1. You are the Vice President in charge of operations of a medium sized widget-manufacturing firm in Centerville Arkansas.

You also have a new branch office in Milan, Italy, since the widget market is becoming very big there. Your work force in Centerville consists of 50 people, 30 women and 20 men. You are of course a salaried employee plus a bonus tied to corporate profits but your production-line employees are all hourly wage earners.

Your domestic work force is not unionized. However your Italian work force has a union. The domestic hourly wage varies based on seniority from $10 to $17 per hour. Widgets are small items which are manufactured on an assembly line. The CEO comes to you one day and says he would like to see domestic production increased by 20%. He then asks you to prepare a plan of action toward that goal.
List your ideas for such a plan of action.

2. One Monday morning, Lucy, one of the best workers on the production line, but a bit of a loudmouth and a minor troublemaker, comes to your office with her supervisor and complains that Joe, another worker on the line, has been hitting on her for a date. Joe is married and Lucy says she really doesn’t like him

“that way.” She says she is tired of the harassment and wants you to do something. She also mentions in passing that she had heard about “Sexual Harassment law suits against employers” from her sometimes boyfriend, Lance (a former law student at Billy-Bob’s Pretty Good Law School and College of Animal Husbandry).

What actions would you take?

3. Barnaby Smith, a young hard-working junior executive employee, arrives at work one morning with blood-shot eyes,

disjointed speech, and difficulty in maintaining a train of thought. He does not smell of alcohol. You are concerned that in his present state, he might not be able to function properly on the job.

What actions would you take?

4. In your Milan plant, one of the local national
employees is found leaving the compound with his car trunk
full of corporate property. He was detained by the plant
guards until they could call the local police.

When the
police arrived he was taken into custody and the local
plant manager swore out a complaint for larceny against the
employee. His job has been terminated by the plant
personnel director. Your employees in Italy are represented by a union. The union immediately started making noises about a strike since they saw the termination as over-reaction. The employee had been working for your company for 2 years,

and has a wife and 5 children. The Union-representative claims that even if he did steal the
property, the total value was only $200, and the employee
had never stolen anything before. (You think – he was
never caught stealing before.) You are in danger of
having a real labor problem at the plant. Also, under
Italian law and custom, the local judges might consider
termination under these circumstances to be overly harsh.
The CEO, has decided to send you to
Milan to “straighten out the mess.”

How do you straighten out the mess?

5. You are at a meeting with the CEO and the CFO. The CFO explains that because of the Italian plant expansion, the company had to issue bonds. In fact he says that the balance sheet reflects that the company is “leveraged” at about 80% of the value of the assets. (80% of the value of the company assets is financed by debt). The income statement is healthy, showing about a 10% profit after taxes. The CEO is happy with the profit and suggests that we expand the domestic plant further next year to take advantage of the expanding market.