...illegal or just a cost of doing business? Discuss this in light of Siemens’ bribery scandal. We believe that bribing is unethical because it takes away the fairness of a business transaction between bidders of a contract. Bribing also has a negative impact on competition because it allows for oligopolies and monopolies to emerge in an industry due to smaller competitors being unable to financially compete with the amount of the bribes. This in turn creates a barrier for entry for prospective companies and promotes the oligopoly or monopoly in place. The lack of competition affects consumer choice by reducing their options which then stifles innovation within the industry as there is no need to generate a competitive advantage to attain customers. The legality of bribing depends on the laws of the home country that the business is based from. For example, Siemens is a German based business and German law states that bribing officials of another country to win business contracts is illegal. So, under German law, Siemens was guilty of bribing an official when it bribed employees of the Italian company Enel to gain a contract as Enel was 68% owned by the Italian government. The counter-argument is that bribing is the cost of doing business. We disagree with this because the economic benefits gained from bribing are not outweighing the cost to a company’s reputation. As we see in this case, Siemens paid a 6 million euro bribe to secure a contract valued at 450 million...
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...“Efficiency” is getting things done, it is not trying and it is not having ability. In other words, “efficiency” is actually accomplishing. It is execution. “Effectiveness” is also getting the right things done. This is where the efficiency is different than effectiveness. With efficiency, is to get the task done faster, easier, or better way. But with effectiveness, there always an initial question as to “what to do”? Example for efficiency, at the Siemens AG factory in Forchheim, Germany, where employees make X-Ray equipment, efficient manufacturing techniques were implemented by doing things such as cutting inventory levels, decreasing the amount of time to manufacture products, and lowering product reject rates. These efficient work practices paid off as the plant was named one of Industry Week’s best plants for 2002 “Industry Week’s Best Plant”, (2003) Industry Web site From this perspective, efficiency is often referred to as “doing things right”, that is, not wasting resources. Example for effectiveness, at the Siemens factory, goals included reducing equipment installation time for customers and cutting costs. Through various work programs, these goals were pursued and achieved. Whereas efficiency is concerned with the means of getting things done, effectiveness is concerned with the ends or attainment of organisational goals (see exhibit1.1). Management is concerned, then, not only with getting activities completed and meeting organisational goals (effectiveness) but...
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...Table of Contents: Table of Contents: 1 Performance Management at Siemens 2 Introduction: 2 Analysis of Siemens current situation: 3 Task 1 4 Setting Performance Targets of Team to Meet Strategic Objectives 4 1.1 Evaluating Tools and Techniques Available To Set Team , Performance Targets: 4 1.2 Assessing the value of team performance tools to measure future , team performance: 5 1.3 Assessing the Link between Team Performance and Strategic Objectives: 6 Task 2 6 Agreeing team performance targets to contribute in meeting strategic objectives 6 2.1Need to encourage individual commitment to team performance in achieving organisational objectives: 6 2.2 Evaluating team performance plan evaluation in meeting organisational objectives: 8 2.3 Relating the application of delegation, mentoring and coaching to the achievement of the organisational objectives: 8 2.4 Required performance targets within teams against current performance: 9 Task 3 9 Monitoring actions and activities defined to improve team performance 9 3.1 Evaluation of team performance against agreed objectives of the plan: 9 3.2 Evaluating the impact of team performance in contributing to meeting strategic objectives: 10 3.3 Assessing the process for monitoring team performance and initiating changes: 11 Task 4 12 Contribution of influence and persuasion to...
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...eate Value for People II. The Human Side of Business 7. Motivating and Managing People and Groups in Business Organizations © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2007 234 Chapter Seven SATISFIED CUSTOMERS. Unlike the other moving companies she had seen, Sheets decided that Two Men would put a premium on customer service. “Moving had a cruddy reputation,” she says. “I made sure everything was spotless. And we went out of our way for the customers.” Sheets put her movers in uniforms and gave them business cards, charged by the hour instead of weight, and paid for any damage to be fixed. The company’s mission statement remains: “Treat everyone the way you would want your Grandma treated.” From the start, Sheets handed out postage-paid reply cards, with just five questions, to her cus- tomers. Last year, the company received 66,000 responses. Sheets says that only 1% of the comments are negative—and she uses them as an opportunity. “We want to get it right with our customers,” she says. “Sometimes we send them flowers or a gift if something went wrong.” As a result, Two Men gets about 95% of its business from word-of-mouth refer- rals, eliminating the need for much advertising. With no formal business background, Sheets says she has relied mostly on her own instincts and expe- rience. She credits her time volunteering at a hospital crisis intervention center with helping her to handle customers over the phone. “It taught me empathy and how to listen,” she says. STICK MEN U. When it came...
