...Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A) Greg James, a global manager at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun), slumped on the edge of his bed in the company’s corporate flat in Paris. He struggled to even move after only three hours of sleep. James had embarked on this unexpected trip from Sun’s Santa Clara, California, headquarters six days earlier. With only a few hours’ notice, he had set out to meet with his entire 45-member customer implementation team spread across India, France, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the United States (US). He had already met with his team members in the US, India, and the UAE. France was his final stop before heading home. For the second time, the team had failed to respond promptly to a customer system outage as required by a service contract agreement. James had begun this trip assuming he would find a swift resolution to the rapidly escalating customer situation that had motivated it. Unfortunately, that had not been the case. James knew that if he could just make it to the gym, exercise would invigorate him and clear his head: “Five more minutes and then I’ll go.” Twenty minutes later, still in his room, he grabbed his laptop and launched his e-mail. Re: HS Holdings James scanned his inbox, reliving the events that had plunged him into this predicament. Six days earlier, he had received a string of e-mails, forwarded to him by his team. Rahul Ashok, service manager for the Mumbai team, was in touch with Praveen Devilal...
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...Massachusetts Institute of Technology Reebok NFL Replica Jerseys: A Case for Postponement1 “This time of year is a little too exciting for us. I have a warehouse full of jerseys out there and retailers are screaming for the teams and players I don’t have! Every year, it seems like we have the right mix of inventory going into the season, and then some team that no one expected to do well gets off to a 4-0 start, and the team everyone expected to contend for the Super Bowl is losing games. Suddenly I have 1000s of jerseys I can’t sell and 1000s of orders I can’t fill.” Tony is responsible for the inventory of NFL replica jerseys that Reebok maintains in their central distribution center. It is early October, and the NFL season is well underway. “No wonder we call this the chase, I feel like I have been running for months, I’m exhausted. I wish there was someway to plan inventory that would allow me to react faster to hot players and teams. But with player demand changing so much from year to year, I really can’t increase inventory, in fact I like to minimize inventory at year-end.” Background Reebok International Ltd. is headquartered in Canton, Mass. The company employs approximately 7400 people, and is widely known for their sports apparel and footwear brands. Reebok was still a small British shoe company in 1979, when Paul Fireman acquired the exclusive North American license to sell Reebok shoes.2 In 1985 Reebok USA acquired the original British Reebok, and Reebok...
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...The case is about the company Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUN), which is located in Santa Clara (USA) and provided companies with hardware, software, storage and services in information technology (IT). SUN was founded in 1982 at the Stanford University and derived its name from the Stanford University Network. One of the company´s competitive strategies had been the global presence all over the world in order to provide excellent support to its clients anytime. Furthermore SUN could take big advantages over its competitors due to the ownership of technologies like “Solaris”, “UltraSPARC” and the “JAVA” platform. As a result, SUN had earned impressive revenues of $14 billion and holds 35,000 employees in 47 different countries. Greg James is the global manager of Sun Microsystems Inc. and leads a global team of 45 people. He studied computer science engineering at the Stanford University and had been praised for his talent of solving complex technical problems. Various Silicon Valley companies tried to hire Greg, however, he chose SUN after extensive research, as he wanted to work for a technology company where he could grow and develop his professional career. After working five years for SUN he received the SUN outstanding Manager award and was praised for his excellent customer service. Greg’s global team is composed of 45 members in France, India, the United Arabic Emirates and the United States and serve customers in Asia and Europe. His team faced a big challenge with an UK...
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...Overview of SUN Microsystems Inc. Sun Microsystems I nc. (SUN) provided companies with complete information technology (IT) solutions that included hardware, software, storage and services. One of Sun ’ s competitive strategies had been to form global teams in order to provide excellent and prompt support to its client at any hour of the day. Greg James is the global manager of SUN located in Santa Clara, USA. H e leads a global team of 45 people composed of members in France, India, the UAE and the US. James ’ team serves Sun’ s enterprise customers in Asia and Europe. 1. Situational Analysis James’ s team faced a big challenge where one of their account, HS Holding has a problem of their entire system went down for two hours. It was a disaster for their online banking business. H S Holding support team had contracted SUN for support but nobody engaged their needs . They were dissatisfied with their customer services and expected prompt response from SUN. H ence, they are seeking a $300K service contract money return to them and threatening a lawsuit because SUN violated their service contract. Through this incident, James realized there are many issues existed among his global teams. 2. Organization and HRM challenges Being a multinational enterprise (MNE) has to face many challenges, just like James ’ team at SUN, they are now facing a challenge in people management . Managing a global team, they need to have a good system or procedures to guide the ir teams in different countries...
