Preview

What Human Resource Management- Related Steps Did Siegel Take to Help Tyco Back on the Right Track

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
507 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
What Human Resource Management- Related Steps Did Siegel Take to Help Tyco Back on the Right Track
Laurie Siegel, senior vice president of human resources for the beleaguered conglomerate Tyco International, isn’t one to brood, hesitate or theorize. When she was offered the job, she knew she had to take it. When she showed up for work, she knew exactly what she had to do. "When you’re in a hole, you don’t need a PowerPoint presentation to tell you which way is up," Siegel says. "You just head up. And you know you’re doing the right thing."
Siegel has been making the long climb toward the surface for 14 months. Difficult, high-pressure jobs are her specialty, and she’s obviously enjoying this one, but even she isn’t certain that the company will make it out of the pit dug by previous management. Tyco, which employs approximately 260,000 innocent bystanders, manufactures and sells everything from suture needles to circuit breakers, burglar alarms to duct tape. But to most of the world, its name is a synonym for corporate corruption. Its former chairman and chief financial officer face the possibility of significant jail time, and the company itself is involved in multiple shareholder lawsuits and an ongoing SEC investigation for malfeasance.
Less widely publicized is the company’s tentative comeback under new CEO Edward Breen. Unlike most of its fellow corporate black sheep, Tyco has not yet been charged with accounting fraud, although various irregularities have prompted it to write down nearly $700 million. It has not declared bankruptcy, although it barely survived a liquidity crisis early last year. In the fiscal year that ended September 2003, Tyco earned $979 million, or 49 cents a share, rebounding from massive one-time charges and a horrific loss of $9.2 billion, or around $4.50 per share, for fiscal year 2002. Tyco’s stock, which traded at around $60 at its bubbly high in January 2002, plunged to $10 at its low point seven months later. In early February, it had climbed to $28.
"I think Tyco is in good shape. It’s got good businesses and good

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Tyco Case Study Essay

    • 885 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Section 1: Introduction. Tyco is a multinational corporation that deals with industries from hospital suppliers to fire sprinklers. To some, Tyco epitomized the excesses that could occur from success. Some executives plundered the company for personal gain, which affected its very survival and the employment of thousands of employees. The organization's culture required substantive change. In this assignment, I will review and write a case study analysis based on how Tyco overcame the frustration of its employees and communicated needed change throughout the organization. The sources for my paper will come from Chapter 11 of the textbook as well as other web based sources.…

    • 885 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Regina Case

    • 507 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Regina Company Inc. was known as a complacent slow-growth company and was dominated by Hoover and Eureka within the floorcare industry. Donald Sheelen was a promising young individual when he was hired first as the head of the marketing division in Regina, and then became its president. Shortly after becoming company president, Sheelen set out to make Regina the industry’s number one company and repeatedly vowed to “bomb” Hoover, the number one firm in the industry at the time. Sheelen expanded Regina’s product line and started an aggressive advertisement campaign to promote Regina’s products over Hoover’s. His strategy paid off, as Regina’s profits grew substantially, and after Regina went public, its stock price soared by nearly 500 percent, making Sheelen and the company’s other principal stockholders millionaires many times over. However, it turned out that the impressive financial figures released by Regina after it went public were fabricated by Sheelen. “Instead of a growth company with bright prospects, Regina was a dying company mired in mounting losses.” The major reason behind Regina’s financial difficulties was the poor quality of its new products, which resulted in a reported 50 percent customer return rates. After realizing that Regina was in a deep trouble, Sheelen, with the help of Regina CFO Vincent Golden, came up with several illicit accounting schemes to keep the company’s stock prices at a high level. In addition to significantly understating customer product returns and company’s cost of goods, they recorded bogus sales to inflate sales revenues, and implemented a so-called “ship-in-place” booking scheme. After realizing that he could no longer conceal the company’s deteriorating condition, Sheelen decided to let the public know of the company’s dire financial condition. Although Sheelen and Golden initially blamed the computer system for errors, they later pleaded guilty to federal mail and security fraud charges in 1989. Sheelen…

