Acme and Omega Electronics

Acme and Omega Electronics

Using the mechanistic and organic structure arguments develop in Chapter 2, compare and contrast the management styles at Acme and Omega.

Acme’s managerial style consists of a mechanistic structure, while Omega’s managerial style is based on an organic structure. Acme’s vertical differentiation, which consists of four levels of control, constitutes the dispersion of authority between the organizational hierarchy levels and gears to give the organization more control over its projects and activities. Acme is highly centralized, managers of the top of the hierarchy have all the power to make most of the decisions for the company, and subordinates are expected to follow orders. Although, I think that Acme has established a high level of standardization and formalization, they experienced difficulty abiding to their own rules. Employees at Acme exercise individual specialization, where employees specialize in one specific area and work individually. On the other hand, Omega is a decentralized organization, where managers and subordinates delegate important decisions about new organizational projects. Omega’s management believes in mutual adjustment, which is the practice of using judgment on problem solving and also creates an informal way of communicating with each other rather that using standardization or written rules. Joint specialization at Omega gives their employees and opportunity to work in teams and balance their actions to find the most effective and efficient way of accomplishing an assignment. Omega’s organic structure gives the employees more flexibility to innovative thinking, and creates a unity within the organization, where managers and employees share their knowledge and skills to achieve optimal performance.

How do the differences between the companies’ management styles explain the way they coordinated the production of the memory unit prototypes of the photocopying customer?

Acme’s mechanistic management style didn’t give their employees the flexibility and the freedom to perform at their capacity. Acme’s management was more concern in producing the memory units, they didn’t stop to consider all the details and aspects dealing with the production of the memory unit. John Tyler, the president at Acme, was oppressing his people to produce the units. The production foreman order his people to begin the assembly of the product without contacting the methods engineers, whom have worked hard in analyzing the actions needed for the assembly process. Acme failed to integrate its organizational subunits and were violating their own regulations, they were not considering the inputs of core employees and they were not adding value to its product instead they where disregarding quality. When the products were finished Mr. Tyler waived the final inspection after inspecting one unit himself. On the other hand, Omega’s organic management style gave the employees the opportunity to integrate with each other, and thus working together and sharing their ideas. Omega was very successful in their production process because employees had more freedom to create or find better ways of producing the product and also because they took the time to analyze, study and plan the best method of assembling the memory unit. For example, one of the parts that was not immediately available, Acme chose to assemble the memory unit and add the missing part at the end, while Omega chose to substitute the missing part with another of equal characteristic component. Acme’s decision to assemble the unit without the missing part was made by top management without asking the opinion of the subordinates. Omega first met with core employees to come up with the decision to substitute the missing part. At the end Omega had better performance. Acme’s products were deliver late because they had to disassemble the memory units twice, while Omega deliver their products on time. Many of Acme’s products were defected while Omegas products were operational and with zero defects.

Why didn’t Omega win the final contract? How do you account for the photocopier manufacturer’s decision?

Omega didn’t win the final contract because the photocopier manufacturer desired a lower price on the memory units and Acme was able to suite their need. At the beginning the photocopier manufacturer had split the contract between Acme and Omega with