Case Study:
The Australian Cladding Company
Question 1:
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What are the immediate and underlying problems facing ACC?
Introduction
In the case study, Jim Hackett (Jim) started the Australia Cladding Company (ACC) as the Managing Director in the year 1998, where new light weight and low cost house cladding product was created. From there, ACC grew rapidly and also supplied its products to other states and internationally. The products from ACC have gained popularity in major building projects, home buildings and extension work. ACC supplies and install the products to large building projects in Western Australia which had gained positive comeback in the construction industry. Jim had chosen the management team from his mates from the building industry whom they are Ben Harper (Engineering and Design), Reg Grundy (Marketing and Sales), Arthur Seymour (Financial Controller), Ted Clark (Production Manager) and Jill Hackett (Jill) who is Jim’s wife (Personnel – Wages and Salary or Personnel Admin). As the business is good in ACC, they have rapidly grown and employed more staffs. However, even though the sales are increasing, but the profit earning is decreasing. Problems were identified, where it is related to the human resource management (HRM) planning, and a consultant, Terry Wild (Terry), was employed. Nevertheless, these problems and solutions related to HRM will be further discussed in this paper.
Kramar et al. (2011) states that, HRM relates to “policies, practices and systems that influence employees’ behaviour, attitudes and performance”. Therefore, HRM in an organization plays an important role in justifying what are the best activities to be done in the organization to ensure constant strategic competitive advantage in the business industry. In every business, there will be problems and issues arise due to the management issues, employee issues and many more. In the
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