Business Ethic Case

1.0 Introduction

The world is constantly changing. Environmental factors such as technology, social trends and government regulations have affected how organizations plan their structure and strategies. Evolving from a small radio manufacturer to a multi-billion dollar company in the harsh economic environment, Motorola, under the leadership of Bob Galvin in the early 1960s to late 1980s, became the role model of many businesses in embracing and implementing change to their businesses. This report covers the issues faced by Galvin, the type of change initiated and how leadership impacted the change management during the 1980s. The shining example of the transformation of Motorola eventually brought the famous Six Sigma strategy to the world.

2.0 The Issues of Concern to Bob Galvin in the Spring of 1983

Galvin recognized that Motorola needed a change as it was unable to adapt and cope with the ever changing environment and withstand foreign competition despite a year of strong growth. The following were issues that he was concerned with:

2.1 Internal Environment

The existing organization structure and management style could not support the growth and expansion that Motorola was experiencing. Employees were less satisfied as they were not empowered to make decisions due to the strong and formal chain of command. The narrow span of control of one to five people resulted in overly tight supervision and discouraged employee’s autonomy. Between first line managers and executive level, there were already nine to twelve layers of management. Not only was it costly to maintain such multi levels of management, decision making and approval processes were slow and inflexible.

The managers and executives also became too focus and specialized in their team, their internal performance standards as well as incentives; they disregarded the importance of meeting customer needs and achieving long term and overall objectives of Motorola as a whole.

The organization size and matrix structure became too complex. Emphasis of customer’s relationship and their needs were diminished and developments of products were driven by

technology. Moreover, ownership of projects to ensure success was unclear. There were no managers solely responsible for a particular project to see through the entire process; from initial discussions with customers to sale of products. Therefore, production staff could not meet deadlines for projects set by engineers and the manufacturing managers could not deliver what the sales and distribution managers required. Hence, the product development cycles were extending at alarming rate which was unrealistic and completely unproductive.

Programs like the Technology Roadmap and