    • 507 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The author offers observations on Dennis Kozlowski, the former chief executive officer of industrial conglomerate Tyco, who is serving up to 24 years in prison. The author argues that if greed alone were grounds for imprisonment, much of Wall Street would be in jail. He questions whether Kozlowski was unfairly demonized as opposed to the corporate leaders who nearly took down the international economy in 2008.…

    • 1217 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Crazy Eddie

    • 4785 Words
    • 20 Pages

    In 1969,Eddie Antar, a 21-year-old high school dropout from Brooklyn, opened a consumer electronics store with 150square feet of floor space in New York City 1 Despite this modest beginning, Antar would eventually dominate the retail consumer electronics market in the New York City metropolitan area. By 1987,Antar's firm, Crazy Eddie, Inc., had 43 retail outlets, sales exceeding $350 million, and outstanding stock with a collective market value of $600 million. Antar personally realized more than $70 million from the sale of Crazy Eddie stock during his tenure as the company's chief executive. A classic rags-to-riches story became a spectacular business failure in the late 1980s when Crazy Eddie collapsed following allegations of extensive financial . wrongdoing by Antar and his associates. Shortly after a hostile takeover of the company in November 1987,the firm's new owners discovered that Crazy Eddie's inventory was overstated by more than $65 million. This inventory shortage had been concealed from the public in registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Subsequent investigations by regulatory authorities revealed that Eddie Antar and his subordinates had grossly overstated Crazy Eddie's reported profits throughout its existence.2…

    • 4785 Words
    • 20 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mccaskey Case Analysis

    • 670 Words
    • 3 Pages

    McCaskey, 29, a HBS graduate, worked in the Seleris’s Industry Analysis Division (IAD), a consulting firm in San Francisco branch. Her jobs were to analyst and report the competitive advantages of competitor companies to her clients. The employees of this company were separated into two groups, old and new guard. The members in old guard such as Rendall and Kaufmann often paid ex-employees of target companies to obtain highly sensitive information. IAD’s top manager, Tom Malone, knew the company situation and knew how to play the game.…

    • 670 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    How did a multibillion dollar company arrive to the point of non existence? Was it the lack of organizational structure? Or maybe the lack of ethical management and leadership? One thing is certain and that is Enron has given the world a glance at how a leader within the energy industry, could have it all one minute, yet in a blink of an eye it can all be gone. Enron’s circumstance was not a random act coincidence but a perfect example of the repercussion and consequences a business will face when there is an absence of integrity, structure, and overall firm management and leadership. In looking further into the collapse of Enron’s empire it is imperative that analysis of the company’s failures be brought to light. In addition to the discovery of its failures also identifying specific organizational behavior theories that could have predicted or explained the company’s downward spiral into disaster.…

    • 931 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Business Failure Ldr/531

    • 999 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Tyco International Ltd. is a multi- national company which manufactures products and provide services to customers all over the world. Its products are quite diversified and range from residential and commercial security systems, fire suppression systems, electrical components, firefighter and medical diagnostic equipment, water purification systems, and building construction materials. In 2001 it reported revenues of $ 34 million. At the end of September 2002, Tyco revenues climbed to nearly $35 billion but it also had a loss of $9…

    • 999 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Leadership Failure at Tyco

    • 4008 Words
    • 17 Pages

    In the Tyco failure, Lytton said, “They failed as leaders. They forgot that leadership was about serving others and not themselves.” But it was also a failure of those who follow the leaders, the corporate lawyers who failed in their duty to keep the leaders in…

    • 4008 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Tyco International as a whole was no different any other company in that it contained a chief executive officer (CEO) that wanted to achieve success. But at some point that success turned into greed. Dennis Kozlowski began working for Tyco in 1975 and was named the CEO in 1992. Kozlowski had a reputation for being aggressive in his field and during his tenure at Tyco was named one of the “Top 25 Managers of the Year” and became one of the highest-paid CEOs (Kaplan, 2009, p. 14). Along his rise to the top, Kozlowski became subjected to a lavish lifestyle of extravagant vacations, company jets and cars, and memberships. During this rise, he also treated himself to a “$31 million Fifth Avenue apartment, a vintage yacht, a Renoir, and a Monet” (Kaplan, 2009, p. 15). However, in 2002, Kozlowski’s world began to crumble around him. He was initially accused of tax evasion, but this accusation by the Manhattan district attorney led to a broader investigation into Kozlowski’s practices. As a result of this investigation, Kozlowski resigned as the CEO, was indicted for looting hundreds of millions of dollars, and was convicted on a range of felonies that led to an eight to 25 year sentence (Kaplan, 2009, p. 15).…

