MBS538 ASSESSMENT 2 CASE STUDY ANALYSIS PRESENTATION (FOR STUDENT) CRISIS AT ATOM SYSTEMS

The Crisis

Everyone was scurrying when the mainframe at The Sanctuary General Hospital failed a second time after it has been replaced. It didn't help with the Southeast Asia Information Technology Conference (SEA IT Conference) just hours away, where John the Senior Manager of Business Services at Atom Systems has been invited to be one of the keynote speakers for the event. Looking at his watch and at the email he received from Angela, the Group Director, regarding the second incident of the malfunctioned mainframe, he is in despair...

The Merger and Structure

To synergise their businesses, Atom Systems and Beta Systems agree to a merger six months ago. The name Atom Systems is retained in the process. Due to the merger, a major restructuring has taken place. Some employees have been laid off and those who remained were on thin ice, uncertain of their future, fearing another cycle of redundancy. Human resources redeployment is extremely unpredictable.Yet in the height of all the uncertainty and ambiguity, opportunities for promotion seemed not too far-fetched for some who have managed to develop strong and wide networks in the organisation.

Originally, John is a manager from Systems and Technology of Atom Systems. Since the merger, he has been promoted to Senior Manager and redeployed to lead the team at Business Services. There were five members in his team, Gideon, Jason and Matthew were colleagues with John at Atom Systems prior to the merger. Gary and Fei Li were from Beta Systems.

The Preparation for the Conference Presentation

Amidst the disruption, John has been invited to speak in the Southeast Asia Information Technology conference (SEA IT Conference). He is elated and honored to be representing the company for this event. This is a high-profile event where many global senior executives of the IT industry would be attending. It is another good opportunity for John to expand his network externally. Who knows he might end up being headhunted to join one of the region's largest tech companies. He is very determined to make good use of this opportunity to exhibit his expertise, charm and charisma. His team was given a brief on the conference theme and were told to come prepared in the meeting with ideas on the topic for the conference.

When the team convened to meet, Gideon started the ball rolling with ideas which he thought were trending in the industry. John told Gideon that the conference attendees are

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MBS538 ASSESSMENT 2 CASE STUDY ANALYSIS PRESENTATION (FOR STUDENT) CRISIS AT ATOM SYSTEMS

conservative Senior Executives who might be more interested in topics that are down to earth and practical. Gideon was disappointed at how quickly his ideas have been thrown out of the window. He was hoping that John would be impressed. Afterall, he has spent the past one week researching on the ideas and have gathered significant amount of information for the meeting. The meeting ended without any conclusion on the topic.

One day, Gideon overheard Jason having a conversation with John in the pantry. "John, I think the company has gotten the right person to speak in the conference. You are so experienced and well respected in this industry." John smiled gleefully and Jason continued, "I have been thinking a lot after our first meeting and I thought you can consider 'Data Integration' in your presentation..." Gideon was disgusted at Jason's mentioned of 'Data Integration'. This was one of the ideas he proposed in the first meeting. Jason continued, "Let me show you some statistics on this growing trend here... What do you think?" John was full of praise after listening to Jason's proposal and thought that was a great idea.

After this, Gideon went to Matthew and told him what happened. "The idea on 'Data Integration' was mine and it was rejected. But just a minute ago, I overheard Jason proposing the same idea to John and John accepted it. This didn't feel good at all!", Gideon sounded very dejected. "I understand how you feel. Gideon, you are more than who you think you can be. We don't win all the time, but it is important not to give up on what you believe is important to excel at work. What you can do is learn to be more effective in your communication." Matthew replied. Gideon felt better almost immediately after talking to Matthew. Gideon really liked talking to Matthew. He has this calm disposition that draws people's attention, and his advice often stirs up positive emotion.

In the next meeting, John recognized Jason's recommendation publicly to the team and he was tasked to prepare a major part of the content for the presentation. Gideon felt the lingering disappointment resurfacing as John continued to compliment Jason. John added that Jason can go to him anytime to communicate the details. The rest of the members were then assigned other tasks by John. Just before John concluded, Gary protested with aggression, "The tasks should be assigned based on role and skills compatibility as well as experience. Furthermore, I can't see how doing all the other research would help in preparing for the topic. Don't you agree, Fei Li?" Fei Li gave a fleeting and uncomfortable glance at Gary

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MBS538 ASSESSMENT 2 CASE STUDY ANALYSIS PRESENTATION (FOR STUDENT) CRISIS AT ATOM SYSTEMS

and nodded her head timidly in agreement. John was quick to brush away the comment without further elaboration and hastily moved on to the next agenda.

After the meeting Gideon was increasingly feeling more upset that Jason was given a major part of the work for an idea that originated from him. He recalled Matthews' word of advice and determined that since he has been tasked to put together the visuals for the presentation, it is another good opportunity to impress John with his creativity. He followed up closely and diligently with the rest of the members to gather the information for the visuals, added his own ideas, worked through the evenings and several weekends to prepare the visuals. After completing what he thought was an exceptional piece of work, emailed it to John the night before the agreed deadline.

Early next morning when Gideon arrived in the office, he saw a post-it-note on his desk. It was from John, and the note written in a liner, "Review the visuals, too fanciful." Gideon was totally baffled. What did John mean that the visuals were too fanciful? Gideon felt totally drained and did not feel like working on the visuals anymore. He decided he would not take any initiatives unless instructed. He thought, clearly my ideas are not valued. John is biased towards Jason and no matter what I do, my efforts will go unnoticed. Anyway, Jason is more experienced. He probably would be more convincing when making a case. At that instance, his gaze settled on Fei Li and brightened up a little. Fei Li, though has similar work experience as him is far more reticent at work. He recalled how she has been criticised harshly by John for the mistakes she made in previous projects.

