Experiential Exercises

Analyzing a Golf Swing

Directions. Read the following scenario and then perform the listed activities. Your instructor may want you to perform the activities as an individual or within groups. Follow all of your instructor’s directions carefully.

Frank and Lillian Gilbreth recommended improving worker efficiency and effectiveness by searching for the one best way to perform work tasks. To discover this one best way, the Gilbreths would perform motion studies, which would pinpoint the best behaviors to use. For example, as a result of one of the Gilbreths’ motion studies, the number of motions needed to lay brick was reduced from 12 to 2. Obviously, the effectiveness and efficiency of bricklayers were significantly increased as a result of the motion study.

To gain some experience in performing a motion study, find two photos on the Internet, one photo showing professional golfer Phil Mickelson’s golf swing and follow-through and the other photo showing an amateur’s golf swing and follow-through.

  • Activity 1: Compare Phil Mickelson’s swing and follow-through to those of the amateur. How are they the same? How are they different? Refer to specific behaviors in your comparison.

  • Activity 2: What advice would you give the amateur for improving his or her success in golf?

  • Activity 3: What are the strengths and the limitations of your motion study results?

You and Your Career

You have just heard about an opening for a job as a time study specialist in a company that manufactures plumbing tools.54 Your main job would be to figure out how hard people should be working—that is, how many activities of various sorts they should be performing per hour. Using a stopwatch and a computer, you would evaluate what people do during a typical workday and then make suggestions to their supervisors for how the employees can improve their activities. Although you would probably enjoy seeing how a piece of scrap metal is molded into a finished tool, you might not enjoy pushing people to work harder because of the results of your studies. The salary and benefits seem fine to you. You’ve been with the company for two years and think that eventually you’d like to be president of this company. Would you take the job? Why? Why not?

Building Your Management Skills Portfolio

Your Management Skills Portfolio is a collection of activities specially designed to demonstrate your management knowledge and skill. Be sure to save your work. Taking your printed portfolio to an employment interview could be helpful in obtaining a job.

The portfolio activity for this appendix is Comprehensive Management Skills at Crocs. Read the following about Crocs, Inc., and perform the activities that follow.

Crocs, Inc., started when three Boulder, Colorado, residents decided to develop and market an innovative type of footwear called Crocs™ shoes. Although originally intended as a boating/outdoor shoe because of its slip-resistant, nonmarking sole, by 2003 Crocs had become a bona fide phenomenon, universally accepted as an all-purpose shoe for comfort and fashion.

During 2003–2004, the Crocs company focused on accommodating remarkable growth while maintaining control of the expansion. The company expanded its product line, added warehouses and shipping programs to provide speedy assembly and delivery, and hired a senior management team. Today, Crocs are available all over the world and on the Internet, as the company continues to significantly expand all aspects of its business.

Despite its rapid success, Crocs, Inc., has held onto its core values. The company remains committed to making a lightweight, comfortable, slip-resistant, fashionable, and functional shoe that can be produced quickly and sold at an affordable price.

Crocs, Inc., has also developed products that focus on the needs of employees in specific industries. For example, the company offers specialized footwear products that meet the needs of workers in the health-care, hospitality, restaurant, and transportation industries. The stylish closed-toe designs, which are made from patented material, are nonmarking, slip resistant, and odor resistant. Ergonomically certified, the company’s shoes provide arch support and circulation nubs that are designed to stimulate the feet while one works. Crocs, Inc., claims that its shoes improve health, safety, and overall well-being in the workplace.

Activity 1

You have just been appointed the new president of Crocs, Inc. To be successful in this position, you will need to apply insights from many different approaches to management as well as your comprehensive management skills. Fill out the following form to help organize your thoughts about how to examine Crocs, Inc., from a comprehensive management skill perspective.

Planning Issues to Inspect
Approach to Management Issues to Be Examined at Crocs, Inc.
Behavioral Approach (managing by focusing on people)

Do employees get along with management?

