...Executive Summary During the past three years under the leadership of Shikhar Ghosh, the Appex Corporation (Appex) has undergone a number of significant and radical structural changes in an attempt to respond to its meteoric growth as one of the primary suppliers in the rapidly expanding and evolving cellular telephone industry. While each of these structural modifications has generally improved the operating performance of Appex for a short period of time, ultimately each different structure has introduced a new set of inefficiencies and barriers that constrained the innovation, performance, and growth of the company. Consequently, Appex is no longer structured to effectively deliver on its overall vision through its strategic plan and objectives. Without major modifications that bring its operating behaviors in line with its vision and goals, its success in the marketplace is in question. These effects are compounded by its recent acquisition by EDS, a highly bureaucratic organization which will impose some of its own vision, structure, and values upon the company. After thorough examination of Appex’s current organizational structure, its previous structural transitions, its core competencies, the evolution of the industry it serves, and the institutional context into which it is being placed, it is my recommendation that Appex undergo a substantive restructuring. For a company of Appex’s size in this rapidly-evolving, technologically-oriented market...
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...Summary The Apex Corporation started off as a small company, of only 25 employees. They provide services to cellular carriers, which at the time was a still developing market. They owe their initial success to preempting the cellular market, with a solution to a need, while others were still trying to assess the need. Apex offers two types of services, Intercarrier Services (ICS) and Cellular Management Information Systems (IS). ICS consisted of managing cellphone calls, while the customer was “roaming,” and IS was the management of the cell company’s logistical information. In the beginning while the cellular market was still getting its feet wet, the company was small. This allowed for a very relaxed company atmosphere with a Corporateur management system. Apex had a close employee environment and was able to turn around a product quickly. Due to the excellent communication between employees and small management, this enabled Apex to compete with established companies. This worked well in the beginning, but the market developed at an extremely aggressive pace. Apex’s lack of structure soon began to pose a problem; the supply was surpassed by the demand. The company didn’t have realistic forecasting and underestimated their employment needs. They soon became a “fire-fighting” organization, and tackled everything by throwing money and people at the problems as they arose. The investors saw the problem and stepped in. Shikhar Ghosh was hired by...
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...Before Ghosh joined Appex, the company was entrepreneurial, technology-driven, and loosely structured. The company was at its start-up stage, few business procedures had been defined as they were considered as unnecessary given the relatively small size of the company. As well people had particular expertise but everybody did anything because nobody had any sense of what their job description was. This is a very typical structure for those small companies in the starting up stage. Advantage is that when the company business is not very large, it can act in this way to fully utilize the resources and make itself responsive and effective at getting things done quickly and relatively cheaply. But the disadvantage is that if fortunately, the market was growing quickly and so was the company, things will change into chaotic because there is no long-term planning for the company and all people just focus on the immediate issues. The company will not be able to further grow with this structure. Circular Structure A circular structure was then implemented to address the problem mentioned above. The special thing in circular structure is that senior executives are in the core, and the next circular layers out includes the managers of functions and the employees in the functions. In the environs around the circle was Apex’s customer. Positive things of this structure are that the information can flow continuously and freely within the organization and between the organization and its...
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...Below is a free essay on "Study Case: Appex Corporation" from Anti Essays, your source for free research papers, essays, and term paper examples. 1. What were the challenges that Shikhar Ghosh faced when he joined Appex? 2. Evaluate the importance of each of the structural changes he implemented. How important were they? What problems did each new structure address? What problems, in turn, did they create? 3. What would you have done in Shikhar’s place? Were all the changes in structure necessary? How would you address the challenges Appex is facing at the end of the case? When Shikhar joined Appex it was entrepreneurial and technology-driven company. According to what I read in case it would be exciting and fun to work because everyone did everything and there were no job descriptions. They were growing and enjoying this crazy time. However Shikhar realized that this entrepreneurial stage is becoming too long and he even recognized strong signs that it was leading to chaos. Company was growing and expanding but dangerous features accrued – company was spending more and more money without any serious control, customers were starting to complain more about undelivered services, requests that were left without response. This was happening because lack of functional structure and clear job descriptions. It lead to problematic situation that employees were working with numerous projects at time what even resulted as so called fire-fighting when employees did those tasks...