    • 1452 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Enron: Tone at the Top

    • 1288 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Enron, one of the largest corporations in America and once ranked Fortune magazine’s “Most Admired Companies” went down in 2001 after they were exposed of defrauding their investors in a series of creative ways. Enron was known for being an innovative company in the energy, technology space but much of their innovation seemed to lie in how they managed to hide their debts and cover their losses through unscrupulous means. They would book hypothetical profits on projects and joint ventures that had not yet launched and on the day a deal was signed. They would hide their debts through the use of complex Special Purpose Entities (SPEs). They would solicit support from top tier investment banks by giving them lucrative deals to work on. All this and more was conducted with one clear objective in mind: to make as much money as possible through manipulation. Everyone was happy as long as there was money to be made. Ethics was out the window. Manipulating financial books and records, exploiting deregulated markets became their predominant strategy -all in the name of maximizing profits and pushing up the company’s stock price. When indicted, the chief executives of Enron, Kenneth Lay (former Chairman and CEO) and Jeffrey Skilling (CEO), amongst others, continually denied their involvement.…

    • 1288 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Qwest Financial Fraud Essay

    • 6622 Words
    • 27 Pages

    In the late 90’s, early 2000’s, Qwest Communications International Inc. (Qwest) was a rapidly growing telecommunications company that provided global internet and telephone services. At their pinnacle, Qwest was one of their industry’s top leaders, reporting revenues of $16.7 billion in 2001 (Anonymous, 2013). Through continued expansion and acquisitions of other large telecommunications companies, it seemed things were only headed in a positive direction for Qwest. Their technology and advancement were consistently outpacing the competition, and they were dominating the marketplace. Then things took a turn for the worse in 2002, with the discovery that the President and CEO, in conjunction with several other top executives, were committing several types of financial fraud, including insider trading. Unraveling the web of lies and deceit uncovered billions of dollars of falsely reported revenue, and ultimately led to the tarnished brand image of Qwest, millions of dollars lost by investors and hundreds of employee out of work.…

    • 6622 Words
    • 27 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The central text for this project is the film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room by filmmaker Alex Gibney. This film investigates, documents and then exposes the many moves that led to the collapse of Enron. The director focuses on the chief leaders of the corporation as his principal characters in order to develop the story as a human tragedy. Throughout the course of the film, each leading character is revealed. All players were found to be distinct in their strategies and methods. However, all were alike in their attitude and way of thinking. Each one was goal-driven and each found a way, by whatever means possible, to achieve their desired end: making money. Gibney incorporates many strategic moves into this film that contribute…

    • 764 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) demonstrates that Enron, as a company, was managed through patriarchal and authoritarian principles that facilitated, and even encouraged, illegal activity. Enron was a well-respected company that received accolades in the press and was named Fortune Magazine’s most admired company for several years; this created an atmosphere of supremacy and superiority within the business and the top company leaders (Gibney, 2005). Company leaders like Jeffrey Skilling, Lou Pai, and Kenneth Lay fostered an authoritarian environment within the company where whistleblowers or other doubters were humiliated and devalued; at the same time, the company was engaged in illegal and unethical business practices perpetrated against the public (Schwartz, 2002). The authoritarianism within Enron only grew as the company’s financial footing became less secure (Schwartz,…

    • 654 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Tyco Fraud

    • 1126 Words
    • 5 Pages

    During the fiscal years 2006-2009, Tyco Inc. was found to be involved in several illicit payment schemes. The company filed misstated financial statements with the SEC, failed to place and maintain efficient internal controls, paid false commissions and payments through a third party, and violated anti-bribery provisions set by the FCPA. By using Tyco’s international business, illegal acts were easily hidden within the financial statements and the company was able to earn $10.5 million in profits by employees’ commissions and promises with third party contracts.…

    • 1126 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The film comes to a harrowing climax as I hear Enron traders’ own voices as they wring hundreds of millions of dollars in profits out of the California energy crisis. As a result, I come to understand how…

    • 467 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays