Prepare a Case Study Analysis report about this case:

It had been 100 days since John took over as manager of Acme’s manufacturing plant in Mexico, on a three-year expatriate assignment. Looking back now, John remembers how excited he was in the first couple of weeks to get some of his plans and ideas underway. This was John’s first foreign assignment, and he knew it was a phenomenal opportunity to advance his career prospects with the company if he handled it well. He was fluent in Spanish, a big plus. As well, he was somewhat familiar with Mexico, having honeymooned there and taken a few subsequent vacations to resorts along the coast.
In his first week, John met with his direct reports and made a few walk-around tours of the plant, pausing to introduce himself to employees. John believed getting to know employees as individuals and taking an interest in them beyond their work lives was a key to his past success as a manager; besides, John was simply a “people person,” friendly by nature. The employees he met addressed him as señor, which made him a little uncomfortable, and he quickly asked them to call him John. They were polite with him but not very forthcoming as he attempted to engage them in friendly conversation about their backgrounds and experience at Acme. He decided to arrange a “getting to know you” all-plant meeting very soon to break the ice.
As John gathered information and made some initial observations, a few things stood out to him right away as opportunities to improve the effectiveness of the Mexico plant. He could not wait to get started. Here are a few of his notes from his first week:
 He was pleased with what he learned about employees’ skill and experience levels.
 Pay rates were determined by job category and seniority.
 There was no performance appraisal system.
 The plant did not use any team-based work structures.
John strongly believed in the importance of the first 100 days for anyone assuming a new leadership position. He saw that period as crucial for establishing credibility with employees and superiors. He wanted to show his employees that he had their best interests in mind, as well as the company’s, and he wanted to prove to his superiors that he was the right choice for the job. Therefore, he set three ambitious goals for his first 100 days. 

1. Develop a merit pay plan. John was very surprised to learn that seniority was the sole basis for compensation at the plant, as he was a big believer in “pay-for-performance.” He was confident that the prospect of a financial reward would be appreciated by strong performers and would motivate average and weaker perfrormers to step it up. Of course, before implementing merit pay, a performance appraisal system would be needed to accurately measure employee performance. John was confident that he and the HR director could work with the existing job descriptions to quickly develop a simple evaluation instrument. His plan was to ask supervisors to complete the form and hold oneon- one meetings with employees to discuss the ratings. He wanted to get this initial round of employee evaluations done by the end of his first 60 days, so that early next year, a merit pay plan linking performance evaluation scores with pay raises could be rolled out.
2. Establish a Acme Effectiveness Team (AET). Acme’s management introduced AETs throughout its North American operations several years ago with substantial success. An AET is a group of six to eight production-line employees plus a supervisor, who meet weekly to explore opportunities for correcting quality control problems and eliminating work process inefficiencies. Acme’s philosophy is that the workers closest to day-to-day production operations know best where improvements can be made, so AETs were empowered to set their own agenda concerning the areas to investigate and make recommendations. Only the most skilled and experienced employees were selected for a AET, and in John’s experience, being named to one was viewed as something of an honor. Typically, these teams were highly motivated by the prospect of making a positive impact in the plant, and they came up with lots of ideas for improving quality and working smarter, not harder. John thought the Mexico plant AET would be largely self-managed, requiring little oversight and direction from him after he laid out its overall purpose in an initial meeting.
3. Implement a peer-nominated recognition and reward program. John started a program like this in his past two management positions in the United States. It was a modest, easy to implement program that was appreciated by both the employees who were recognized as well as those who had the opportunity to nominate coworkers. The employee selected for recognition for a given month could choose from a menu of small rewards, such as game or concert tickets, store and restaurant gift certificates, or cash envelopes. Now, 100 days later, John looks back at his early enthusiasm and ambitious plans with chagrin. Nothing has worked out as expected, and little progress has been made on those three big goals. On top of that, the family atmosphere he had been able to develop with his employees in his previous management positions, and to which he attributed much of his past success, has proven elusive here. Employees do not seem interested in his relationship-building attempts, and just last week when he tried to pitch in and help during a production line stoppage, he got the distinct impression they wished he would just go back to his office. What went wrong? On reflection, John noted some occurrences over the past couple of months that foretold doom for his big plans.
The AET for which John had high hopes met only twice after the initial roll-out meeting and had not brought him a single idea for improving production quality or efficiency. He talked with the supervisor on the team, who explained that the members just did not understand what John wanted. Frustrated by their apparent lack of initiative, but determined to make it work, John convened the team himself last week to “reboot” it. He patiently outlined once again the overall AET objectives, stressing that team members were chosen because as front-line employees, they were the best source for improvement ideas. He thought he had effectively communicated how much he valued their experience and truly wanted to hear their suggestions. But when he said, Let’s try brainstorming some ideas as a group for how we can improve things around here; that’s how a AET team usually gets its meetings started. Any and all ideas are welcome, no matter how impractical. . . . Who wants to go first?
No one responded. They seemed to be waiting on John to continue or for the uncomfortable meeting to mercifully come to an end.
Regarding the performance appraisal system, his HR director initially expressed some skepticism. After John convinced her of its merits for performance improvement and employee development, she agreed to work with him to develop some performance criteria and a simple rating form. They got this done quickly, and the form was distributed to supervisors with instructions to complete it and conduct one-on-one review meetings with employees within the next 45 days. These meetings were to explain the ratings, give specific feedback, both positive and negative (if necessary), and discuss with the employee ways to improve performance. After 45 days, however, the HR director reported that only about 25% of the supervisors actually held the meetings. Most simply filled out the forms and submitted them to HR, without discussing them with employees.
Finally, concerning his third goal, the reward and recognition program, not one peer nomination had been submitted. John was truly puzzled by this. Surely employees would want to nominate a peer who helped them out, or who had otherwise gone above-and-beyond the call? In summary, at the end of his first 100 days, John is feeling disappointed, both in himself for his failure to achieve the objectives he set and in his employees for their seeming unwillingness to “get on board” and work together with him to improve the Mexico plant.

Table 1: Hofstede’s Cultural Value Indices, Mexico and the United States.

Masculinity
Power
Distance Individualism
Uncertainty
Avoidance
Long-term
orientation

Mexico 69 81 30 82 24
United States 62 40 91 46 26

Note. Score Interpretation: 0 = extremely low; 100 = extremely high.

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

introduction In this case study we will analyze the cultural differences between Mexico and the United States using Hofstedes cultural value indices We will also discuss how these differences may have ... View the full answer