you approach this task? What
sources of information will you seek to help understand and solve problems in
the company?
MANAGEMENT
PROBLEMS 3
The governor of a state is confronted
with a series of conflicting recommendations from his staff. Recently welfare
costs have been dropping, and he is concerned that they will start to rise
again.
The
director of the state welfare department suggested in her report that the new
reduced payments schedule passed by the legislature has reduced overall
expenditures and so the downward trend will continue. The governor’s advisor
for economic affairs indicated that the recent improvement in the state’s
economy had resulted in large increases in employment. These new jobs are
attracting people and taking them off the welfare roles. A state senate leader,
however, felt that most of the change resulted from enforcing requirements for
welfare, limits on how long one can collect payments, and requirements to work.
Who is right? What is responsible for so
many different positions? How can the governor reconcile these conflicting
viewpoints and arrive at the true cause of the problem?
MANAGEMENT
PROBLEMS 4
Dave Masters in vice president of
manufacturing for Siliconix, an electronic components manufacturer. Siliconix
runs most of its production control and factory systems on an IBM mainframe
computer. The firm has just purchased another company that makes similar
components, but the newly purchased another company that makes similar
components, but the newly purchased division runs its applications using a
package called SAP R/3 on a client-server computer configuration.
Masters
has to decide what to do about the different computer applications. The staff
of the corporate management department wants to make the new division feel
welcome and does not want to upset its employees. Staff members argue that SAP
is probably better than their old custom-programmed system on the mainframe.
However, the implementation of SAP is a major task, and they do not recommend
undertaking it right now. They are content to run the two systems separately.
Masters
is concerned because he feels the entire company would be better off with a
single production control system. However, he recognizes that the merger will
cause some disruptions, and he questions the wisdom of undertaking a major
systems conversion at the same time.
What do you recommend? How should
Masters go about making his decision?
MANAGEMENT
PROBLEM 5
Block and Thomas, a regional
stockbrokerage firm, hired a chief information officer (CIO), a senior manager
who is responsible for all technology in the firm. The brokerage firm uses
technology heavily as is typical in the industry. Block and Thomas has a number
of systems to process stock trades and support its brokers. It also subscribes
to a broker workstation system provided by a market data vendor. Each broker has
a personal computer that provides a great deal of data and analytic
capabilities in different windows on the screen.
The
new CIO surveyed users and potential users at Block and Thomas. He concluded
that in the past, users had very negative attitudes toward systems. However,
the interviews he conducted convinced him that users’ attitudes were now
different. The users described problems but also mentioned that they were very
optimistic about the potential of technology and wished they could implement the
technology faster. The new CIO was surprised by the creative suggestions that
came from users during the interviews.
What events do you think are responsible
for the new attitudes on the part of users? How can the CIO take advantage of
them?
MANAGEMENT
PROBLEM 6
The traditional organization is
characterized by tacit understandings among managers and subordinates. In some
instances, the rights and responsibilities of each group are contained in a
detailed contract, such as the one between a union and management. Under a
tacit understanding, an employee responds to a supervisor for a number of
reasons. Custom or habit is a very important reason; organizations throughout
history have functional through a hierarchical relationship like that found in
the armed forces. A manager usually has the ability to determine the
subordinate’s pay and can even arrange to have the subordinate dismissed.
Because there is a long history of this type of relationship, most people in
organizations are quite comfortable with it.
In some of the organizations
described in this chapter, managers form alliances with various partners. These
alliance firms may provide a virtual component for your organization. However,
the employees involved in this alliance do work for two different firms. How
does a manager manage under these conditions? Suppose that your firm enters
into a relationship with another firm to take over its inventory of raw
materials and to become a just-in-time supplier. The partner firm hires your
former inventory employees so they no longer work directly for you. Describe
the role of a manager in working with an alliance partner that provides you
with a virtual component of your firm?
 |
| Standard International (SI) is the subsidiary of a large manufacturing firm; it is responsible for marketing, sales, and distribution outside the United States |
MANAGEMENT
PROBLEM 7
Boats-R-Us operates a group of 50
discount marine supply houses throughout the U.S., primarily on the east and
west coasts and around the Great Lakes. The company has both walk-in and
mail-order business. It has been organized traditionally as a retail store and
several warehouses. A central order processing site accepts orders over 800
numbers and by mail and fax: this site distributes the order to the warehouse
that is closest to the customer and that has the products requested in stock. A
large number of purchasing agents is involved in determining what to stock and
in negotiating purchases.
The president of the company has
read about new organizational forms enabled by information technology. The only
technology in place now is the order entry and warehouse inventory system. The
president would like to make Boats-R-Us both more efficient and more responsive
to its customers. What new kinds of organization forms for Boats-R-Us might be
enabled by information technology?
MANAGEMENT
PROBLEM 8
Harold Rubin has spent a career in
banking. He how works for a large money-center bank that has global presence.
However, Harold is worried: He has been the explosion in interest in the
Internet and World Wide Web, and he thinks there will be profound implications
from IT for banking. The picture is confused, however. Some banks are reducing
the number of physical branches as they are expensive in terms of real estate
and labor. The banks replace branches with ATMs and phone banking; other banks
offer PC banking so that customers can do almost everything they can in a branch
from home. They are usually able to pay bills via their home computers as well.
