Anderson Manufacturing Company 1. Ham Wilson in the Anderson Manufacturing Company case must choose between a career in management and a career in research and development. a. Describe Ham Wilson in terms of several of his key values (what does he value? Show your support for this. ) The measure of a person’s value mainly depends on how much this man did contribute to the company, as well as how much wealth they have created. Performing adequately expressive force is an embodiment of one person. Although there is a small problem for Wilson on interpersonal aspects, he loves to work and he dares to innovate.
In the case, Wilson works very hard and Wilson is good at solving problems in all situations from work. People could change their strengths and weaknesses by postnatal efforts: how to think and how to do. Wilson’s passion and perseverance to work always give himself a confidence in setting goals. Regardless how others evaluate him, he insists own opinions and do efforts to do work, which finally gets due values and brings wealth for the firm. Therefore, power and wealth Wilson creates are a standard of measuring values. Although Wilson is gotten doubt during a period of time, Wilson could take a broad view and has a long-term plan.
He is innovative, which is also his personal values. He has sufficient grasp to prospects in the future. Good uses of time and technology make their companies strategically stronger than other companies and have more advance products than other companies. These can reflect the values of Wilson. b. Describe Ham Wilson in terms of the FIRO–B (show support for these positions) The Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation-Behavior (FIRO-B) is a behavior that highly choose and assess individual all kinds of respects which one pays attentions to according to one’s values and needs. In this case, HAM is very enthusiastic about the work.
However, he does not like to make new friends and just wants to be identified by colleagues. He is very positive to the development of the roller and he conducts in person. Although I think HAM’s leadership needs to be improved, his creation and imagination are great. In this case, he cannot affect his wife. By contrast, he is affected by his wife. Ham likes Holden and Porters in the story, so he wants to influence them. c. Describe Ham Wilson in terms of LSI (show your support) The Learning Style Inventory (LSI) is used to determine learning styles. It’s also a learning process to assess personal hobbies and need aspects.
It does the followings: (1) allows to designate how they like to learn and expresses consistency of their active learning;(2) provides possible learning methods to set strategies; (3) increases the participation and offer in learning process. In this case, HAM was of allows designating how they like to learn and indicates how consistent their responses are active learning. In this case, HAM follows the first method above: he arranges subordinates how to learn relevant work and makes them consistent to do work. Although Horton invents the roller, there is no development and it’s just a kind of machine with regardless.
However, rollers are developed successfully through HAM’s factual thoughts and uses. d. Based on a, b, and c and your knowledge of management as a career, should Ham move into the management position or should he remain a researcher/scientist? Why? I think that the HAM should do research at first and just be a researcher / scientist, because his ideas and innovative spirit are very strong. Subordinates appreciate him on his persistence and passion to work. He is very conscientious and keeps correcting his mistakes. HAM does his efforts to do every project. He does have good attitudes to it.
According to the FIRO – B, he is very not suitable for the management position. As a manager or leader, he should have an all-around view to a single performance. Therefore, he should still be a researcher. HAM is very active to do and participate in every task. He loves to research and to develop new products. However, he does not have experience on management. HAM also does not have his own minds and then he does not have the leadership. Case2. Going Back Home After reading the case “Going Back Home”, we know that the leading character Jerry’s attitudes to these two are poles apart and he likes the former one.
We also could look out from this case that there are many reasons to influence this kind of phenomenon and these causes belong to elements and concept of expectancy theory. Next we explain his attitudes by this theory as following: Early career satisfaction: 1. Expectancy (Effort > Performance): Jerry is very interested in firefight so that he gives up his university to work with it and then do his job hard, which shows expectancy process—efforts will be achieved desired objectives through Jerry’s former experience and his confidence. 2.
Instrumentality (Performance > Outcome): If behaviors get to expected performance, rewards could be received. Jerry also comes up with many great ideas for his firm and then he gets compliments and has a chance to promote his position. 3. Valance: it’s not only physical benefits the firm gives rewards to Jerry, but also getting his internal satisfaction. Later career dissatisfaction: 1. Expectancy (Effort > Performance): many behaviors Jerry does illustrate that he does not make efforts because of his impatience, doing things in two minds and currying favors with the superior.
As a result, his chief does not accept these behaviors. 2. Instrumentality (Performance > Outcome): unexpected performances and chief attitudes make him disappointed, which lead to bad outcomes such as working not on time and criticism. 3. Valance: Jerry is confused that he doesn’t get effective performances and relevant rewards. People in this workplace are elders which have seniorities, which is not suitable for him. His thoughts about jobs needn’t be adopted, which makes Jerry very confused and unhappy. Case3. Dowling Flexible Metals 1.
Why is Dowling Flexible Metals experiencing decreasing effectiveness: According to the background and interviews of workers in this case, Bill Dowling’s firm faces many problems from different aspects as followings: a) Firm’s Unstable Situations: Dowling’s firm depends on the auto industry before, but it doesn’t connect with auto industry because of fluctuation of auto sales and then Bill chooses the manufacturing industry. Moreover, Dowling expands the firm under the conditions of instability and insufficient funds of the firm. The problems of employees’ rapid growth in the firm are not been solved. ) Improper Distribution: Bill Dowling has many different duties to do. He often comes into contact with customers so that he seldom comes back the shop to manage employees. He doesn’t detailedly explain the job to employees, which leads to the confusion of employee responsibilities. Engineers in the firm not only have to do their own jobs but also extra jobs such as drawing up drafts and so on. However relatively, journeymen and their prentices don’t have many workloads and much time to do other things. Engineers and journeymen could leave on time and don’t care if the jobs have done.
