| The final case assessment consists of 4 mini case studies with questions pertaining to each. Please note that each case study is worth one-quarter of your final grade. Use the text, the readings, the videos, and the articles from the first half of the semester in responding to the questions. You may also do additional research and use the results, as long as you cite your sources. A few points: I believe in the honor system when giving assessments. The assessment will be open book but should be completed by individual students without consultation with others. Try to limit your responses to about 800 – 1000 words for each case Submit your answers using the appropriate assignment link. Check the course Calendar for the due date. CASE STUDY 1 https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/04/12/258131/#:~:text=U.S.-,How%20Levi’s%20Trashed%20a%20Great%20American%20Brand%20While%20Bob%20Haas,came%20apart%20at%20the%20seams.&text=In%201985%20he%20took%20Levi,Haas%20was%20a%20hero Please read the Levi Strauss & Company case study and answer the questions below. What were the key positive and negative internal and external forces for change at Levi Strauss? How effectively did Levi Strauss apply Lewin’s model of change when implementing the Customer Service Supply Chain Initiative? Explain. Based on your assessment of Levi Strauss’s attempt to create organizational change, what would you have done differently if you were Bob Haas? Discuss both your assessment and what you would have done differently. During the time of this case study, to what extent was Levi Strauss a learning organization? CASE STUDY 2 Durk Jager was a man on a mission. As the newly appointed CEO of Procter & Gamble in January, 1999, he was determined to make P&G a more conflict-friendly organization. Jager had some ambitious goals for P&G. At the top of the list was the goal of significantly boosting sales volume. In 2000, he said he wanted the company, best known for products such as Tide, Crest, and Crisco, to double sales to $70 billion by the year 2005. But the company’s strong cult-like culture tended to “Procter-ize” people, said Jager. P&G people were too insular, risk-averse, and slow to make decisions. According to Jager, the problem had a lot to do with keeping people isolated inside P&G’s twin-towers’ headquarters in Cincinnati. The company recruited job candidates from a variety of backgrounds, put them through a relatively standardized training program, and then insulated them at company headquarters. After awhile, they began to sound alike, think alike—even look alike, he said. Jager’s career path was unusual for P&G. While he had been with the company for nearly 30 years in 1999, he had spent most of his time outside Cincinnati. A Dutchman by birth, he joined P&G as an assistant brand manager in Holland. After 12 years, he was transferred to Japan as an advertising manager and was later promoted to general manager. He grew up totally removed from Cincinnati’s central bureaucracy. So in spite of all his years with the company, he had an outsider’s perspective. Asked to describe Jager, those who know him described him as a “loner,” “hard-driving,” and a person who “doesn’t mince words.” He had a reputation for shaking things up. As such, he might have been just the right man for his new job. At the time, P&G was a company in which managers had a passion for memo-writing and dissent was rarely tolerated. Employees were wasting up to half their time on “non-value-added work,” such as memo writing, he said. During a talk with employees in Japan, for instance, one worker complained to Jager that he had to continually create new management review charts, often with the same information in several different forms. The employee thought he was wasting a lot of his time. Jager was determined to change P&G’s culture. He wanted to make the company faster on its feet, more innovative, and more conflict-friendly. “Great ideas generally come from conflict—from a dissatisfaction with the status quo. I’d like to have an organization where there are rebels.” Questions: How was the P&G culture shaped? Using the four-culture typology (double-S cube) described in the powerpoint presentation linked in the resources, what type of culture do you think P&G was when Jager took overy? What type was Jager trying to change it to? If you were Jager, what would you do to change this culture? Outline specific steps. As it happens, Jager‘s changes cut into profits, and the company began to distance itself from his projects. He resigned in 2000. What might explain his failure to institute change? CASE STUDY 3 Band-Aid bandages, Johnson’s Baby Oil, Mylanta, Reach toothbrushes, and Tylenol are well-known products found in medicine cabinets around the world. What you might not know, however, is that all these products–and many others–come from the same company: Johnson & Johnson (J&J). More precisely, they come from any of 166 separate companies belonging to J&J. Starting in the 1930’s, under the guidance of Robert Wood Johnson, long- time chairman and son of one of the co-founders, J&J went out its way to keep the various businesses independent of each other. Believing the companies would be more manageable and responsive to their markets if they remained smaller, self- governing units, Johnson resisted pressures to merge them. He feared an enormous bureaucracy. According to J&J’s Chief Executive from 1989 to 2002, Ralph S. Larsen, this approach helped to create a sense of ownership and responsibility. At the same time, Larsen realized these benefits had to be weighed against the costs; namely, excessive expenses because of redundancies. For example, J&J’s overhead was considerably greater than that of competitors Merck & Co. or Bristol-Meyers Squibb Co. Another cost arose in the area of customer service. Large retailers such as Wal-Mart were increasingly interested in streamlining their contacts with suppliers, and they became impatient with sales calls from dozens of J&J companies. To meet these realities, J&J centralized some of its operations. For example, under Larsen’s guidance, J&J has began pooling various administrative functions, such as payroll and benefits processing, computer services, purchasing, and accounts payable. So, too, were some companies merged–creating, for example, Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceuticals, a drug company formed from two previously separate companies. Another innovation united customer-service and credit functions that once resided in four different departments of various companies. With this change, a single phone call could handle all these needs. Streamlining J&J operations meant trimming the workforce by 3,000 in 1993, thereby leading to an annual savings of $100 million. Not all J&J insiders agreed with Larsen’s plans. In fact, one top executive, William C. Egan, III, quit J&J after l7 years because he so strongly disagreed with Larsen’s approach. In that case, the straw that broke the camel’s back was the decision to merge the Baby Products Company with several others to form the Johnson & Johnson Consumer Products Company. (J&J also has many companies specializing in medical and surgical supplies, such as sutures and anesthetics.) What bothered Egan was that the decentralization he associated with J&J was, in his view, being dismantled. Larsen believed he was simply righting an imbalance in J&J’s corporate structure. Allaying the fears of those worried he will take things too far, Larsen cautioned, “We will never give up the principle of decentralization which is to give our operating executives ownership of a business.” Indeed, things continue to work this way at J&J, where business strategy flows not from the top down but from the bottom up–that is, initiatives come from the individual companies themselves, not from executives in some distant corporate headquarters. J&J still, in 2015, consists of 265 operating companies (the Johnson & Johnson family of companies) and employs 126,500 people Questions: What were the advantages and disadvantages of J&J becoming more highly centralized? Based on this assessment, what type of structure do you recommend? Is the more centralized J&J a boundaryless organization? If so, why? If not, how could it change to become one? Might J&J benefit from a strategic alliance with another company? What kind of company would be a good potential partner? Why? What is the impact on employees, from an OB perspective. of a more a highly centralized organization? CASE STUDY 4 http://polaris.umuc.edu/~busilane/tman633/cases/perot.htm Read the Case Study on Perot Systems and answer the following questions. Compare Myerson’s leadership style versus Perot’s based on the Michigan and Ohio State behavioral theories of leadership. Utilizing Fiedler’s contingency model, explain how either Myerson’s or Perot’s style might be most appropriate based on specific characteristics of the situation at Perot Systems. Specify the characteristics. Evaluate the situation at Perot Systems from the point of view of transactional leadership, transformational leadership, and charismatic leadership. |
