Format of case study on management

Case Study Question 1

A certain construction company, after decades of development, has become a well-known local construction leading enterprises. Summarize the success of the enterprise experience, many managers attributed to the timing, location, and people, such as the sustained development of the national economy, good relations with the local government, banks, the formation of decades of fixed customers and a good reputation, good quality of staff and so on. Encouraged by the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the company has established the vision and mission to break the regional boundaries and become a national and even world-renowned construction enterprise. When the company set up such a vision and mission and work hard for it, it found that the "timing, geographical advantage and human harmony" which used to be its advantages seemed to be absent. For example, not long ago, a Japanese construction company asked the company to provide a quotation for a project within two days during negotiations. Because the company did not have a person who knew both the construction profession and Japanese, it was not able to quote in time, and unfortunately did not seize the company's project.

Analyze the company's internal and external environments and the measures to be taken.

(1) Heaven, earth, and man are generalized descriptions of the company's internal and external environments. It can be seen from the case that the company's success in the past came from the timing, location and people, which constituted the company's competitive advantage. When the company re-established "to become a national and even the world's construction enterprises", from the case can be seen in the government, bank relations, in the geographic area, in the quality of personnel requirements, etc., have changed, the so-called heaven, earth, and people are no longer an advantage.

(2) Therefore, the company should really recognize the internal and external environments, determine the company's mission and vision, and develop corresponding measures around the sky, land and people. Specific measures should be centered around the cultivation of the company's core competitiveness: with the establishment of e-commerce network and system skills; the ability to quickly put new products into the market; better after-sales service capabilities; production and manufacturing of high-quality product skills; development of product features of the innovative ability; rapid response to market changes; accurate and rapid to meet the customer's system of ordering; and the integration of a variety of technologies to create new product skills and so on. Aspects.

Case Study Question 2

A local enterprise producing traditional handicrafts has gradually developed and expanded along with China's open-door policy. Sales and exports have increased by an average of more than 15% in the past ten years. Employees have also increased from less than 200 to more than 2,000. Enterprises are still used in the past similar linear organizational structure, the enterprise a hand Wang factory director both sales, but also in charge of production, is a multi-faceted all-powerful managers. Recently, some things have happened to the enterprise, so that Wang factory director overwhelmed. One: production is basically according to the production order, basically by the factory manager to convey the production instructions. Encountered tight delivery, often the factory director to take the lead, and staff together with the lights at night. Although the delivery on time, but the quality is not pass, the product was returned, and was required to claim; Second: before the enterprise recruiting a small number of personnel, so the factory director Wang alone can decide. Now we have to recruit nearly 50 students from universities and colleges every year, and it also involves the training of personnel, etc., the previous practice will not work. Third: in the past, always Wang factory director to do logistics and other work, now too much work in this area, the temporary grasp of people to do, already can not do to do a bad job. In all these cases, the previous effective management methods have lost their role.

Please explain the problems of the enterprise from the point of view of organization and the suggested measures.

(1) From the information given in the case, it is clear that the enterprise is using a linear form of organizational structure, which has the following advantages: Advantages of a linear organizational structure: the structure is relatively simple, and all people understand to whom they should report and who reports to him. Responsibilities and authority are clear. Each person has one and only one direct supervisor, so decisions can be made easily and quickly. Disadvantage: is that in the case of larger organizations with more complex operations, it is more difficult to centralize all management functions in one person.

(2) Obviously when the enterprise has grown into more than 2,000 people, the linear organizational structure restricts the normal development of the enterprise. As in the case of the dilemma faced by the factory manager Wang, it is no longer effective and efficient to have one person to manage everything.

(3) The enterprise needs to adopt a form of organizational structure suitable for the development of the enterprise, such as the management of specialized division of labor line - staff type organizational structure, consider the establishment of the production planning department, human resources department, and logistics department. This will give play to the advantages of line - staff type organizational structure, that is, all levels of line managers have the appropriate functional bodies and personnel as staff and assistants, and thus be able to carry out effective management of the Department, in order to adapt to the characteristics of modern management work is more complex and detailed, and each department is by the line of personnel under the command of the unified, which meets the modern organizational activities need to unity of command and the implementation of a strict system of responsibility requirements. .