And then the manager and the shop foremen have to deal with unsettled tasks. c) Lack of coordination among work employees: We could look out from the interview of Gene and Bill in this case; most of them have complaints to each other. Other people also say that Bill inform us relevant tasks incomplete. On the other hand, shop foreman of fist shift complains that engineers do extra jobs so that restricting work qualities and time of fist shift. Even giving a example to illustrate the mistakes of extra jobs done by engineers incur extending deadlines. ) Production and Service Problems: Dowling recommends computerized machines, which makes employees work without positivity and not promote their techniques. They also don’t know what customers do think and don’t want to concern their opinions. Because employees especially engineers are not professional to do extra jobs so that product outcomes are dissatisfied. 2. What advice do you have for Bill Dowling on how he should respond to the current situation: We could know the key problems and challenges of the firm through detail explanations of question one.
According to the classification of problems above, we suggest some solutions as followings: a) Improving Firm’s situation: The firm should keep contacting with auto industry. Dowling may find out more situations of this kind of market to compare so that choosing more proper auto industry. Or building a good relationship with manufacturing industry to make it produce more relevant and better products. The best way is to set up partnerships to deal with fund this problem. On the other aspect, Bill should control employment and control its conditions.
He could accept or reject some employees and reserve qualified personnel. Moreover, he would better know external environment such as competitors and target markets, which could be beneficial to firm development. b) Proper Distribution: The firm should hold a very important meeting to discuss and arrange timetable and task distributions of employees. Bill also needs to have discussions to talk about business termly. For example, engineers just do their own jobs and Dowling should let journeymen and prentices do more and proper tasks.
The office manager could distribute the tasks to his secretary. The key one is Bill Dowling himself. He could hire a secretary for himself to arrange his daily events. The most important is he needs to pay more attentions to manage his shop employees. c) Solving Conflict: Dowling should hold a special meeting for employees to be free to express their opinions. They sit together to talk about the opinions and ideas of the firm and employees to resolve problems. Meantime, everyone should have self-examination. ) Product and Service: Bill Dowling should consider high efficiency and that it’s not negative to employees’ skills in terms of choices to equipments and machines. The computerization and mechanization are used under the conditions which employees have proficient skills and machines could promote efficiency. Employees should often consult old and new customers and ask their ideas. It’s the best service to satisfy customers’ demands as soon as possible. Case 4 Treetop Forest Products a. Based on issues of team/group dynamics, explain why the packaging department is less productive than other teams at Treetop.
We could look out Gibson’s theory “The Behaviors of Effective Leaders” from this case. There are two types of leaders in Gibson’s theory: one is job-centered leaders and the other is employee-centered leaders. The job-centered leader has responsibilities with completing the task so that subordinates could finish their tasks through using specified procedures. The employee-centered leader focuses on the tasks employees do and gives decision-making and aids to subordinates for satisfying their needs by creating a proper environment for work.
There is a supervisor in every department in this case. Although the company distributes the planer supervisor to manage the packaging department on the morning shift and the sawmill supervisor to monitor the packaging department on the afternoon shift, these two supervisors are neither job-centered leaders nor employee-centered leaders. They don’t pay more attentions to and do efforts to their own departments. Because these leaders do not work hard and then it leads to a negative impact on their employees. Employees would not have cohesion and motivation without an excellent leader.
Finally the production rate declines and many backlogs are overstocked outside the packaging building. On the other side, the afternoon shift does worse than the morning shift, which could increase the inventory costs. As a result, the packaging department has low production rate. b. What changes do you recommend to improve this situation long term? I think it would be great to choose employee-centered leaders, because it could satisfy employees’ needs. They could work hard after getting their demands and it makes them have motivation and cohesion to do work. The company hould employ professional management and good packaging departments to let staffs work in the professional workplaces. The company also should give them space enough to exert their abilities, which makes more innovative products be produced. The Company should provide a proper work schedule for the packaging department employees to have a clear work arrangement and then this team’s spirit will be better expressed. Therefore, production rate will increase and products will have higher quality and even better sales services. Case 5 ‘Ramrod’ Stockwell a. Describe Ramrod’s leadership style.
In this case, Ramrod has a concentrated management method. He doesn’t like to communicate with others, which makes him impossible to provide necessary information for subordinates. He also doesn’t provide any guidance for them and they just have to submit him. He decides everything and they are under his control. Employees are not shared daily information which makes work process could not be completed well. Ramrod hopes to expand power and status of the organization performing business: he does not down-pass his power and to share information, which could increase his authority of sales.
Moreover, Ramrod never listens to his subordinates and just let them obey his commands. He also seldom takes part in social situations. He doesn’t like to make friends and does not allow others to be close to him, which makes him be isolated by society. b. How is the external environment a factor in leadership power in this case? Traditional sales power reflects a fact: in the past, the main competition was to face to many challenges of suppliers. Under this condition, developing clients’ relationships and services are very important. Recently, environment has changed.
Production gets more essential and only it could produce kinds of rolled steels to satisfy customers’ needs. In new competition environment: production control mainly needs to speed up productivity and production has become a nonfungible thing. Benson think that it’s good to build up a management department of product sales to eliminate the lack of production and sales and increase new order forms in production process. All requests should be delivered to use of production flow through production process control, which leads to the reduction of traditional power to production sales and promotes power balance.
Most people in management departments in the case support this change of the important opinions very much and they realize the importance of increasing production control. Management departments may increase production facilities for improving production situations. It’s also a good idea to raise more employees to get more opportunities of management. Ramrod also could set up a management group to research how environment change influences affect work problems and promote the importance of production opinions of status.
