Provide a SWOT Analysis of the following case study:

The Case Of The Changing Cage

The voucher-check filing unit was a work unit in the home office of the Atlantic Insurance Company. The assigned task of the unit was to file checks and vouchers written by the company as they were cashed and returned. This filing was the necessary foundation for the main function of the unit; locating any particular check for examination upon demand/ There were usually eight to ten requests for specific checks from as many different departments during the day. One of the most frequent reasons checks were requested from the unit was to determine whether checks in payment of claims against the company had been cashed. Thus efficiency in the unit directly affected customer satisfaction with the company. Complaints or inquiries about payments could not be answered the accuracy and speed conducive to client satisfaction unless the unit could supply the document immediately.

Toward the end of 1952, nine workers manned this unit. There was an assistant(a position equivalent to a foreman in a factory) named Miss Dunn, five other full-time employees, and three part time workers.

The work area of the unit was well-defined. Walls bounded the unit on three sides. The one exterior wall was pierced by light-admitting north windows. The west interior portion was blank. A door opening into a corridor pierced the south interior partition. The east side of the work area was enclosed by a steel mesh reaching from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. This open metal barrier gave rise to the customary name of the unit---The Voucher Cage. A sliding door through this mesh gave access from the units territory to the work area of the rest of the companys agency audit division. Of which it was a part, located on the same floor.

The units territory was kept inviolate by locks on both doors, fastened at all times. No one not working within the cage was permitted inside unless his name appeared on a special list in the custody of Miss Dunn. The door through the steel mesh was used generally for departmental business. Messengers and runners from other departments usually came to the corridor door and pressed a buzzer for service.

The steel mesh front was reinforced by a rank of metal filing cases where checks were filed. Lined up just inside the barrier, they hid the units workers from the view of workers outside their territory, including the section head responsible for overall supervision of this unit according to the companys formal plan of operation.

On top of the cabinets which were backed against the steel mesh, one of the male employees in the unit neatly stacked pasteboard boxes in which checks were transported to the cage. They were later reused to hold older checks sent into storage. His intention was less getting these boxes out of the way then increasing the effective height of the sight barrier so the section head could not see into the cage even when he stood up.

The girls stood at the door of the cage that led into the corridor and talked to the messenger boys. The workers also slipped out this door unnoticed to bring in their customary afternoon snack. Inside the cage, the workers sometimes engaged in a good-natured game of rubber band snapping.

Workers in the cage possessed good capacity to work together consistently and workers outside the cage often expressed envy of those in it because of the nice people and friendly atmosphere there. The unit had no apparent difficulty keeping up with its work load.

For some time prior to 1952 the controllers department of the company had not been able to meet its own standards of efficient service to clients. Company officials felt the primary cause to be spatial. Various divisions of the controllers department were scattered over the entire twenty-two-story company building. Communication between them required phone calls, messengers, or personal visits, all costing time. The spatial separation had not seemed very important when the companys business volume was smaller prior to World War II. But business had grown tremendously since then, and spatial separation appeared increasingly inefficient.

Finally in November of 1952 company officials began to consolidate the controllers department by relocating two divisions together on one floor. One was the agency audit division, which included the voucher-check filing unit. As soon as the decision to move was made, lower-level supervisors were called in to help with planning. Line workers were not consulted, but were kept informed by the assistants of planning progress. Company officials were concerned about the problem of transporting many tons of equipment and some 200 workers from two locations to another single location without disrupting work flow. So the move was planned to occur over a single weekend, using the most efficient resources available. Assistants were kept busy planning positions for files and desks in the new location.

Desks, files, chairs, and even wastebaskets were numbered prior to the move, and relocated according to a master chart checked on the spot by the assistant. Employees were briefed as to where the new location was and which elevators they should take to reach it. The company successfully transported the paraphernalia of the voucher check filing unit from one floor to another over one weekend. Workers in the cage quit Friday afternoon at the old stand, reported back Monday at the new.

