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Asda Case

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ASDA Case
Stephany Mejia

1. What problems of motivation did Archie Norman discover at ASDA? Archie discovered that beyond the immediate financial crisis ASDA had organizational and cultural issues. These issues created a problem of motivation. ASDA’s top executives had offices in a separate part of the headquarters and were isolated from the rest of the company, one manager explained that executives seemed more interested in “hunting and partying” than in addressing serious issues faced by the company. ASDA had become more bureaucratic and hierarchical. The bureaucracy had reached a point that made it difficult to get anything done. With the financial crisis people feared losing their jobs, so they didn’t want any attention to themselves and this stopped any innovation. There was little integration or interaction between the classes. Executives came mostly from the upper class while lower level employees came from working class. There was clearly a communication issue and subordinates were intimidated by their superiors and thus afraid to tell them anything other than what they wanted to hear. There was also an issue of communication between different departments such as buying, marketing and finance and this made coordinating activities particularly difficult. Since employees were not allowed to do anything and were so afraid this caused them to lack motivation for ASDA.

2. What do you think Archie Norman should have done on his first day on the job? I think that the first thing that Archie Norman should have done was set up a meeting with all the corporate managers and flown in all the store managers to headquarters so that he can introduce himself and gather ideas from them and propose the changes that he was planning on making.

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