The Paradoxical Twins: Acme and Omega Electronics, John F. Veiga - Case Study Example

This system offered higher productivity as there was clearly defined specialisation and repetition. Admittedly, the company was prone to making mistakes in decision-making and problem-solving because there was an absence of a multi-dimensional system approach. 1.2 Analysis of Acme issue From Jain’s (2004, 3) point of view, Acme exhibits a proper structure according to Webber’s bureaucratic approach (Bureaucratic form according to Max Webber- his six major principles). It is found that the company has a proper structure with the president at the top, and vice presidents and a controller at the next level, which is followed by plant managers and various departments.

Moreover, there is clear specialisation, as is evident from the details provided about the company. However, one can see that there is an absence of rationality in the authority exhibited by the company. In Acme, the President, John Taylor, takes all the decisions on his own, independent of any support or help from his management team. Thus, relying on the traditional authority that believes in the supremacy of the dictator, John Taylor failed to distribute the authority among various leaders, thus failing to ensure rationality.

In the present case, it becomes evident that the decision to go ahead with the production of the memory unit was taken by John Taylor himself without consulting anyone in the company about the technical viability of the project. This was the reason for his failure to understand the problems involved such as the limited time, the non-availability of materials and so on. One can find two shortcomings in this case. Firstly, he did not understand the problems involved in meeting such a short deadline as he did not utilize the expertise of the management team.

Secondly, he ruled like a dictator, so the department heads did not have any chances of appealing to him on decisions. Instead, they were simply forced to meet his deadlines. In addition, when the purchasing department could not procure a particular component, Taylor single-handedly decided that the production would start without that particular component. Admittedly, had he formulated a system of management team that met and discussed progress and hurdles regularly instead of taking decisions for each department independently, someone might have suggested another component that could replace the missing component, as happened in Omega that will be discussed later in this work.

The mistakes on the part of Acme become very evident when the issue is analysed through the lens of a systems approach (Haaf. Bikker & Adriaanse, 2002). According to this approach, a system is a whole that is composed of various elements that are related to each other. Problem-solving, according to the systems approach, is not the task of a single person. This approach believes in multi-disciplinary problem-solving. Thus, if it is found that the solution of a problem requires the cooperation of a number of specialists, each specialist conducts an analysis that is primarily based on his or her own discipline.

Thus, each of them will come up with the possibilities and hurdles from his or her own field in order to meet the requirements. This will also make each participating department understand how its performance is linked to other departments. Now, a look back into Acme proves that the issues