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Systems Approach (managing by viewing the organization as a whole)

What major parts of Crocs, Inc., function together to achieve goals?

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Classical Approach (managing by finding the “one best way” to do jobs)

Do people have the right tools to perform their jobs?

  1.           

              

  2.           

              

  3.           

              

  4.           

              

Activity 2

Assuming that you have gathered the information requested in Activity 1, explain how the triangular management model would help you organize your thoughts on enabling Crocs, Inc., to maximize its success.

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MyManagementLab: Writing Exercises

If your instructor has assigned this activity, go to mymanagementlab.com for the following assignments:

Assisted Grading Questions

  1. A1-10. Discuss the primary limitations of the classical approach to management. Would this approach be more useful to managers today than it was to managers in the distant past? Explain.

  2. A1-11. What is the “systems approach” to management? How do the concepts of closed and open systems relate to this approach?

Endnotes

  1. 1. Ford Motor Company, “The Moving Assembly Line Debuted at the Highland Park Plant,” Historic Sites, http://corporate.ford.com/our-company, accessed February 13, 2014; Ford Motor Company, “Henry Ford’s $5-a-Day Revolution,” Company Milestones, http://corporate.ford.com/our-company, accessed February 13, 2014; “The United Automobile Workers (UAW) and Ford Motor Company: Working Together,” Company Milestones, http://corporate.ford.com/our-company, accessed February 13, 2014; “‘Whiz Kids’ Brought Financial Expertise and Modern Management to Ford Motor Company,” Innovators, http://corporate.ford.com/our-company, accessed February 13, 2014; Julia King, “How Analytics Helped Ford Turn Its Fortunes,” Computerworld, December 2, 2013, http://www.computerworld.com; Rik Kirkland, “Leading in the 21st Century: An Interview with Ford’s Alan Mulally,” McKinsey Quarterly, November 2013, http://www.mckinsey.com; Tom Perez, “Stronger Together: Labor and Management at Ford,” Work in Progress (U.S. Department of Labor), http://social.dol.gov; Ben Klayman and Bernie Woodall, “Ford Posts Higher Profit but Faces Pressure in U.S.,” Reuters, January 28, 2014, http://www.reuters.com.

  2. 2. James H. Donnelly, Jr., James L. Gibson, and John M. Ivancevich, Fundamentals of Management (Plano, TX: Business Publications, 1987), 6–8; Harold Koontz, Cyril O’Donnell, and Heinz Weihrich, Management, 8th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984), 52–69; W. Warren Haynes and Joseph L. Massie, Management, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969), 4–13.

  3. 3. David W. Hays, “Quality Improvement and Its Origin in Scientific Management,” Quality Progress (May 5, 1994): 89–90.

  4. 4. For an article describing how Taylor’s work has given rise to other types of modern production research, see: Betsi Harris Ehrlich, “Service with a Smile,” Industrial Engineer 38, no. 8 (August 2006): 40–44.

  5. 5. Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Harper & Bros., 1947), 66–71.

  6. 6. For more information on the work of Frederick Taylor, see: Mary Godwyn and Jody Hoffer Gittell, “Fundamentals of Scientific Management,” in Sociology of Organizations: Structures and Relationships (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge/Sage, 2012), 233–240; Hans Picard, “Quit Following Marx’s Advice,” ENR 246, no. 12 (March 26, 2001): 99.

  7. 7. “Date in Quality History,” Quality Progress 43, no. 3 (March 2010): 14.

  8. 8. Franz T. Lohrke, “Motion Study for the Blinded: A Review of the Gilbreths’ Work with the Visually Handicapped,” International Journal of Public Administration 16 (1993): 667–668. For information illustrating how the career of Lillian Gilbreth has been an inspiration for women managers, see: Thomas R. Miller and Mary A. Lemons, “Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Lessons from a Management Pioneer,” S.A.M. Advanced Management Journal 63, no. 1 (Winter 1998): 4–9.

