Reference no: EM132926768
Case Study - Packed Mee Limited
Amos is CEO of Packed Mee Limited, a company which manufactures instant noodles for the local market. The company has belonged to his family for generations. It is a small company with only 3 departments - Human Resource, Sales & Marketing and Production. Each department is headed by a manager. The Production Manager (Amos' younger brother) is in charge of the company's factory which employs some 100 operators manufacturing the noodles. The operators report directly to the Production Manager and Amos always felt amazed that his brother could manage that many subordinates so well. Business is so good that the Production Manager recently approached the Human Resource Manager to hire 20 more operators! Amos knows that the Human Resources and Production Departments are well run by their respective managers. The employees in both departments are mostly capable workers with positive work attitudes. In fact, the Human Resource Manager did appoint some of his most capable subordinates to act on his behalf for certain projects and the results have been very good.
Amos' main concern is the Sales & Marketing Department. Although its manager is hardworking and well qualified, she has encountered attitude problems from a couple of the sales executives there. For instance, they would disregard her instructions about punctuality for work. Both executives are very experienced in their jobs (each having been with Packed Mee Limited for over 20 years) and had been instrumental in securing many major contracts and new businesses for the company over the years. They know therefore that they are quite indispensable to the company's profitability as they cannot be easily replaced at short notice. Amos suspects that a main reason for their lack of respect for their manager is the latter's relative youth - she is only 24 years old and has less than 2 years of working experience although she has done very well during that time and has a MBA from a reputable university.
Refer to your lecture notes and identify (with explanations) the organising concepts present in this short case study.
Question 2
Diagram 1: Organisation chart of National Arts Council
Source: https://www.nac.gov.sg/aboutus/management.html
Note:
CEO - Chief Executive Officer D - Director
CFO - Chief Financial Officer DD - Deputy Director
DyCEO - Deputy Chief Executive Officer FD - Festival Director
ACE - Assistant Chief Executive
FD - Festival Director
(a) The organisation chart of National Arts Council (NAC) depicts its "chain of command" and "span of control" (refer to Diagram 1).
(i) Provide TWO examples of "chain of command" from the organisation chart of NAC.
(ii) Define "span of control" and explain if there is an ideal span of control. Describe the type of span of control that the management of NAC is organised around.
(iii) Identify the type of departmentalisation which NAC depicts. Explain your answer.
Question 3
You have just joined an organisation as a manager in the Business Development department. As this is your first designated role as a manager, you are concerned with managing a team of 20 staff and how to apply leadership skills. Also, you are unsure of what its organisational culture in the company is like. Thus, you plan to apply the business concepts which you have recently learnt from your Business Management studies.
(a) Discuss the difference between "authority" and "power". Is it possible for you, as a manager, to have authority without power? Explain.
(b) Being a new manager in the organisation, you need to know four functions of organisational culture. State these FOUR functions.
Question 4:
Explain what centralisation and decentralisation of authority mean. Would you rather be a manager in a centralised or a decentralised organisation? Why?