Sumprint Ltd was established in the mid-1980s as a partnership. The enterprise was converted to a private limited company in the second year of operation.
The shares were wholly owned by members of the two families of the original founders.
The business was initially concerned with printing of leaflets, club newsletters and similar small jobs. This aspect of the company's activities had been largely superseded by firm contracts for printing technical manuals and brochures.
By the end of 2000 the company had grown to employ around 180 staff. Fifty of these employees were engaged in marketing, finance, administration and personnel functions. There was minimal interaction between these functions and each tended to operate as separate entities.
The financial department and small marketing section kept the general operation of the sales and production activities closely under their supervision.
The administration department operated all the monitoring and control systems and provided clerical support to finance, sales and production. The function was well organised and was managed by the daughter of the founders. She had gained considerable working experience, initially with a large charity and subsequently as office manager in a small engineering business. She had held her present post for four years and had acquired a high level of selfassurance.
Her confident manner made her dealings with the other departments easier to manage. Indeed, on some occasions it made the situation possible.
The same level of development and attention had not been give to the personnel aspects of the business.
This function had always tended to receive less attention and had been without any designated person in charge for some months. Now that the Directors had taken on an experienced Personnel Manager there were hopes that the situation would improve.
Almost of necessity each department had handled their own personnel needs. With this background it was no surprise to the new Personnel Manager that there was little in the way of formal systems and procedures.
He was working on these when there was an incident in the production department.
The supervisor wished to take disciplinary action against an employee for disobeying an instruction and the employee wished to register a grievance against the supervisor for the way the supervisor had acted. This situation, if properly handled, would provide the Personnel Manager with the opportunity to show the importance of the function.
At the same time the Administration Manager had employed two new staff to start at the beginning of the next month. This gave her three weeks to produce an induction programme.
One of the prospective employees was a mature woman with considerable experience of office routine while the other was an eighteen-year-old straight from college.
The Administration Manager knew she would get no help from personnel as she had always been very critical of the way the personnel function had been neglected. In contrast to this she offered some assistance to the Personnel Manager, both personally and by two of the staff. Unfortunately, this offer was rejected in a rather offhand manner. He said that he wanted to sort things out himself.
The purchasing of materials and general items had always been the responsibility of the Administration Manager, but stock control and the small warehouse was the responsibility of the Production Supervisor.
The arrangement normally worked satisfactorily, but when there was a breakdown on the flow of information, production could be interrupted.

Questions

(a) Discuss the weakness of the informal structure in Sumprint and suggest how improvements could be made.
(b) Advise the Personnel Manager on the immediate way forward in the combined disciplinary and grievance case.
(c) Discuss the approach the Administration Manager should take to devise the induction programme for the two new staff.