  9. 9. Rachel Emma Silverman, “Tracking Sensors Invade the Workplace,” Wall Street Journal, March 7, 2013, http://online.wsj.com; Alana Semuels, “Tracking Workers’ Every Move Can Boost Productivity—and Stress,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 2013, http://articles.latimes.com; Martin Dewhurst, Bryan Hancock, and Diana Ellsworth, “Redesigning Knowledge Work,” Harvard Business Review (January–February 2013): 60–64.

  10. 10. Edward A. Michaels, “Work Measurement,” Small Business Reports 14 (March 1989): 55–63. For information regarding the application of time studies in a nursing home, see: Greg Arling, Robert L. Kane, Christine Mueller, and Teresa Lewis, “Explaining Direct Care Resource Use of Nursing Home Residents: Findings from Time Studies in Four States,” Health Services Research 42, no. 2 (April 2007): 827.

  11. 11. Dennis Karwatka, “Frank Gilbreth and Production Efficiency,” Tech Directions 65, no. 6 (January 2006): 10.

  12. 12. Fariss-Terry Mousa and David J. Lemak, “The Gilbreths’ Quality System Stands the Test of Time,” Journal of Management History 15, no. 2 (2009): 198–215.

  13. 13. Ibid.

  14. 14. Henry L. Gantt, Industrial Leadership (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1916), 57.

  15. 15. For information on software that constructs Gantt charts, see: Anonymous, Fast Company 182 (February 2014): 17–18, 20, 24, 26.

  16. 16. Marc Puich, “The Critical Path,” Biopharm International 20, no. 3 (March 2007): 28, 30.

  17. 17. Doug Green and Denise Green, “MacSchedule Has Rich Features at Low Price,” InfoWorld (July 12, 1993): 88.

  18. 18. Henry L. Gantt, Industrial Leadership (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1916), 85.

  19. 19. Chester I. Barnard, Organization and Management (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952). Barnard’s ideas are still used today as a rationale for carrying out organizational studies. See: L. G. Keykanlu, M. S. Navakhi, and A. Batyari, “Investigating the Relationship Between Organizational Culture and Employee Efficiency in Department of Natural Resources and Watershed,” Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business 5, no. 7 (2013): 376–383.

  20. 20. Alvin Brown, Organization of Industry (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1947); Henry S. Dennison, Organization Engineering (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1931); Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick, eds., Papers on the Science of Administration (New York: Institute of Public Administration, 1937); J. D. Mooney and A. C. Reiley, Onward Industry! (New York: Harper & Bros., 1931); Oliver Sheldon, The Philosophy of Management (London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, 1923).

  21. 21. Henri Fayol, General and Industrial Management (London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, 1949). See also: David Frederick, “Making Sense of Management I,” Credit Management (December 2000): 34–35.

  22. 22. Charles A. Mowll, “Successful Management Based on Key Principles,” Healthcare Financial Management 43 (June 1989): 122, 124; Carl A. Rodrigues, “Fayol’s 14 Principles of Management Then and Now: A Framework for Managing Today’s Organizations Effectively,” Management Decision 39 (2001): 880–889.

  23. 23. Henry Fayol, General and Industrial Management (London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, 1949), 19–42. For an excellent discussion of the role of accountability and organization structure, see: Elliott Jaques, “In Praise of Hierarchy,” Harvard Business Review 68 (January/February 1990): 127–133. Fayol’s work is still recommended today as the foundation for the logical way to manage: Jennifer J. Stepniowski, “Be the Change,” Quality Progress 46, no. 12 (December 2013): 66–67.

  24. 24. For an interesting discussion of how negative information doesn’t always travel up the chain of command, see: Jonathan Alter, “Failure to Launch: How Obama Fumbled HealthCare.gov,” Foreign Affairs 93, no. 2 (March/April 2014): 39–50.

