Unit 3 Emotional Intelligence and Spiritual Intelligence.pdf
STUDY GUIDE Disney Case on StrategyGoals and Objectiv.docx
1. STUDY GUIDE
Disney Case on Strategy
Goals and Objectives
https://open.lib.umn.edu/principlesmanagement/part/chapter-6-
goals-and-objectives/
Google Case on Communications
https://open.lib.umn.edu/principlesmanagement/part/chapter-12-
communication-in-organizations/
Netflix Case
Motivating Employees
https://open.lib.umn.edu/principlesmanagement/part/chapter-14-
motivating-employees/
Leading People and Organizations
https://open.lib.umn.edu/principlesmanagement/part/chapter-10-
leading-people-and-organizations/
Caterpillar Case on Control
https://open.lib.umn.edu/principlesmanagement/part/chapter-15-
the-essentials-of-control/
Dr Babu Subbaraman
Chapter 5
Make or Buy, Insourcing, and Outsourcing
25. It takes time to move products (transit time, handling time,
delays)
Demand pattern does not equal supply pattern (goods
produced in lot sizes)
Demand pattern varies. Customer service levels must be
maintained.
Variations in demand relative to productive capacity or
significant cost advantages to holding supply in anticipation of
demand
Distribution and production efficiency gained from
independence between stages of production and distribution
OBJECTIVE
Balance in-transit inventory costs against cost of reducing
delays
Balance cost of ordering (or setup) and cost of carrying
inventory
Balance cost of carrying extra inventory against cost of
stocking out
Balance inventory costs against production costs,
transportation costs, purchase discounts, and costs of avoiding
price changes
Balance efficiency of production - distribution activities
against costs
Transit or
Pipeline
Cycle
Buffer or
Safety
36. card to reduce
trips for extra credit
Buffer or Safety
ered by a brewery to allow for unexpected
breakage
Seasonal or
Speculative
lunch
Decoupling
arts/hr,
assemblers work at
50 parts/hr, parts are held in operations to balance production
rates ( and
moulding is shutdown periodically).
TYPE
EXAMPLE
Transit or Pipeline
· parts on trains, forklifts, etc.
· paper forms being moved between departments
Cycle
· a retail store that orders furniture by the truckload to save
ordering and shipping (set-up) costs
· student buys $25 of credit instead of $10 for a photocopy card
to reduce trips for extra credit
Buffer or Safety
89. Business unit autonomy
Reporting line simplicity
Undivided authority and responsibility
Suits purchasing personnel preference
Broad job definition
Geographical, cultural, political, environmental, social,
language, currency appropriateness
Hides cost of supply
Disadvantages
Difficult to communicate among business units
Encourages users not to plan ahead
Operational versus strategic focus
Too much focus on local sources - ignores better supply
opportunities
No critical mass in organization for visibility/ effectiveness -
“whole person syndrome”
Lacks clout
Suboptimization
Business unit preferences not congruent with corporate
preferences
Small differences magnified
Reporting at low level in organization
Limits functional advancement opportunities
Ignores larger organizational considerations
Limited expertise for requirements
Lack of standardization
Cost of supply relatively high
8
Advantages and Disadvantages of Hybrid, Centralized, and
Decentralized Structures
125. easily understood.
5
Total:
25
Netflix, Los Gatos, California - If you were in charge of
Netflix, what would you do?
CEO Reed Hastings started Netflix in 1997 after becoming
angry about paying Blockbuster Video $40 for a late return of
Apollo 13. Hastings and Netflix struck back with flat monthly
fees for unlimited DVDs rentals, easy home delivery and returns
via prepaid postage envelopes, and no late fees, which let
customers keep DVDs as long as they wanted. Blockbuster,
which earned up to $800 million annually from late returns, was
slow to respond and lost customers in droves.
When Blockbuster, Amazon, and Walmart started their own
mail-delivery video rentals, Hastings recognized that Netflix
was in competition with “the biggest rental company, the
biggest e-commerce company, and the biggest company,
period.” With investors expecting it to fail, Netflix’s stock price
dropped precipitously to $2.50 a share. But with an average
subscriber cost of just $4 a month compared to an average
subscriber fee of $15, Netflix, unlike its competitors, made
money from each customer. Three years later, Walmart
abandoned the business, asking Netflix to handle DVD rentals
on Walmart.com. Amazon, by contrast, entered the DVD rental
business in Great Britain, expecting that experience to prepare
it to beat Netflix in the United States But, like Walmart,
126. Amazon quit after four years of losses. Finally, 13 years after
Netflix’s founding, Blockbuster declared bankruptcy. With
DVDs mailed to 17 million monthly subscribers from 50
distribution centers nationwide, Netflix is now the industry
leader in DVD rentals.
However, its expertise in shipping and distributing DVDs won’t
provide a competitive advantage when streaming files over the
Internet. Indeed, Netflix’s Watch Instantly download service is
in competition with Amazon’s Video on Demand, Apple’s
iTunes, HuluPlus at Hulu.com, Time-Warner Cable’s TV
Everywhere, and DirectTV Cinema, all of which offer movie
and TV downloads. Moreover, unlike DVDs, which can be
rented without studio approval, U.S. copyright laws require
streaming rights to be purchased from TV and movie studios
before downloading content into people’s homes. And that
creates two new issues. First, does Netflix have deep enough
pockets to outbid its rivals for broad access to the studios’ TV
and movie content? Second, can it convince the studios that it is
not a direct competitor? HBO, for instance, won’t license any of
its original shows, like The Sopranos, for Netflix streaming. It
also has exclusive rights for up to eight years for content from
Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Pictures. HBO co-
president Eric Kessler says, “There is value in exclusivity.
