MBA 552 Case Study Exam
You just inherited a pen company from your dearly departed uncle. Uncle Ernie was a benevolent, yet controlling owner of the company. The company has been in existence since 1953 and has not turned a profit in the past ten years. In its most profitable period, during the 1960s, the company employed 250. The current number of employees is 100 they work with outdated equipment and technology due to limited cash flow. When Uncle Ernie died the leaders of the departments quit.
The departments are:
Marketing: There are five marketing staff who average 25 years of service;
Finance: There are five finance staff, four of whom are nephews of Uncle Ernie.
Sales: 30 sales associates of varying years of experience;
Production:60 production workers (total) in three different departments:
o Assembly: 40 assembly workers who have experienced a high volume of turnover and are relatively under-trained and unmotivated;
o Packaging: The packaging department has ten employees who have strong social bonds and enjoy being challenged on the job;
o Shipping: The shipping department has ten employees the department has a reputation of been a dumping ground for problem employees from other areas of the company who Uncle Ernie did not want to fire so he shipped them there.
Your challenge is to:
Identify new leaders for each department (Marketing, Finance, Sales, Assembly, Packaging, and Shipping) using a different leadership approach for each.
a. Choose from: Traits Approach, Skills Approach, Styles Approach (Three Skills Approach, Competencies Skills Model), Behavioral Approach (Ohio, Michigan, Blake Mouton Managerial Grid), Situational Approach, Contingency Approach, Path-Goal Approach, LMX Approach, Transformational/Transforming Approach. Explain your reasons for your choices. You may use, or reuse, more than one approach per department as long as you introduce a new approach for each of the six departments.
b. Based on your self-knowledge, through assessments (Strengthsquest, etc.), as the new CEO, what attributes would you be bringing to the leadership team and the company to make it successful?
(Please respond using MS Word and limit your total word count to 750 (two to three pages))