Q. Read the case study given below and answer the questions given at the end
Case Study
Coping Strategies
This stress audit case study is about Company A, a 100-year-old UK manufacturing organization. The company employs 15,000 people and operates on 50 sites. It primarily supplies the agricultural machinery markets.
The company set itself the objective of pulling itself out of a stagnant loss-making situation and to regain market dominance. It set out to accomplish this by completely redesigning its manufacturing techniques through lessons learnt from Japanese companies. The company also implemented a large-scale programme of organizational restructuring involving decentralization and the establishment of cost centers. However, the payoffs were not as great as expected, even after several years of development.
The programme of large-scale change, in the context of an already ailing business had improved performance at a slower than expected rate. Individuals were experiencing stress also. Changes were being implemented and performance was being improved slowly but at a high personal cost (in terms of health) and high organization cost (in terms of disappointing efficiency increases).
Senior managers presumed that middle managers were experiencing the worst stress, being caught between upper management and the work force. A stress audit was conducted with middle managers at each site. The hypothesis was confirmed by the stress audit. An analysis of the stress audit results indicated that stress levels were greater than expected and that many middle managers had adopted stressed styles of behaviour. The stress audit revealed that many of the middle managers perceived also that several of the changes going on around them were outside their influence or control.
Analysis of stress sources and stress coping strategies employed by the middle managers revealed that the organizational development effort itself had the effect of being a source of stress. This in turn made it difficult for people to cope with the change of working practices.
The organization decided therefore to implement additional programmes of stress counseling, and to address the issues of roll clarity and participation in change planning. The latter were seen as complimentary inputs to the development process. Efficiency gains and a reduction of stress were realized as a result.
Based on the above case study, what steps the company should take to reduce Organisational stress?
Read the case study given below and answer the questions given at the end
System Installation
A rug manufacturer and importer wanted to have his own computer and run applications away from the parent company's mainframe. A computer consultant (with no knowledge of the rug business) did a feasibility study. He recommended a system with which he had design experience.The firm leased the system and signed a contract with the consultant to do the installation and training. The consultants brought in two programmers and a data base specialist to convert the files and train personnel. For weeks, everyone was busy with what was bound to be a successful system.
As a first step, the company decided to compare the reports generated by the new system with those available from the main computer. The procedure was to run invoices first, followed by accounts receivable and payable. The first inventory reports seemed way out of line with reality. Both the format of the reports and the data were off. The few invoices sent out brought hostile complaints from customers who were overcharged for their orders. Further attempts to correct the errors only generated more inaccuracies. The company decided to go back to the old system and cancel the whole project.The matter ended up in court with the consultant demanding the balance due him on the project. The company filed a counter suit claiming irreparable damage to the firm. An investigation discovered that despite management's lack of experience with computers, they decided to convert three major applications at the same time. The employees, not having been forewarned of the conversion, panicked. Prior to the computer, they had undocumented methods of invoicing, keeping track of inventory, and billing procedures that the consultant never knew of or inquired about. To make matters worse, he did not even know that the parent company's warehouse system had a terminal that used the mainframe to update inventory. System testing was also a disaster. Only real data were used. The resulting output was so unwieldy that no one could audit or verify its accuracy until it was too late. With no interface between the system being tested and the mainframe, there was no way the files could be copied. The consultant decided to go ahead with the incoming data only and to worry later about copying the files on the mainframe. Documentation and audit procedures were virtually nonexistent. No one seemed to know who changed what. There was no way of telling whether errors were caused by the software or by incorrectly entered data. The contract was well written. It simply committed the consultant to install a computer system and the company to pay the consultant $75 per hour plus out-of-pocket expenses. The consultant never really knew what the company wanted, and the company had no work with the consultant. The employees stayed out of the ways, since they had not been consulted and were not knowledgeable about computers. The programmers, in their opinions, were simply obnoxious. Another consultant who came in to evaluate the mess thought the whole installation was primitive and lacked state-of-the-art software.
What went wrong in this case? Be specific.
Elaborate on the importance of a computer contract. What elements would you have emphasized in the contract? Why?
Does a contract save an installation from failure? In what way? What testing procedure should have been followed? Explain