Case Study Question 3

With China's accession to the WTO, enterprises face new opportunities and challenges. A large state-owned enterprises in order to adapt to the competition from home and abroad, as well as the long-term healthy development of enterprises, recognizing the need to change the concept of accelerating the pace of the establishment of a modern enterprise system, and at the same time the need to practice hard to improve their own management level. And training is the precursor. In the past, the enterprise has engaged in a number of training, but basically temporary hiring of a few well-known experts, using all employees to participate in a large class training methods, in the training process is negligent in control. After the training, some people think that in the work of useful, some people think that there is no use, want to learn did not learn; there are people reflecting the training method is too single, not combined with the actual work and so on.

If you are the deputy general manager in charge of human resources management, how should you manage the company's training work.

(1) Although companies recognize the awareness of the importance of training is the precursor. But as shown in the case of the enterprise in the training there are still many problems, such as training content and method of monotonous single, training process control and training effect assessment is not enough. In order to ensure the effectiveness of training, the following aspects should be considered.

(2) For the problems in the case, the measures that should be taken are: firstly, to manage the training work; secondly, to ensure the diversity of training contents. The training content should include political and ideological education, business knowledge and management, etc.; thirdly, a variety of training methods should be used, including systematic theoretical training, job rotation, visits and so on.

(3) in short, in the training process, generally focus on solving the following problems: training should be combined with the enterprise's objectives; higher management should support and participate in training; select and train good instructors; training content should be targeted; training methods should be combined with the training object and the training content; the theory and practice should be combined.

Case Study Question 4

Please read the following piece of dialog:

American Boss: How much time will it take to complete this report?

Greek employee: I don't know how much time it will take to complete this report.

American Boss: You are the most qualified person to suggest a time frame.

Greek employee: ten days.

American Boss: Do you agree to complete this report in 15 days?

Greek employee: didn't make a sound. (Thinks it's an order)

Fifteen days pass,

American Boss: Where's your report?

Greek employee: finish it tomorrow. (It actually takes 30 days to complete.)

American Boss: You did agree to finish the report today.

The next day, the Greek employee handed in his resignation.

Please analyze the conversation between the American boss and the Greek employee from a communication point of view, explain why the Greek employee resigned and make suggestions.

(1) In the process of human communication, there are certain peculiarities, i.e., due to the differences in people's political viewpoints, economic status, age, experiences, religions, habits, etc., there will be different interpretations and attributions of the same things or conversations in the process of communication.

(2) In the conversation of the case, the American boss asked the Greeks for the time to finish the report, which is actually asking for the opinion of the Greek employees (which is related to the traditional habits of the American management), and the Greek employees are not unaware of the time needed to finish the report, but just want to let the American boss to give an order (the Greek employees are accustomed to the commanding management).After 15 days have passed, the American boss wants the report (to keep the After 15 days, the American boss wants the report (to keep his promise), and the Greek employee has done his best to complete the 30-day job in 16 days (and sees no problem with a delay). The Greek employee thinks the American boss is looking for trouble, so he has no choice but to quit.

(3) Therefore, it is important to recognize and understand individual differences and their effects in the communication process to ensure the effectiveness of communication. For example, we usually say that empathy, put yourself in the shoes of others, etc. is the means of effective communication.

Case Study Question 5

The boss of a private enterprise through the study of the theory of incentives, was very inspired, and set out to put into practice. He gives his subordinate employees more work and responsibility, and motivates them through praise and common sense. As a result, instead of increasing the motivation of the employees, they became strongly dissatisfied with the boss's approach and believed that he was using subterfuge to exploit the employees.

Analyze the reasons for the failure of the boss's approach and make suggestions based on what you have learned about motivation and other theories.

(1) From Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs theory, we know that human needs are stratified into physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, status and respect needs, and self-actualization needs. Maslow believed that higher level needs can only occur when lower level needs are satisfied. Dominant needs determine human behavior.

(2) The owner of the private enterprise in the case may have neglected the lower level needs of the employees, such as physiological and safety needs, which are probably the dominant needs of the employees. The failure to treat the symptoms of the problem is what led to the failure of the private enterprise owner's motivational practices.

(3) To make incentives effective, the real needs of employees should be understood and satisfied. In the implementation process, the principle of material benefits should be adhered to, randomized, to create incentives, the combination of material benefits and spiritual encouragement.

Case Study Question 6

The appraisal system used by the U.S. Air Force is typical of the performance evaluations of many U.S. public *** affairs agencies. This appraisal system requires that the immediate superior of each officer below the rank of general make a written report for each officer once a year. The format of the appraisal report is designed to be uniform for the different branches and ranks of the military. The forms left small margins, and the evaluators were limited to summarizing the performance of individual officers in condensed language.

The evaluation system was widely criticized in the mid-1970s because it lacked a professionalized definition of the employee's job assignment, which led to subjective and irrational evaluations, such as the assessment of staff leadership, for which the methodology was not very useful.

Assessment has led to modifications in the appraisal system. Within each unit, the percentage of high and low performance evaluations has been made mandatory, and the evaluation process has been modified so that each officer is evaluated by his or her primary supervisor, as well as by an additional evaluator and a reviewer*** with him or her.

Questions:

(1) Using a managerial-administrative approach, analyze what is wrong with the evaluation system in this case?

The essence of the administrative approach is management through duties and positions in an administrative organization. It places special emphasis on duties, authority, and positions, rather than on individual abilities or privileges. The evaluation system of the United States Air Force emphasized the evaluation of direct superiors, and the masses were not directly involved in the evaluation, so that the results of the evaluation were affected to a certain extent, and the existence of subjectivity in the evaluation reduced the quality of the evaluation. Thus this assessment system was widely criticized in the mid-1970s.

(2) Can you suggest a better assessment method for them?

In my opinion, the assessment of employee performance should pay attention to:

a. The method of mass participation, that is to say, the performance of the appraisee increases the transparency;

b. The method of self-assessment, so as to make the results of the assessment to reduce the large discrepancy;

c. The combination of quantitative and qualitative assessment, combined with the determination of the appraisee's performance;

d. To look at the performance today, but also look at yesterday's performance;

d. To look at today's performance, but also look at yesterday's performance and analyze the study in a comprehensive manner.

Case Study Question 7

In the 1980s, Lee * Eckhardt rose to fame by saving one of the U.S. automobile giants, Chrysler, from near bankruptcy. Today, Chrysler faces another challenge: surviving in an environment of overheated competition and predicted overcapacity in the world's automobile industry. In order to survive this crisis and compete successfully again, Chrysler will have to address the following issues:

First, the overcapacity of the world's automobile industry means that all automobile makers will do everything in their power to maintain or increase their market share. U.S. car companies are going to rely on increased investment to become more efficient, and Japanese automakers continue to build plants in the United States. European and Korean manufacturers also want to increase their market share in the United States. Iacocca recognized the need to cut prices on certain models, and to do so he used discounts and other incentives to lure consumers into Chrysler's car showrooms. However, Iacocca and Chrysler also believed that price was the only way to get more buyers. But in the long run, it was not the best method. The second problem Chrysler had to solve was to improve the quality and performance of the cars it produced. Iacocca recognizes that it is not good to focus too much on marketing and finances and give up product development to other manufacturers. It was also recognized that it was important to focus on the high quality of after-sales service proposed to consumers. Ekka's third problem was combining the moves of American Motors Corporation (AMC) and Chrysler. The merger of AMC meant that Chrysler had to fire many of its employees, which included both blue-collar workers and white-collar workers. The attitudes of the remaining employees toward such firings ranged from anger to concern, creating enormous pressure on Chrysler's management: it was difficult to work closely with labor, avoid unrest, and ensure the quality of the cars and the productivity of the workforce.

In order to survive, Chrysler recognized that managers at all levels of the company, as well as employees in design, marketing, engineering, and production, needed to work together as a team to develop and build quality products that matched consumer needs. Chrysler's future is also going to be based on improving efficiency. Today, Chrysler has focused on reducing costs, improving quality and relying on a team approach to increase the speed of product development and develop better relationships with suppliers and consumers. In other areas, Iacocca asked suppliers to provide cost reduction proposals - he has received thousands of such proposals. The key to cost reduction, says Ekka, is to "get all 10,000 employees talking about cost reduction."

Iacocca has now retired as president of Chrysler. Some analysts are beginning to see tough times for Chrysler. But one current executive says Chrysler has one big advantage: It has had a crisis before and survived it, so Chrysler can learn valuable things from the past.

Questions:

(1) How can the problems facing Chrysler be solved using contemporary management methods?

Ekka suggests four approaches to solving the problems faced, which are basically headache and footache approaches. In contemporary times, to solve the dilemma, it is very important to the user first, generally to the user's needs as the starting point for business; enterprises should have a new concept of social responsibility to carry out business activities; innovation of the product mix, and continue to introduce products with high technological content to supply the market; clear for the human service and so on. Aimless merger of enterprises is not the best policy, according to the needs of the market, there are large enterprises, as well as small and medium-sized enterprises.

(2) How to solve the problems faced by Chrysler with the idea of Contingent Change Management?

Contingent change management thinking is that the objective environment is constantly changing conditions, the business behavior of enterprises to adapt to this need, and constantly put forward new measures. According to Chrysler's situation, first of all, we should use various measures to deal with the backlog of cars, which is an important way to recoup funds; the production of improved new cars to supply the market, and strive to have a high rate of return on capital; and to deal with the relationship with the staff to improve their motivation. Among the arrangements for the remaining employees, should follow the practice of Japanese companies, less to dismiss, but to develop the economy to accommodate a larger number of employees.

(3) What should Chrysler do today?

In today's world, Chrysler should grasp the conditions of networking, knowledge, and informationization, and fully access all kinds of information to conduct its business. The "three" are complementary and indispensable, which requires the Chrysler Corporation to absorb more useful talents, and strengthen the power of the Knowledge Society, which is the guarantee of economic growth. It is also necessary to have the concept of sustainable development, have all kinds of resources, and make good use of all kinds of resources. Finally, it should use all kinds of methods to develop the economy according to the needs.

Case Study Question 8

Lundy Automobile Distribution Company is a newly established enterprise with a number of sales departments.

When the company was first established, in order to give concrete expression to democratic management, the development of a number of accountability systems, the operation is still smooth. With the passage of time, the staff of the mutual shirking of things that happen from time to time, but in dealing with this kind of thing, and can not say who should be responsible for, so that some things will be left unsettled. To promote democratic management, the company sought to involve subordinates in certain important decisions. They introduced a senior group system, whereby a non-manager was selected from each sales department and *** five people were singled out, with whom the company's supervisors met once a month to discuss solutions to various problems and implementation strategies. Despite this, people's motivation is not fully mobilized.

After two years of operation, the company's operating income has a certain growth, but the enterprise's pre-tax profit growth is not fast, the second year than the first year of only 1.8% growth. This has caused a great deal of distress to the executives.

Question:

(1) The company has developed a responsibility system, but then there is a lack of responsibility, please analyze what causes?

The principle of responsibility involves clarifying everyone's duties; position design and authority delegation should be reasonable; rewards and punishments should be clear, fair and timely. Although Lundy Company has formulated a responsibility system, it may not have done a good job in clarifying each person's responsibility, position design and delegation of authority, and thus there are cases of unclear responsibility and shirking of responsibilities.

(2) From the analysis of human-centered management, how should we mobilize the enthusiasm of employees?

To mobilize the enthusiasm of the staff, the implementation of the "people-centered" principle is very important. Lundy's five non-managerial subordinates to participate in the discussion of the issue of the meeting, and did not mobilize everyone's enthusiasm, so that the operation of the second year, the pre-tax profit growth is not much. This is something to be aware of.

(3) Please provide a brief analysis of the reasons for the company's slow economic growth.

The main reasons: a. people's enthusiasm is not fully mobilized; b. rewards and punishments should be clear, fair and timely, which will make the employees work seriously and diligently; c. the position design and delegation of authority are not ideal, and thus things are not handled effectively.

Case Study Question 9

A city in northern Jiangsu is one of the poorest cities in Jiangsu. There are only a very few enterprises with high technology content in the city, and Kechuang Company is one of them. It was originally a state-owned enterprise, mainly producing transformers. However, it was poorly run and suffered serious losses. In order to accelerate economic development, the city government decided to let private entrepreneurs buy out the property rights of Kechuang Company at a relatively low price to form a joint-stock company. The condition of the buyout is to keep more than one hundred people among the original four hundred workers. Xiangke is a very smart and capable and has a relatively good quality of entrepreneurs, higher education, in the Special Administrative Region has engaged in business. After acceptance, he carried out two reforms: one was to increase the proportion of investment in scientific and technological development; the other was to increase the proportion of cost of sales. The former was raised from 1% to 5% and the latter from 3% to 12%. Both measures boosted business operations relatively strongly. However, a considerable portion of these high percentages of cost of sales was used by product promoters as kickbacks or gifts to the people concerned to open the market. Xiangke believes that the enterprise's products now have an optimistic outlook, even though they do not have the highest market share in the industry. In addition, in the second year after the restructuring, he dismissed some of the workers left behind by the original enterprise. It is estimated that it won't take long for a significant number of the more than 100 workers retained to be fired.

