Bitley Corporation is a large conglomerate in the United States, headquartered in Chicago, with 450 branches and operating more than 9,000 kinds of products.

Management case analysis 4 cases:

A company that produces traditional handicrafts in a certain place has gradually developed and grown along with my country's opening-up policy. Sales and exports have increased by an average of more than 15% in the past ten years. The number of employees has also increased from less than 200 to more than 2,000. The company still adopts the linear organizational structure of the past. The top leader of the company, Director Wang, is in charge of both sales and production. He is a multi-faceted and all-round manager. Something happened in the company recently, which made Director Wang overwhelmed. First: Production is basically based on orders, and production instructions are basically conveyed by the factory director. When delivery is tight, the factory director often takes the lead and burns midnight oil with his employees. Although the delivery was on time, the quality was not up to par, and the product was returned and a claim was required; secondly: in the past, the company had only a small number of recruiters, so Director Wang could make the decision alone. Nowadays, nearly 50 college and technical secondary school students are recruited every year, and it also involves personnel training. The previous approach will no longer work. Third: In the past, Factory Director Wang always hired people temporarily to do logistics and other work. Now there is too much work in this area, and people are hired temporarily to do it, and it is no longer possible to do it well. For all these reasons, previously effective management methods have lost their effectiveness.

Question: Please explain the problems and suggested measures in the enterprise from the perspective of organizational work. Answer points: (1) Judging from the information given in the case, the company obviously adopts a linear organizational structure. The advantages of this organizational structure are: The advantages of the linear organizational structure: The structure is relatively simple and everyone understands them To whom and to whom reports should be made. Responsibilities and authorities are clear. Each person has one and only one direct supervisor, so decisions may be made easier and faster. Disadvantages: When the organization is large and the business is relatively complex, it is difficult for all management functions to be concentrated on one person. (2) Obviously when the company has grown to more than 2,000 people, the linear organizational structure restricts the normal development of the company. Just like the dilemma faced by Factory Director Wang in the case, it is no longer effective and efficient for one person to take care of everything. (3) Enterprises need to adopt an organizational structure form suitable for enterprise development, such as a linear-staff organizational structure with specialized division of labor, and consider establishing a production planning department, human resources department, and logistics department. In this way, the advantages of the line-staff organizational structure can be brought into play, that is, line managers at all levels have corresponding functional agencies and personnel as staff and assistants, so they can effectively manage the headquarters to adapt to the more complex and detailed modern management work. characteristics, and each department is uniformly commanded by line personnel, which meets the requirements of modern organizational activities that require unified command and a strict responsibility system.

Case: As my country joins the WTO, companies are facing new opportunities and challenges. In order to adapt to the competition from domestic and foreign countries and ensure the long-term healthy development of the enterprise, a large state-owned enterprise realized that it needed to change its concept and accelerate the establishment of a modern enterprise system. At the same time, it needed to work hard to improve its own management level. And training is the first step. In the past, companies have conducted a lot of training, but they basically hired a few well-known experts on a temporary basis and adopted a training method in which all employees attended and attended large classes. There was little control over the training process. After the training, some people thought it was useful at work, while others thought it was useless and did not learn what they wanted to learn. Others reported that the training method was too simple and did not combine with the actual work, etc.

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

Answer points: (1) Although enterprises realize the importance of training as a precursor. However, as shown in the case, companies still have many problems in training, such as monotonous training content and methods, insufficient training process control and training effect evaluation, etc. In order to ensure the effectiveness of training, the following aspects should be considered. (2) In response to the problems in the case, the measures that should be taken are: first, manage the training work; second, ensure the diversity of training content.

The training content should include political and ideological education, business knowledge and management; third, a variety of training methods should be used, including systematic theoretical training, job rotation, visits and inspections, etc. (3) In short, during the training process, the following issues should generally be addressed: training work should be combined with corporate goals; superior managers should support and participate in the training work; teachers should be selected and trained well; training content should be targeted; training Methods should be combined with training objects and training content; theory and practice should be combined.

Case: The boss of a private enterprise was greatly inspired by studying relevant motivation theories and started to put them into practice. He gives subordinate employees more work and responsibility and motivates them through praise and common sense. The result was counterproductive. Instead of improving the enthusiasm of the employees, they were strongly dissatisfied with the boss's actions and believed that he was using tricks to exploit employees.