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...unearthed at Siemens AG (Siemens) in 2006 and 2007. There were a series of scandals that involved some of the company's employees bribing foreign officials to gain contracts and creating slush funds for this purpose. More so, in this case, the company was accused of bribing labor representatives on the supervisory board in order to gain their support for its policies. After the German authorities conducted raids on Siemens' offices in Germany, investigations were initiated on Siemens in several other countries like the US, Greece, Italy and Switzerland for possible misconduct. As fallout of this scandal, the CEO of the company, Klaus Kleinfeld and the chairman of the supervisory board, Heinrich von Pierer; had to resign even though they were not directly implicated (Durgaaus, 2008). With bribery scandals surfacing in Siemens and many other German companies like Volkswagen, questions were also raised about the effectiveness of the Co-determination law in Germany, which advocated a system in which a supervisory board governed the management board and at least half the supervisory board seats had to be filled by labor representatives. In such a system, critics contended that the management always needed the labor representatives' support to be in job and gain support for company policies, which led to a suspicious alliance between them. The case also highlights the opinions of several analysts on the issues related to bribing by the German companies and Siemens in particular...
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...Resource: Ch. 7 of Introduction to Business Read the two case studies (Two Men and a Lot of Trucks and the case study Siemens’s New Boss) on pp. 233–236 of the text. Answer the following in a 200- to 300-word response: List the specific names of the motivation theories from Ch. 7 (i.e. Maslow’s, Expectancy Theory, Goal-Setting Theory, Equity Theory, Job Enrichment Theory) which are found in each case study Describe these theories you identified in the case studies and cite specific examples of how they were used. What was each business owner’s approach to creating high-performing teams within their company? The motivation theories used in Two Men and a Lot of Trucks are the Expectancy Theory and the Equity Theory. With having the motto “To treat others as you would want your Grandma treated.” the company is expecting the owners and employees to treat customers with respect as well as their belongings, therefore causing the customers to be satisfied and to refer other friends to use the services of Two Men and a Truck. With the Equity Theory the company has set up a computer lab where franchisees can compare data of other franchisees and communicate about what is working and what is not. Mary Ellen Sheets approach to creating high-performing teams was to be the best out there. She came up with a moving company to move clients within city limits or short distances, and by charging by the hour instead of by the pound. She also made sure everything...
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...Siemens AG: Global Development Strategy • What were the major causes of the problems with the NetManager project? (I’m not looking for a list of points made in the case; I’m looking for you to step back to a higher level and analyze why these problems occurred.) The problems experienced by the NetManager project appear to be symptoms of integration vs. responsiveness issue within Siemens AG. As a transnational company, Siemens faces strong pressure to globally integrate its operations, and be responsive to the needs of their offices and customer’s needs. The main problem with NetManager was that it had mushroomed in size and strategic importance. This was the result of keeping up with the rapidly changing technological demands, and NetManager becoming a highly visible product for Siemens’ largest customers. Analyzing the various problems, we see that despite the competence of the Bangalore RDC, there is a serious number of integration problems between Munich headquarters and Bangalore. First, there was a gap in product knowledge and competence, which resulted in unrealistic expectations such as project deadlines. Indians held proficiency in desktop and personal computing programming languages, while the Germans held extensive product knowledge concerning their EWSD technology and its functions. As the project grew in size and scope, it required interdependence amongst EWSD systems, knowledge held by German management and not sufficiently provided to Bangalore. Then...
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...The Bribery Scandal at Siemens AG Analysis Lvao Guo Arkansas State University The Bribery Scandal at Siemens AG Analysis This case discusses the bribery scandals that happened in Siemens AG in 2006 and 2007. There are a series of scandals involve that some of the company's employees establish slush funds to obtain contracts. In another case, they were accused by IG Metall of bribing a union. It bribes the labor representatives of supervisory board to enlist their support of policy. Since then, the company managers' bribery at the Italian energy company employees was convicted by German officials. After the raid on Siemens offices in Germany, they continued to investigate the possible misconduct on Siemens in several other countries like the US, Greece, Italy and Switzerland. Due to the aftermath of the scandal, the company's Chief Executive Officer Klaus Kleinfeld and Supervisory Board Chairman Heinrich von Peeler had to resign, even if they did not directly implicate. With the Siemens bribery scandal surfaced, Volkswagen AG, Duetusche Telecom AG, Duetsche Bahn AG, and Deutche Post AG unethical business practices exposed at the same time in Germany. Those corruption scandals make a query for the German Co-determination law and Mitbestimmug—wondering if they were flawed. From the viewpoint of a Siemens employee who is willing to break the law in order to gain large profits, it was definitely worth it. However, in my opinion, enterprises have to face the legal environment...
