Humanized Robots? Profit machines?

Sydney had inherited the business three years ago when her father, Phil Scott, passed away unexpectedly. Northern Hardware was founded four decades ago by Phil's Father and uncles and had grown into a moderate-size corporation. Northern Hardware sells contract hardware - hardware, household machinery to builders and developers. The firm is headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta, and has facilities in all the major centres in Alberta.

Sydney took her MBA and now she wanted to play in the global market - regional success was not enough she wanted to take the company international and to do that she wanted to take it public. For that cash flow (reduce coats- with efficiency)and belief in constant growth had to be thefocus.

Phil Scott had the reputation of an ethical leader. The bank told Syd that they would loan her dad money on a handshake, they then went on to explain she would have to build that relationship of trust and needed to quality for the large loan she was asking them for. Phil Scott trained his employees and grew them in the business. He cared about them personally, and ensure they were well cared for. Staff tenure was good once a fit was established as the staff made the company their career.

Although Syd grew up in the family business, she never understood her father's approach. Syd thought her father a weak leader. She had studied to make tough decisions. Phil had treated his employees like part of his family. In Syd's view, however, he paid them more than he had to, asked their advice far more often than he should have, and spent too much time listening to their ideas and complaints. When Syd took over, she vowed to change how things were done. In particular, she resolved to stop handling employees with kid gloves and to treat them like what they were: the hired help.

She made those tough decisions and - change did not happen. They were not making the figures that by Syd's calculations show be obtainable.She could see her employees just not doing what they should. The older those on the executive kept wanting to have meetings she did not need to waist time on meetings, a memo would serve the purpose. She knew she made the right decisions; she just could not figure out how to make them effective. The executives ignored here and did what they had done before.Production kept wanting to waste money on training. The marketing group was all young, living on their computers but the work culture was terrible according to Syd. They never volunteer to work overtime they wanted to be listen too all the time.

Syd Scott was stumped. Sitting in her office at the offices, she pondered the same questions she had been facing for months: how to get her company's employees to work harder and produce more. No matter what she did, it didn't seem to help much. From the day Syd took over, she practiced an altogether different philosophy than her dad, to achieve her goals. For one thing, she increased production quotas by 20 percent. She instructed her first-line supervisors to crack down on employees and eliminate all idle time. If it works for Amazon why not her?

All personal phones had to be left at the receptionist, she would not tolerate any waisted time. She also decided to shut down the company softball field her father had built. She thought the employees really didn't use it much, and she wanted the space for future expansion. You should have seen the wining she could not understand it was as if her staff was in a time warp. Baseball really?

Syd stopped the soft sell. She announced that future contributions to the firm's profit-sharing plan would be phased out. Employees were paid enough, she believed, and all profits were the rightful property of the ownerher. She needed cash surplus to expand and go public. She also had private plans to cut future pay increases to bring average wages down to where she thought they belonged. Finally, Syd changed several operational procedures. In particular, she stopped asking other people for their advice. She reasoned that she was the boss and knew what was best. If she asked for advice and then didn't take it, it would only stir up resentment.

A month passes, all in all, Syd thought, things should be going much better. Output should be up, and costs should be way down. Her strategy should be resulting in much higher levels of productivity and profits. But that was not happening. Whenever Syd walked through one of operations, she sensed that people weren't doing their best. Performance reports indicated that output was only marginally higher than before, but scrap rates had soared. Payroll costs were indeed lower, but other personnel costs were up. It seemed that turnover had increased substantially, and training costs had gone up as a result.

Q1) What are the differences in values in the organization between, the father, and Sydney, the current owner? How do values influence behaviour of self and others i.e. leaders and employees?

How will the lack of support for the old aligned values play out in the workplace?

Why would counter productive work behaviours arise?

Q2)1.If the employees came to the company aligned with the OCEAN aspects of Openness, extroverted, and moderate neuroticism, would they prosper in the old culture or the new one? And why?

Q3)1.What is the possible role of value misalignment in Sydney's challenge? What can be done? What attitudinal issues are facing the company?Is the company structures to have a thriving workforce? If emotions drive action, what emotions did the different leaders Phil and Sydney, tag and what would you expect to be the consequences? Refer to material on positive psychology, EI, PERMA. If you were Syd, how would you build organizational commitment?