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...EAE Business School. IMBA. Carlos Díaz. APPEX CORPORATION 1. What problems do you observe in the organization before Ghosh arrived to the company? * In spite of the small size of the company, with 25 employees and a potential business because of the new cellular industry, there was a lack of organization and administration in the company. * Everyone was doing just what they felt like, people where arriving late at work, did things on their own time and the customer service was very poor. * The company had a problem with financial planning and the investors needed someone to put control and an urgent structure. * The employees were focused, committed, hardworking and worked in close interaction with each other, but customer service was not the correct. * The project-based company forced the company to hire more people, making it spending cash quickly and not monitoring its expenses. * No communication, no planning, no financial planning 2. Prepare the SWOT for Appex Corp. Before Ghosh arrived. Strengths | Weaknesses | * New Industry * Revenues * It was a merged company * Market growth | * Bad organization * Lack of structure * “We’ll call you back” attitude from employees * ...
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...Executive Summary During the past three years under the leadership of Shikhar Ghosh, the Appex Corporation (Appex) has undergone a number of significant and radical structural changes in an attempt to respond to its meteoric growth as one of the primary suppliers in the rapidly expanding and evolving cellular telephone industry. While each of these structural modifications has generally improved the operating performance of Appex for a short period of time, ultimately each different structure has introduced a new set of inefficiencies and barriers that constrained the innovation, performance, and growth of the company. Consequently, Appex is no longer structured to effectively deliver on its overall vision through its strategic plan and objectives. Without major modifications that bring its operating behaviors in line with its vision and goals, its success in the marketplace is in question. These effects are compounded by its recent acquisition by EDS, a highly bureaucratic organization which will impose some of its own vision, structure, and values upon the company. After thorough examination of Appex’s current organizational structure, its previous structural transitions, its core competencies, the evolution of the industry it serves, and the institutional context into which it is being placed, it is my recommendation that Appex undergo a substantive restructuring. For a company of Appex’s size in this rapidly-evolving, technologically-oriented market...
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...While reading the article about Appex Corporation, I was able to relate to similar issues that they faced. Life is all about finding a system that works for you. However, just because a system works for one person or organization does not mean that it will work for everyone. Shikhar Ghosh, the CEO of Appex, went through trial and error with different strategies and structures before finding one that works well for Appex. Over the past three years, I feel like the University of Illinois Track and Field team has adjusted to different structures as well. During my freshmen year here as a pole vaulter, the coaching staff was a bit chaotic. There seemed to be no structure of any sort. First off, the track team is already divided into a few groups, such as the sprinters, throwers, distance runners, and jumpers. Within my group, the jumpers, we had about eight of us. We would show up to practice everyday at 3:30pm and not know what our workout was or which coach we were working with, whether is was our head coach, conditioning coach, or pole vaulting coach. We didn’t know who to go to with issues or who was in charge of us. Some days we practiced with one coach and the next day it was a different coach. None of their workouts were in sync and things just seemed a bit out of control. However, after a few of us talked to the head coach, who was ultimately in charge, at the end of the year and we all agreed that some things needed to be changed. At the start of my sophomore year, I...
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...Case Write-up Appex Corporation 1. What were the challenges Shikhar Ghosh faced when he joined Appex? When Shikhar Ghosh joined Appex Corporation in May 1988, the Cellular Telephone Industry was growing rapidly and the market for Appex was expanding. The need of the time was a large scale expansion and organizational level changes to handle the increasing customer demands and planning for the future strategies. Following were the challenges which Ghosh faced when he joined Appex: 1) The organization was initially small and the decision making was centralized among the key executives. All other employees were only involved in developing and selling products. 2) People had expertise in definite sectors but everybody did anything which came to their mind. 3) There was no functional structure, roles were not defined and there was no job description 4) As the market was growing, more projects poured in and people worked on many projects at once 5) The environment started becoming chaotic and the company was spending cash quickly without monitoring its expenses. 6) Employees were only “fire-fighting” with the existing operations and there was no development or underlying planning structure. 7) Customer complaints started increasing and Appex was unable to handle the increasing demand and volume of customer requests. 8) Company started missing the installation dates and fell behind schedules, there were failures in product development. 9) Information flow started...
