American Films and Backhoe Operators

To select the one who would get the job, the company asked each of them to go out and actually work on the backhoe for a day. Jim felt his chance for the job disappear because he had never even driven a tractor, let alone used a backhoe. When he went out, he did not know how to start the tractor. One of the other backhoe operators had to show him. He managed through the day, and to his surprise, did better than the others. He was given the job. On his first day at the new job, one of the other backhoe operators showed him where to check the hydraulic fluid and said, â€Å"These old Masseys are foolproof. You will be okay. † Jim taught himself how to dig a hole by trial and error. He initially believed that the best way was to fill the bucket as much as possible before lifting it out of the hole and emptying it. He would wiggle the bucket back and forth until it was submerged and then curl it. When it came out of the hole, the earth would be falling off the sides. This job was not so difficult after all, he thought. He cut through his first water line about two weeks after starting his new job. Going into a deep, muddy hole did not make the crew happy. After Jim cut through his third water line, the crew chief pulled him aside and said, â€Å"You are taking too much earth out with each bucket, so you don’t feel the bucket hitting the water line; ease up a bit. Water lines were usually six to eight feet down, so Jim would dig until about four feet and then try to be more careful. It was then that he pulled up some telephone lines that were only about three feet deep. Realizing that more was involved in operating a backhoe than he first had thought, he sought out Bill Granger, who was known to have broken a water line only twice in his 15 years. It was said that he was so good that he could dig underneath the gas lines—a claim that Jim doubted. Bill said, â€Å"You need to be able to feel any restriction. The way to do that is to have more than one of your levers open at the same time. Operating the bucket lever and the boom lever at the same time reduces the power and causes the machine to stop rather than cut through a line of any type. † Jim began to use this method but still broke water lines. The difference now was that he knew immediately when he broke a line. He could feel the extra pull, whereas in the past, he found out either by seeing water gushing up or by hearing the crew chief swearing at him. He was getting better. Jim never did become as good as Bill Granger. In fact, two years later, he applied for another job as gas repairperson and was promoted, but the training as a gas repairperson was not much better. Case Questions 1. What are the potential costs to this lack of training? Why do you think the company operated in this manner? 2. What type of training would you recommend: OJT, classroom, or a combination? Describe what the training might entail. 3. What type of training environment would you provide? 4. Who would you get to do the training, and why? 5. Would you consider purchasing a training program for backhoe operators? Provide your rationale. American Films and Backhoe Operators To select the one who would get the job, the company asked each of them to go out and actually work on the backhoe for a day. Jim felt his chance for the job disappear because he had never even driven a tractor, let alone used a backhoe. When he went out, he did not know how to start the tractor. One of the other backhoe operators had to show him. He managed through the day, and to his surprise, did better than the others. He was given the job. On his first day at the new job, one of the other backhoe operators showed him where to check the hydraulic fluid and said, â€Å"These old Masseys are foolproof. You will be okay. † Jim taught himself how to dig a hole by trial and error. He initially believed that the best way was to fill the bucket as much as possible before lifting it out of the hole and emptying it. He would wiggle the bucket back and forth until it was submerged and then curl it. When it came out of the hole, the earth would be falling off the sides. This job was not so difficult after all, he thought. He cut through his first water line about two weeks after starting his new job. Going into a deep, muddy hole did not make the crew happy. After Jim cut through his third water line, the crew chief pulled him aside and said, â€Å"You are taking too much earth out with each bucket, so you don’t feel the bucket hitting the water line; ease up a bit. Water lines were usually six to eight feet down, so Jim would dig until about four feet and then try to be more careful. It was then that he pulled up some telephone lines that were only about three feet deep. Realizing that more was involved in operating a backhoe than he first had thought, he sought out Bill Granger, who was known to have broken a water line only twice in his 15 years. It was said that he was so good that he could dig underneath the gas lines—a claim that Jim doubted. Bill said, â€Å"You need to be able to feel any restriction. The way to do that is to have more than one of your levers open at the same time. Operating the bucket lever and the boom lever at the same time reduces the power and causes the machine to stop rather than cut through a line of any type. † Jim began to use this method but still broke water lines. The difference now was that he knew immediately when he broke a line. He could feel the extra pull, whereas in the past, he found out either by seeing water gushing up or by hearing the crew chief swearing at him. He was getting better. Jim never did become as good as Bill Granger. In fact, two years later, he applied for another job as gas repairperson and was promoted, but the training as a gas repairperson was not much better. Case Questions 1. What are the potential costs to this lack of training? Why do you think the company operated in this manner? 2. What type of training would you recommend: OJT, classroom, or a combination? Describe what the training might entail. 3. What type of training environment would you provide? 4. Who would you get to do the training, and why? 5. Would you consider purchasing a training program for backhoe operators? Provide your rationale.