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...came to light when an outage at HS Holdings, who has a $300,000 annual service agreement with 24X7 response, went unanswered by Sun Microsystems. With threats of a lawsuit, Sun Microsystems was determined to get to the bottom of it and find out who dropped the ball. Interpersonal conflict is the most important issue within the case because if there hadn’t been perceived power distance, distrust, and cultural misunderstandings than the outage could have been handled quickly without involving HS Holdings management nor the Customer Advocate in Paris, Elisabeth Fournier. Despite the poorly programmed queue and the lack of an updated contact list, the problem still could have been addressed fairly quickly if the Indian team hadn’t felted alienated by the team as a whole and insulted by Nick Elliott when he was overheard saying the Indian team was incompetent. Situation Analysis: Sun Microsystems (Sun) is one of the largest information technology companies in the world. It includes global teams filled with efficient and effective employees who work with a choice of an employee-friendly open work environment. Greg James, a successful engineer and “Outstanding Manager Award” winner was appointed as a global manager of a diverse 45-member team from the United States, United Arab Emirates (UAE), India, and France. As he sets out to meet his entire team to resolve the HS Holdings system outage, he realizes that finding a smooth and easy solution to the rapidly decreasing customer...
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...Problem Statement Greg James, a global manager at Sun Microsystems, has found himself in a difficult situation after his teams failed to respond to a customer’s outage. James’s main problems are that his teams have a support system that fails to address emergency situations and that James has poor, inefficient communication with his teams that leads to unhappiness in the workplace. Analysis Sun Microsystems uses a support systems that queues problems for resolution. The situation for HS Holdings went into a queue that is designed to keep track of missing contract numbers. Since there is no queue system for emergencies, it took several hours for anyone of importance to notice the issue. Jamal, the programmer that created the queue system, stated his assignment was to create a queue for accounts with missing contract numbers. Never was Jamal communicated to create a program that dealt with emergencies such as when a client’s servers go down. The problem here is that Sun Microsystems does not have an emergency situation protocol. With a fail proof support system, one that is designed to deal with emergencies, James would not be traveling across the globe to meet with each of him teams. Sun Microsystems also fails from poor and inefficient communications from James to his teams which has caused unhappiness. If this problem is left uncheck, employee morale will decrease and Sun Microsystems could start to see themselves with a high employee turnover. One of the biggest reasons...
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...Organization Structure Resource Sun Life Financial is a leading international financial service organization. It provides a diverse range of protection and wealth products and service for the customers. The organizational structure is based on the divisional structure. The company divides into five segments: Sun Life Financial Canada (SLF Canada), Sun Life Financial United States (SLF U.S.), MFS Investment Management (MFS), Sun Life Financial Asia (SLF Asia) and Corporate (reference). Compared to other competitors, each of the businesses focuses on a different resource. They provide different services in the different areas. SLF Canada has national market leadership positions in both protection and wealth services. The segment offers a full range of protection and wealth products and services to individuals and corporate clients. It includes three business units: Individual Insurance & Investments, Group Benefits and Group Retirement Services. In the domestic market, the SLF has a leading market position. .It gives the organization competitive advantage. The SLF US segment is primarily focuses on the Employee Benefits Group, and Life and Investment Products. The Employee Benefits Group business unit provides group life, long-term and short-term disability, medical stop-loss and dental insurance, as well as a suite of voluntary benefits products, to over 10 million group plan members. MFS was a global management financial team; it provides a variety of products and...