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...CASE: Appex Corp Appex Corp. was fastest growing high-technology company in the United States. They provided management information systems and intercarrier network services to cell phone companies. During the rapid growth, the company went through several structural changes and also Ghosh had to find a way to handle the increasing customers’ demands and planning for the future strategies. 1. What were the challenges that Ghosh faced when he joined Appex? 1) The organization was originally small and the decision making was centralized among the key executives. All other employees were only involved in developing and selling products. 2) People had expertise in definite sectors but everybody did anything which came to their mind. 3) There was no functional structure, roles were not defined and there was no job description 4) As the market was growing, more projects poured in and people worked on many projects at once 5) The environment started becoming chaotic and the company was spending cash quickly without monitoring its expenses. 6) Employees were only “fire-fighting” with the existing operations and there was no development or underlying planning structure. 7) Customer complaints started increasing and Appex was unable to handle the increasing demand and volume of customer requests. 8) Company started missing the installation dates and fell behind schedules, there were failures in product development. 9) Information flow started becoming difficult...
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... are grouped by both function and product in a matrix and frequently teams of employees will be assigned to a project to accomplish a specific goal. This type of structure can take advantage of the best parts of divisional and team based structures. If Appex were to consider a matrix format I would recommend a balanced/functional matrix. This form of a matrix structure is one in which a project managers are assigned to oversee projects and these project managers must share power with the functional managers who are the normal chain of command. One of the disadvantages of this arrangement is the division of power between the managers but if Appex’s managers could overcome the difficulty inherent in such a power sharing scheme then this could be a beneficial way to structure the company. 4) A classical hierarchy. I believe that this time-tested structure is what Appex needs as it has grown too large and complex to operate efficiently in any of the structures described above. Although some consider this to be an impersonal form which would not allow for the employees of Appex to operate in the unstructured way that they did at the beginning, the simple fact of the matter is that the employees of Appex had already slipped out of that productive mode long before Mr. Ghosh arrived on the scene. Although they began as a cohesive group, that cohesiveness had become chaotic by 1988. The company is large and getting larger. If it wants to achieve common goals...
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...Summary Appex corporation has spent the last 3 years developing and trying out new organizational structures as it changes from a small organization of only 25 employees to a large one which grows an estimated 50 percent every six months. T o do this they have recruited Shikhar Ghosh to the position of COO with the promise of the CEO position in the future. Each of these structures implemented by Ghosh has revealed strengths and weaknesses after they were implemented and as 1991 approaches it is time for another change. The purpose of this paper is to show that a move to a more bureaucratic system is needed more and more as the company reaches larger sizes. When the company is later incorporated into a larger organization this would also facilitate such a move by more easily integrating into the new parent company’s existing bureaucracy. The key problem facing Shikhar Ghosh upon arriving at Appex is the chaotic condition of the company’s current structure. What was once a tight-knit group of employees is now a group of people with no clear-cut job responsibilities or work ethic. He reports that “Everybody just did what they felt like. For instance, customer service people were supposed to start at 8:00 AM. They wouldn’t arrive until 10:00 AM, but they would work until 2:00 AM. Everybody did things on their own time, and the attitude toward the customer was-“we’ll call you back.” (CoursePak) The cellular industry was beginning to explode and Appex found themselves...
