Organisation and Behaviour
Case Study 1: Dimensions of Organisational Structure
Changing the Rules at Bosco Plastics
When Jill Thompson took over as chief executive officer at Bosco Plastics, the company was in trouble. Bosco had started out as an innovative company, known for creating a new product just as the popularity of one of the industry’s old standbys was fading, i.e., replacing yo-yo’s with water guns. In two decades, it had become an established maker of plastics for the toy industry. Bosco had grown from a dozen employees to four hundred, and its rules had grown haphazardly with it. Thompson’s predecessor, Wilhelm K. Blatz, had found the company’s procedures chaotic and had instituted a uniform set of rules for all employees. Since then, both research output and manufacturing productivity had steadily declined. When the company’s board of directors hired Thompson, they emphasized the need to evaluate and revise the company’s formal procedures in an attempt to reverse the trends.
First, Thompson studied the rules Blatz had implemented. She was impressed to find that the entire procedures manual was only twenty pages long. It began with the reasonable sentence "All employees of Bosco Plastics shall be governed by the following . . ." Thompson had expected to find evidence that Blatz had been a tyrant who ran the company with an iron fist. But as she read through the manual, she found nothing to indicate this. In fact, some of the rules were rather flexible. Employees could punch in anytime between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. and leave nine hours later, between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. Managers were expected to keep monthly notes on the people working for them and make yearly recommendations to the human resources committee about raises, bonuses, promotions, and firings. Except for their one-hour lunch break, which they could take at any time, employees were expected to be in the building at all times.
Puzzled, Thompson went down to the lounge where the research and development
Changing the Rules at Bosco Plastics
When Jill Thompson took over as chief executive officer at Bosco Plastics, the company was in trouble. Bosco had started out as an innovative company, known for creating a new product just as the popularity of one of the industry’s old standbys was fading, i.e., replacing yo-yo’s with water guns. In two decades, it had become an established maker of plastics for the toy industry. Bosco had grown from a dozen employees to four hundred, and its rules had grown haphazardly with it. Thompson’s predecessor, Wilhelm K. Blatz, had found the company’s procedures chaotic and had instituted a uniform set of rules for all employees. Since then, both research output and manufacturing productivity had steadily declined. When the company’s board of directors hired Thompson, they emphasized the need to evaluate and revise the company’s formal procedures in an attempt to reverse the trends.
First, Thompson studied the rules Blatz had implemented. She was impressed to find that the entire procedures manual was only twenty pages long. It began with the reasonable sentence "All employees of Bosco Plastics shall be governed by the following . . ." Thompson had expected to find evidence that Blatz had been a tyrant who ran the company with an iron fist. But as she read through the manual, she found nothing to indicate this. In fact, some of the rules were rather flexible. Employees could punch in anytime between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. and leave nine hours later, between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. Managers were expected to keep monthly notes on the people working for them and make yearly recommendations to the human resources committee about raises, bonuses, promotions, and firings. Except for their one-hour lunch break, which they could take at any time, employees were expected to be in the building at all times.
Puzzled, Thompson went down to the lounge where the research and development