Wen Guang Li
BTM 103.0078
Dr. Deborah Harrell
October 17, 2009
3626BMT 103 PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT
Case Study Assignment
Due date: To be handed in not later than Monday, 10/19/2009
Directions: Read the Case Incident cited below. Then, using your notes and the terminology covered in Chapter 2,
respond to the questions at the end of the case. The assignment is to be typed, single or double spaced.
CASE INCIDENT 2.2 RETURN TO SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT
Recently a professor at State University was lecturing in a management development seminar on the topic of
motivation. Each of the participants candidly discussed problems that existed in their respective organizations. Problem
areas mentioned included absenteeism, turnover, and poor workmanship. The participants managed a variety of
employees such as automobile assembly workers, clerical workers, computer operators, sanitation workers, and even
some middle-level managers.
During the discussion, one of the participants made the following statement: “What we need to do to stop all of these
problems is a little scientific management.”
Questions
1. What do you think the person means?
The person means is scientific management is necessary and can act a very important role in which
produces big positive influences to solve problems that existed in their respective organizations.
2. Do you agree? Discuss.
I agree with the person. Like above case describes there are problems that existed in their respective
organizations. Problem areas mentioned included absenteeism, turnover, and poor workmanship. It needs
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to use scientific and effective methods for solving these problems. Scientific management is philosophy of
Frederick W. Taylor that sought to increase productivit and make the work easier by scientifically studying
work methods and establishing standards. Therefore, scientific management can bring a new attitude
toward their respective duties and toward each others.
3. Take one of the jobs in the above case and show how you would apply scientific management.
For automobile assembly workers, in order to produce more and better products, they need to be
motivated and improve their persoanl performance. There are some approaches of scientific management.
We can carry out the scientific the main principle of the selection and progressive teaching and development
of automobiles assemly workers, and to study worker strengths and weaknesses and to provide training to
improve automobile assembly workers’ performance. Actually, the scientific study of work also emphasized
specialization and division of labor. Thus, the need for an organizational framework becomes more and
more apparent. The concepts of line and staff emerged. In order to motivate automobiles assemly workers,
wage incentives were developed in most scientifc management programs. Scientific management is a
philosophy about the relationship between people and work, not a technique or an efficiency device. The
employee could produce more and hence earn more with little or no additional effort. Therefore,
automobiles assemly workers could be motivated by economic rewards, provided those reward were related
to individual performance.
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CASE INCIDENT 4.2 GOING ABROAD
You supervise 12 engineers. Their formal training and work experience are very similar, so you can use them
interchangeably on projects. Yesterday, your manager informed you that an overseas affiliate has requested
four engineers to go abroad on extended loan for six to eight months. For a number of reasons, he argued and
you agreed, this request should be met from your group.
All your engineers are capable of handling this assignment; from the standpoint of present and future
projects, there is no special reason any one engineer should be retained over any other. Somewhat
complicating the situation is the fact that the overseas assignment is in a generally undesirable location.
Question
1. How would you select who should go abroad on extended loan?
First of all, I will use the programmed decisions which are reaches by following an established or
systemastic procedure. Because all engineers are capable of handling this assignment, it needs an
established or systmeastic procedure to observe, and then to decide who are really able and suitable to
work in the overseas affiliate. Then, I will use optimizing approach to make a decision. I will recognize
the need for the decision, establish, rank, and weigh criteria and gather available information and data.
We know overseas culture, enviornment and policy are different with the United States. We need to
collect enough information, for example the overseas situations and each engineer’s detail background,
to establish the suitable criteria for the decision by those information. Especially, we need to find out the
engineer who has the same culture background with the oceaseas country. Then, we can identify
possible alternatives and evaluate each alternative with respect to all criteria; and select the best fort
enginners.
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2. What are some major factors that would influence your decision process?
Naturaly, it always has some major factors that influence my decision process. Actually, there are
limitations and problems of the optimizing approach. For example, decision makers do not always have
clearly defined criteria for making decisions, many decisions are based on limited knowledge of the possible
alternatives and these is always a temptation to manipulate or ignore the gathered information and choose a
favored alterantive. In addition, the other important factor is a manager’s values define his or her ethics
and affect the selection of performance measure, alternatives and choice criteria in the deciosn process. If I
feel the engineer who has the same culture background with the oceaseas country is preferred choice, I may
establish the criteria around it. However, other manger may feel the most important is the adaptive faculty,
he/she will choice the engineer who has rich work experience. Sometime, we also may use intuitive
approach to decision making. It based on hunches and intuition. It can eaisly lead to poor decision. All
above factors can influence my decision process. They can be positive or negative.
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