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...Ghosh faced when he joined Appex? 1) Lack of structure: because Appex Corporation lacked structure, it resulted in a working environment without formal procedures. Even though the people had expertise, everyone just did anything creating chaos. There were no job descriptions so if the employees were interested in something, they did it. Also, there was no development of an underlying structure so anything a week away pretty much had no priority. 2) Lack of financial planning: Appex was not monitoring its expenses and this resulted in the Corporation spending cash too haphazardly. For instance, Appex had initially planned to increase its staff from 36 to 55 by the end of 1989. However, they ended up having 103 people by the end of 1989. 3) Lack of control: People arrived when they wanted and would just react to whatever crisis the company happened to face that day creating a situation where the atmosphere was changing from entrepreneurial to chaotic plus the fact that nobody had the time to had time to plan or schedule meetings. Customer service people who were supposed to start work at 8.00am would not arrive until 10.00am and then work till 2.00am. This lack of control even created an atmosphere where the staff of Appex could go off and play basketball during office hour. 4) Lack of productivity: Appex initially had employees who were focused, committed, hardworking and worked in close interaction with each other. As a result, Appex was very responsive and effective...
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...1. What were the challenges Shikhar Ghosh faced when he joined Appex? When Shikhar Ghosh joined Appex Corporation in May 1988, the Cellular Telephone Industry was growing rapidly and the market for Appex was expanding. The need of the time was a large scale expansion and organizational level changes to handle the increasing customer demands and planning for the future strategies. Following were the challenges which Ghosh faced when he joined Appex: 1) The organization was initially small and the decision making was centralized among the key executives. All other employees were only involved in developing and selling products. 2) People had expertise in definite sectors but everybody did anything which came to their mind. 3) There was no functional structure, roles were not defined and there was no job description 4) As the market was growing, more projects poured in and people worked on many projects at once 5) The environment started becoming chaotic and the company was spending cash quickly without monitoring its expenses. 6) Employees were only “fire-fighting” with the existing operations and there was no development or underlying planning structure. 7) Customer complaints started increasing and Appex was unable to handle the increasing demand and volume of customer requests. 8) Company started missing the installation dates and fell behind schedules, there were failures in product development. 9) Information flow started becoming difficult, there were clashes...
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...LEADERSHIP IN ORGANIZATIONS(Draft Syllabus) B01.1302.25 Spring 2010 Professor R. Kabaliswaran Office: KMC 7-56 E-mail: rkabalis@stern.nyu.edu Office Hours: 11:30 AM– 1:00 PM on class days and by appointment Class Hrs: Wed 1:30-4:20 PM on Jan 27; Feb 3, 10, 17, 24; Mar 3, 10, 24, 31; Apr 7, 14, 21, 28. Due Dates Team Case Write-up: 2/24. Final Team Project : 4/28. Indiv Take Home Final: 5/2. ____________________________________________________________ _________________ Course Overview Welcome aboard! What do leaders do? What happens inside organizations? And how do these relate to each other? In a nutshell, that’s the stuff this course is made of. Business organizations of all types face chronic management problems that pose significant challenges to them. These problems include the difficulty of designing organizations capable of coping with highly dynamic business environments, the challenge of developing strategies and structures for hypercompetitive conditions, the greater complexity of managing global enterprises, the difficult task of shaping a corporate culture, managing politics and conflict between individuals and organizational units, motivating employees who are more mobile than ever, designing attractive incentive systems, managing and harnessing intellectual capital, and so on. Such challenges and how the top leadership can deal with them are the subject of this course. The course has two major components. The first is “macro” in nature. It focuses on organizational...
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...INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT CALCUTTA BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE II (BS-102) (PGP-1 Compulsory Course) Term 2 – (September 16, 2013 – November 2, 2013) Instructors |Prof. Vidyanand Jha |Prof. Nimruji Prasad | |E 206, New Teaching Block |K 402, New Academic Block | |Ext: 519 |Ext: 721 | |vjha@iimcal.ac.in |nimruji@iimcal.ac.in | |Prof. Chetan Joshi |Prof. Devi Vijay | |K 406, New Academic Block |K408, New Academic Block | |Ext: 782 |Ext: 784 | |chetan@iimcal.ac.in |devivijay@iimcal.ac.in | COURSE OUTLINE Objective The course aims at building and further developing on the perspectives of why organizations exist and how they are designed to achieve their objectives. This course would require you to analyze and examine organizations around you...
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