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...ian town of Forchheim was getting beat up by rival General Electric Co. and that shareholders were nag- ging Siemens to dump its medical equipment unit. Everyone’s job was on the line. The negotiations were tough. But Kleinfeld won over workers, hanging around the factory asking detailed questions. He answered e-mails from employee reps almost immediately, even late at night, recalls Werner Mönius, chairman of the work- ers council in Erlangen, Germany, home base of Siemens Medical Solutions Division. “He was able to motivate people to pull together,” says Mönius. The workers signed off on Kleinfeld’s plan, which helped cut the time it took to build a $100,000-plus diagnostic scanner from six weeks to one. Siemens Medical is now Siemens’s most profitable business. And that cocky young boss? This month Klein- feld, now 47, becomes chief executive of Munich- based Siemens, a $100 billion behemoth that oper- ates in 190 countries and makes subways, light bulbs, power plants, auto parts, automatic mail-sorting equipment, and more. With 430,000 employees and 12 major divisions, Siemens is the rock of Germany Inc., which still needs to learn how to survive and thrive in a world where heavily taxed, slow-moving European companies operate at a disadvantage. If Siemens can reach new levels of profitability, maybe the rest of Corporate Germany has a chance, too. Siemens Chief Executive Heinrich von Pierer and the company’s supervisory board, which includes such corporate luminaries as Deutsche...
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...International Management – Siemens Case Study Group Coursework Presentation Question 2 Introduction Klaus Kleinfeld took over as CEO of Siemens in 2005 from Heinrich von Pierer and was at the helm of the company until his resignation on the 25th April 2007. During his time he was seen as an enigmatic premier who transformed the company. The stock had grown by 39% since he took over (Global Business 07/05/2007). He streamlined the organisation by cutting costs, boosting innovation and expanding abroad. He even maintained a rise in the company’s share price during the bribery scandals publicity. Was the board right to accept his resignation? This was a highly sensitive decision at the time because the bribery scandals came to light whilst Kleinfeld was CEO but he had worked magic at Siemens in a very short amount of time, in only two years he had transformed Siemens and their share price had grown exponentially as a result. Based upon his track record at the company he did not deserve to be released in that manner. The bribery came to light during Klienfeld’s tenure but most of payments were made during von Pierer’s time as CEO. Kleinfeld pushed Siemens employees to make faster decisions and put as much emphasis on the customers as on the technology. He sold off the unprofitable mobile phone production to BenQ and fostered a JV between Nokia and Siemens to merge their mobile and fixed line phone equipment businesses to create one of the world’s biggest network firms. In...
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...users like Raikes from millions of information workers. The discussion came at the tail end of Microsoft’s annual CEO Summit, attended by about 100 chief executives on May 21 and 22. They had gotten a full dose from Microsoft’s senior managers on the company’s business-technology strategy and philosophy—and dinner at the home of chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates. Each attendee was given a new tablet PC loaded with the latest Microsoft productivity tools to use during the conference and, if they chose, to take with them. Yet, as impressed as they might be with the gadgetry and software demonstrations, the CEOs at Raikes’ roundtable discussion— representing Accenture, Best Buy, Flextronics, Premera Blue Cross, and Siemens USA—made it clear that neither Microsoft nor the rest of the IT industry has satisfied all their companies’ needs when it comes to using IT to solve business problems and boost productivity. In fact, their companies are far from mastering the technologies they have in place. “We’re nowhere near the end of this road, nowhere near,” said Michael Marks, chief executive of Flextronics, which manufactures equipment for tech companies such as Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard. “We have a project list as long as our arm about the next things to do.” It...
