questions

Dinner party discussion.

You are at a dinner party where several of the guests are computer programmers from a successful information technology company. One of the guests starts talking about how the success of the company is due to the programmers and how their technical expertise alone has driven the company’s recent growth. According to this guest, the management team at their company don’t really do anything. In his opinion, the management team don’t have any real skills, and their only actual job is to be nice to the staff.  

Having studied BUSMGT 711 ‘Managing People and Organisations’, you obviously disagree with the guest. You want to explain that that good management is vital in organisations and is about so much more than simply being nice.

Culturally diverse virtual teams

Globalisation, combined with the proliferation of information and communication technology (ICT), has seen a substantial increase in the number of organisations that operate through virtual multicultural teams. For example, a recent survey of employees from over eighty countries found that 85% of employees have experienced working in a culturally diverse virtual team.

Your MikesBikes’ simulation is giving you the invaluable experience of learning how virtual multicultural teams work.

Pei’s Painting Company

Pei’s Painting Company is a medium-sized painting and decorating firm. Pei Ling, the owner of the company, learnt that recently released inmates from the nearby medium-security prison often find it difficult to get a job. She decided to hire and train six prison inmates to work for her after they had served their prison sentence.

That was eight months ago. Pei Ling’s new employees are not qualified painters, so she put a lot of time and effort into training them. They currently earn the minimum wage and must be closely supervised by a qualified painter when working in customers’ homes. These new employees get along well and enjoy socialising with each other but are not very ‘career-minded’. Pei Ling has noticed that morale is falling amongst these new employees and that they try to do as little work as possible when they think no one is watching.

Last week, Pei Ling secured a contract with a well-known property developer, but the painting must be completed in three weeks’ time. In theory, Pei Ling has enough employees to get the job done, but she is not confident that the new staff will be willing to work the overtime necessary to complete the contract.

You are a management consultant. Pei Ling has asked you for advice on how best to motivate her new staff.

Communication at ABC Tech Limited

Andrew has just been promoted to be the regional manager for ABC Tech Limited. He is based in Auckland, but his team of about 500 technical and support staff are dispersed around the Asia Pacific region.

The previous regional manager, Bevin, found the best way to communicate was by email and this became the default communication channel for the majority of employees throughout the region. Bevin had a jargon-heavy style of communicating that could be challenging for employees with English as an additional language. Also, Bevin didn’t see any problem sending individual staff anywhere from 5 to 50 emails per day, and expected prompt replies, irrespective of the time of day or day of the week his emails were sent.

People learn by observation, and so the expectation of constant connectivity gradually passed down from Bevin and was adopted across the region. Under Bevan’s leadership, not only did staff turnover go up, but innovation and subsequently financial performance went down!

Andrew wants to make some significant changes to how staff across the region communicate. However, given people are generally averse to change, he needs to get their buy-in if he wants them to adopt his new approach to ensuring efficient and effective communication.