Individual Case Study 1
Problem Statement:
You need to consider how you will identify the range of issues and problems in the following problem statement.
Lee Bineesh is a highly qualified but aggressive Singaporean CEO educated in Sydney who has just taken over as CEO of a company we shall call VRD Industries located in Singapore. Lee had a track record of working in fast cycle markets and achieving above average growth in developing industries. Lee’s arrival at VRD was greeted with much initial surprise followed by a steely resolve to change things. For over 40 years, the company manufactured component parts for the auto industry in both Europe, GM in the US and other US automakers. Recently, VRD has also exported to GM in China which has been identified as a growth market. VRD operated as three product-divisional strategic business units (SBUs) all located within the same industrial complex: 1) Automotive Parts 2) Infotainment and 3) Electrical & Energy. Each SBU has its own Divisional General Manager with a small office staff, a manufacturing manager, Quality Control Engineers, Process Supervisors, leading hands and upwards of 150 staff working within each factory centre. The three SBUs shared the normal Head Office functions of R&D, Technical, HR, Sales & Marketing, Accounting and Warehouse and Distribution. The top management team comes from the main VRD Head Office structure (8 senior managers). Middle management consists of about12 managers in each factory. Functional or line managers consist of another 6 managers.
Lee took over from Frank Delacy who had worked his way up in the business from the factory and had retired at age 70. For over 30 years, Frank had a steady team of managers at each of the SBUs including middle managers. Staff turnover was low with most managers (functional staff included) having been with the company for over 20 years. Staff loyalty to Frank was extremely high. Changes had been few. Despite discontinuities within the auto industry, Frank and some senior sales staff had built up long-term relationships at Detroit resulting in a fairly consistent sales growth with consistent supply contracts to Europe. Recently, discontinuities and the relentless pace of competition from China, Taiwan and Vietnam for component exports placed heavy pressure on VRD to compete. A new line of managers at Detroit following the GFC and aggravated supply contracts out of Europe meant sales had halved. This coincided with Frank’s retirement placing heavy pressure on Lee and the top team. Lee also appointed a change manager, May Wong, to assist the divisional and manufacturing managers to implement a change agenda. After some weeks of constant review, Lee realised that the company was too slow in production, had old job design methods and that conflict existed between the SBU divisional managers and their teams and between each SBU.
The basis of the conflict related to maintaining the current processes and systems that had held the company in good stead for many years and the type of change being imposed by Lee. For his part, Lee wanted an agile company, highly responsive to shifting markets, a cooperative team, and a highly efficient production process. It was no surprise then that each divisional manager had been advised that a staff reduction of 10 per cent had to occur within the next 6 months. This was difficult for senior management who had long-standing friendships with lower managers and line staff dating back to the 1990s and in some cases, the 1980s. Indeed, some factory staff had been on the same machine and processes for over 20 years. That processes needed to change and that manager’s had to “get off their backsides and do some real work” had suddenly become the ‘new’ culture. This shocked the senior team as they were more familiar with Frank’s easier fine-tuning and collaborative style. The problems and issues facing VRD came to a head for Lee after May’s quite detailed interviews and assessment of staff practices and policies. Mays exit polls consisting of qualitative questionnaires and several focus groups revealed further issues. Warehousing and Distribution staff accused sales and marketing of imposing unrealistic delivery estimates. Sales and marketing accused warehousing of being ‘too slow’. Fractious lines of communication started to appear within groups in each factory since more pressure was being placed on divisions for more efficiency. Also, following Frank’s departure, the impact of less capital expenditure and funds for resources appeared to create conflict between each SBU manager competing for a decreasing slice of the pie. This led to falling morale, a clash between managers for updating technical processes, and lower-level staff accusing managers of ruining a perfectly good company. After 6 months of constant conflict and falling sales, Lee asks May to also hire an outside change consultancy firm to assist the organisation deal with its next phase of growth. Lee was struggling for control and May was being flooded with an increasing list of day-to-day issues.