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...Case Study: Siemens Bribery Scandal 1. Corruption was deeply embedded in Siemen’s business culture. They rationalized this corruption by stating that it was not illegal to initiate bribes to government officials. This was true, however not anymore, the law changed in 1999 prohibiting such acts of corruption. 2. If a manager at Siemens would have stood up and took a stand against corruption, I think that he/she would have most likely been fired for being insubordinate. The higher executives that were promoting such bribery would have wanted these managers to go along with what they were doing. The manager could have also been demoted possibly, or just plain and simple reamed out by the higher executives. 3. Siemens spent extra money to secure future business investments. This in, in turn, means that other companies, even ones that might have an advantage, lose business opportunities. The entire concept of such corruption completely disregards competition, because it simply removes it, unless other companies also engage in bribery. 4. Some economists argue that doing such practices such as bribery is the price that must be paid to perform a greater good. They support this claim by stating that it can promote efficiency and growth in countries that have pervasive and cumbersome regulations, and may also enhance welfare in countries that have preexisting political structures that distort the workings of the market mechanism. On the other hand other economists...
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...Siemens Corporate Strategies: A Siemens AG Case Study Jeff Head Loyola University Chicago Foundations of Organization CPST 250 Dr. Marilyn Stocker February 13, 2015 Siemens AG, An Organizational Analysis “Siemens is a global technologies company comprised of 343,000 employees worldwide” (Karczewski, 2014). For the purpose of this paper an analysis of the company will be presented, to include a look at the company mission, human resources, markets, products offered, recent financial performance, and how engineering plays a major role in Siemens AG. Description of the Organization In 2013, Peter Loscher was replaced as CEO of Siemens AG by the current CEO Joe Kaeser. The following year Kaeser presented “Vision 2020”, a comprehensive plan to get the company back on track. This vision provided focus on the company’s path, positioning, culture and strategy. The strategic framework to support the vision centered on the company with four contributing elements: Customer and Business Focus, Governance, Management Model and Ownership Culture. Siemens History and Operations “Siemens was first founded in 1887 and started to expand with mass production and established a branch in Saint Petersburg and London for Russian lines and English lines” (Choudhary, 2013). It increased its production and started producing electrical power, lighting, and other advances after the Industrial Revolution, which enabled it to gain strength. After the end of World War II, it faced expropriation of over...
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...at Siemens AG in 2006, 2007 which consisted of employees bribing foreign officials. Siemens employees made slush funds specifically for the purpose of gaining an unfair advantage to win contracts. They also were accused of bribing officials of the labor board in return they would give support for Siemen’s policies. Siemens office in Germany was raided and an official investigation was started. In other countries they were investigated subsequently following the raid in Germany. The CEO resigned regardless of not being found responsible though the scandal was under his watch. This scandal set off a chain reaction to questioning the other companies in competition and the laws in Germany made to deter this behavior. Labor representatives who had been possibly bribed held the board, which governed the laws. This created an element of people responsible of making sure this type of thing did not happen, by letting it happen for personal gain. All along critics of this type of management feared this to be a potential issue. This shed light upon the challenges that the new management would encounter after the scandal occurred. In your opinion, is “bribing” unethical & illegal or just a cost of doing business? Discuss this in light of Siemens’ bribery scandal. Bribing is unethical and it takes the level playing arena away from business and all that compete within it. Oligopolies and monopolies arise from this type of unfair business practice. The employees of Siemens felt...
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...Siemens AG is a German multinational engineering and electronics conglomerate company headquartered in Berlinand Munich. It is Europe's largest engineering company and maker of medical diagnostics equipment and its medical health-care division, which generates about 12 percent of the company's total sales, is its second-most profitable unit behind the industrial automation division. Siemens' principal activities are in the fields of industry, energy, transportation and healthcare. It is organized into four main divisions: Industry, Energy, Healthcare, and Infrastructure & Cities. Siemens and its subsidiaries employ around 360,000 people across nearly 190 countries and reported global revenue of approximately €78.3 billion in 2012. The company has been the subject of a number of controversies in its history. There were a series of scandals that involved some of the company's employees bribing foreign officials to gain contracts and creating slush funds for this purpose. In 2008, it was revealed that Siemens had bribed the two main political parties of Greece for approximately 10 years to be the sole provider of mechanical and electrical equipment of the Greek state. After the exposure the German authorities moved to arrest the representatives of Siemens in Greece, who had managed to escape from the Greek authorities. The German judicial system didn't allow the Greek authorities to cross-question the representatives. As a result, there wasn't any solid evidence against the...
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