Management Case Studies: Problem Solving, Social Responsibility, And Decision Making

Case study 1

1. Toyota’s main capability is the Toyota production system, which is an excellent example of quality and efficiency. Toyota have a four p model as their management system, elements of the four P model included, problem solving, people, partners, process and philosophy. The main concept behind the management principles are, “Good thinking means good Product”.  Taiichi Ohno is the genius behind the innovative idea of TPS, these ideas brought revolution in the the auto industry, these ideas changed the traditional method of manufacturing. Their focus was on the detail and noble frugality(Deng, Kang & Low, 2013).

Problem solving- They believe in Solving each problems and issues faced by the employees as well as the customers.

People- People includes all the stake holders of the Company, customers, suppliers, employees and the public as a whole, they believed that for their organization be successful it should consider all the stakeholders important, and realize their social responsibility towards the stakeholders (El-Masry & Kamal, 2013).

Partners- Partners refer to the people and organizations that the company work with, including the suppliers and the media partners of Toyota.

1. The long-standing commitment of Toyota towards its core principles of manufacturing was lost because of the new executives for whom the main focus was growth and increased market share, in order to grow and beat the competition in the automobile market. The company in order to gain profit and increase its market share reduced the focus in the efficiency in the manufacturing process. It lost the purity and the old principles it once used to follow. The lesson learned from here is that one should consider the profits important but not that much important that it is gained by compromising the interest of others, motivation should not be based on the self-interest but on the good of the society as well (Cheng, Ioannou & Serafeim, 2014).
2. Yes, it was wise decision made by Akio Toyoda to apologize, as per the omnipotent view of management, it is the manager’s decisions and actions that affect the outcomes. The customer complaints and the accidents were all because of the poor decision making of the managers who gave importance to growth, expansion and capturing the market share and completely ignored safety issues. They lacked efficiency in their manufacturing process like before and this is the reason they lost the trust of the customers.
3. Other organizations can learn a lot from the organizational culture of Toyota. They should learn that organizations should consider the omnipotent view of management rather than the symbolic view of management and focus on social responsibility rather than the individual benefits. The organizations should focus on improvement and development of the product and the services they offer to the customers, rather than only focusing on  growth and capturing market share.

1. When David Morgan became the CEO of Westpac he noticed that the society was very disappointed by the big corporate. The society believed that big corporate only thought about making profit and they cared less about their social responsibility, people were also very cynic about the banking industry, that was because the industry did not follow much social responsibility hence David Morgan decided to focus on the Social responsibility and followed sustainability approach(Pomering, 2017).
2. The main stakeholders of the Westpac are the customers, the employees, the shareholders, investors, customers and the society as a whole who are affected by the company are the stakeholders. None of the concerns of the stakeholders was in conflict with each other because the organization was socially very responsible and considered the sustainability very important for the growth of the organization. This has put a very positive impact on the CEO of Westpac because the company gained goodwill from all the activity is did as its social responsibility. The concerns of the stakeholders differ, the concerns of the employees will be mostly related to the work environment and whether they will be appreciated fairly for the effort they put, appreciation includes both monetary and non-monetary forms of rewards. The investors will be concerned about the returns they will get through their investment decision. The main concern of the customer is the value they will get from the products and services that they have paid for, the extent to which the product is going to fulfill their needs. Shareholders have concerns related the dividend they will get.  The main concerns of the society is that, to what extent the organization is going to be ethical in its practices and how much is the organization going to consider its social responsibilities (Carroll, 2015).
3. The CEO of Westpac faced social dilemmas like every other financial institutions and banks face in the banking industry. They could have ignored the social responsibility, other banks were criticized for unethical means for profits, the same kind of dilemmas were faced by Westpac, other social responsibilities included ignoring the environmental sustainability, the other responsibility they had as a corporate was community services for the aboriginal groups of Australia and New Zealand(Cornelissen & Cornelissen, 2017).  

4  (a) The social responsibility of the CEO is to focus on the duties and the responsibilities they have towards the society, he should focus on leading the organization towards working for the society, thinking about the welfare of the people and not focusing only on individual needs but rather focus on the needs of the whole society. The CEO should make sure that its organization follows all ethical ways for operations, ethical consideration should be the given utmost priority by the organization and the corporate, if they want to create a goodwill in the society (Blowfield & Murray, 2014). 