  25. 25. Lee D. Parker and Philip Ritson, “Fads, Stereotypes, and Management Gurus: Fayol and Follett Today,” Management Decision 43, no. 10 (2005): 1335–1357.

  26. 26. For detailed summaries of these studies, see: Industrial Worker, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938); F. J. Roethlisberger and W. J. Dickson, Management and the Worker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939).

  27. 27. Stephen Jones, “Worker Interdependence and Output: The Hawthorne Studies Reevaluated,” American Sociological Review (April 1990): 176–190.

  28. 28. Jennifer Laabs, “Corporate Anthropologists,” Personnel Journal (January 1992): 81–91; Samuel C. Certo, Human Relations Today: Concepts and Skills (Burr Ridge, IL: Irwin, 1995), 4; Scott Highhouse, “Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology,” Personnel Psychology 54, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 204–206.

  29. 29. Mark Goulston and John Ullmen, “How to Really Understand Someone Else’s Point of View,” Harvard Business Review, April 22, 2013, http://blogs.hbr.org; Stephen R. Covey, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Habit 5, Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood,” Stephen R. Covey website, https://www.stephencovey.com, accessed February 13, 2014; Greg Toppo, “Want to Understand Others? Read Literary Fiction,” USA Today, October 4, 2013, http://www.usatoday.com.

  30. 30. Michael Wilson, “The Psychology of Motivation and Employee Retention,” Maintenance Supplies 50, no. 5 (July 2005): 48–49.

  31. 31. A. H. Reylito Elbo, “In the Workplace,” Business World (2002): 1.

  32. 32. David A. Kaplan, “SAS: A New No. 1 Best Employer,” CNNMoney.com , January 22, 2010, http://money.cnn.com.

  33. 33. C. West Churchman, Russell L. Ackoff, and E. Leonard Arnoff, Introduction to Operations Research (New York: Wiley, 1957), 18.

  34. 34. Hamdy A. Taha, Operations Research: An Introduction (New York: Macmillan, 1988), 1–2; see also: Scott Shane and Karl Ulrich, “Technological Innovation, Product Development, and Entrepreneurship in Management Science,” Management Science 2 (2004): 133–145.

  35. 35. Kalyan Singhal, Jaya Singhal, and Martin K Starr, “The Domain of Production and Operations Management and the Role of Elwood Buffa in Its Delineation,” Journal of Operations Management 25, no. 2 (March 2007): 310.

  36. 36. James R. Emshoff, Analysis of Behavioral Systems (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 10.

  37. 37. For a discussion of management science in the twenty-first century, see: David R. Anderson, An Introduction to Management Science: Quantitative Approaches to Decision Making (Mason, OH: South-Western/Cengage Learning, 2012); Michael S. Hopkins, “Putting the Science in Management Science?” MIT Sloan Management Review, March 17, 2010. An interesting discussion of the issues related to establishing a health information technology system for the United States is found in David J. Bailer, “Guiding the Health Information Technology Agenda,” Health Affairs 29, no. 4 (April 2010): 586–594.

  38. 38. The discussion concerning these characteristics is adapted from James H. Donnelly, Jr., James L. Gibson, and John M. Ivancevich, Fundamentals of Management (Plano, TX: Business Publications, 1987), 302–303; Efraim Turban and Jack R. Meredith, Fundamentals of Management Science (Plano, TX: Business Publications, 1981), 15–23.

  39. 39. For a practical application of the contingency approach to management, see: Henri Barki, Suzanne Rivard, and Jean Talbot, “An Integrative Contingency Model of Software Project Risk Management,” Journal of Management Information Systems 17, no. 4 (Spring 2001): 37–69.

  40. 40. For an application of the contingency approach to management in an information systems organization, see: Narayan S. Umanath, “The Concept of Contingency Beyond ‘It Depends’: Illustrations from IS Research Stream,” Information & Management 40 (2003): 551–562.

