Chat with AIExam 9: In Search of New Managerial Paradigms
Imagine that you were made the manager of a fast-food restaurant staffed largely by university students working part-time. If you could choose to implement any management system (or some part of it) that you wanted, what would you choose? Explain what your goals would be, and how this management approach would help you reach them.
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VerifiedSuggested student response: Students will likely take the position that the primary goal is business profitability, while a secondary goal would be satisfied workers. Based on previous chapters, they should have some sense of the type of business they are involved in (i.e., lower-tier services) and its reliance on nonstandard workers. This would make some types of management unlikely candidates (e.g., Swedish work reforms, advanced forms of QWL, the high-performance workplace model). Total quality management (TQM) with its emphasis on customer satisfaction and organizational culture approaches that try to motivate workers might be more likely (and have been used in the fast-food industry). A few students might insist that, since they could choose any approach they wanted, their goals would be more humanistic than profit-driven. This might lead to some interesting answers, but they should still be plausible.
Which of the following is a key feature of "lean production" methods?
(35) VerifiedD
A chemical plant built in Sarnia, Ontario, in the late 1970s has come to be seen as a highly successful example of the introduction of new managerial paradigms. Describe the organizational innovations that were implemented, and why this managerial experiment was successful. If the same plant had been built 30 years later, what might have been different?
(27) VerifiedSuggested student response: Students should be able to describe some of the QWL innovations and recognize that union involvement from the outset and the fact that this was a "greenfield site" contributed to success. Answers to the second part of the question could develop in many ways, but should focus on managerial strategies that have emerged more recently. For example, students could speculate about what might have happened if lean production had been proposed by management, or if they had tried to rely on more part-time workers (numerical flexibility)-unions might have been resistant to participate. Alternatively, management might have proposed a high-performance workplace model, which would have involved less job security while providing other benefits to workers.
Many different managerial approaches have been developed in Europe, Japan, and North America over the past several decades, all trying to deal with "problems of bureaucracy." Which of the following new managerial paradigms has placed the most emphasis on employing nonstandard workers (e.g., part-time, temporary)?
(35) A completely new workplace that offers opportunities for both technological and social innovations is best described by which of the following concepts?
(34) Ringi, a Japanese word describing a key component of Japanese management approaches, is best described by which of the following statements?
(27) Briefly define and give an example of each: pay flexibility, functional flexibility, and numerical flexibility.
(39) Quality of working life (QWL) programs can involve a number of different techniques of job task and work organization redesign. In a sentence or two for each, describe four of these techniques.
(32) Which of the following is not one of the characteristics of a "winner" work organization, according to Tom Peters in his book Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution?
(23) Which of the following is the best explanation for Japan's strong economic performance after its economy was basically destroyed during World War II?
(40) List the key features of what organizational analysts call a "high-performance workplace" (HPW). Which of these features, if any, are unique to the HPW approach to management?
(33) Amitai Etzioni described different ways managers might try to gain control over workers. Which of the following management approaches would Etzioni likely label as an example of "normative control?"
(28) Attempts to convince employees to identify with the "organizational culture" of their company are most similar to which of the following management approaches?
(36) Which of the following is a key feature of a "high-performance workplace?"
(38) Piore and Sabel described what they saw as the future of manufacturing and called it "flexible specialization." Which of the following social theorists would likely have agreed that this is the direction we are heading?
(36) Training workers to perform a variety of different tasks would represent which of the following forms of work organization flexibility?
(40) Which of the following best describes the introduction of "high-performance workplaces" in North America?
(34) Which of the following strategies might senior managers in a government department pursue if they wanted their department to be recognized as a "learning organization?"
(27) Which of the following is a key feature of "total quality management"?
(41) Six central themes can be identified when reviewing the variety of new managerial paradigms that have emerged in the past several decades. In a sentence or two for each, identify and explain at least three of these themes.
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