(b) Drawing examples from the SPS case, recall any four (4) challenges or opportunities that managers face when applying OB concepts to real-life situations.

People and Performance at SpanPack Singapore (SPS) :

The 2018 Mercer Index of Employee Engagement in the Asia-Pacific ranked Singapore 13th out of 14 countries. SpanPack Singapore (SPS) has emerged as one of the leading packaging companies in Singapore. Alvin Tay, the company's founder and managing director, realises that he has to strengthen the employee engagement at his company. Though he understands that each head of department at SPS works hard, they seem to have lost sight of what was best for the organisation as a whole. Alvin is preparing to address some serious people and performance issues at SPS at the next Monday meeting. As he is doing so, he begins to wonder how engaged are the employees at SPS? What would be the best course of action for SPS to pursue to ensure smooth operations and a consistent growth for the company?

SpanPack Singapore:

The company's operations involve around 100 employees working in five different departments: production, purchasing, quality control, marketing, and administration. Alvin himself takes care of marketing, although sometimes he outsources it. He believes in running a quality-driven and cost-efficient business. The company operates on core values of quality assurance and performance excellence. SPS works on a wide variety of packaging materials but the overall usage of bio-degradable materials is low because they cost more and, as a result, demand for them is lower. Flexible plastic packaging material is extensively used as it has high demand in the market. Having operated in Singapore for more than 15 years, the company has been profitable with an established customer base in Singapore, Malaysia and some in the Asia Pacific region. The company has recently recruited more staff, particularly in purchasing. It has also invested in the latest production equipment and has plans to automate some areas of production for greater efficiency.

Operations and the Staff Issues:

Production and Purchasing are two of SPS' key functions and most staff work in these two departments. The administration, headed by Susan, is confined to maintaining remuneration and accounts, taking care of staff schedules and implementing company rules pertaining to employees' discipline. The machine operators in the production department are led by supervisors who report to Kevin, the production manager. The production demands are high and Kevin leaves no stone unturned so that his supervisors deliver results and that the department maximises its production output. Recently, Kevin noted that the operators and their supervisors are slacking off and that there are reports of higher-than-usual absenteeism among machine operators. The staff feel 'left out' as any improvement in the output is not attributed to their better performance but to the new machines. Rumours of automation further add to the situation and to make matters worse, two senior supervisors have left the company recently, creating further disruptions in the production department. The employees of the purchasing department work in teams. The team members work on various purchasing operations: sourcing and selecting materials, placing purchase orders and liaising with quality control. All teams report to Nathan, the head of purchasing. The new recruits, mostly younger staff with a university degree, are distributed across the existing teams that also include experienced and long-serving staff. A few weeks ago, there were many reports of disagreements about work specifics and processes. The new recruits are BUS103 (Online) Group-based Assignment SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES (SUSS) Page 8 of 9 perceived as less agreeable and tougher to work with. The older staff strongly feel that their expertise and experience are not considered. Furthermore, Nathan recently noted many delays in processing purchasing orders, particularly orders pertaining to plastic materials, as the quality department does not approve them in a timely manner. This resulted in many delays in the production. The quality control department has a new head, Ramesh, who holds a diploma in material sciences as well as a degree in behavioural sciences. Ramesh believes that most materials chosen by the Purchasing staff are largely made out of non-recyclable plastic. However, the most recent studies indicate that 'polystyrene', a key component of modern plastic materials, contains styrene, a component that poses serious health risks to those who are exposed to it over the long-term. Ramesh strongly believes that ethics, and not just costs, should be taken into consideration when selecting production material. Hence, he has not approved many purchasing orders and he has also started to exhort Alvin to make SPS a more environmentally friendly company by choosing materials that are kind to the environment, especially since this trend is clearly part of the future of the industry. On the other hand, Ramesh and Nathan have differences of opinions in the way they view the company's values. Nathan has had to approach Alvin several times to resolve approval issues. He was exhausted dealing with the team work at his department and facing hurdles in approvals from Ramesh. On a separate point, Susan is pursuing an undergraduate degree programme and she has approached Ramesh to seek his advice about taking up organisation behavior course as she wonders how it could help her enhance her people skills. The Monday Meeting Alvin starts the meeting by reading out the findings of the 2018 Mercer Report on Employee engagement.