• (b) Westpac engaged in socially responsible behavior because they considered the importance of the society and the community in which they operated. When all the other banks were motivated by the profits and growth. Westpac believed that any organization could grow only if they considered that the social responsibilities of the corporate are important. There are only two methods through which the organization can become socially responsible either by, legislation and regulation or by intelligent view of long term interest, the CEO chose the second method, which was adopting an intelligent approach for surviving in the long run. So the company’s strategy to survive in the market in the long run was to be socially responsible. This strategy inspired by the belief that the CEO of Westpac had motivated the actions of the organization(Bowman, 2014).

1. The viruses like blaster B changed the approach the virus hunters had before, when the virus blaster B was launched the virus hunters started working more effectively and efficiently to fight the onslaught of blaster B. The organization realized they need more talent to work in a better way in this kind of situations, therefore it is the nature of the viruses that affects the efficiency and effectiveness of working of the virus hunters(Boesso, Kumar & Michelon, 2015).
2. While managing the crisis of the virus attacks on the computers and the softwares the professionals, face a lot of problems. They have to analyze the of nature of the virus and the impact it can put on the computer systems, the intensity of the viruses affecting the systems determines how much efforts the team members need to put to fight the onslaught of the viruses. They have to decide which candidates will be appropriate to be in the team to manage the virus attacks(By & Burnes, 2013).
3. Team structure would be the best design that would be appropriate for the Symantec because the tasks that Symantec performs requires professional team of candidates who are efficient and talented in fighting the onslaught of the viruses, these kind of activities cannot be done by individually, it requires professionals to work in teams. (Foss, Lyngsie & Zahra, 2013).
4. The  main challenges faced by present organization design is balancing and differentiation and integration, differentiation is the process through which people and resources are allocated to the tasks, integration is the process of coordination of the various tasks, functions and divisions so that they can work together and not at cross-purposes. Differentiation is the main challenge is relevant to the Symantec because allocating resources and people is a very big challenge, based on the complexity of the tasks the team members are selected, it is very complex process to identify the skills of the employees and accordingly allocate them tasks(Foss, Lyngsie & Zahra, 2013).

Decision-making are the primary function of the managers and a very significant aspect of management. A manager daily faces several situations, that requires them to take crucial decisions therefore it is their responsibility to make right decisions that would not adversely affect the organization. Managerial actions and organizational actions, both are determined by the decision-making. Decision-making is consciously choosing a course of action from the given alternatives.  Efficiency of a manger is determined by the decision he takes. There are various situations where the mangers have to take important decisions, those situations include, financial decisions, in an organization managers need to take major financial related decisions, there are human resource related decisions that the HR managers take, sales related decisions that a sales managers take, operational managers take decisions related to operational process and methods. These decisions can be small decisions that might not put a greater impact on the organization but even the small decisions have a certain amount of influence, the managers also take big and important decisions that affect other departments and the organization as a whole. The duty of the managers is to analyze the decisions carefully and the impact it will put on the organization, the managers are required to evaluate the decisions, and see carefully focus on the disadvantages it has and the advantages the organization will have through that decision-making.

Case study 2

Decision making for organizational good is never based on individual benefits, rather it should be motivated by the good of all the organization as a whole. It is the duty of the mangers to focus on what are the benefits of their decision-making

The three major decisions taken by the financial managers are

Investment decision

The investment decision is related to choosing the assets, the fixed assets and the current assets in which the firm should invest. The managers need to evaluate and see which assets will bring maximum profit to the organization, if the organization invests on that particular asset. Here the finance managers play a very important role in deciding how the organization is going to spend the funds, considering the risk, return and liquidity aspects (Benn, Dunphy & Griffiths, 2014). 

Financing decision

Another most important decision is financing decision in which the finance mangers need to decide the source of finance, they have to decide how much amount is to be raised from which source. The finance manager should look at the capital structure of the company, the best mix of debt, equity and internal financing should be determined.

Dividend decision

Dividend decision that the finance manager takes is related to the distribution of the profits of the company. It is the duty of the finance manager to decide how much surplus profit is to be distributed to equity shareholders as dividend or how many needs to be kept as retained earnings, based on the growth plans and the investment opportunities (Larcker & Tayan, 2015). 

Decisions taken by HR managers

There are several decisions that the HR managers take related to the workforce of the company, recruitment decisions, selection decisions, placement decisions, decisions related to the wages and salaries of the employees, decisions related to the training and development of the employees, retrenchment decisions, and decisions related to incentives (Larcker & Tayan, 2015).  

Recruitment decisions- It is duty of the Hr managers to decide the type of recruitment decisions are they going to take for recruiting candidates. Whether it would be internal recruitment or external decisions, the methods that should be used for recruitment, through aptitude tests, physical tests, personal interviews, physical tests and the various methods in which the eligibility of the candidates will be evaluated, how the employees will be judged.

