Hp Case
5. Were the changes initiated by Fiorina justified?
At the time when Fiorina took over HP, she faced many problems, for instance stagnating technology, losing market share to competitors. Many expected her to help the company. She made many changes on structure and policies of the company. Although the overall outcomes of her changes are not as good as expected, the changes initiated by her were still justified because the situation of the company drove her focus more on outcome than people.
One of the problem the company faced is every units are separated and they have few communication. So, what Fiorina did is to change the structure. She consolidated the power and put the workers into two groups – product-facing group and customer-facing group. It successfully made the structure more clear and change the image of HP to a consolidated image but problems like how to allocating costs between two groups aroused. There are criticisms of her change but this change is justified as it does bring in benefit to the company. She changed the image of HP in order to give customer a fresh image.
Another controversial thing she had done is implementing policies contradicting to the company’s originally culture. She dismissed workers with poor performance, change the bonus system. She is an autocratic leader and task-oriented. So her intention of implementing the above policy is to boost the sales by setting a higher goal for her followers and to cut excess costs. But she focused more on the outcome than the people. “Work quickly, keep the doors unlocked, work whenever” is one of her “Rules of the Garage”. She neglected that the company has a strong people-oriented culture. Workers are unwilling to change. That’s why her changes bring out some negative effects. Implementing policies which focus on outcome is beneficial to the company but Fiorina is too aggressive and believe that her policies can motivate the employees. The changes made by her is still justified as she
At the time when Fiorina took over HP, she faced many problems, for instance stagnating technology, losing market share to competitors. Many expected her to help the company. She made many changes on structure and policies of the company. Although the overall outcomes of her changes are not as good as expected, the changes initiated by her were still justified because the situation of the company drove her focus more on outcome than people.
One of the problem the company faced is every units are separated and they have few communication. So, what Fiorina did is to change the structure. She consolidated the power and put the workers into two groups – product-facing group and customer-facing group. It successfully made the structure more clear and change the image of HP to a consolidated image but problems like how to allocating costs between two groups aroused. There are criticisms of her change but this change is justified as it does bring in benefit to the company. She changed the image of HP in order to give customer a fresh image.
Another controversial thing she had done is implementing policies contradicting to the company’s originally culture. She dismissed workers with poor performance, change the bonus system. She is an autocratic leader and task-oriented. So her intention of implementing the above policy is to boost the sales by setting a higher goal for her followers and to cut excess costs. But she focused more on the outcome than the people. “Work quickly, keep the doors unlocked, work whenever” is one of her “Rules of the Garage”. She neglected that the company has a strong people-oriented culture. Workers are unwilling to change. That’s why her changes bring out some negative effects. Implementing policies which focus on outcome is beneficial to the company but Fiorina is too aggressive and believe that her policies can motivate the employees. The changes made by her is still justified as she