Question: Based on the theories you have learned about motivation, please analyze the reasons for the failure of the boss’s approach and make suggestions.

Answer points: (1) From Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, we know that human needs are hierarchical, including physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, status and respect needs, and self Implement needs. Maslow believed that only when lower-level needs are satisfied, higher-level needs will emerge. Dominance needs determine human behavior. (2) In this case, the boss of the private enterprise may have ignored the lower-level needs of employees, such as physiological and safety needs, and these needs are likely to be the dominant needs of employees. The failure of the private enterprise owner's incentive approach failed because he was unable to prescribe the right medicine. (3) To make incentives effective, the real needs of employees should be understood and met. During the implementation process, we should adhere to the principle of material interests, adapt to circumstances, create incentive conditions, and combine material interests with spiritual encouragement.

Case: Beatle Company is a large conglomerate in the United States, headquartered in Chicago, with 450 branches and operating more than 9,000 products, many of which are such as Clark's Candy, Trader Joe's China Food, etc., are all brand-name products. The company's annual sales reach more than $9 billion. Over the years, BitTree has grown rapidly through an aggressive strategy of buying other companies to grow its own. The company's traditional approach is: whenever it purchases a company or manufacturer, it generally maintains its original products and makes it a market for new products of the joint company; on the other hand, it adopts the form of decentralization for all subordinate branches. Newly purchased branches or factories are allowed to maintain their original production and management structures, which are not subject to the restrictions and constraints of the joint company. Due to the implementation of this strategy, the company became a joint company composed of many branches with no unified goals and little connection with each other. In 1976, after the chairman responsible for this development strategy retired, Dem was appointed chairman under such circumstances. New chairman Dem's intention is to move the company in his new direction. Under his new strategy, Dem sold 56 of its subsidiaries, but at the same time bought Northwest Beverage Industries. According to Dem, in addition to problems in the direction of development, the company also faces two other major problems: One is that each of its branches is faced with the problem of introducing and promoting new products to the society. In order to stimulate the enthusiasm of each branch, At work, Dem decided to adopt a bonus system to reward branch managers who have done outstanding work under their subordinates with an annual reward of US$10,000. However, for these branch managers whose income far exceeds 10,000 yuan, a 10,000 yuan bonus may not be much of a stimulus. Another more serious problem faced is how to raise awareness of the necessity of adding additional staff officers and how to play the role of line and staff officers while maintaining the original decentralization system. Dem decided to assign additional staff officers to each of his departments to better help each team carry out its work. However, some managers believe that it is not enough to send additional staff officers. Others believe that it is not necessary to send additional staff officers. A single liaison person can be used to contact several units, that is, a centralized management method.

The company has a dedicated financial department, but this financial department simply cannot control the financial activities of so many branches. Therefore, the joint company headquarters cannot even understand and grasp the payment of checks by subordinate departments, etc.

Questions: (1) Can BitTree do a better job at decentralization? (2) What do you think of Dem’s motivational methods? (3) What is the role of staff officers? How to coordinate the relationship between line and staff personnel?

Answer points: (1) BitTree could do a better job at decentralizing power. The current degree of decentralization of Bitri Company is very high, and each subsidiary branch basically divides and conquers. This management structure makes the organization very loose and the headquarters lacks control. In today's increasingly fierce market competition, organizations need to form an overall strength, which is like punching with more force than each finger. Bitri Company needs to balance centralization and decentralization. Only moderate centralization on the current basis can form a greater overall synergy. (2) Dem's motivation method may be difficult to achieve the desired results, and meager rewards may not have enough motivating effect. To achieve a better incentive effect, improvements can be made from two aspects. One is to increase the amount of material, so that it can stimulate high-income groups such as branch managers; the other is to combine material rewards with spiritual rewards. Can the rewards be The motivating effect depends on people's achievements and the extent to which they pursue different needs. Only a combination of material rewards and spiritual rewards can play the greatest role. (3) What is the role of staff officers? How to coordinate the relationship between line and staff personnel? Staff officers can provide information to line supervisors, make suggestions, and cooperate with supervisors. It is very important to coordinate the relationship between the line and the staff: First of all, the line supervisor cannot influence the staff. Staff officers have only auxiliary powers, such as providing consultation and suggestions. Line supervisors should make decisions after extensively listening to the opinions of staff officers. Note that only the line manager is the decision-maker. Secondly, staff should make suggestions as independently as possible, and line supervisors should not interfere too much.