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...Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A) Greg James, a Global Manager at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A) comes across a critical issue wherein the server of the client (HS Holdings) went down and Sun’s 24x7 software premium - a $300K service was not able to engage them and get the issue resolved. The client was threatening a lawsuit because it breached the service contract. Greg James needed to identify the root cause of the issue and sets out to meet his global team spanned across India, France, UAE, and US. While traveling across these countries and meeting his team he realizes that the problem was more complex than he had realized (as mentioned to Pam Lawry in the article). Greg’s management of the project reflected Illusion of Control (Shore 6) as he was never able to foresee any issue or conflict occurring within the team. His team was a global team spanning across geographies, so he was a virtual manager (Mantel | Meredith | Shafer | Sutton 48). In such a scenario even though he had regular meetings with his team he was averse to the issues that were concerning his team at different locations. Teams at different locations were dissatisfied with one or more factors. The Indian team was concerned about their treatment by the US team and also the kind of work that they were assigned. The French team was worried about the compensation as compared to their US counterparts and the UAE team felt neglected. There was some serious Interpersonal and Intra team conflict...
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...TSEDAL NEELEY Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (B) “I learned that as a manager, you will face crises. You are not a failure if they are created on your watch. How you deal with these crises, however, will define your success as a leader.” −Greg James Greg James returned from his trip exhausted but intent on making the changes necessary to help his team work together effectively. The process problems that had instigated the HS Holdings crisis were easily remedied: James unified the two support queues, collapsed the weekend and weekday protocol phone numbers into one, and made sure that customer contact information was updated and universally available. But he knew that creating team cohesion was going to be more difficult. If James had learned anything from the HS Holdings crisis, he needed to keep his team more engaged with their client work and the company as a whole, and to keep himself better apprised of how his team was functioning. Before James could begin to create the kind of team cohesion he sorely needed, upper management wanted him to hold people accountable for the myriad of mistakes that had caused the crisis in the first place. James decided to weather the heat from upper management alone. Not only did he not fire any of his team members, he took full responsibility for all of the mistakes that had occurred under his watch. James knew that mistakes are a fact of life in such complex organizations, and that his team need not be punished....
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...HRMG 6200 Bob Koski’s business plan for Sun Hydraulics was successful because Bob created an environment that fostered creativity, an essential characteristic for this type of manufacturing business. Although I’ve never experienced working in a horizontal management organization due to the nature of my field, I can appreciate how Bob’s horizontal organization and working in teams created job satisfaction that increased employee self-motivation that ultimately increased productivity which resulted in the success of Sun Hydraulics in a competitive manufacturing market. However, I believe that horizontal management for Sun Hydraulics could inhibit Sun Hydraulics’ national and international expansion. A decentralized structure, working in teams and communicating the organization’s goals can attract really talented creative employees who like to work in an environment that is not restricting. Employees in these organizations can make companies successful once the employees perceive that their skills and talents are well compensated and their job is designed with all or one of the five enrichment motivators. Horizontal organizations that are successful and grow can become chaos since there is a decentralized structure. The total amount of employees, their various personalities and values can make communication very difficult. Hence the reason for Bob Koski limiting the total amount of employees in each location to be less than 250 which can inhibit the growth of the organization...
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...contrast to International Human Resource strategies. One goal of globalization is to be able to do business across borders without stress. Similarly, as companies grow customer bases, it is important to have strategic business units in areas local to the customer base. It is what is required to successfully build a successful global presence. This analysis will attempt to highlight potential issues faced by Walmart when they opened up for business in China in 1996. This analysis will also provide a set of recommendations that may have helped to avert the issues that Wal-Mart faced. Background Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. started when Sam Walton set out on an ambitious mission to have a store with the lowest prices anytime, anywhere. In 1962 Sam Walton opened the very first Wal-Mart in Rogers, Arkansas. By 1967, they owned 24 stores and continued to rapid expanding. In 1983, they added to their portfolio by starting a wholesale/bulk retailer called “Sam’s Club” and by 1988, they started a hybrid of general merchandise stores and supermarkets and aptly called them “Super Centers.” In 1990 Wal-Mart became USA’s number-one retailer. In 1991, Wal-Mart opened its first global store in Mexico City, Mexico. In 1994, it rapidly expanded throughout Canada by purchasing of 100 Woolco stores and converting them to the Wal-mart brand. In 1996, Wal-Mart aspired to be the first retailer to open up a chain of stores in China (Walmart) but was facing a lot of resistance; and that’s where this case focuses...