To Rubin, these changes seem
evolutionary and rather mild. He has read articles about electronic commerce
and even shopped on the Web to try it out. He also sees small firms becoming
global as they advertise their products on the Web. What kinds of banking
services will these firms want? How will changes in commerce and life styles
influence what customers, both individual and corporations, want from a bank?
Will a bank become “a piece of computer software on a network,” a statement
attributed to the chairman of Citibank?
MANAGEMENT
PROBLEM 9
Standard International (SI) is the
subsidiary of a large manufacturing firm; it is responsible for marketing,
sales, and distribution outside the United States. Standard International does
not develop products; the parent firm creates all products it sells. SI has
operations in 30 countries. In virtually all these countries the local SI
operations in treated legally as a subsidiary of Standard International.
Recently
a new president took control of SI. Historically the firm’s systems were
oriented to finance and accounting because the technology group reports to the
vice president of finance. Accounting applications are important because so
many different currencies are involved. The new president, however, is
impatient and feels that technology should be able to do something for
marketing and sales.
She asked you to consult with SI in
the hope of finding a strategic application for information technology: “I want
something that will give us a competitive edge,” she said. What kind of process
would you follow to try to identify a strategic application? What applications
areas look promising? How does a firm like SI develop a strategic system? How
does it establish and maintain a competitive advantage?
MANAGEMENT
PROBLEM 10
Autozip sells accessories for cars
through a chain of stores on the West Coast. The company started a catalog
sales division 4 years ago that now accounts for 25 percent of sales. Customers
like the convenience of calling a toll-free number and having the parts they
order delivered via USP or an overnight carrier such as Federal Express.
The
president of Autozip realizes that the firm needs to have a presence on the
Internet. He is trying to decide whether to accept orders on the Internet. He
is trying so decide whether to accept orders on the Web, and if so, how. He is
caught between two positions offered by his staff. The marketing vice president
advocates taking orders on the Web. Her reasoning is: What have we got to lose?
We have everything to gain; it’s another market channel and our competitors are
already there or will be soon. We save money because customers act as their own
order entry personnel.
The
controller disagrees. His reasoning is: Any advantage we gain will be
temporary; it is so easy to set up a system to order on the Web that everyone
will take Web orders and we won’t gain a sustainable advantage.
The president has to make a
decision. First, should Autozip accept orders on the Web, and second, if so,
how? Should it go to a firm that hosts Web marketplaces, buy software and set
up its own site, or develop its own software?
MANAGEMENT
PROBLEM 11
Hershey and Sherman is a medium-sized
consulting firm that specializes in helping clients install “enterprise
software,” the kind of applications packages that automate all aspects of a
company’s operations. The company has always stayed at a high level, and
according to Sheila Hershey, “We deal with management to prepare a change
program. We are not programmers.” However, the tremendous success of several
enterprise software packages, most notably SAP’s R/3 and a series of
applications from Oracle and PeopleSoft, have created a problem for Hershey and
Sherman.
Clients
are asking for recommendations from the firm on whether to purchase one of
these packages, and then they want help implementing it. Sheila is confronted
with several choices for responding. “We can try to hire more technical people,
but everything we read and hear says that it is very difficult to find
consultants with expertise in these systems. The demand is very high, and all
of the big consulting firms have practices devoted to installing SAP. Hiring
specialists would also change the character of our firm.
“Another
option is to form an alliance with a firm that does have technical
capabilities. We can continue to do our high-level management consulting and
then bring in a firm appropriate to the client’s needs. The problem here is
that we may be helping provide our competitors with business—one day we are
partners, the next day we are after the same client.”
What advice would you give Hershey
and Sherman? What are the pros and cons of strategic alliances in this
situation?
MANAGEMENT
PROBLEM 12
Bill Roberts is the chief information
officer for a multinational company. He reports to the company president and
has a staff of 50 at headquarters. This group runs systems for the headquarters
operation and also tries to provide standards for subsidiaries in foreign
countries.
Headquarters
has developed a standard library of financial and accounting applications that
runs on most of the computers in the subsidiaries. (Bill was successful a few
years ago in getting all the subsidiaries expect the largest to agree on one
model of computer.) Since many of the subsidiaries are not large and have
trouble recruiting skilled technology staff members, they are quite happy with
the library of programs.
Each
Country has its own information services department manager, generally
reporting to the controller or possibly the president of the subsidiary. Bill
and his staff travel extensively to try to help each subsidiary better manage
its technology effort.
Bill
is facing a major problem in at least two countries; he and his staff think the
local person in charge of information systems is not doing a good job. “After
several years of working with the people in charge in two countries, I have
come to the conclusion that we really should let them go. However, I have no
real responsibility; these people report to a manager in the country, not to
me.”
How can Bill help the company solve
this problem? Do you think they need to reorganize the structure of their IT
units? Does it make sense to have foreign operations reporting to Bill? If not,
how can he influence what goes on in subsidiaries outside the U.S.?
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