Description Marks out of Wtg(%) Due date
Individual case study 2 (write up to 2400 words) 100 4000005 6 June 2014 (11.59pm AEST)
You should write the case study in such a way that you start your answers from line 1. That is, there is no need for large introductions that we see in essays. You should apply the principles you have learned from lecture material/tutorials/readings that are specific to the case study. Case study 2 answers should be written in narrative form (i.e. sentences not bullet points), and should be 2000 words long, single spaced. Each case study should be referenced by including these at the end of the case. Case study write-ups will not be marked down if the case length is 10% more or 10% less than 2000 words.
Individual Case Study 2
Use the VRD Industries case information from Case Study 1.
Required: Based on your analysis of VRD Industries in Case Study 1, you are now required to continue the external change consultancy role. Case study 2 requires you to implement change intervention models to solve the company’s range of change issues. Use the same list of issues and problems and assumptions from Case Study 1. However, if needed, add additional relationship and behavioural assumptions based on less than perfect information as follows:
1. Intervention 1: Use the ideas presented on P203-210. Be creative. Design an intervention based on organizational learning to solve the problems of VRD (300-500 words). Justify why the intervention will be useful and how it will work.
2. Intervention 2: Use the team building process intervention. Justify why the intervention will be useful and how it will work. (300–500 words)
3. Intervention 3: Use the integrated strategic change intervention. Justify why the intervention will be useful and how it will work. (300–500 words)
4. In relation to intervention number 2, design a team building survey similar to (but not the same as) Table 7.2, page 252-253 in your text. Your survey should be related to the facts in the case. Include the survey as a Table(s) in text. Then explain in 300-500 words why you have chosen the variables in the survey.
5. Evidence: From the information relating to intervention 1, 2 and 3, use 7-10 separate references from the study book that support your selections of interventions and why you used them (900-1000 words). How can theory here be used as evidence to support your claims?
Guidelines to Case Study 2
Required: Based on your analysis of VRD Industries in Case Study 1, you are now required to continue the external change consultancy role. Case study 2 requires you to implement change intervention models to solve the company’s range of change issues. Use the same list of issues and problems and assumptions from Case Study 1. However, if needed, add additional relationship and behavioural assumptions based on less than perfect information as follows:
A. Intervention 1: This intervention is asking you to be creative in choosing an organisational learning technique to get people to work more cooperatively and yet more creatively. For instance, if you used a ladder of inference (Figure 6.3, P209), how would this work and how would it help to solve the issues in VRD? Please quote from some classical articles in this field such as Espedal, B. (2008), Murray, P (2002), Argyris, C (1993)
B. Intervention 2: Use the team building process intervention. Describe and explain why this process will be useful and how it can be implemented within VRD given the facts in the case. For the team building exercise, use the intervention techniques explained on P251 through 257 of Waddell et al. Try to use team skills or behaviours that seem applicable for VRD, not what is in the text. Use the text table structure however as a basis to build and describe your team building process intervention. Please use and quote relevant theoretical points from at least the following readings in your Module books including Bulla, R. Bell, C. (1986), Murray, P. Millett, B. (2011), Kirkman, B.L., & Rosen, B.( 2000).
C. Intervention 3: Use the integrated strategic change intervention explained on P327 through 337 of Waddell et al. Please note that this intervention is not asking you to do a Strategic Plan as in Strategic Management. Rather, it is focused on developing an Integrated Strategic Change Process. Please use and quote relevant theoretical points from at least the following readings: Cummings, TG 1997, Greiner, L. Bhambri, A. (1989),
D. In relation to intervention number 2, design a team building survey similar to (but not the same as) Table 7.2, page 252-253 in your text. Here, have a closer look at the problems and issues in the case. Now if you were May or Lee, what things would you like to see in your team? (e.g. innovative thinking).
E. Evidence: This is very explicit in Point 5 above. There are enough references listed above for you to demonstrate how theory is linked to practice.
Good luck with Case Study 2 and I look forward to reading it!