Case Acme Manufacturing Company
Steve Arnold is a production manager at Acme Manufacturing Company in New Jersey. When he arrived at the plant on Tuesday morning at 8:45, he was already late for work. Steve had overslept that morning because the night before he had stayed up late to finish the monthly production report for his department. Entering the office Steve greeted his secretary, Ruth Sweeney, and asked whether anything urgent needed his immediate attention. Ruth reminded him of the staff meeting at 9:30 with Steve’s boss—Frank Jones, the vice president for production—and the other production managers. Steve thanked Ruth for reminding him (he had forgotten about the meeting) and continued on to his adjoining office to look for the email announcing the meeting. He vaguely remembered getting it a week earlier, but he did not read it carefully or look at the attached materials.
His phone rang, and it was Sue Bradley, the sales vice president, who was inquiring about the status of a rush order for one of the company’s important clients. Steve promised to look into the matter and get back to her later in the day with an answer. Steve had delegated the rush order last week to Lucy Adams, one of his production supervisors, and he had not thought about it since then. Stepping back into the outer office, Steve asked Ruth if she had seen Lucy today. Ruth reminded him that Lucy was at a training workshop in California and would be difficult to reach until the session ended late in the afternoon, because the workshop facilitators regard cell phone calls and text messages as an unnecessary distraction.
Going back into his office, Steve sent a text message to Lucy asking her to call him as soon as possible. Then, he resumed his search for the email about the meeting with his boss and the other production managers. He found it in his large collection of unprocessed emails, and it said the purpose of the meeting was to discuss a proposal for changing the quality-control procedures. By now it was 9:25, and there was no time to read the proposal. He hurried out to get to the meeting on time. During the meeting, the other production managers participated in the discussion and made helpful comments or suggestions. Steve was not prepared for the meeting and did not contribute much except to say that he did not anticipate any problems with the proposed changes.
The meeting ended at 10:30, and Steve returned to his office, where he found Paul Chen, one of his production supervisors, waiting for him. Paul wanted to discuss a problem caused in the production schedules by a major equipment breakdown. Steve called Glenda Brown, his assistant manager, and asked her to join them to help rearrange the production schedules for the next few days. Glenda came in shortly and the three of them worked on the production schedules. They finished around noon and went out for lunch.
Soon after returning from lunch, his boss (Frank Jones) stopped in to ask about the quality report for last week. Steve explained that he had given top priority to finishing the monthly production report and would do the quality report next. Frank was irritated, because he needed the quality data to finalize his proposal for new procedures, and he thought Steve understood this task was more urgent than the production report. He told Steve to get the quality data to him as soon as possible and left. Steve immediately called Glenda Brown and asked her to bring the quality data to his office. The task of reviewing the data and preparing a short summary was not difficult, but it took longer than he anticipated. It was 2:40 by the time Steve completed the report and attached it to an email to his boss.
Looking at his calendar, Steve noticed that he was already late for a 2:30 meeting of the plant safety committee. The committee meets weekly to review safety problems, and each department sends a representative. Steve rushed out to the meeting, which was held in another part of the plant. The meeting was dull this week, without any important issues or problems to discuss. The meeting ended at 3:30, and when Steve unmuted his cell phone he discovered that Lucy had tried to contact him before leaving to fly home from the conference. Steve walked back through his section of the plant and stopped to talk to his assistant manager Glenda. She wanted some advice on how to resolve a problem in the production assignments for the next day, and they discussed the problem for about a half-hour. When Steve returned to his office at 4:05, he was feeling tired and decided it was time to go home. As he drove out of the parking lot, Steve reflected that he was getting further behind in his work and wondered what he could do to get better control over his job.
Written by Gary Yukl
In 500 words, answer the questions from Part 1 & 2 of the case study.
For Part 1 answer the following questions:
1. What is the usual leadership situation in the auto repair shop (consider the nature of the task, subordinates, and environment)?
2. Describe Alan’s typical leadership style and evaluate whether it is appropriate for the leadership situation.
For Part 2 answer the following questions:
1. Describe Alan’s leadership style during the flood, and evaluate how appropriate it was for the leadership situation.
2. Identify effective behaviors by Alan after the flood subsided.
3. How should Alan behave toward his employees in the future?
