Case Study

You are a management consultant working with the global manufacturing company Adiba to improve its operations and staff engagement at its manufacturing plant. A recent staff survey at Adiba identified the companys rigid and hierarchical control system as being a major source of stress and frustration for its staff.

The Adiba manufacturing plant has a total of 50 teams, and each team is responsible for manufacturing a specific Adiba product The General Manager of the manufacturing plant receives a total of 20 performance metrics from each team, some of which are irrelevant to the companys performance. Metrics of staff performance include: what time staff arrive at work and leave; the team's productivity per hour; how many defects are produced per hour; how many reports there are of staff underperformance from company inspectors'.

Teams provide no feedback to management on how to improve their processes. Team managers get fired if they report mistakes or errors. To avoid being fired, team managers hide errors and do not report them. As a result, many errors go undetected, resulting in faulty products and high levels of customer dissatisfaction for some products. Team-members do not know how other teams are performing There is little sharing of ideas and knowledge between team leaders, because team leaders are afraid of accidentally sharing mistakes or problems that could get them fired. The General Manager hires 'inspectors; who are staff members that secretly report to the General Manager on the work of individual teams and employees. Anyone who is reported as underperforming is at risk of being fired.

a) Drawing on concept relating to "controlling", outline two costs and two potential benefits of the current hierarchical control model used by Adiba? (4 marks)

b) Outline three potential benefits and one potential risk of adopting a more decentralised control model for Adiba's manufacturing plant? {4 marks)

Please be precise to the question, do not copy and paste, the answer can be short but be precise.