Selection decisions- The HR manager based on the results of the tests conducted needs to decide which the candidates that will be most suitable for the organization as per the requirements of the organization in terms of skills that are required in that organization.

Case study 3

Salary and wages decision

HR mangers take decisions related to the salary and wages of the employees, they have to take unbiased decisions so that no employee is unfairly paid.

Training and development decisions

It is the duty of the HR manager to take decide when should be the training and development sessions be conducted. He decides which employees need training and development sessions. The venue where the will the training will be conducted, which are the employees that need the training, which employees need development. The HR managers decides what kind of training is required, technology, soft skills, legal, safety, quality, team and the development programs like the personality development programs.

Incentive decisions

It is the duty of the HR manager to take decisions on the incentives given to the employees, who have showed excellent performances by working hard over the targets set by the company.

Retrenchment decisions

It is the duty of the HR manager to take decisions related to the redundancies of the employees. The HR managers based on the skills of the employees takes the redundancies decisions which employees the organization should keep and which the employees should be terminated.

Sales manager decisions

The sales manager needs to take the various decisions related to the sales strategy. Decisions are needed to be taken for the sales team, they take decisions related to the units of any product is needed to be sold in which area, they take decisions related to the target areas where which sales team is going to operate. They also decide that which segment of the society is their product going to target. They decide which sales executive will operate in which sales area.

Operations Manager

The duty of the operation managers is to take decisions about the operational process of the company, the methods that will be chosen for the operations manager decides the operation. The operations manager takes decisions related to the technologies, only if required, for a particular operation. Operations manager take all the important decisions related to the process and the methods that are used in the operations.

Intuition plays a very important role in decision-making, it is the intuition that helps in deciding which decisions should be taken and which should be avoided. Decision making are always based on the anticipation of the outcomes of the future. Managers have to believe their intuitions at times when the outcome cannot be calculated, it is not always possible to know what will be the outcome of a particular decision before hand. So managers are sometimes forced to take blind leap, but that blind leap should have some kind of logical reasoning. Intuitions should be based on some logic that perfectly fits in to the situations. When the experiences and the past results cannot be anticipated to occur in the present situations then the managers need to use their intuitions for decision-making, for new situations, people normally take intuitive decisions.  Generally, in crises managers use their intuitions for decision-making process.

Major decisions taken by financial managers

While most of the decision-making is based on quantative and rational analysis, the other alternative to it is use of intuitions. There are situations where the decision making process requires intuitions, when there is a requirement of expediment decisions making and there is a need of rapid responses, the situations does not give enough time for rapid rational analysis in such situations intuition plays a significant role in the decision making process. When the factors on which the analysis is based changes, then intuitions becomes the basis of decisions. When the problem is not properly understood, then intuitions help in decision-making. Decisions are based on the intuitions when the factors that need to be taken into account cannot be articulated. When the information given for decision-making is incomplete or conflicting then there is a need for intuitive decision-making. When there is no precedent to a particular situation, decision making is based on intuitions.

When the managers fail to rationally and quantatively fail to analyze a particular situation they make wrong decisions. Managers in certain situations fail to analyze the advantages and the disadvantages of that particular situation then they often take wrong decisions.

There are several reasons why the managers take wrong decisions.  When the managers rely too much on the past experiences they often take wrong decisions. It is very important to analyze the present situations properly, often the managers depend on the past experiences and apply it on the present situations, which is very dangerous for the organization. Wrong judging the present situation and thinking that the conditions of the present situation would fit with the past situation often lead to wrong decision making. When the managers or the leaders are addicted to the corporate politics, there is chance the decision taken will be politically motivated and not rationally or logically motivated. Political motivations does not allow to make objective decisions and manage the responsibilities that lies on the shoulders of the leaders and the managers, often these motivations do not align with their core beliefs and they end up taking wrong decisions. When the managers lack the clarity of the purpose, they take wrong decisions. Clarity of decisions allows taking decisions that are very consistent, when the purpose is disrupted there is chance that the decision-making will be poor. When there is mismanagement of the resources, there is a chance that the decision-making will be poor, the ineffective use and understanding of resources does not allow to take right decisions. When the managers lack the ability to see the opportunities in wide angle they fail to make good decisions. When the managers are too much motivated by their individual interests and the common interest do not motivate them they make decisions that are ethically and legally very wrong. Generally, it is found that people who acquire power develop confidence and in their abilities, they end up making wrong decisions. Arrogance is also one of the reasons of wrong decision making by the leaders and the managers, when the managers think they are right even if the information given is conflicting, and they are arrogant enough to listen to other people they end up making wrong decisions.

Decisions taken by HR managers

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