Business Culture Environment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Business Culture Environment - Essay Example His mission does not include trying to transform the Chinese business culture or their society. So taking a very hard and principled stance is never a great business strategy. A sound business strategy is one that is pragmatic, realistic and with a clear profit motive and wealth maximization for the company's stakeholders. [Ref. 2: "Profit Motive" by Murphy Warren.] This is even more so, because by winning one moral victory at a very high cost, there is no guarantee that it will bring greater benefits to the joint venture in the future. There is no guarantee that it will lead to a change of heart and a change of culture of your Chinese partners. There is no guarantee that even the same people with whom you negotiated this protracted conflict, will even be there by the time the joint venture moves forward into its next stage of progress, considering that most of the key employees belong to the state and the communist party, and can be re-shuffled or transferred to other positions at any time. The problem with a joint venture is that the more time you lose in the beginning over smaller issues, the lesser time you are left with by the time you confront larger issues. [Ref. 3: "Effective International Joint Venture Management" by R.C. Wolf] Since the joint venture was already off to a bad start with an eighteen-month delay, the pressure was bound to increase as the negotiations progressed to other areas of the venture. During negotiations, the TNT manager must take it into account the experiences of his competitors, and how they are dealing with such problems. In business, you cannot afford to ignore your competitors' behavior and their strategies, while you remain trapped in your own personal beliefs or biases. Excessive loss of time gives opportunities to the competitors to occupy the space that has been left vacant by you. The fact that the negotiations of TNT with the Chinese lasted five years before the joint venture could see the light of the day, speaks eloquently about its dismal performance. There is no way to justify such an inordinate delay merely by explaining the extremities of the Chinese culture. The TNT manager learned about the Chinese culture the harsh way, which proved too expensive for the joint venture. He ought to have done his homework well in advance, and been fully aware of what to expect from the Chinese. Without a thorough knowledge and understanding of the Chinese culture, it would waste a lot of time in gathering one's learning and experience, which is what happened with the TNT manager. The biggest strategic error of TNT was to put such a man in-charge of the negotiations with the Chinese, who had apparently no past experience in dealing with them. Such a valuable joint venture definitely needed such people on the team of TNT who had either worked for many years in China, or alternatively, who were men of Chinese origin working in the west for many years. In other words, the joint venture needed negotiators who understood both sides intimately. ANS. 2: The TNT case is an outstanding example of cultural misunderstandings and miscommunications. Its

Divorce and Children Issue Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Divorce and Children Issue - Essay Example There is a significant consensus among academic publications that divorce as an event has a net negative effect on children’s experience of wellbeing, but different authors differ significantly as to the reasons why such differences might exist and the long term psychological impact on children of divorce. Public opinion, however, is nearly unanimous in believing that divorce is damaging for children, though some argue that the long term impact might be better. In interviews, people generally state ideas that they have consumed from media (both news and popular) about divorce – essentially saying that the odds are that divorce will be harmful, but significant steps can be taken to reduce or mitigate that harm. Overall, the sources are in remarkable agreement about the effect of divorce on children of divorce. ... gely tried to make sense out of former research: â€Å"we know that adults and children from divorced families, as a group, score lower than their counterparts in married-couple families on a variety of indicators of wellbeing.† This essentially mirrors statements made in each of the other articles; in fact, the other two articles treat the idea that damage is done during the process of divorce as a known fact, for instance McGuiness simply quipping that â€Å"obviously, divorce reverberates in a child’s life for many years,† (2006, 20), and stating that the fundamental â€Å"truth† is that â€Å"marriage offers substantial benefits to children† (McGuiness, 2006, pg. 17). Hetherington’s research also largely concurred, indicating that almost any measure of wellbeing was worse amongst children of divorce than children who were not from divorced households. These researchers differed significantly, however, in their interpretation of why childr en of divorce performed worse than ones who marry. Though each researcher made reference to the tempting notion that there was some sort of selection bias in play (IE that children of divorce were less happy because the family situation of parents who decide to get divorced is likely to have problems that filter down to affecting the child), none of the researches were convinced that this process amounted to the primary reason for the apparent negative impact of divorce. Amato (2000, pg. 1287) even, in his survey of recent research, found that when largely controlling for variables such as family situation and so forth, divorce itself seemed to be problematic, that is that two children in exactly the same circumstance would have differing levels of success based on whether or not their parents were married. Given that selection