Question

Steel City Inc. is a company located in Dallas in the United States of America. It deals in import export of furniture. The workforce is composed of almost 200 employees, from different levels. In Steel City, Inc., the president Anna, 33 years old, realizes that this firm requires some reorganization.

The organization is using the top down management approach, it has many levels of management and it uses narrowly specialized job descriptions.

Anna wants to move into new international markets but she noticed that employees are demotivated and they are not happy in their positions knowing that Steel City, Inc is applying highly specialized jobs and employees already work independently and in complete autonomy.

Knowing that motivation is very crucial to the productivity of her employees, Anna wanted to work on this issue by increasing employees’ motivation. To do so, she decided to review and change some core characteristics of what they are doing and she was sure that this will certainly end up with beneficial work outcomes.

Anna also used the work flow analysis of Steel City, Inc to define how work in this organization creates value to the ongoing process of employees’ works. She thought that applying the Business Process Reengineering (BPR) might be very efficient to solve the problem of employees’ demotivation since employees have been complaining about their work. Jobs are repetitive and employees don't know how their work fits into the big organizational picture. The president wants to reduce operating costs, reorganize jobs by providing employees with satisfying work, independency and wanted them to be cross trained on different task assigned to the group.

Anna also thought about using a problem solving team to be able to generate solutions about how to decrease employees’ demotivation and increase their work involvement, devotion and commitment.

As she wants jobs to become more interesting and precisely to improve motivation, Anna included specialized task together so employees can expand their work horizontally and vertically. All of this should give employees more autonomy and the opportunity for feedback. Anna decided to compare the productivity of her employees six months after she made the needed adjustments in the company.

1. Based on the above case study, what is the used organizational structure by Steel City, Inc? Explain.

2. Which motivation theory the president's is using to minimize employees’ dissatisfaction?

3. When the job needs to be reorganized some job design modifications should also be implemented. What job design do you propose taking into consideration employees’ complains?

4. What type of team the president can use in order to reduce operating costs giving employees some autonomy in Steel City, Inc.?

Answer 1

1. I believe the current organization structure used by Steel City, Inc. is a mechanistic organizational structure. It can be concluded from the statement that "it uses narrowly specialized job descriptions". This means there is very little chance of showing creativity and contribute to other work rather than the ones assigned to them.

2. The president here is talking about "Herzberg’s Motivation Hygiene Theory". Here the president is talking about increasing the satisfaction but not the motivation. So, it is safe to conclude that Herzberg's motivation theory is discussed in this case.

3. I believe giving employees more span of control. Aligning them with the mission and vision of the organization and thus letting them know that their work is contributing to the organization in such a way that they feel proud of themselves is the best way to redesign the job. Intrinsic motivation is the best way to motivate employees. So, a job design to align them more towards the missions and vision of the organization giving them more span of control is the best way to address the employee complaints.

4. President can use functional teams to reduce the cost and giving more autonomy to the employees. A functional team allows the teams to be formed when necessary and then dilute them when the work is done. This gives the employees more autonomy from a proctored situation and also more span of control. Thus the president can use this strategy to reduce the operating cost.