The exterior boundaries of the new cage were still three building walls and the steel mesh, but the new cage possessed only one door--the sliding door through the steel mesh into the work area of the rest of the agency audit division. The territory of the cage had also been reduced in size. An entire bank of filing cabinets had to be left behind in the old location to be taken over by the unit moving there. The new cage was arranged so that there was no longer a row of metal fining cabinets lined up inside the steel mesh obstructing the view into the cage.

When the workers in the cage inquired about the removal of the filing cabinets from along the steel mesh fencing, they found that Mr. Burke had insisted that these cabinets be rearranged so his view into the cage would not be obstructed by them. Miss Dun had tried to retain the cabinets in their prior position, but her efforts had been overridden.

Mr. Burke disapproved of conversation. Since he could see workers conversing in the new cage, he requested Miss Dunn to put a stop to all unnecessary talk. Attempts by female clerks to talk to messenger boys brought the wrath of her superior down on Miss Dunn, who was then forced to reprimand the girls.

Mr. Burke also disapproved of an untidy work area, and any boxes or papers which were in sight were a source of annoyance to him. He did not exert supervision directly but would request Miss Dunn to do something about those boxes. In the new cage, desks had to be completely cleared at the end of the day, in contrast to the work-in-progress files left out in the old cage . Boxes could not accumulate on top of filing cabinets.

The custom of afternoon snacking also ran into trouble. Lacking a corridor door, the food-bringers had to venture forth and pack back their snack tray through the work area of the rest of their section, bringing a hitherto unique custom to the attention of workers outside the cage. The latter promptly recognized the desirability of afternoon snacks and began agitation for the same privilege. This annoyed the section head, who forbade workers in the cage from continuing this custom

Mr. Burke later made a rule which permitted one worker to leave the new cage at a set time every afternoon to bring up food for the rest. This rigidity irked cage personnel, accustomed to snack when the mood struck, or none at all. Having made his concession to the cage force, Mr. Burke was unable to prevent workers outside the cage from doing the same thing. What had once been unique to the workers in the cage was now common practice in the section.

Although Miss Dunn never outwardly expressed anything but compliance and approval of superior directives, she exhibited definite signs of anxiety. All the cage workers reacted against Burkes increased domination. When he imposed his decisions upon the voucher-check filing unit, he became old Grandma to its personnel. The cage workers sneered at him and ridiculed him behind his back. Workers who formerly had obeyed company policy as a matter of course began to find reasons for loafing and obstructing work in the new cage. One of the changes that took place in the behavior of the workers had to do with their game of rubber band snapping. All knew Mr. Burke would disapprove of this game. It became highly clandestine and fraught with dangers. Yet shooting rubber bands increased.

Newly arrived checks were put out of sight as soon as possible, filed or not. Workers hid unfilled checks, generally stuffing them into desk drawers or unused file drawers. Since boxes were forbidden, there were fewer unused file drawers than there had been in the old cage. So the days work was sometimes undone when several clerks hastily shoved vouchers and checks indiscriminately into the same file drawer at the end of the day.

Before a worker in the cage filed incoming checks, she measured with her ruler the thickness in inches of each bundle she filed. At the end of each day she totaled her input and reported to Miss Dunn. All incoming checks were measured upon arrival. Thus Miss Dunn had a rough estimate of unit intake compared with file input. Theoretically she was able to tell at any time how much unfilled material she had on hand and how well the unit was keeping up with its task. Despite this running check, when the annual inventory of unfilled checks on hand in the cage was taken at the beginning of the calendar year 1953, a seriously large backlog of unfilled checks was found. To the surprise and dismay of Miss Dunn, the inventory showed the unit to be far behind schedule, filing more slowly than before the relocation of the cage.

Questions:

1) What are the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats?

2) What solutions would you recommend?

3) How would you implement those recommendations?