The Crisis Recounted

It was just three days before the conference when John was called into Angela's room, Group director of Business Services. Angela has received an email regarding a customer's complaint (Appendix A) from one of the company's major customers, The Sanctuary General Hospital. John was instructed to resolve the matter urgently looking immediately into service recovery with the customer.

Without delay, John called for a meeting with his team. John was flustered and he asserted to the team that they better have some constructive solutions for the situation. "Your mid- year review with me is just round the corner and not forgetting that potentially the company may enter into another cycle of redundancy. You don't want to be next in line to be asked to leave.", John stated. He was adamant to reach a solution to regain company's reputation, but

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MBS538 ASSESSMENT 2 CASE STUDY ANALYSIS PRESENTATION (FOR STUDENT) CRISIS AT ATOM SYSTEMS

time is not on his side. Customer has threatened to terminate the contract in the next 24 hours.

The meeting was intense. After hours of discussion and brainstorming, Jason said, "This is not the best solution but given the limited time we have, I think it will help us gain back some grounds with The Sanctuary." Most of the members were not totally convinced, especially Matthew, "while it seems to resolve some backend issues arising from the situation, the exchange may ultimately lead to a more inferior mainframe (3.0 version compared to the 4.0 version customer has originally acquired) that they have initially paid for. This might ultimately backfire. Furthermore, it does not sit very well with one our company's credo (Appendix B)." Taking the lead from Matthew, the rest of team began harmonising the same concern. Jason retorted, "But this solution is the only fix we can offer at present, and it can reduce the risk of customer terminating the contract with us. Once we have gained traction, we can strategise to re-establish The Sanctuary's confidence in us." The meeting has gone on for hours and everyone was exhausted. At this point, Gary raised his voice and told John bluntly, "It seems like we already have something we can offer to the customer. Couldn't this whole thing just get wrapped up?"

John froze for a second and passing over Gary's comment, moved on to ask for the most current set of data for both mainframes' efficiency and tested downtime report. Jason dished out the information and highlighted several statistics that he received from one of his networks from the research team indicating that version 3.0 mainframe is more stable than 4.0. "The statistics look promising. We need not divulge that the exchanged mainframe is not our latest version. Anyway, what The Sanctuary needed is a stable mainframe and it seems like the older version can do the job. We can use this set of statistics to convince them." John decided.

The remaining hours were chaotic and frantic. Things seemed to be on track in managing the crisis with The Sanctuary General Hospital but just hours before the SEA IT Conference, John received another email from Angela that the Mainframe version 3.0 at The Sanctuary has failed again and it was found out that information presented by Jason regarding the mainframe version 3.0 was only partially accurate...

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MBS538 ASSESSMENT 2 CASE STUDY ANALYSIS PRESENTATION (FOR STUDENT) CRISIS AT ATOM SYSTEMS

Appendix A (Email Complaint from The Sanctuary General Hospital)Angela Duckson

From:Brad Davidson &..n@atomsystems.com>To:Angela Duckson &..n@atomsystems.com>CC:Alfred Hitman &..n@atomsystems.com>

Subject:The Sanctuary system failure

Angela,

Yesterday I received a serious complaint from one of our major customers, Patricia Freeway, Director of The Sanctuary General Hospital. The hospital accepted delivery of new mainframes from our company to manage their patient record system. Two days after installation, serious hardware faults developed that brought the entire system down and crucially, we failed to meet our 24-hour service level agreement around rectifying the system faults.

Our engineers encountered severe problems getting the mainframes up and running again, resulting in an overall delay of two days. This caused major disruption for doctors and patients.

With the computer down-time meant lives were seriously endangered whilst patient records were unavailable, and we were very luck nobody died because of the poor-quality products and service. In view of the seriousness of this incident, I need to highlight this is a threat to our reputation.

As you know we are at the first stage of a huge programme to roll out to high profile specialist hospital across Australia, this incident has caused a huge dent on our reputation. The hospital has communicated their severe lack of confidence in our products and our future orders are at risk. It is going to be difficult to rebuild our reputation for producing dependable, reliable, high-quality products, suited to this life critical industry.

Brad

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MBS538 ASSESSMENT 2 CASE STUDY ANALYSIS PRESENTATION (FOR STUDENT) CRISIS AT ATOM SYSTEMS

Appendix B (Atom Systems Credo)

Atom Systems Credo

"... we must constantly strive to service our customers promptly, and precisely. High quality services must be maintained always to meet the needs of our customers. We make fair and ethical decisions for the good of all our stakeholders, customers, business partners and stakeholders, all inclusive..."

What you need to do:

Read and be familiar with the case, "Crisis at Atom Systems" that is available on LMS, under

Assessment.

Review the respective assigned theme with any other resources and recent research. You can look up recent peer-reviewed journal articles on the topic with the help of Murdoch's online library. Relevant research articles can also be accessed via "My Unit Reading".

Identify the issues in the case that is related to the team's theme.

Provide your critical analysis of the case with the help of relevant OBM concepts and research.

Recommend solutions based on relevant OBM concepts/theories and research to address the issues identified.

The presentation should include the following aspects:

Introduction to the theme decision making

Issues identified in the case related to the decision making

What specific OBM theories/concepts on the assigned theme can you apply to provide your analysis? Apply OBM theories/concepts to support, explain and discuss your analysis of the issues.

Recommendations that address the issues identified.

References

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