Consumers are willing to pay a premium for high-quality,
exclusive content.” If other studio executives think this, Netflix
will not acquire the video content it needs to satisfy its
customers. Planning involves determining organizational goals
and a means for achieving them. So, how can Netflix generate
the cash it needs to pay the studios? How can it convince them
it’s not a competitor so they will agree to license their content?
Netflix must also address the significant organizational
challenges accompanying accelerated growth. Hastings
experienced the same problem in his first company, Pure
Software, where he admitted, “Management was my biggest
challenge; every year there were twice as many people and it
was trial by fire. I was underprepared for the complexities and
127. personalities.” With blazing growth on one hand and the
strategic challenge of obtaining studio content on the other, how
much time should he and his executive team devote directly to
hiring? Deciding where decisions will be made is a key part of
the management function of organizing. So, should he and his
executive team be directly involved, or is this something that he
should delegate? Finally, what can Netflix, which is located
near Silicon Valley, home to Google, eBay, Apple, Hewlett-
Packard, and Facebook, some of the most attractive employers
in the world, provide in the way of pay, perks, and company
culture that will attract, inspire, and motivate top talent to
achieve organizational goals?
Dr Babu Subbaraman
What Would You Do? Case Assignment, Communications -
Google Mountain View, California
Founded in 1998, Google just had its most dominant year, with
its search market share rising from 77 percent to 83 percent and
revenues jumping 25 percent. Because most of the revenue came
from search, Google is trying to diversify. But it faces intense
competition in every market.
In traditional search, Microsoft’s Bing search engine and
Facebook, which passed Google as the most popular website in
the world, pose threats as people desire more personalized and
social media-related search information. Searches for local
information, such as restaurant reviews or directions, are 20
percent of all Google searches and half of all mobile or
smartphone searches. Yet, local-related search advertising is a
weakness for Google, but a strength for Groupon, Facebook
Places, Living Social, Foursquare, and Bing. Although Google’s
Android smartphones have more market share than Apple’s
iPhone, the Android software is open source, so Google makes
128. no money except for built-in Google Ads and services.
Likewise, Google trails Apple and Amazon in the number of
publishers who use their software, devices (i.e., smartphones,
tablets, book readers), and online stores to sell electronic
versions of newspapers, magazines, books, music, TV shows,
and movies. Finally, Google’s Chrome web browser (13%
market share) competes with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer
(55%), Mozilla’s Firefox (22%), and Apple’s Safari (7%).
In short, Google is trying to position itself for the day when
people won’t automatically use a Google search box to find
information. Keith Woolcock, founder of 5thColumnIdeas, a
technology research firm, doubts Google is up to the task,
saying, “The problem for me as an investor is that Google looks
a little too [much] like last year's model. It’s the chicken in the
sandwich—Apple and Facebook are on the opposing sides.
Google is in the middle. Really, it looks to me as though it has
become the Microsoft of its generation: big, bad and quickly
becoming irrelevant.”
Unfortunately, you fear that Woolcock might be right, which is
why you replaced CEO, Eric Schmidt, who becomes executive
chairman. When Google started, you were CEO for three years.
But, as an introvert who prefers technology challenges to
management issues, you were relieved to hire Schmidt from Sun
Microsystems because of his extensive leadership experience.
When Schmidt became CEO, Google was much smaller and still
in start-up mode, so he focused on management and financial
systems, while you and Sergey Brin focused on technology and
product development. Google’s philosophy was to hire really
smart people and then let them do whatever they wanted. It was
the norm for Google engineers to have 20 percent of their time
to work on whatever they wanted to. And it spawned great
products like Gmail, which engineer Paul Buchheit designed in
a day and then shopped around, to get other Google engineers to
join his team. This approach worked well until Google hit
10,000 employees. But at Google’s current size, 24,000
employees, with plans to hire another 6,000, it leads to
129. confusion, poor coordination, and a lack of focus.
Today, Google is a much larger, more complicated company.
But the biggest problem is that paralyzing bureaucracy has
slowed the company. As technology companies grow, this
happens. IBM, Apple, Microsoft, and HP weren’t immune, and
neither is Google. In fact, the key reason you became CEO
again was to streamline decision making and communication,
and create clearer lines of responsibility and accountability. But
how do you do that in a company of 30,000 people? A related
problem is that top management is increasingly isolated from
middle- and lower-level managers and employees who are
responsible for the research and project management that is key
to Google’s success. So, what might you do to improve upward
communication within the company? Finally, what can Google
do to communicate effectively on an organization-wide basis in
an organization that has dozens of product lines and hundreds of
research projects and that will soon have 30,000 employees?
If you were the new CEO at Google, what would you do?
What Would You Do? Case Assignment- Controlling -
CATERPILLAR
Peoria, Illinois
Caterpillar dominates the construction and earth-moving
equipment industry, with $50 billion per year in revenues.
Komatsu, its next closest competitor, does $25 billion.
However, Caterpillar has not been able to master the cyclical
nature of its industry. When the heavy machinery industry
booms, no one keeps up with demand, and everyone builds new
factories and hires thousands of new employees. Indeed,
Caterpillar doubled its workforce the last time global demand
surged. But when the industry goes bust, factories are closed
and tens of thousands of employees are laid off. What kind of
dramatic swings does Caterpillar experience? A 43 percent
spike in sales in April 2004 and a 52 percent decline in