The Eastern Hemisphere Organization - Case Study Example

1.a. what are Lancasters concerns about the Eastern Hemisphere organization? Lancaster had been a successful pick as a manager by the Black & Decker. He had successfully fulfilled the tasks and objectives of each of the posts assigned to him at Black & Decker. Along with that Lancaster had also worked side by side with the top level managers there and lead various researches working by their side. With this amount of experience on top positions the concerns that bothered Lancaster about Eastern Hemisphere organization definitely had to be significant enough. In October 1995, Bill Lancaster was appointed as the President of Black & Decker Eastern Hemisphere. Within a few months of working there he was faced with a critical decision of selecting a new system of functioning within the organization. On one hand manager HR Anita Lin proposed a new performance appraisal and management development system and on the other hand should he introduce Appraisal Development Plan (ADP) throughout the eastern hemisphere. Before being position as the President of Black & Decker Eastern Hemisphere , Lancaster had seen the level of success ADP brought to the U.S and was quite impressed by its performance in terms of management development. But will the ADP be suitable choice for the Asian organization culture or not? The main problem existed over the question of 360° feedback element. Lancaster was bothered that whether the employees will be comfortable working in an environment where your performance gets feedback from your managers, coworkers, subordinates & peers. Another concern that Lancaster had about the Eastern Hemisphere headquarter was that Black & Decker had either spent or committed to spend $80 million for the setup of Singapore headquarters and new factories in India, China and Singapore itself. But the main problem laid in that in the early 90’s Black & Decker ranked 5th in Asia and had a very weak share. From the case its evident that this also bothered Lancaster that even after investing so much what if the position did not improve much or didn’t improve at all. Lancaster also found out that there was no specific system in place and various managers operated in styles which they were comfortable with; some preferred empowerment of there subordinates, while others believed in the traditional authoritarian styles. The Gap between the bosses and their subordinates in this part of the globe has always existed. People were very reluctant and cautious while talking about people higher than their ranks because of the fear of developing negative opinion and grudges in the minds of the people they commented on. 1b. will ADP address those weaknesses? how? After getting promoted as the President of Eastern Hemisphere Lancaster started off to analyze the weaknesses in the system there by talking with the employees throughout the organization. Firstly interviewing MAC of Eastern Hemisphere which was composed of the directly reporting members to the Headquarters of Black & Decker. Next he also gave time listening to the people other than officers and leaders of the organization. A traditional MBO(management by objective) - type system was being used which had been replaced in the US some time back. Although half of the fortune 500 companies had MBO system but they were not completely happy with it and when ADP system came they quickly shifted to it. ADP will resolve the weaknesses in the following manner: By implementing the ADP system in the Eastern Hemisphere the Boss-Subordinate gap can be bridged and the employees can feel relaxed while working increasing the much needed productivity to step up the ranks. ADP system would make managers interact with their subordinates more often hence making them keep a track of individual employee performance and can guide them in one way or other. A calm and peaceful working environment will be formed as everyone will take care of their attitude and behavior with each other while at work as they know they’ll be evaluated on this basis apart from their work performance. It will increase the trust within the organization and promote teamwork hence resulting in a well linked and dedicated crew of employees which will work together jointly towards achieving the set up objectives and goals. 2. a. what concerns do Asian managers have about ADP? Before the talks of implementing a new system in the organization, a MBO system was being followed in the organizations in the Eastern Hemisphere. It involved yearly evaluation on paper just by the appraising manager. If you had good terms and ties with the manager , you were almost certain to get a good evaluation. But little digging helped Lancaster find out that the organization was not following MBO for joint goal setting. Instead they were using simple evaluation methods i.e. based on numbers rather than the overall performance. The concerns for the Asian managers included that most of them came from organizations and MNC’s offices which operated in the Asia hence they have never been used to the culture of such thorough evaluation. As mentioned they were only familiar with few ways of evaluation like for eg that in some organizations in Asia you don’t even know how you’re evaluated, you just find out the result by looking at the pay raise you get. So this formal system of evaluation which required the efforts and time of both the appraising managers, peers and subordinates troubled them. A few managers had concerns over the language in which the manuals and literature of ADP system was in. As in most Asian countries employees at lower level do not speak English