Xiangke believes he has been caught in a dilemma between economics and morality, between the enterprise's own development and fulfillment of its social responsibility. First, as a local window enterprise, its development will surely promote the development of the regional economy, however, raising the cost of goods sold will foster some unethical phenomena in business operation and create unfair competition. Secondly, when buying out the property rights at a low price, he promised to accept more than one hundred workers, and in practice, a considerable part of them proved to be difficult to meet his management requirements. As a result, either a lot of money was spent on training these workers or they were dismissed. In doing so, on the one hand, the promise made at the time of restructuring could not be honored, and on the other hand, it would lead to new social problems. For the sake of the development of this enterprise, Xiangke chose the latter.

Questions:

(1) What do you think the operator should choose in this dilemma?

Xiangke used to increase the cost of goods sold to promote the product in the short term is effective, but in the long run to consider the problem, to determine the fall into the economy and morality, their own development and social responsibility in the confusion. How to choose, respondents can talk about their own understanding.

(2) Can there be the best of both worlds? If not, what should be the focus of the chosen solution?

Can there be the best of both worlds, it should be said that there will be. As in the case of today's state-owned enterprise system reform, there will be a reduction in the number of employees, which is an unavoidable reality. The problem is how to solve the difficulties, and the practice of Japanese enterprises can be referred to. Therefore, the idea of the way to solve the difficulties is: a. try to arrange the surplus employees, not to push them to the society; b. increase the investment in product science and technology, and improve the market value of the products; c. pay attention to the sustainable development, save and use the resources.

Case Study Question 10

The Watson Group is the largest banking corporation in the United States with 3,300 branches. The group is recognized as a leader in innovative banking and is considered to have a competent leadership group. Throughout the 1980s, this banking organization was profitable almost every year. Despite its strong presence in the financial sector and its good management strength, the Watson Group has recently been affected by the worldwide banking crisis - many banks have failed in record numbers. Three areas in particular have been troubling the Watson Group: poor performance in US government debt deals, the woes of the company's London division and the failure to expand its power in the investment banking sector.

Watson's managers recently announced plans to follow in the footsteps of many other U.S. companies and shrink economically. The company has not been in financial trouble recently, but it hopes that proactive behavior will prevent future problems. As part of the contraction, the company decided to cut 2,000 jobs. As expected, there was a strong reaction from the company's employees and two employees committed suicide. The increased stress led to a significant increase in workplace accidents and errors.

The Watson Group recognized the problems that accompanied austerity and took steps to help employees cope with the uncertainty they faced, and the results were good.

Questions:

(1) How did Watson Group cope with the changing environment?

Shrinking the size of the economy and cutting the number of employees as a result of the problems faced by the Watson Group in the three areas of the environment is something that is bound to happen in business operations. In particular, the Watson Group is not experiencing financial difficulties, and due to technological developments, corporate production processes may have to be refined, which would also trigger a reduction in staff. Therefore, these practices of the Watson Group are normal and it is important to help the employees to cope with the uncertainty that they are facing, which is important. The points of traditional Chinese management thought are informative in dealing with these issues.

(2) What should be done about these problems within the Watson Group?

There should be innovative thinking in dealing with these issues arising within the Watson Group. Such as knowledge and employees who possess knowledge are more important than natural resources such as land and capital; people-oriented thinking should be the guiding ideology; employees who possess knowledge will be given the right to claim the surplus of the enterprise; pay attention to the use of intellectual property rights and intangible assets; focus on enhancing the core competencies that are differentiated from those of other enterprises, and give up the non-core business; sustainable development instead of profit maximization; and replace the market share with the market value of the company; The establishment of learning organizations; virtual companies are replacing the traditional entity-based enterprises and so on, are available for reference.