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...Hewlett-Packard The Company Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), also known as HP, is a global technology company working in approximately 170 countries around the world. Over the years, HP has provided service for a billion of customers and continues to service many more every day. Many people often think of printers when thinking of HP, yet they account for much more than just printers in the technology world. HP has product lines in printers, laptops, desktops, servers, storage, and networks just to name a few. With all of the products that HP has, they also provide customer service with locations around the world on six continents. HP uses the “follow-the-sun” global workflow approach, whereas when the sun moves, the opening and closing of the service centers move with the sun. For the entire year of 2011, HP’s revenue clocked in at $127.4 billion, with $12.6 billion in profit (Kessler, 2011). Even though HP made $12.6 billion in profit last year, some would consider it a slow year for the technology giant. One of the things that had an impact on profits was the acquisition of the software company “Autonomy” for over $10 billion, in October of last year. Sometimes profits do not reflect growth, and HP understands that growing will allow them to stay competitive for many years to come. Community Difference HP believes in the community and has donated to many relief funds around the world such as the Haiti earthquake and the most recent Colorado fires. With over 300 thousand...
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...environment with commitment and dedication, which will help me to explore myself fully and provide me an opportunity to work with a global group.. Professional Tenure: Employment Status: Employed Employed Company: Oracle Corporation India Private Ltd (Bangalore) Designation: Analyst, Global Order Management – North America. Duration: From January 06, 2011 till Date Description of the Assignment Oracle Corporation is the world's leading supplier of software for information management and the world's second largest independent software company. Oracle Global Financial Information Centre (GFIC) is based in Bangalore and provides services for Oracle's in-country operations across the world like Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Cash Applications, Order Management, Credits and Collections, FP & A, Purchasing and all other financial services. Responsibilities include Resource Management, Process Management, Release Management, Requirement analysis, strategy formulation, test planning and implementation, causal analysis, auditing, provide training and mentoring. Applications Used: * Oracle latest environment R12 Application. * Trained on full Order Admin and Support process of Oracle 11i software Roles and Responsibilities * Expertise in the Renewal Process for Sun and Oracle License & Support. * Work for Global Countries and...
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... a comprehensive strategic Plan has been compiled with goals, rational, insights and initiative. These elements are in Accordance with the three fundamental values stated in the Colgate Mission statement. The three fundamental values of Caring, Global Teamwork and Continuous Improvement Are the foundations for Colgate’s business strategy and are reflected in every aspect of Work life. Caring: The company cares about people; Colgate employees, customers, Shareholders and business partners. Colgate is committed to perform with compassion, Integrity, honesty and high ethics in all situations and to listen with respect to others and To value differences. The company is also dedicated to protect the global environment and To enhance the communities where Colgate users live and work. It is also committed to Be compliant with government laws and regulations. Global Teamwork: Colgate is part of a global team that is committed to working Together across countries and throughout the world. By sharing ideas, technologies and Talents, the company can achieve and sustain profitable growth. Continuous Improvement: Colgate is committed to improving every day in all it Does, as individuals and as teams. By better understanding consumers' expectations and Continuously working to innovate and improve products, services and processes, Colgate Will "become the best." Marketing Objectives: Company planning for Increase website traffic by 10% and...
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...Case Study about Sun Life Financial Services Manalaysay, Levi Jhanine P. MG11A Prof. Rosalinda Lacerona Title of the case: Sun Life Financial Services Time Context: Summary/ Abstract Sun Life Insurance is an international insurance company, providing individual and corporate life insurance, group retirement services and benefit management services. The Canadian operations have offices located throughout Canada, with the head office in Toronto. The Group Claims division provides drug and dental claim management and claim adjudication to companies in Canada through its 4 main centres in Toronto, Ottawa, Edmonton and Montreal. Clients include the Federal Government, City of Toronto, Royal Bank of Canada and Magna International. Sun Life Canada alone had a customer base of 7 million. It had its stock listed on the stock exchanges of Toronto, New York, London and Manila. Sun Life’s presence in Hong Kong has been growing stronger and stronger over the past 100 years. Clear and sound policy formulation requires any company to have well defined business objectives, vision and mission. Sun Life Hong Kong aims to be one of the top five players in the Hong Kong market for both wealth management and insurance. In the present time, Sun Life manages assets in excess of $425 billion and has an employee base of more than 14,700 and few thousands of independent agents worldwide. By 2001, with revenues of C$ 16.7 billion, Sun Life Financial Services (Sun Life) had emerged...
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