rather they speak their native languages. The task of converting those manuals into native languages and then writing the things in the same meaning as they are meant to will be quite a hectic task. Also people are afraid of speaking about their bosses altogether. They will reply pleasantly about their bosses ruling out the chance of developing a grudge with the boss which in the end would result in something negative for them. No matter how much you emphasize on the fact that the information will be kept confidential subordinates have a fear that their higher rank officers will find out causing serious consequences for them. Apart from that the review took a lot of time as it involves a 360° feedback process hence appraising one person might involve going through 10 forms and then writing a review on them and then the whole process follow. This was one major concern as the appraisal took place at year end’ took a lot of time and that is the exact time when the managers are really busy achieving year end goals and targets. Also in some Asian countries because of so much competition between the peers you can expect dishonest review as well because every person wants to keep their job and be better then the other employee. 2b. how substantive are these concerns? All of the concerns are relevant and cannot be treated merely as small risk that we might face in shifting towards ADP system. The shifting will take a lot of effort and will require significant amount of time, training, money and dedicated HR personnel. Lancaster cannot make this move just on his thinking just of the line of success in brought to the managerial development in US. As the front line managers are concerned then the probability of its success diminishes along with that the level of moral of their peers and sub ordinates falls. In all of this if you don’t have a motivated team or work force which you can rely throughout and which can help you come out of difficult places then the project will very well result in failure. A failure is which Black & Decker in the Eastern Hemisphere cannot afford , being ranked number one it US for numerous years a company will revenue in billions of dollars cannot afford failure on its belt. Apart from that there is increasing pressure on Lancaster from Jim Baker to deliver good profit this year as the company couldn’t even meet its break even in 2005. 3. a. what action should Lancaster take? As mentioned in the case Lancaster is faced with three options upfront and he’s considering all of them equally after understanding the scenario thoroughly. One Option is to do nothing and work with the same system that is being followed, wait and work on other things’ develop market share and slowly and steadily influx the idea of switching to ADP system in the employees and their managers. Second option at hand was working with the Hybrid ADP created by HR manager Lim. As she had more experience in the working environment of Eastern Hemisphere she better knew what the people demanded here and she altered it understanding the needs and concerns of the people. 360° review was changed to a 180° review initially which did not include review from peers and subordinates. After a year if everything went good then peer reviews would have been added followed by subordinate reviews in the next year making it a full 360° ADP system. Her belief was that starting off with full implementation was nearly impossible because in the past many had tried but failed and the closest who came to its full implementation was IBM but eventually shifted back to 180° plan. The final option was going straightforward shift to ADP system which was his initial plan. It was right in the thought because the region needed someone to break the old tradition and come up with new practices and systems of managerial development. 3b. And why? In my opinion My Lancaster should go on with the implementation of ADP system. The organizational structure currently makes sub ordinates get dictated by their managers on every occasion and they have no authority of their own because of the fear of having negative consequences or even to the extent of losing their job. The employees who were being resisting in most cases are the one’s who fear the change most themselves and they cannot tell that directly to Lancaster straightforwardly because of the same traditional customs and experiences in the Asian markets. That if they tell Lancaster that they don’t want ADP system then he’ll think negatively about them and that’ll lead to some consequence for them in future. Also mentioned many of the employees and managers in Eastern Hemisphere had been in the same position for five or more years and did not experience any growth. The main reason to this can be traced back to the fact that employees here keep their ideas mostly to themselves because of trust issue. Apart from that there is no trend of suggesting something to your boss which you think would be better then what he presented. So to break this tradition ADP will play a key role in development of employees professional and work life. Another major reason here is that as ADP system is becoming a new standard in the market so the businesses should move towards standardization rather them getting themselves stuck in the dilemma that whether it will be a wise choice or not. Also by choosing ADP in the Eastern Hemisphere there will be standardize managerial development system throughout Black & Decker hence making it easy for employees who are shifted or posted to any region for managerial post. SOURCE: Black & Decker Eastern Hemisphere and the ADP initiative (A). No. 98G005. 17 12 1998. Read More