個案總覽

Supplements the (B) case.

Raises questions about basing a reward system on profit and changing MBO indicators through time.

Growth in demands on the bank's "back office" required a totally new approach to management. New stress on systems orientation, objectives, measurement, process design and control has resulted in lower costs, fewer people, and higher quality. Also resulted in fear, suspicion, and alienation in middle management. How to get the benefits of change without the unanticipated consequences?

Growth in the banking field has produced new demands on the "back office." Traditional management practices in check processing and paper handling operations have resulted in ten years of cost increases and quality loss. New manager of the operating group faces an action question--can he turn the back office into a production-oriented factory?

Personal history of David Alpert, with emphasis on psychoanalytic developmental issues.

Douglas McGregor's "Theory Y" fails to explain worker motivation under all circumstances. Recent studies show that there is not one best organizational approach, and that the best approach is one fitted to the nature of the work to be done. The "Contingency Theory" states that an individual's central need is to achieve a sense of competence. Competence is most likely to be fulfilled when there is a fit between task and organization. In this situation, competence continues after the achievement of initial goals.

A discussion of a study of two similar manufacturing plants, one organized by product, the other by function, offers clues for managers concerned with how to structure their corporations to enable employees, particularly specialists, to do their jobs with maximum efficiency and productivity. Managers traditionally use technical and economic criteria that ignore the complex set of tradeoffs involved in deciding between a product or functional basis for organization. The recommended solution to the problem of which structure to adopt depends on the analysis of multiple tasks, differences between specialists, the objective of integration and the mechanisms and behavior required to resolve conflict and arrive at the desired states of differentiation and integration.