  41. 41. Don Hellriegel, John W. Slocum, and Richard W. Woodman, Organizational Behavior (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1986), 22.

  42. 42. J. W. Lorsch, “Organization Design: A Situational Perspective,” Organizational Dynamics 6 (1977): 2–4; Louis W. Fry and Deborah A. Smith, “Congruence, Contingency, and Theory Building,” Academy of Management Review (January 1987): 117–132.

  43. 43. For a more detailed development of von Bertalanffy’s ideas, see: “General System Theory: A New Approach to Unity of Science,” Human Biology (December 1951): 302–361.

  44. 44. L. Thomas Hopkins, Integration: Its Meaning and Application (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1937), 36–49.

  45. 45. Company website, http://www.reviewpro.com, accessed April 15, 2010; Marina Zaliznyak, “Hotel Reputation Management Service ReviewPro Has Big International Plans,” TechCrunch, January 5, 2010, http://eu.techcrunch.com.

  46. 46. Joe Schwartz, “Why They Buy,” American Demographics 11 (March 1989): 40–41.

  47. 47. Ken Starkey, “What Can We Learn from the Learning Organization?” Human Relations 51, no. 4 (April 1998): 531–546.

  48. 48. David A. Garvin, “Building a Learning Organization,” Harvard Business Review 74, no. 4 (July 1993): 78. For a more recent discussion of learning organizations, see: Bente Elkjaer, “The Dance of Change: The Challenges of Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations,” Management Learning 32, no. 1 (March 2000): 153–156.

  49. 49. For a study on the effectiveness of the learning organization approach, see: Ashok Jashapara, “Cognition, Culture, and Competition: An Empirical Test of the Learning Organization,” The Learning Organization 10 (2003): 31–50.

  50. 50. Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday/Currency, 1990). Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. For more background regarding learning organizations and innovation, see: Li-Fen Liao, “A Learning Organization Perspective on Knowledge-Sharing Behavior and Firm Innovation,” Human Systems Management 25, no. 4 (2006): 227.

  51. 51. Ronald Alsop, “Sparking Innovation from the Bottom Up,” BBC Capital, November 26, 2013, http://www.bbc.com; Ryan Hutton, “How IBM Bypasses Bureaucratic Purgatory,” Fortune, December 5, 2013, EBSCOhost, http://web.b.ebscohost.com; IBM, “About IBM,” http://www.ibm.com/ibm/us/en/, accessed February 13, 2014; IBM, “Background,” IBM Newsroom, http://www.ibm.com/press, accessed February 13, 2014.

  52. 52. Leonel Prieto, “Some Necessary Conditions and Constraints for Successful Learning Organizations,” Competition Forum 7, no. 2 (2009): 513–520.

  53. 53. UPS, “About UPS: Company History,” UPS Pressroom, http://www.pressroom.ups.com, accessed February 13, 2014; Steve Rosenbush, “UPS Says Automated Routing Will Transform Package Delivery,” Wall Street Journal, October 28, 2013, http://blogs.wsj.com; Devin Leonard, “He’ll Make Your Dreams Come True,” Bloomberg Businessweek, December 23, 2013, EBSCOhost, http://web.b.ebscohost.com; Laura Stevens and Anna Prior, “UPS Unveils Plans to Improve Delivery Performance,” Wall Street Journal, January 30, 2014, http://online.wsj.com; Devin Leonard, “D. Scott Davis, CEO, UPS,” Bloomberg Businessweek, August 12, 2013, EBSCOhost, http://web.b.ebscohost.com; Jeff Berman, “UPS Reports a 2.8 Percent Gain in Q4 Revenue to $14.9 Billion,” Logistics Management, January 30, 2014, http://www.logisticsmgmt.com.

  54. 54. This exercise is based on Edward V. Morandi, Jr., “On the Job, Time Study Supervisor,” Telegram & Gazette, November 13, 2006, E1.

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